Can’t believe it’s already August as another year seems to be flying by here. August is the county fair month here and it always reminds me how much Mario loved sketchy carnival rides. He kind of had the same approach to those as regular amusement park rides, flying on airplanes, or anything else where the chances are not zero that something bad may happen. He would always say, “it’s not gonna happen”. And the funny thing was, I believed him.
One time we went to the fair at night and he got me to go on the ferris wheel and wouldn’t you know it, we got stuck at the very top of it. Me and heights just don’t go well together so I was just a ball of anxiety, my knuckles turning white in a death grip on the bar in front of me. It was a beautiful, late summer night though, so there was that. I think we were up there for about 15 minutes because I remember the band Styx was playing live that night and they went through about 3 songs while we were up there. The whole time, Mario was giggling as he rocked our pod back and forth. I thought I was just going to expire up there as I stared all the way down to the ground to people walking about, enjoying themselves, not stuck on the ferris wheel like I was. Eventually, the thing started moving again and the terror was over, soon to be one of those small memories I’ll never forget.
I remember the time we spent a week in New York City. That was also end of summer. I had done some personal work to get over my fear of flying just to go on that trip. But the fact that Mario was 100% confident that nothing bad would ever happen to him on a flight, helped. That was a great trip and more great memories logged.
We used to like to go to Las Vegas a lot, often in the summer. Even though it was hot as hell there, we spent most of the time in air conditioned casinos, so it wasn’t a big deal. I remember the July that we got married we wanted to go there and call it our cheap honeymoon. My Honda hatchback at the time died about 100 miles outside of the city, in the middle of nowhere, in the desert, when it was about 120 degrees. All I can say is it was a good thing we were still relatively young and that I always carried water in the car when crossing the desert. We called AAA road service on my flip phone, but they sent the truck driver in the wrong direction on the freeway. We sat there for 4 hours in the heat before AAA finally figured it out and had the driver going in the right direction. So we rode into Vegas in a big tow truck. When we finally got to the hotel, I remember telling the desk clerk what had happened and this was supposed to be our honeymoon trip. She took pity on us and bumped us up to the rooftop suite! We were so tired and wiped out from the day though all we did was get some food and then head up to the room. A fantastic lightening storm happened that night and we sat in the in-room jacuzzi tub eating cake that we snagged from the buffet and watching the lightening storm. Such a great memory.
Of course there were all the camping trips we took too. And our visit to the Grand Canyon and the aircraft graveyard. Trips down to L.A. Trips to go to Comic Con. Trips to Seattle, or San Francisco. We might not have done the world travel that we always wanted to do, but we did get out and have some fun.
When we were both still in college, I remember going to many a summer rave. One in particular happened at a location on the way up to Big Bear, CA in the mountains. I especially remember that one because prior to that, Mario and I had just been friends for awhile. It was the night, on the side of a mountain, with live techno blasting in the background that he said to me, “You are the one.” Can never forget that memory.
But now, as another summer is winding down, those memories are all I have of Mario and I’m not gonna lie that makes me incredibly sad sometimes.
