so i’m home. i made it almost exactly 3 and a half hours. why am i home so early?
i think i gave myself mild hypothermia. this is after i took a hot shower, dried off, and changed into warm dry clothes! so when i was out on the street at the end of it all i must have been somewhere around like 93 degrees? shit.
basically, right after i got off the subway (5pm) it starts raining, and then pouring. i’m not deterred at all and start looking for the standby line. there is no standby line. the first security guard i see says that there won’t be any standby tickets, so i keep walking. the second security guard said there is a standby line forming outside of gate 3, so i walk over there. there’s one kid under an umbrella on the sidewalk, so i say hi and we start talking. i think his name was ryan. after a minute or two, the rain is so loud we can barely talk over it and the wind is starting to blow it sideways. it calms down after another couple of minutes, but i’m starting to realize that i might have gotten in over my head.
this repeats pretty much nonstop for the next 2 hours. then the lightning starts.
it finally stops raining around 7:45, but i’m completely soaked. my raincoat is soaked through. all 3 pairs of socks i’m wearing with my brand new rain boots (that i just got in the mail today) are soaked. if it was daytime i could just take the jacket off and walk around and try to dry off, but it’s pretty late and even if it is los angeles, it’s still january. i started feeling kind of funny, then tired, then sweaty and warm for some reason and i figure this is where i should just throw in the towel. i called andrew to ask for a ride home and marcia and liezl to tell them i’m done (i think? i felt really, really awful. i don’t remember what i said but it felt like i had taken too many benadryl or something and i was just a million miles away from myself), but i think marcia had literally just pulled into the lot or something. so i sit in her car and immediately started feeling better, because the wind isn’t blowing through me anymore. andrew showed up about a minute later and we went home.
here’s proof i was there, though:
ryan and the 2 other guys, i hope you end up getting in!
the security guards weren’t really happy about us being out there overnight with the storm and all that crap going on, but i think more people were thinking about heading out there around 1 am or something. who knows. i’m going to get up at 5 and if the weather isn’t going to be insane, we might try to do this again.
