In February of this year, I was in Chicago for an event, and met with Cynthia for some appetizers and chit chat. Cyn told me about this event that Lee and her were talking about doing later in the year. I told her to remind me later in the year about it, and of course I would be there, because it was in California, my home state.
I purchased my ticket, and asked for the time off from work. Since it was driving distance from my house, I really didn’t focus on planning how I was going to get there. But luckily, at the beginning of last week, I was able to make plans for the roadtrip with Tiffany, the goddess behind The SITS Girls and Bloggy Boot Camp. As Tiffany would say much later, we could have fun, even if we were in a cardboard box. Although it was a seemingly short road trip, I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time. Tiffany and I also learned that; 1. it is a good thing we don’t live close, 2. we spend too much money together, and 3. we should never ever go to Target together.
We finally arrived at our destination in Ojai, CA, and it was dark. Seriously, so dark we could barely see anything, and cell phone service was, well there was no cell service. But we found everyone at a local restaurant. I think I had the best sausage pizza ever, and I’m totally not a sausage pizza eater. I blame Tiffany for that. I was able to initially meet some wonderful women, that I’ve never met before. In the four plus years that I’ve been blogging, there are people that I’ve wanted to meet, but we literally have just passed/missed each other by minutes at events. I love that we weren’t rushing around and could just spend some one on one time chatting.
And then I hit bottom. Seriously, waking up at 5am, working all day, and then traveling, well it makes you tired. I don’t think that there was enough caffeine in the world to keep me awake that night. Tiffany and I decided that it was time to head back to the MOTEL. I had to capitalize that because, MOTEL really needs to stick out.
We arrived at our motel, where we instantly noticed that the main office was closed. You could tell that we were in a small town, because there was a note with my name on the door, which stated that my room keys were in the mailbox, just to the right of the note. We grabbed the keys, and drove around the corner to find our room. I had to give some work humor with a phrase like, “you know what defines a motel from a hotel, you can drive your car up to the door of the room.” I have such odd humor, I’m glad that I surround myself with people that “get me”. Tiffany may have mentioned something about “pepper spray”.
We headed into our room, which was refreshingly nice. We organized our stuff, and sat on the fluffy white covered beds. I did an exclamation of “god bless wifi” or something like that. Because I started checking my e-mail etc., when I sat down. I think we were exhausted and finally crashed around 11pm, but I still tossed and turned. I thought I was loosing my mind, but then I realized that every time I moved, a damn motion sensor light came on in the room. The night was not like a simple night light either, it was bright and lit up the entire room. Tiffany had a sleeping mask on, and she could still see the light too. I think the sensor was activated at least 3-4 times during the night. I may have cursed profanities at the light, a few times.
I added a few “decorative touches” to my photo of that damn motion sensor light. I may have told Tiffany that it seemed like we in the perfect setting for a horror movie, or where serial killers go to bury their bodies. I hope that the other people who stayed in the motel had the same experience with the lights, because we could not make this stuff up.
We then headed towards our destination at Calliote Canyon, down a long and winding road. I would like to thank Tiffany’s OnStar navigation system for getting us there. I’m quite jealous, and actually researched the system when I got home. I’m pissed because my Tahoe is a 2007, and it is only available for 2009+ models.
We caught everyone at breakfast time, but we had some small talk while everyone got ready. Since, this post could go on forever, I’m breaking it up into two posts. I will try and get another post up soon about The Creative Alliance soon. But in the meantime, here are some sneak peek photos below.
