My California Adventures: Part Two

Posted on November 6, 2025 by Tara Lynne

In part one of this two-part California Adventure “series” (if you can call it that when it’s only two parts, ha) I talked about the many cool things I did and saw local to the Inland Empire and Los Angeles areas, overnight trips we took, and my jaunts down to San Diego for SDCC. Those explorations were of course tons of fun and I saw and experienced a lot of awesome places and things, but I have to admit that I’m most excited to talk about the vacations – even the shorter ones – that I went on from my California ‘base camp’!

*ACTUAL* ADVENTURES
While I would love to say that I would have gone out of my way to travel to the places I’m about to mention even if I hadn’t lived out in California, the reality is that no, I probably wouldn’t have. But I cannot express how grateful I am that I was able to do so with such ease because I was already there, and I cannot stress enough that all of these trips were beyond amazing and (with one small exception, which I’ll get into) would have been worth it even if I’d had to fly out here to take them.

The first real, true California adventure that I had was actually not until the end of 2023 – I’d recently taken a job with a company that gives employees the week between Christmas and New Year’s off, and because of the way those holidays were situated that year, it actually gave me more than a week straight off work. So I planned a full trip for Dean and I, where we left home the day after Christmas to spend three nights in Sonoma, followed by a full day driving down the PCH from northern California to Solvang, with a night spent there before returning home (at a leisurely pace) the next day.

I cannot truly describe how much I loved, loved, LOVED, Sonoma. The town square, the nearby wineries…but most especially, the Jack London Historic State Park. When I was a kid, I LOVED White Fang and Call of the Wild, and while I’ve since read other books of his (Valley of the Moon, Marftin Eden – neither of which I really liked, TBQH)…and have also read his wife Charmian’s Our Hawaii and The Book of Jack London (volumes 1 & 2), which are definitely skewed versions of their travels and his life…visiting his ranch, which is now a historic state park, was worth every minute we spent there.

We got to explore the grounds and the original house they lived in, featuring his famous desks (one for ranch work, one for correspondence, one for writing) and his bedroom with a recreation of his note papers that he would wake up and write on throughout the night, plus the ruins of Wolf House, which burned down just before it was completed, and the house Charmian built after Jack died that showcases all sorts of items from their life together…I would go back there in a heartbeat and can’t stress enough how meaningful it was to visit these beautiful grounds, even outside of their historic significance to one of the greatest classic American writers (even if you disagree with some of his seriously stilted late 1800s/early 1900s views).

Not to mention the fact that on our first full day in Sonoma, we met a lovely couple on our wine tour and even ended up meeting them for dinner the following evening!

ageeksaga california adventures sonoma pch solvang

While our drive down the Pacific Coast Highway happened on a pretty gloomy, windy, and sometimes rainy (though thankfully just sprinkling) day, that road trip was absolutely something to BEHOLD. We made a couple photo stops as well as some brief pit stops in Monterey Bay, Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, and at Elephant Seal Beach and Hearst Castle. Sadly our drive and previous stops made us too late to actually visit Hearst Castle proper, but we did wander around the little museum and store at the entrance before making the last leg of the drive down to Solvang (a.k.a. “The Danish Capital of America”).

And y’all…I *loved* Solvang. Maybe it’s the Disney person in me, and I KNOW that Solvang is super touristy and kind of cheesy, but just the evening and following morning that Dean and I spent there actually led me to plan a subsequent trip the following year, also between Christmas and New Year’s. That time around it was just my younger stepson Cam and I who were able to go, but we got to explore the town a bit more, ate a lot of good food, and went on the most amazing bicycle tour of the surrounding wine country.

…Also, if anyone ever wants to purchase and send me Sylah Salt Patties from Ingeborg’s Danish Chocolates in Solvang, I will love you forever and always 😉

As for that ‘one small exception’ that I mentioned, this is not in any way a dig on Palm Springs, but the ONLY reason we actually spent a weekend there was because I got lucky and won a raffle at work for three nights at a Wyndham resort…unfortunately I had to use those nights within a month or two of my winning, and at that point I didn’t really have the money or PTO to travel to the other location options (all of which were VERY far away). That said, while I wouldn’t have made a special weekend (or longer) trip to Palm Springs, we had a great time relaxing at a gorgeous Wyndham near Palm Springs, and of course also explored downtown Palm Springs, which is a really neat little place even if it’s not (in my opinion!) worthy of a whole trip to California just to see this one city/area.

