I Slept Through An Earthquake (I'm Really Tired)

At 3:20 a.m. on Sunday, August 24, in The Bay Area's Napa Valley, about 50 miles north of where I'm living in Oakland, a 6.0 magnitude earthquake, the biggest in California since the 1989 Loma Prieta 6.9 quake, shook the region. Hundreds were injured and a few were killed. Buildings and highways, mostly in Napa Valley, sustained heavy damage. The governor of California, Jerry Brown, declared The Bay a disaster area.

I slept through the entire thing under a floor-to-ceiling shelf filled with VHS tapes that could have easily toppled over and crushed me.

The Inability to Accurately Convey Experiences

At one point on this tour/moving adventure, Francisco was riding in the passenger seat of my 2004 Chevy Malibu as we drove from Tucson, AZ, to Los Angeles, CA. He had his phone pressed to the glass of the passenger side door to take a picture our surroundings - barren desert punctuated by masses of jagged rock and mountains. He gave up because what he was seeing in first person wouldn't transfer from his iPhone to the internet to someone back home. The only thing you can do to engage in the beauty of nature and adventure is experience it firsthand.