Chaos is an event that is typically taken in a negative light, but chaos can be a good thing. It is the one thing that can take life out of your control and allow you to experience things you would have never been able to do so otherwise. Chaos is proof that you can succeed no matter what. A confidence booster. The one thing that can prove you are, and will remain, undefeated by life.
I think we all know things don’t always go as planned. We get frustrated that things didn’t happen as you had thought. But does it really have to ruin your day? In the heat of the moment it may seem like the day is lost, but rolling with the punches can make any day even better than your itinerary allowed.
Today I was planning on heading up to Pasadena to see the Rose Bowl After-Parade float viewing. I had originally considered seeing the game and parade in person, but since my plans weren’t set in stone I had to pass on the possibility of getting tickets. I figured I would just see the parade-then I found out that people camped out for 36 hours to get a good spot along the parade route. I finally settled on seeing the floats in the after parade display. A friend of mine from Ohio State was in town to see his team play in the rose bowl. Considering the likeliness of two friends, one from Ohio and one from Missouri, to be in the same place at the same time we had decided to try to meet up. Unfortunately, the air lines had lost my friend’s luggage, along with his cell phone charger.
As a result of the long night in Hollywood (exceptionally long since I was a full two hours later than my normal time zone) I slept in later than I planned. I showered and headed out in the general direction I knew Pasadena to be located while I waited for the antiquated GPS to catch up with me. A full 10 minutes later the GPS had still not loaded the necessary information and I noticed a sign over the highway indicating that Manhattan Beach was nearby. I decided to make a detour.
Manhattan Beach is a very familiar name of a place from my young childhood. It was a beach that my parents took me to, being such a short drive away. I had originally assigned myself to the task of visiting the beach everyday I was here, and yesterday the magic of Hollywood and the new year had prevented me from doing so. Today, I decided the beach was not an option. Tomorrow I would not have the chance to see it again since I would have to leave very early.
When I took the exit for Manhattan Beach I noticed a sign on the side: Hawthorne. Hawthorne, California is my childhood hometown. I was certainly traveling down memory lane. Apparently the jogging of my memory also jogged the GPS’s memory: it finally figured out where I was.
I found a parking spot along a steep hill close to the beach. I set my E-brake and curbed my tires, and as I dropped a few quarters in the parking meter I noted to myself that if I was driving my Jeep this would not have worked so well. I really do need to get the e-brake tightened on “29”.
The beach was everything I remembered as a child. The sand along the beach was clean and a light-sandy color, covered in variously colored seagulls and sparsely littered with broken seashells and rocks. My jogging sneakers, that have a mesh outer shell, began to fill with sand as I walked across the beach towards the ocean. I took them off and enjoyed the feeling of the soft sand as I made my way to the water.
The sky was a beautiful blue color and pretty clouds were stretched across the sky. There were a handful of surfers bobbing in the tide, and some parents walked around with their young children as they played tag with the sea. Expensive houses and condos line the backside of the beach and I daydreamed of a day when I could afford to life in a place like that. A time when I could step out my back door onto the sandy shores of the ocean.
After I spent a good half hour sitting there, soaking in the ocean air, I realized how hungry I was. I looked over to the pier and imagined there must be a restaurant at the end of it. I could only hope it was open on New Years Day, and luckily for me it was. The small snack shack was fairly busy for the day and it took a decent wait to get my food. As I waited in line to order a small boy, around the age of 4, sang a familiar theme song as his dad ordered food. I laughed and asked his dad if the boy was in fact singing the Star Wars theme. He chuckled and explained his son had been playing a lot of Lego Star Wars recently. Cute kid.
I decided it was getting a little late and walked back along the beach and up the hilly, blue-colored sidewalk to my car so that I could head towards Pasadena. The thought of smelling roses and looking at the intricately built floats that were made entirely of roses sounded like a welcome escape from the city. This time the GPS started right up, it was almost as if it had failed to work the first time on purpose. Chaos had put a wrench in my trek to the parade, but I had to thank it for the peaceful time I spent on the beach. Sometimes detours are well worth the extra time they take.
When I finally arrived in Pasadena it was easy to identify the parade route. The street was covered in paper, bags and various pieces of trash that had probably accumulated during the campout for the parade as well as the event itself. I realized that I had no idea where the float viewing took place so I stopped at a CVS pharmacy and got some directions. I was probably a good half mile away when I hit the wall of vehicles in line to get a parking spot to see the floats. After slowly inching forward for what may or may not have been hours I noticed the time was getting later. I had planned with my Aunt & Cousins to have dinner with them near their home, so I text my Aunt. I find out there is no way to get a hold of my cousins while they are at work to try to change the time so I leave the line for the parade viewing and start driving back towards Panorama to pick up my brother for the family dinner.
All I knew about the Chili’s restaurant we were to meet at was that it was it’s address on Sepulveda Blvd, a large street that runs N-S through the entire LA area. What I didn’t know was what town it was in, so I couldn’t input the data into my GPS nor determine how far I could travel down the freeway before exiting. So as I traveled down Sepulveda I had my brother get a hold of my Aunt to determine that they lived in Manhattan Beach. Funny, I was just there earlier that day. Since I now knew I had a good distance to go I got back on the freeway and coasted south.
My brother had told me a theory earlier in the week: He has never seen a cop pull over a vehicle for speeding alone. It was his belief that the cops here simply didn’t care if you were speeding as long as you weren’t recklessly driving. Seeing as how the traffic was lighter due to the holiday I decided to put his theory to the test so we could get to the Chili’s restaurant on time.
As of this scientific experiment, my brother’s theory holds true.
Dinner at Chili’s was nice. It was great to see my Aunt and cousins since I don’t get to see them very often. I talk to them a fair amount online via social networking sites, but it simply isn’t the same. It was nice talking about how our lives were going, catching up and telling stories. It’s the best to hear childhood stories of your parents so that you can, for once, have the upper hand in a game of embarrassing stories.
I know that the chaos of my life exists because of my lack of planning. I wanted to go to see the floats, but had no time frame and didn’t even know where exactly it was. I had planned dinner but didn’t even know what city it was in.I even started driving before I knew where exactly I was going.
I can get impulsive and do things on a whim, and it usually ends up detouring from the plans I had originally made. I had said earlier that some things don’t always go as planned, but in my case I guess my lack of planning creates an empty canvass for my life to play out on. While I may not have been able to see the floats in Pasadena or visit with my friend from Ohio, I still had a pretty interesting day. Even seeing the trash-filled streets of Pasadena was an interesting experience that I will remember.
Chaos is proof that you can succeed no matter what. A confidence booster. The one thing that can prove you are, and will remain, undefeated by life.