Saturday 30 September 2017

Adventure in Sacramento




A North California friend, not Sally
A memory from my 40th birthday trip to the US, inspired by John's adventure post.

In my earliest blogging days there was a woman who posted and commented prolifically and introduced people so I made a lot of blog mates through her and got to know her well enough to phone her sometimes. Sally had a husband or maybe an ex called Rob. He was supposedly a one-time actor on Days of our Lives. I think they were still together when we first knew each other and at some point he went to live with his mother. Anyways, I knew Sally well but Rob was known to me mostly by what Sal said. When I decided to take a trip to the US I intended to stay with Sally but unknown to me, she was drinking heavily and ashamed of it so pulled out at the last minute.
I was to get an early morning train from Sacramento to LA so Rob offered me a bed at his place the night before and a lift to the station in the morning. The arrangements were made by email and there were a couple of phone calls as well. Everything was civilised and friendly until the day before I was to stay there when Rob called me in an absolute flap about something Sally had said. He was threatening to pull out of the whole arrangement but I needed the place to stay so I soothed his ruffled feathers and things carried on.
Another blogger drove me from her place to Rob's in the late afternoon. It didn't look like the trailer parks in the movies but it was a mobile home in what seemed to be a suburb full of neat prefab dwellings, a stark contrast to the affluent neighbourhood pictured in Sally's blog. Rob came out to meet me, he was considerably shorter and less good looking than he had been represented, I almost didn't recognise him. He hugged me for far too long as my other friends looked on, then they waved goodbye and left.
We went inside the cluttered house and I was shown to my room which looked more like an actual person's bedroom than a spare. Rob was insistent that I should book a room for my upcoming night in LA and sat me down at his computer to do so, then he wandered off and got involved in a text conversation with somebody while I attempted to entertain myself in his house. He mentioned that after dinner we might go for a drive.
Eventually it was dinner time and we went to some place to get burrito bowls. We chose one each and then drove back to the house where Rob emptied half of each bowl onto a plate and packed the rest away, never to be seen again.
Sally decided to make the drive to meet me and soon after we ate she arrived, a little worse for wear. She apologised for reneging on our arrangements and I said she would do well to sort herself out which provoked screaming about Rob's abandonment of her, which provoked him to shout at her to get out. My meeting with Sally, the inspiration for the whole trip, had taken a total of about ten minutes.
Rob retired to bed and I went to shower. Rob's mum had died many months earlier but her bra was still hanging on the back of the bathroom door.



27 comments:

  1. I am at a loss for words except to say wow__just wow!

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    1. Looking back, there were enough oddities that I should have made different arrangements but I never felt unsafe, I just felt that I was caught in a vortex of weirdness

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  2. A vortex of weirdness sounds like the perfect description. I hope Sally was able to find herself again later. She sounds to have been in a desperately sad place.

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    1. I'm not in close touch with her anymore but I think things are a little better.

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  3. Interesting experience and something triggered that off now!

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    1. You make an interesting observation that something triggered this now. I'll think about that

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  4. Oh. My. I feel sorry for everybody in this story - you, mostly, though! Goes to show how blogging can present only a slice of a person's actual life. A thin slice, at times.

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    1. It makes an interesting memory for me and no harm was done so it's all good.
      I think people unintentionally reveal themselves all the time but sometimes it takes the right eyes to interpret what is there. I knew Sally to have regular falls but I thought she was having a run of bad luck

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  5. I wonder how common it is for bloggers to misrepresent their lives? I like to believe most of us are pretty honest about who we are, hoping to discover like-minded individuals.
    Your experience sounds rather disturbing, not to mention spoiling what must have been an epic journey.
    Hope you were able to get away from the situation and enjoy the rest of the trip.

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    1. It was indeed, an epic journey and I loved every minute. I was a little hurt about Sally but when I realised the truth of her life I didn't mind so much.
      I must have met about ten other bloggers by now and Sally was the only surprise, everyone else is remarkably true to their online persona

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  6. Yes, Kylie, as you say in your reply to Jenny's comment "... people unintentionally reveal themselves ...". I am afraid you have done just that. Revealed a side in you I didn't think was there.

    I am astonished at you. How can you relate someone's personal tragedy on such a public forum, easily traceable via your blog? I take it Sally isn't her real name. As to "falling". Yes, "regular falls" can mean "having a run (sic) of bad luck". Nothing more, nothing less. Shit happens.

    Neither do I see the adventure in your story. It seems somewhat foolhardy to rely on a stranger's hospitality rather than procuring a hotel room, dinner and maintaining independence should the encounter turn out not what you had hoped for. Tell a (relative) stranger they need "to sort themselves out" first time you clasp your eyes on them? And what have Rob's looks got to do with anything?

    Sorry, Kylie, I don't get what you are trying to say with your post.