Oh, and just like with other trips I took around California, we got to stop at a couple neat little roadside attraction type places that I almost certainly never would have seen otherwise – specifically the Cabazon Dinosaurs and Hadley Fruit.

ageeksaga california adventures palm springs

I don’t really want to say that I “saved the best for last” because it’s basically impossible to decide which was better, mine and Dean’s Sonoma/PCH/Solvang trip or the one I’m about to describe…so I guess it’s more like “last but ABSOLUTELY, certainly not least”: for Cam’s high school graduation, we took him on a trip to Yosemite, and while my type A self regrets not doing more specific planning for said trip, seeing that national park and the surrounding areas over the course of about 3 days was another experience of a lifetime that I’m fairly certain I never would have had if we hadn’t been able to just pack up the car and drive about 5.5-6 hours to get there.

We drove up to the Yosemite area on a Friday, stopped in Oakhurst and had a really good dinner (and beers!) at South Gate Brewing Company, then made our way to the Yosemite View Lodge, which is located just minutes outside of the park’s West entrance. The hotel itself is fine – the rooms are very, shall we say, aged, and the restaurant is okay at best – and the location can be both a huge plus and also kind of, well, meh. Basically on the day we were actually able to get a reservation to get into Yosemite, the ‘main’ (aka South) entrance had an hours-long wait, while we waited just 15 or so minutes to get in via the West entrance. And the hotel’s surroundings are beautiful, as it’s situated right on the Merced River. Plus it was nice having a kitchenette and a HUGE spa tub in our room. BUT…it IS very much in the middle of nowhere – the “closest” town is probably Mariposa and that’s about 40-45 minutes away.

ageeksaga california adventures yosemite 1

Setting aside my [somewhat minor] qualms with where we stayed and the fact that we were only able to get a park entry reservation for one full day of our trip (even with making reservations to get into the park within a day or so after they opened), we at least got to see a lot of the surrounding areas. We took a ride on the Sugar Pine Railroad, spent part of an afternoon exploring the aforementioned Mariposa (which is a historic gold rush town), and were able to enjoy dinner at the Ahwahnee Dining Room in the park.

On our [sadly, only] full day in Yosemite National Park, we thankfully got into the park pretty quickly, though it took us awhile to find a place to park – eventually we had to pull into a small dirt lot that was situated pretty far from any of the shuttle stops, which meant that we unfortunately spent quite a lot of our day just walking to get to and from stops and then later back to the car. At first this did at least allow us to see the beautiful El Capitan Meadow, and we did have a nice easy, quiet hike in the forest from one of the shuttle stops to Bridalveil Falls, but by the time we’d made it from Bridalveil (which was of course gorgeous!) to the nearest stop, waited for a shuttle that had space, and made it up to Curry Village, we needed real food and some time to rest our feet.

ageeksaga california adventures yosemite 2

Honestly, after that brief rest I could have kept going for a lot longer, but as the only one of us who puts in regular workouts I was a lone wolf in that, haha. We decided to check out one more place – the nearby-ish Vernal Falls – and that after that we’d head back to the car. The hike up to Vernal was by far the toughest thing we did all day, so even though it wasn’t a big deal for me, it was understandable that I couldn’t convince Dean & kiddo to keep going after that 😉

(And to be fair, it being a holiday weekend and the shuttle waits being long/those being crowded, combined with the fact that we had a good 15-20 minute walk back to the car from the closest shuttle stop, in the end it was probably for the best even for yours truly that we wrapped up our day when we did.)

While that just about wraps it up for my “actual” California adventures, I did want to at least briefly touch on a few additional trips we took that were at the very least far easier to take from California, and in some cases only happened at all because of how much easier it was to get where we were going…

OUT OF CALIFORNIA…

As these weren’t technically California adventures, I’m not going to go into any great detail, but some of the fun things I ended up doing thanks to living in California include:

Vegas trips! With Vegas being only about a 3.5 hour drive from us (depending on traffic as usual, ha) I got to go there twice for Very Important Events. Those being, we were legally married in Las Vegas, which had actually been something I’d ALWAYS wanted to do – and we celebrated my 40th birthday there as well, which felt kind of necessary considering I had celebrated my 30th there ten years prior 🙂

Honeymooning in Hawaii! Not that this would have been an impossible trip, but being so much closer obviously meant less time wasted traveling and cheaper flights, and even if it hadn’t been one heck of an awesome honeymoon, our trip to Maui was overall practically perfect in every way <3

ageeksaga california adventures out of california

Experiencing the first ever Red Dead-centric event, Tombstone Redemption! I found out about this so late in the game that I didn’t have a ton of PTO left or the vacation funds that flights and a rental car would have added to the cost had I lived farther away…but when we got lucky and were able to snag someone’s canceled hotel room, Tombstone being only about an 8 hour drive meant we could make a weekend out of it, and we made friends and memories that were more than worth 16-ish total hours in the car over the course of three-ish days 😉

What can only be called a ‘trip of a lifetime’…visiting Japan! Both Dean and I had always wanted to go to Japan, and I made it probably my biggest goal of my time in California to take advantage of direct flights from LAX to Tokyo before moving back east…and we finally made that dream a reality in late 2024, spending about 8 days exploring Tokyo and the surrounding areas – adventures that I’ve detailed in two solo travelogue podcast episodes, “Best Laid Japlans” and “TOTALLY Tokyo (& Beyond)” 😀

So yes, while I’m glad to be back on the east coast, closer to my family and most of my friends, I am beyond grateful for so many of the experiences I had in (and because of living in) California, especially those I likely never would have had otherwise. Hopefully I’ll make it back there some day – just for a visit, of course – but in the meantime I can at least treasure these adventures!

