Our Trip in Pictures

Leaving Home...

St. Louis, Missouri

Driving through Kansas

Boulder, Colorado

Denver, Colorado
Georgetown, Colorado
Edwards, Colorado
Driving through the Rocky Mountains
Colorado National Monument

Arches National Park, Utah

Grand Canyon, Arizona

Sedona, Arizona

Driving through Arizona

Palm Desert, California

...and Home!

A Funny Thing Happened...

(Post by Tracy)

A funny thing happened on the way to school this week. Even though I leave the house at 6:45 am, there's always plenty of other people out on the road with me during our sunrise drive on the 101. So it didn't surprise me when I followed the same car from the highway off my exit and onto one of the main roads that leads me to school. I was noticing that the young-ish woman who was driving the black sedan seemed distracted, looking back and forth from the road to something in her front seat or near her center console, but she was managing to still drive safely enough.

We exited the highway and merged into traffic on the 6-lane surface road before coming to a stop at a stoplight. Even on the surface roads, traffic was pretty heavy, so we weren't leaving too much space for the Holy Ghost between us and the car in front of us. The lady in the sedan stopped pretty close to the decent-sized SUV in front of her, and there were 2 or 3 more cars in front of the SUV at the stop light.

While the lady in the sedan continued to look around for whatever was distracting her in her car, she must have subconsciously let her foot believe that the light had turned green. Still looking down, she picked her foot up off the gas and inched up just enough to bump the SUV in front of her. In the same instant that her bumper banged into the back bumper in front of her, her head flew upwards, and she and her car froze. I could tell from what little I could see of her face in her rear-view mirror, as well as her body language, that she was stunned. Oh crap, I imagined her thinking, what the Hell do I do now?

We sat there for a few more seconds, which I imagine felt like a small eternity to the lady in the sedan. Her hands did not move from the steering wheel, and her eyes did not leave the car in front of her. I didn't blame her for doing nothing, as there wasn't much she really could do at the time - all the lanes were blocked, and there wasn't a place to pull over. Getting out of the car right there would have caused a major headache for all of us behind her.

Then the coolest thing happened.

The light turned green. The cars in the front of the lane started to resume motion. The SUV slowly began to drive forward, and the driver of the SUV raised their hand to wave at the lady driver in the sedan. The SUV drove on, the slight wave dismissing the whole issue.

Still kind of in shock, the driver of the sedan just barely allowed her right hand to leave the steering wheel long enough to give a sort of half-wave-reply, and she also drove on.

I thought about it for a little while, wondering if I would have reacted the way the SUV driver did; I probably wouldn't have. I would have pulled over, at least to see if there was any damage. But then again, we were at a complete stop, the sedan probably only moved 6 inches before hitting the SUV, and she couldn't have hit the SUV any harder than when someone bumps your car parallel parking. The mature and forgiving response from the SUV driver was such a refreshing way to start the day. It no doubt kept a lot of people from being late to work, and maybe it will lead at least the driver of the sedan and myself to be more calm during a typical road rage-inducing situation.

That's our City of Angels for you.

Update on the California Life

Update! If you scroll down to the bottom of our blog, there is now a place to put in your email address ("subscribe via email") so that you will get email updates when we update the blog! This is different than becoming a "follower," which just shows who likes the blog. Go ahead and do both!

(Post by Tracy)

Big News. We have been living in California for 6 weeks. Why is this Big News? Because I have officially broken my standing record of how long I have been away from home. Until now, the longest I have ever gone without visiting the ol' Chaput Homestead in Deerfield was 6 weeks, and that record was set during my brief stint abroad in Lyon, France. Perhaps to some it is surprising that I've never been away longer than that, but then remember that I have never (until now) lived more than 2 hours (110 miles) from the only house I grew up in.

So what has been going on in the last 6 weeks? Well...

Mom and Dad stayed with us this weekend. (Mark and Brigette's beautiful and fun wedding was last weekend in Phoenix. Mom and Dad stayed the week in Arizona and then came to see us before heading back to the Midwest.) And we had a great weekend:

- Ate at The Counter - Mom and Dad's favorite LA eatery
- Visited "The Autry" - "Cowboy Museum"
- Went to Mass at another new LA Catholic church
- Ate at Carousel - tasty Middle Eastern Cuisine
- Saw a sketch comedy show at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre
- Shopped at the Studio City Farmers Market
- Played with puppies up for adoption in the park, barely leaving without a new family member
- Made 2 impromptu visits to some Studio City open houses, accidentally checking out the same house as Corbin Bernsen and his wife Amanda Pays
- Had a home-cooked dinner and played some gin rummy (Tom and Mom beat me and Dad)

I am looking forward to their next (not-yet-scheduled) visit!

To catch up, here are some of the other highlights of the last 6 months of California life in a nutshell:

- The DMVs here are awful. It took 3 days visiting the DMV (multiple locations) to get our stuff organized.
- The pizza here is great. We have found our favorite take-out place, and the first time I ordered my favorite pizza (pepperoni, pineapple, black olive), the lady on the phone thought it was "cute."
- I splurged and took the Honda to a hand-wash car wash since there's no rain or snow in sight.
- I also splurged for my first California mani/pedi and ran into two of my new co-workers while at the nail salon.
- While I was missing terribly the best season to be in Milwaukee or at Legend Lake, Tom and I were lucky to be able to spend plenty of hours at the beach in Malibu.
- Although it also tore me up to miss the last weekend of the summer at the lake and miss the Shawano County fair for the second year in a row, Tom and I had a great weekend with family in Phoenix to celebrate Mark and Brigette's wedding. The wedding and reception were beautiful, and I really enjoyed the mini-vacation with some of my family.
- The drive out of the LA area on the Friday of Labor Day weekend was the longest, slowest strand of city traffic in my recent memory, replacing the (awfully long and slow) drive between Hammond, IN and Milwaukee, WI on a Friday evening. It took 3 hours to go 50 miles. Previous Hammond to Milwaukee record: about 3 hours to go 115 miles.
- Overall, this traffic does not faze me. My commute is about the same distance and time as it was between Milwaukee and Elm Grove. With that said, people here do not seem to understand what I am saying when I tell them I don't mind the traffic here because "I am from Chicago."

By the way, school is going great. Being an internet-savvy teacher, I know it's best leave out specifics while blogging. So suffice it to say that things are great at work - great coworkers, great work environment, great students. Block scheduling is kind of a different world, but I think I like it. (It's hard not to like a schedule that lets you leave at 1:15 a couple Fridays each month.)

There you go - an entry without much focus but that covered a lot of ground. Also, Tom and I have heard some really nice comments from y'all about the blog. Thanks for checking in on us! Next post: a re-cap of our trip in pictures! Oh, and we'll tell you about how we became buddies with Martin Sheen.

P.S. Thanks again to Mom and Dad for visiting. Come back soon!