Cali Chapter 2: You know what's wrong with this?

Day 2 of our California adventure began with us all waking up at like 7 in the morning. For courtesy's sake, we all tried to sleep in, but by about 8:30, we were "up and at 'em." As I said to Larry, "I am much more productive on West Coast time." I pretty much awoke in a panic because I had school work that was due. So, we went and got our free breakfast since we had swanky Regency Club access, then parted ways. I stayed in the room and worked. BOO. The other three went running, jogging, walking, or a combination of the three on the beach. By noon, we all met up and sat on the beach for a little while. We may or may not have watched the National Beach Soccer team practice.

(photo courtesy of beachsoccer.us)

Okay, busted. The soccer team was staying in our hotel, so we encountered them quite a bit and alerting the other girls about their presence was kind of a running joke. In fact, while Lana was out running, she sent a text to Amy saying "Soccer Boy Alert!" The only problem was.... she sent it to Amy's husband instead. He told Amy something like, "Lana sent me some movie quote about soccer boys, but I didn't understand it." LOL.

After some relaxation and chatting about life at the beach, we went back to the room and cleaned up. Let me just say - you've never seen 4 girls be as successful at sharing a room as us. We rock. After an hour (or two or three), we were ready and headed out. While we were waiting for our car, I started embarrassing my friends by asking strangers to take our picture. (Although they didn't waste any time asking me to send them copies, did you ladies?) ;)


We had lunch at Billy's on the Beach in Newport Beach. It was right next to a Yacht store, and we were trying to pick out the one we wanted. (You can kind of see them in the background of the picture below.) It was here at Billy's that Lindsey provided us with the theme for the weekend. As soon as we sat down, she said: "Do you know what's wrong with this?...........NOTHING." We used that line excessively for the rest of the trip.

After lunch, we piled into the car, where I once again asked the valet to take our picture. We decided to head down to the Ritz Carlton at Dana Point to watch the sunset.
Here is Amy driving a convertible down the Pacific Coast Highway. It suits her, no?


Here is a hilarious picture that I took while we were driving. I was trying to capture the beauty of the ocean and scenery, and I managed to get a chain-link fence, bushes, a sign and a view of me in the side mirror.

We made it to the Ritz and proceeded to visit the Ladies Room. Of course, I had to be photographed in it. I'm classy like that.
We spent several hours just breathing it all in. We ordered drinks and chocolate fondue and I asked more strangers to take our picture.



I will spare you all 45 pictures I took of the sunset, but here are a couple. Those little specks you see in the water are surfers.



Once the sun set, we headed back to Huntington Beach. On the way, we stopped at Trader Joes so that Amy could get some gummies for her 10 mile training run the next day. I wandered around the aisles and found dark chocolate Joe-Joes, which are dark chocolate covered oreos. (one word = yum.) Then we ate a late dinner at Dukes before going back to the hotel. Lindsey was still recovering from her cough and had a date with Cody (aka: codeine cough syrup) and Amy needed to get some rest before the run, so Lana and I went down to the hotel bar - the Red Chair - and had a few drinks. This was the introduction of the signature cocktail...a strawberry and pinapple infused vodka martini that was called "the Red Chair." Lana and I managed to kill an hour or so talking about boys, then headed up to bed.
You know what was wrong with day 2? NOTHING.