My California Adventures: Part One

Posted on October 22, 2025 by Tara Lynne

While I had been to California many times prior to living there – both on vacation and for work – my California adventures REALLY began in early 2021, when I half-moved to California to be with my partner Dean and his kids.

Dean and I had spent just over a year suffering through a long-distance relationship – and I *do* mean suffering, because about three months into our relationship the pandemic hit, which of course messed up so many of our travel/meetup plans. And at the end of the day, him moving to the east coast with a kid who had just entered high school simply didn’t make sense.

I won’t say that the approximately four and a half years that I spent in California, working east coast hours and being so far from my family and most of my friends, were easy. I think that if I had headed out there to live in, say, San Diego, or northern California, my enjoyment of life there would have been far more positive. Not that I hated it; I didn’t, and I certainly like the politics of California far more than those of South Carolina, which is where I have (temporarily, at least) returned to. But the place where I lived out in California is a suburban wasteland, an hour or more from anything interesting (in my opinion anyway). Not to mention the $600+ power bills in the summer, gas being nearly twice as much as it is most other places I’ve lived, and a nearly psychotic group of HOA people in our neighborhood that yes, have made for some hilarious conversations and memories, but who sure as hell will NOT be missed.

All of that said, I have to admit that I was extremely lucky that in my time there I was able to see and experience so much of California that I probably never would have seen or experienced otherwise. And so this blog is going to be about the amazing things that I did simply because I could.

LOCALLY[-ISH]
As much as I didn’t love Rancho Cucamonga as a place to live and certainly never could or would see myself spending much longer living there than I already did, there are some quintessential California experiences that I never knew about until I lived there. First, a thing called “The Pumpkin Patch”, which is a place you can go to in the fall/leading up to Halloween to buy overpriced pumpkins, ride crappy carnival rides or play in gigantic bounces houses (which I never bothered with, but the kids – even being teenagers/in their early 20s – enjoyed), and eat carnival-type food.

Then there’s this whole idea of “going to the snow”. This remains an absolutely HILARIOUS idea to me, mostly because the phrase “going to the snow” is even a thing. And even though we only did it once during my time there, the idea that we could leave RC and drive about an hour or an hour and a half (depending on traffic because LOL everything out there ALWAYS depends on traffic) and go from let’s say 50-60 degree weather to FEET of snow is crazy to me. After all, I grew up in New England where snow was just a constant thing from November/December through March or sometimes even April, and most of my adulthood has been spent in upstate South Carolina, where sure we GET a bit of snow now and then, but if you want to see REAL snow you have to drive hours north in the dead of winter.

Another thing we sadly only did once was taking the pups to the dog beach in Huntington. Another situation where it’s about an hour and a half away *depending on traffic*, it was still fun to see my pups experience the ocean for the first time, since both of them were born and raised (Ellie for 3.5 years, Sokka for 1.5 years) in upstate SC, which is several hours from an actual ocean beach. (P.S. Ellie didn’t care for it, but Sokka LOVED it, and I am honestly sad that they only got to go once.)

Weirdly enough, one of the little half-day trips we took was thanks to a friend of mine from SC, who had told me all about this gorgeous southern California hotel that she and her husband had a little getaway at. Turns out that the hotel she was talking about was the Mission Inn in Riverside, only about a 35-45 minute drive from where I ended up! We spent a long afternoon exploring the inn and grounds and having a delicious lunch, and I only wish I’d made time to go back before returning to the east coast…and I definitely regret that we didn’t wear Red Dead costumes and get photos around the hotel, though we DID do so on another day trip that we took out to Calico Ghost Town (a place that we visited twice in the years I spent in SoCal, though I do regret that both times we visited were basically during summer and it was errrr kind of miserably hot, haha).

We also went to Pasadena a few times (usually to meet up with friends), and got to go to a House of the Dragon exhibit at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles, PLUS a Paleyfest presentation in Hollywood, celebrating Amy Sherman Palladino of Gilmore Girls/Marvelous Mrs Maisel fame. This involved us seeing said presentation in the theater where they host the Oscars and having a bit of time to walk around the extremely touristy section of Hollywood Boulevard around that theater. Which to be fair I had visited before, but the ability to do this in an afternoon/evening – and most especially to see the Amy Sherman Palladino presentation – was so great.

