So get this. I’m coming home from British Columbia and I have a connection in LAX. When I land at LAX, I find out that my connecting flight is CANCELLED. The next flight time I could get was at like 6:00am the next morning. So I ended up spending the night in Los Angeles.
This is the kind of disruption that I would have been dreading only a short while ago. If you recall from my initial trip out to British Columbia via Toronto, where I flew through that freak storm, I was clawing my way back out from a deep pit of anxiety at this time. I felt like I had to learn to travel all over again. I think this trip did wonders to improve my mental health and re-establish my travel chops, but I still had heightened sensitivity to bumps in the road such as this. Even as this was happening, I was waiting to feel that familiar wave of panic… but you know what? I am happy to report that it never came. Looking down into the pit of magma that was my baseline level of agita, things were definitely uneasy, but the volcanic eruption of anxiety never came. THIS WAS PROGRESS.
Delta put me (and a bunch of other hapless passengers) up in the Sheraton for the night. It was a funny cross-section of people that shared the shuttle to that hotel with me. I spent the majority of the ride making conversation with a sunburnt family of all red-heads with 3 small children who were returning from Hawaii. The Weasley clan was resigned to spending the remainder of the night in their hotel room, and I was tempted to do the same. I was a bit out-of-sorts and thoroughly exhausted at this point. But when I reached my hotel room, I decided that it was important for me to take these lemons and make some goddamn lemonade. So I called an Uber and grabbed my camera.
The moment I stepped out of my Uber and set foot on the pavement, I was so happy that I had made the decision to venture out. I chose to chart my Uber for Venice Beach because it was a place I wanted to see within striking distance from LAX. And as soon as I stepped out of the car, it hit me. I was in LOS ANGELES!
I actually came to love Los Angeles during my last visit (right before COVID hit)—it is a very distinct place. And as Venice beach unfolded before me like some sort of surreal virtual reality, I realized that this might be the most “LA” place I’d yet seen. It is the stereotype of what this place is. It was Saturday night and everybody was out having fun. I hurriedly crossed the boardwalk and made a B-line for the beach so I could catch the sunset. It did not disappoint. I’ll postpone additional narrative in favor of just showing you the pictures I took.
Sitting there on the beach, looking up towards the Santa Monica Mountains, I was reflecting on how surreal and unexpected it was that I would be sitting here. This was not part of the plan. But how cool is it that you can get on a plane in some far-off northerly place, and in just a few hours, you can be sitting on Venice Beach? Honestly, I think it’s easy to forget just how easy it now is to get from point A to point B. I think a lot of us feel trapped and unempowered to travel. Logistics and finances aside, it is truly a modern marvel how EASY it is to travel. You can literally get to the other side of the planet in a matter of hours. Only a generation ago, this would have taken weeks. This was a timely reminder for me: the world is a beautiful place so JUST BOOK A FLIGHT AND GO!
I took my shoes off and stashed them in my backpack. I wanted to feel my toes in the sand. I rolled my pants up and walked alongside the surf. While I was taking pictures up the coastline, I big wave hit me, and then my bottom half was wet and sandy for the rest of the night. Oh well. This was too beautiful a setting to let that get to me.
When that magical California sunset light began to fade, I took a walk into the Venice Canals. (Not to be confused with the canals of the original Venice, in Italy… although I have to imagine there was some inspiration there). Here are a few non-HD pictures that I snapped on my phone as I walked. Let me tell you, living in this neighborhood would not suck.
I think the most empowering thing about this little episode was that it showed me I still had the ability to roll with the punches and do long trips. In terms of duration, this little delay pushed my total travel time up to a level where I could have gotten all the way back to Asia in the same amount of time. My anxieties around my ability to travel long distances definitely played into how I planned this trip. Next time, I’m just going to fucking go for it. Here’s me metaphorically hurling those anxieties and self-doubts into the sea.
Hope to see you again soon, LA. I have a flight to catch.✌️😘
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter was born & raised in Columbus, Ohio, and started this blog when he moved from Boston to Hanoi (Vietnam) in 2014. After years based in Nashville working on his band, The Great Palumbo, he now resides in London, UK.
