Reasons I love my life: Friday through Sunday

This was one of those weekends where I feel like I must be reading about someone else's life in Los Angeles, rather than actually living my own.

My weekend kind of started on Friday, at least in the sense that I didn't have to drive into Pasadena for work, but only 20 minutes in the other direction to Shutters on the Beach, where my company had planned our first ever corporate retreat. I had expected that it would be equal parts team-building and strategizing for the future, and I was not mistaken. We kicked off with an ice-breaker (even though we have a small office and know each other pretty well) and then launched into individual presentations on our departments. We worked through lunch, and then our "team-building activity" was announced: we'd be going on a scavenger hunt! Through Santa Monica! On bicycles built for two!

Huh?

Let me tell you: I haven't been on a bike, other than a stationary bike at the gym, for about 20 years. I was never a good bike rider as a kid. I never had much coordination or balance, and it scared the crap out of me, to be honest. The year I grew out of my pink Huffy 3-speed and didn't have to make any more excuses as to why I didn't ride it, was a very good year, that.

We were each teamed up with someone who normally, we wouldn't work with or get to know. I was paired with our warehouse manager, an older, slower, quiet guy, whose hearing only catches about every fifth word spoken. I've known him since I started at this job more than two years ago, but have never really "talked" with him. I learned quickly that in what he lacks in hearing and conversing, he more than makes up for in bike riding, and I let him take the lead, steering us across Ocean Blvd and down Main Street as I wobbled fearfully on the back, gripping the brakeless handlebars with every passing car, essentially trusting my life in his hands.

It was a blast. I had so much fun. Running around town, racing against the clock, and having so much fun with this person that, until Friday, I had never bothered to get to know. How silly and sheltered and snobby I can be sometimes. What a waste, I think. It was an awesome, educational, inspiring afternoon. We came in third.

The retreat ended around 4:00, and I had only a few hours to relax and catch up on actual office work before Miya's birthday party on Friday night. A handful of us went to dinner at Canal Club in Venice, and then met a larger group out at a bar after that. I stayed out until the bar closed at 1 AM, and, exhausted from my day, was thankful that the bar actually closed that early, unlike when we both lived in New York. It was a fun night, but I couldn't keep my eyes open.

Saturday I woke up and rushed around to do my errands so I could head up to Malibu in the early afternoon. Lauren and I had planned on doing a hike near her family's house on Sunday, and so would stay up there on Saturday night. It turned out that another friend of hers was hosting a work event/party nearby, so we stopped by that for a little while. It was definitely a Hollywood scene. Some B-list celebs, but mostly people like us, just regular folk, looking around to see if anyone was "someone". It was a little depressing.

We left after only an hour, grabbed a quick dinner at nearby Duke's, and then just went back to the house and watched a movie. I was in bed by midnight, and I don't know if it was the wine, the ocean air, the comfy guest bed, or the waves crashing against the house, but I slept so well, so soundly. (I also dreamed that Jack Wagner was making breakfast in the house I grew up in, singing All I Need, and I told him how I had seen him in concert in fifth grade. Because I loved Frisco.)

I woke up to the sun streaming in my window at 8 AM, and sat on the deck for a while, watched the waves roll in, and just got lost in my pre-coffee thoughts. The last time I had been up there was Memorial Day, and the May Gray fog had settled over the ocean until burning off at noon; now, however, the sky was clear blue and the sun was warm enough for me to sit without my sweatshirt, in only thin pajamas on this clear summer morning.

It turned out that Lauren had forgotten her sneakers, and so we took a detour to the Woodland Hills DSW before getting started on our hike in nearby Solstice Canyon. I had, just that morning, been reading an article in Shape which advised to "beat the summer heat" by working out either before 10 AM or after 6 PM. Are they that out of story ideas, I thought. Surely their readers must know to do so. And yet, I found myself sweating though a mid-day hike, directly under the burning noon, summer sun, as what we thought was a four mile hike turned out to be closer to an eight-mile one.

It was a beautiful hike, but it was hot, and uphill. Both ways. I realized we were going the wrong way only when we were practically vertical on the side of a cliff and the only thing to hold on to was an electric tower, it's sign warning: High Voltage, Do Not Touch. So we turned around, and retraced our steps, but the base was a lot further away than either of us had anticipated. Lauren's new sneakers looked like they had been purchased months, if not years, before. I had been wearing older trainers and thick, ankle-high gym socks, and yet the dirt of an 8-mile tropical desert trek still managed to seep it's way in over the course of our three hour tour:

I drove home around 4, stopped at Whole Foods, and threw myself in the shower within two minutes of walking in my front door. I ate my salad, and then fell, heavy and horizontal, onto my couch, where I napped for an hour and a half.

I need another weekend.