Goin' Out To Cally – Part 33, Gasping For Air

We arrived at the house of Paul and Anne Osterhout in the evening on our sixth day and were immediately welcomed into their beautiful home. The house was a little smaller than the house I grew up in yet, as I later came to find out, was five times more expensive than my childhood home.

Everything was more expensive in California. We thought prices in the Arizona desert were outrageously high, but it turned out it was God’s way of preparing us for the financial burden of living in California. Gas. Food. Lodging. Hopes. Dreams. Aspirations. Respect. In Los Angeles, they all cost you more than you’d expect.

After unpacking, Tim and I took it upon ourselves to stretch our legs and go to a nearby park to throw the football. This has been a time honored tradition since high school when our church youth group would play tackle football for hours on end every Sunday during football season. I was often the quarterback and Tim was a speedy receiver. Years later in college we would toss the football back and forth and talk about school, life, etc. Even today we continue this relaxing tradition and go outside to toss the football and talk about life events.

As we entered the park near Paul and Anne’s house I was at first struck by the beautiful, high mountains hazily seen in the distance through the infamous L.A. Basin smog. Mountains were something I had never seen in a tropical location. The one thing you can say about Florida is that it is extremely flat. Overly ambitious speed bumps are sometimes called hills and dangerously aggressive bridges are considered by some Florida natives as mountains. But here I was standing in the cool, arid California weather in a wonderfully groomed park with my best friend tossing the football as the grandeur of the mountains watched over us. In some ways, it couldn’t get any better than that.

After a few warm up tosses Tim and I started our standard slants, ins and outs, button hooks and fly patterns. Within minutes our lungs began to burn. What was going on? We were healthy? I was riding my bike over thirty miles a day back in Florida, so my legs, lungs and heart were certainly up to the task.

After a couple more tosses our eyes began to tear in irritation. It was then that we finally realized the thick smog was enveloping us in a heavy blanket of increasing discomfort, leaving us gasping for clean air. Within minutes we found ourselves leaned over, our hands on our knees, struggling to breath, like after playing three hours of football at home outside of Holy Family Catholic Church.

Frustrated and disappointed we quickly decided to end our day’s exercise and returned to Paul and Anne’s house. We had a nice visit with Tim’s family as they gave us insight into what it was like to be one of the imagination engineers working for the mouse. There were a lot of exciting projects on the horizon that Tim’s brother was creatively directing. I was impressed with Paul and Anne’s creativity and passion for their work. I could only hope that I would end up in a career with which I would have the same passion and drive.

After a few hours we found ourselves exhausted from another long day of basically sitting in a car and doing nothing and a failed attempt at exercising without available oxygen, so we all decided to call it a night.

We setup our sleeping bags and pillows in the family room. I offered Sunday the couch and I agreed to sleep on the floor. Sleeping in a real home with the constant cool of air conditioning was a great respite from our days and nights in the canvas cave.

I had never felt more relaxed until I saw something that literally took my breath away... Sunday wearing very skimpy, very sexy lingerie.

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Part 33, (Text, Audio) - Part 32, (Text, Audio) - Part 31, (Text, Audio)
Part 30, (Text, Audio) - Part 29, (Text, Audio) - Part 28, (Text, Audio)
Part 27, (Text, Audio) - Part 26, (Text, Audio) - Part 25, (Text, Audio)
Part 24, (Text, Audio) - Part 23, (Text, Audio) - Part 22, (Text, Audio)
Part 21, (Text, Audio) - Part 20, (Text, Audio) - Part 19, (Text, Audio)
Part 18, (Text, Audio) - Part 17, (Text, Audio) - Part 16, (Text, Audio)
Part 15, (Text, Audio) - Part 14, (Text, Audio) - Part 13, (Text, Audio)
Part 12 (Text, Audio) - Part 11 (Text, Audio) - Part 10 (Text, Audio)
Part 09, (Text, Audio) - Part 08, (Text, Audio) - Part 07 (Text, Audio)
Part 06 (Text, Audio) - Part 05 (Text, Audio) - Part 04 (Text, Audio)
Part 03 (Text, Audio) - Part 02 (Text, Audio) - Part 01 (Text, Audio)