    Disappointed yours,
    U

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    1. Ursula,
      Sally is not her real name and none of my readers from those days are still with me, I thought enough time had elapsed and enough distance that it was an okay story to tell.
      Sally was no stranger to me, I regarded her as a good friend and it was only because I felt that way that I spoke the way I did. The conversation was a little longer and a little kinder than what it maybe comes across here but i just put in the salient points.
      As for my being foolhardy, yes i probably was. And all I was aiming to do was relate what i thought was an interesting story.

      I'm sorry i disappoint you. I'm no saint no matter how much I wish I was. Maybe I made a mistake on this one....

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    2. I've re-read my post many times now, looking at what I have said and how my tone is. The key to it all is in this line "My meeting with Sally, the inspiration for the whole trip...."
      That is what I thought of her, that I wanted to spend my money and my holiday time on flying half way around the world to meet this person. That is how confident i was that we had a solid friendship, that is how much I respected her.
      It will also tell you how shocked and hurt I was when it all turned out to be a pretence.
      I have tried to tell the story without anger or judgement, just as an incident in my life. If it says anything about me, it is probably that I was too trusting.

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  7. You put yourself at real risk! I'm just glad you made it out alive, but am sorry that Sally wasn't quite the way she pictured herself online.

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    1. yes, looking back I should have known better.

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  8. Well here's my tuppenceworth. I have made some exceptionally good and permanent friends through Blogland. Oddly the one rather bizarre situation that I found myself in was so long ago that I can't recall the details although it was an introduction by a close friend when I was about 20 and I never felt threatened - just totally out of my comfort zone.

    So I shall address the point that has been made about you telling this story. I probably would not have done so but not for the reasons others have given but because I probably would have consigned the memory to oblivion.

    I would defend your post on many grounds: one being a warning to others to be careful.

    It's easy to realise that one 'should have known better' but we all have 20:20 hindsight. [Actually I should have said that some of us occasionally have 20:20 hindsight.]

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    1. Thank you Graham. I was tempted to delete but decided to stand by my decision.
      The interesting part about my fool hardyness is that maybe I was a complete idiot or maybe I had enough intuition to understand what I was dealing with: stressed and unusual people but not dangerous.

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  9. This sounds absolutely nightmarish. So what happened next? Was the whole trip a loss? Did you wind up enjoying yourself with other company, or in other lodgings?

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    1. This came at the very end of the trip so i already had great memories. I stayed with three other families who treated me like their own (probably better than their own, actually)
      I met a bunch of people I didn't stay with and they all gave me the royal treatment.
      To end this particular story, the guy, Rob gave me a lift to the station in the morning, it was a half hour drive so not a small offering. He wasn't in a hurry and I nearly missed my train but I caught it with two minutes to spare and made the trip down to LA and flew home the next day

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  10. I think Ursula is totally off base. Ignore naysayers like her.

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    1. PP,
      She is probably at least partly right but foolhardy or not, i have no regrets about that episode. It was one of the bravest things I have ever done and it makes a good story

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  11. I found this very interesting, and thank you for sharing this. If it serves as a cautionary tale, it serves well. This is similar to a trip I took to NYC; after meeting a nice lady on a bus tour through Ireland, and she then had offered her home as a place to stay to sight-see NYC. I took her up on it, along with my mom and daughter, and thought it would be lovely. When we got there, her 'real self' was revealed and we found her home crawling with bugs, with no running water or refrigerator, and learned that she had recently walked out of her hospital room, in a traumatic brain injury center. She also drove us through NYC without a valid license, and ruined the side of her car by veering into a truck on the highway. Needless to say, it was a very enlightening episode in my life, and I am grateful that I apparently had a big lesson to learn and all went without major mishaps. We were fortunate things didn't go worse. The takeaway is It is hard to see the real person until you are in their everyday environment! And it seems some people can be less than honest about themselves whether on a trip or through a blog. Am enjoying your posts!

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    1. i suspect you were the unwitting victim of her brain injury but whatever makes a person do weird stuff doesn't change the fact they are doing weird stuff!
      Do you have a blog I can visit?

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  12. I do not have a blog yet; my daughter is the one who could help me set one up but she went and moved off to Portland, Oregon! I am quite technically challenged, and am actually pleased with myself that I figured out how to run my ipad, but in all honesty, my hubby set the thing up for me. But I can paint! ....if that means anything, heeheehee.

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    1. well if you can figure out how to set up a blog (it's very easy, i promise) I would be keen to see your paintings!

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  13. Well thank you! I should seriously consider this! I am joining a new art group in my new hometown, so perhaps they have some tech help on blog set up. I tried an Instagram account and had a couple artworks out there, but then that got hacked and someone else took over my account. Rather discouraging. I need to press on!

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    1. get another Insta account! It's the place to be!

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