It started with the coordinator asking Angel to ask me to wait down in the lower deck, since there'd soon be presents, stories of empowerment and general "girl power" goings-on that might make me uncomfortable/might be disrupted with me being there. Angel asked me a few times if it was okay and I understood and didn't mind at all.

In fact, it gave me the opportunity to check out the lower deck, then meander over to this giant sloping hill near the property that was covered in avocado trees. And so I walked slowly, listening to mirthful laughter dance across the air now and then, stopping to photograph this path, or those trees, or this path and those trees with that giant mountain range poking up in back.

And for whatever reason, I felt like I was on my own giant mexican plantation, morbidly obese and full of knowledge, with a sportingly tight white button-down and an airated beige hat, surveying this or that tree while I explained the history of the place to onlookers and made obscure gestures to a house boy that peeked in around the distances. And the photographs looked pretty spiffy too.

But all good delusions come to an end, and I went back to the lower deck, hung out with the white-gold lab who lazed in the shade and made a few calls to Ma and Scott, to figure out how to replace the coolant. Around that time I also started hearing birth stories and Mother/Daughter tales, which was heartening, actually. You could also gauge how wonderfully clever or thoughtful a gift was by the tone and pitch of the raucous laughing. It was amusing and chill like that until Angel came around to get me.

And in short order, we'd gone down back to civilization, got two gallons of anti-freeze, paper towels, and water--just in case. Going back to the San Marco pass Angel and I saw how backed up traffic was going south, and we decided to take in the sights and wait for the carnal mob of metal to die down.

We slowly wound up the mountain--with me being much more relaxed this time, passed my sun-tanning car, then went along under some fetching rock shelving I'll have to photograph later. We only passingly looked at the caves for me to get a sense of where they were. We then wound up an even more gnarly but equally treacherous road that makes Old Topanga Canyon Rd. look like a surface street, with artistically missing asphalt on the sides, bumps and dips, and this great tiny hillock you sortof fly over like a little rollercoaster around and up a bend.

She showed me her baby shower friend's old place, which looked vacated--so we decided to take a good look around. She showed me the back, with this two-tiered Druidic ampitheatre to the left, a hill copse of majestic boulders and a tall oak tree to the right. And when she mentioned where the sit-down concerts were (which were performed by the concert musician baby shower friend who, yes, has no name in this narrative), I could imagine the casual elegance of those times. Angel's stories were wonderful in giving you a picture of the mood and atmosphere like that, even how her friend found that instant love one night as she saw who'd be the father of her child.

The whole area reminded me of Topanga Canyon, with that same pure sortof closeness engendered by the tucked away feeling of it all. And the view from that mountain was absolutely breathtaking, with the ocean a distant background as sweeps of Tibetan mountains hoisted fields and boulders full of amber stalks and lone oak trees, the San Marco pass just a vein far below. We also dodged up this tres fancy driveway to see this bitchin' hacienda complex of a house, joking on the way back down about being captured by them, then being forced to serve food for a 7 hour french dinner and have only the bad wine. With french accents. You had to be there.

Eventually, we went back down to my poor exhausted car, filled it with antifreeze and found out it only had a tiny leak in one of the lower hoses. At this time we had about over half a dozen people drive by waving, some asking if everything was alright. Angel and I talked, compared notes on vehicle repair, foreign language tapes, stuff.

And y'know, it occured to me that it was a wonky sortof serendipity that my car overheated that day. If it hadn't, I wouldn't have been to the awkwardly interesting baby shower, or up to see the caves, Angel's friend's old place. I wouldn't have gotten to know Angel better or hear all those cool stories. By the end of it all it felt like she was a real friend, and that was a great feeling.

Everything turned out for the best, in essence. Even my car sounds like it's still doing the same.

I didn't actually get a chance to photograph the painted caves that day, but sometime soon I'll go back up there--with a repaired hose and three gallons of antifreeze.

Just in case.

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