Davis Part 1 - The Ride Up

This past weekend I went to the Davis Ultimate Invitational to play with Monster (kind of on a whim, I decided to go only 3 days before.) I drove up with 3 other teammates (Roeder, Khosh, and Thunder.) We were set to stay at another teammate's house in Sacramento. Seeming as our 7 hour drive ended up taking 15 hours I think you can say it was quite the adventure.
So we left at 2pm from Khosh's place in Costa Mesa after an impromptu BBQ chicken lunch prepared by the master chef Khosh himself. Hit a little bit of traffic though LA, but nothing too bad. We were making good time until just before 6pm when Roeder's car inexplicably breaks down on the middle of the 5 north just north of the 58.
So there we are on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere with no idea what had happened to the car. We try calling AAA but Scott's card number has expired so we opt to have CHP sent out. While waiting, Scott finds that his card is not in fact expired and we get AAA to finally send a tow truck. CHP gets there, but ends up not being able to help us out much. Tow truck gets there and says he can tow us into Bakersfield (about 20 miles due East from where we were.) Unfortunately its a Friday night at 7:30, so no auto shops are open. We end up getting taken to this auto shop in this guy's backyard. Our situation was definitely a good start to a bad horror flick. So the mechanic who lives there tells us the timing belt is busted, but that we might have damaged the valves inside the engine. That added to the fact that no machine shops open till Monday morning means we are stuck... in Bakersfield. Not a good situation.
So we started calling around to different rental car agencies, but none are open. We try the places near the airport, but they don't have any cars. The only car we could find in all of Bakersfield was an Infinity that was $120 a day (wow) and that we couldn't take one way. No bueno.
So we call a cab with the intent of staying at a motel for the night and hoping our rent-a-car fortunes will improve come the morning. And man our cabby was crazy. He tried to convince us to let him drive us to 'somewhere in North LA' for only $250. Not the best of ideas, especially with this guy. So motel 6 it is. On the way he decides to call the motel and ask if we can have a room in the back because he has the great idea that two of us will hide behind the hotel while the other two book a room so that the staff doesn't know we are stacking 4 people in a 2 person room. What a crazy idea. I don't think I've ever done anything like that at a Motel 6. Hilarious. Anyways, I was glad to be rid of that cabby.
So at this point of the night (around 9:30) our plan was to get a rental car in the morning and just drive back down to Irvine. Steve had other plans. He called from Irvine just after dropping Jerry off at the airport (he had opted to fly up instead of drive. smart idea all things considered). But yea, Steve called with the crazy idea that he would drive up to bakersfield to pick us up then we would continue on to Sacramento and then Davis the next day for the tournament. It was so crazy it just might work. He ends up getting up there around 11:30pm and we sit around for an hour trying to figure out if we want to drive up to sac or back to irvine. Of course we choose Sac.
Playing ultimate > not playing ultimate.
So we start driving after a pit stop at Del Taco (with crazy drunk people who high fived us for being ultimate players). I opt to take the first driving shift and drive till about 3:30am or so (up the 99). Then steve starts driving as I fall asleep in the passenger seat. I'm awoken around 4:30am just north of Stockton to steve saying 'oh crap' and flashing lights behind us. I guess steve was in a hurry (understandably) and had been going a bit above the speed limit. He was ticketed for 95 in a 65, but from reports from the back seat we had been hovering a bit above 100mph for a while. I'm glad I was sleeping. Even then, I know Steve, so I wasn't worried.
The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. We got to Henry's place just past 5 in the morning and slept for a few hours before we had to get up and drive the half hour to Davis for our first round at 9am the next morning.
And that is how our 7 hour drive to Sac turned into a 15 hour adventure.