As I approached the Arizona state line, I started to feel a little nervous. This was it. What we had been driving toward for 3 days. Even once we were there, in Arizona, I could barely believe it was all actually happening, and that we were really driving to California. But there were still about 4 hours of driving left to Los Angeles.
Oh, there it was – the border, a checkpoint where everyone gets stopped for some reason (I realized why later – California basically considers itself a separate state, and everything has to be different there). And the coveted sign: "WELCOME TO CALIFORNIA." We wanted to get out and take a picture, but since it was dark, we decided not to waste time, and besides, you weren't allowed to stop there. Everything really is different in California – even the road signs. Across the rest of America, the speed limit sign says "SPEED LIMIT," but in California, it says "MAXIMUM SPEED." Just like that. And prices for everything are one and a half times higher than in other states.
Having driven halfway through the state, somewhere in the mountains, we realized we hadn't slept for 20 hours, but there wasn't much left to go, so we had to keep driving. About 2 hours before Los Angeles, a gorgeous view of the valley opened up, all glowing, all the way to the ocean. As I understood it, these were the lights of Los Angeles and its suburbs. By this point, we had crossed the pass and were already starting to descend toward the Pacific Ocean. It was simply stunning. We were almost there. I called the girl we were supposed to stay with one more time and told her we would arrive soon. She said she was waiting.
It's very hard to tell where Los Angeles begins. It stretches for hundreds of miles, at least from the direction we were coming from. And that's where a small disappointment awaited us. The thing is, Interstate 10, which we had been driving on the whole way from the Atlantic Ocean, was closed for some reason, and we had to find a detour. But our GPS wouldn't lead us anywhere except the 10. We had to drive "by feel" through nighttime Los Angeles. The girl lived right in the center, in downtown, her name was Analeigh. So, we somehow made it to downtown, found her address, left the car in a parking lot, and went inside. At first, we thought we had the wrong address. At the address she gave us, there was a tall, beautiful building with what were probably very expensive apartments and a Black concierge. He asked us what we were looking for, and we said apartment #3. He told us there was no apartment 3, but there was a 3rd penthouse. A PENTHOUSE?! No way, we thought. Someone must have messed up. We checked the address again. Everything seemed to match. So we decided to go up and see what was in the 3rd penthouse, after signing in with the concierge downstairs.
We went up. There were 15 floors in the building. The penthouses were on the top floor, of course. We found #3, knocked, and, oh miracle – a girl from Couchsurfing opened the door. At first, we were speechless. And we felt a bit awkward barging in with our dirty suitcases. But Analeigh turned out to be very hospitable.
What a gorgeous penthouse she had. A 3-story one with a balcony that offered a stunning view of the Los Angeles skyscrapers. And at one moment, something flashed in my head – I had seen this girl somewhere before. And then I thought that with such beautiful features, she must be famous, and to afford such a penthouse, she had to be working at least in Hollywood. I wasn't wrong – she did work in Hollywood, and her name was Analeigh Tipton. Since she was still quite young, not many people knew about her yet, but she had already managed to star in a few films, and she was also a model (I read that on the internet). She didn't tell us anything about where she worked, and we didn't tell her that we knew who she was.
Photos of Analeigh.
Then my brother and I sat down with a bottle of gin to celebrate his birthday, which was on September 9th. We realized that by that time, we hadn't slept for 25 hours. We finished the gin and, exhausted, crashed to sleep.
Hooray! We crossed the whole country in our old clunker. From one ocean to the other. It's hard for me to believe even now. By the way, when we were leaving the Outer Banks, the guys from the go-kart track where I worked started taking bets on which state our car would break down in. The most popular bet was North Carolina.
