In which Sharon and Bryce have an adventure

If you are a living, breathing organism this side of the universe, you are probably definitely aware of a certain first-world phenomenon bearing a certain four-letter acronym. As prematurely old young people disgusted by the irresponsible tendencies of our generation, Bryce and I have thoroughly rejected the idea that one should engage in destructive behavior because one experiences an earthly existence in a singular form. I'm not going to say it, you know what it is.

However, this weekend we uncharacteristically found ourselves embracing a similar philosophy, only without the total lack of self-preservation.

Upon returning from my weekly lesson in San Francisco, we found ourselves facing an uneventful Saturday evening, of which there have been too many in recent memory for our taste. We are young, high-powered, adventure-seeking people after all—but the usual alternatives seemed rather dull. Dinner and a movie? So passé. Life is only as interesting as you make it.

So without stopping to really think about it, we each threw a change of clothes into a single duffel bag, hopped into my car, and drove to the airport with no idea where the day would take us. We acted with such haste that we may have looked like fugitives or hunted political dissidents. But there was no time for thinking or regret. We were in need of adventure, dammit, and we were going to get one. After all, we're young and the time to pull impetuous stunts like this is now.

Upon parking, we walked to the Virgin America check-in counter and basically told the clerk that we wanted to get tickets to go somewhere but we didn't have a destination in mind, no need to check bags—which in hindsight probably set off some alarm bells, and may be the reason why we seemed to be dogged by airport security for the rest of our trip? She was initially fazed, but then took up the challenge with gusto, looking up flights and recommending destinations to us. For all of about three seconds we were ready to go to Las Vegas but it turns out the only seats available on the return flight were in first class, and contrary to popular belief, young people who have just gotten out of school are not made of money.

So we ended up getting tickets to LA, and our enthusiastic clerk got us really good seats. Because our timing was just right, we breezed through a practically empty security checkpoint and then walked onto the plane before we even had time to maybe think about regretting our decisions.

Upon landing in LA we looked up a hotel via Gogobot on Bryce's phone on our way out of the terminal, hopped into a cab, and took off. At said hotel, a very nice clerk booked us a room on one of the highest floors, we went up, and finally, barely two hours after deciding to just up and go to the airport for the hell of it, Bryce and I were finally able to sit and wonder what to do with our evening.

We ended up getting dinner at Chaya Downtown, where we proceeded to eat and drink ourselves silly.

(We devoured dessert—a warm croissant bread pudding with dulce de leche ice cream—without thinking to take a picture. My bad.)

Last minute traveling has an odd way of tiring you out, and so our plans to really explore the city were trashed in favor of getting a decent night's sleep. Bryce set an early morning alarm with the intent of exploring then, but when morning rolled around we decided that we just like sleep too much.

In a nutshell, we flew to LA to have dinner and to sleep. I have no regrets.

Packing the next day was ridiculously easy—partially because we had brought little more than a change of clothes, and partially because Bryce did all the packing. Packing light and having a proactive boyfriend is great, I recommend you all try it. After breakfast we left from the hotel, where the porter buzzed over a luxurious black sedan to get us back to LAX. (Right before us he had crammed a family of five into a little taxi, so I imagine that this porter was charmed by the intoxicating scent of adventure that clung to us like a perfume. Or maybe he thought that we were celebrities, which is a very easy mistake to make.)

After being whisked to the airport, getting our daily dose of personal rights violations courtesy of the full-body scanner, and boarding the plane early, I proceeded to enjoy a spectacular hourlong scenic view of California's frothy coast and sun-drenched mountain ridges, none of which I got to document because I'd left my camera at home with a case of battery exhaustion. (All pictures here were taken by Bryce, because what are boyfriends for if not gratuitous photo-stealing?)

To cap off our uncharacteristically spontaneous adventure, we discovered that we'd been flying with Kevin Rose, of Digg/Milk/Google/general entrepreneur fame. Even Bryce was too shy to say hi to him.

Thus ends our rash whirlwind experience. Running off to hop on a plane for no reason whatsoever may not have been the most responsible thing to do but hey, sometimes you just have to get away and have an adventure.



Oh yeah, and we came up with a new catchphrase. FIAG. You get to guess what it stands for.