Then there were the ‘little things’ – evenings out at a local winery, and, more often, evenings out at local breweries; some local hiking; checking out both Renaissance Faires in the area; experiencing a Golden Girls pop-up followed by a walk down Rodeo Drive; meeting my first WDWCP roommate for dinner at Downtown Disney; and even visiting Golf n’ Stuff of Karate Kid fame! Needless to say, as I’ve been writing this I keep thinking of more fun little Inland Empire and LA things that we did throughout the years and realizing that as much as I might have missed checking off a number of things on my “to do while living in California” list, I also fit a whoooole bunch of really cool experiences in 🙂

Anyway, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my absolute FAVORITE thing about living in RC – or really more so, specifically living in our neighborhood. Because we did Halloween BIG, there. Our neighbors on one side did so as well, and in 2024 our neighbors on the other side picked up on the vibe too, which was so much fun. For my first Halloween here in 2021 we were Cobra Kai themed; in 2022, we went with “Taco Hell”; 2023 was Mario; and 2024 was Ghostbusters. After the first couple of years we became known as a house that would provide not just candy for the kiddos but entertainment and other fun options for older kids and adults as well, and that’s the one thing I will miss the most about living there.

ageeksaga california adventures halloween

NOT-QUITE-DAY-TRIPS
While I suppose some of the things I’ve already mentioned might not technically be truly local experiences, they were things we did in a single day (often less)…and I also got to go on a couple of overnight ‘trips’ to nearby places that almost certainly never would have happened if I wasn’t living so close.

First, I highly doubt I ever would have traveled all the way out to California to run in the Disneyland half marathon. (And to be honest, having run that race, I’m glad I didn’t have to pay for flights and more than one night in a hotel to do so, heh.) Instead we drove in the day before, got a hotel right across the street from Disneyland, picked up my bib and wandered the tiny runners’ convention, ate at Downtown Disney, went to bed early, then I ran the marathon the next morning and we were back home by dinnertime.

A much more fun overnight trip was when we got to meet up with my good friends Rachel and Josh when they came to California for vacation 🙂 We picked them up from LAX and headed over to Venice, where we checked out the touristy beach area, had a touristy lunch, wandered the canals, had more drinks and food, stayed in a lovely little boutique hotel (you can actually see the building it’s in in the video game Dead Island 2, ha), and then walked all the way to the Santa Monica pier the next day – which was a weird culmination of my route 66 trip that began in January 2021 and only finished at the actual tail end of route 66 in October 2023.

ageeksaga california adventures overnight

And then – pretty much JUST before I left California – a good friend of mine, Jonathan, who I hadn’t seen in something like 10? 11? years was in San Diego for a work conference…thanks to proximity and Hyatt points we were able to head down there for an overnight to meet up with him. We had a blast eating at one of my favorite SD restaurants, Bencotto in Little Italy, and visiting the Ballast Point brewery in Little Italy, AND a really cool tiki bar called False Idol, plus brunch the next morning at Werewolf in the Gaslamp (though I would have preferred Cafe 21 in the Gaslamp, sadly that location was closed – at least temporarily – when we visited ::cries::). Dean and I even stopped at Tom’s Farms, a sort of famous roadside attraction, on the way back from San Diego…so basically fun things that I never had the time and/or energy to fit in when I was in San Diego for…

SDCC
I’ll be honest, if I hadn’t been living California during the summers of 2022-2024, I don’t think I would have bothered going to San Diego Comic-Con. The expense long ago started outweighing the benefits when it came to flights alone, not to mention the amount of PTO I had to expend to fly out even for a long weekend. Being only about a 2-2.5 hour drive away (depending on traffic! lol), combined with friends who lived in San Diego who I could stay with, or a hotel room I was gifted one year by some much beloved and truly generous friends, or even paying for a spot in a hotel room last year, was the only way it was truly…well, maybe ‘viable’ isn’t the right word, but certainly the only reason I was willing to spend the money to be there.

And wow did I have some GREAT times at SDCC the past few years. More than worth the drive, any money I spent on food and drinks, etc. Of course I spoke on panels each year, but I also got to meet up with old friends who I hadn’t seen in a long time, got TONS of free books (well, in 2022 anyway), was able to attend a meetup with fellow Red Rising fans, had some absolutely amazing times with my friends Paul and Orion and Fahad, among others…and then last year (2024) even had the privilege of hanging out with my friend Tore (who wrote Red Dead’s History) and the one and only Roger Clark, the actor who brought Arthur Morgan to life and did the audiobook for Red Dead’s History. And listen…if that was my last trip ever to San Diego Comic-Con, it was a GREAT way to wrap up my 9 years of attending that event!

Of course, there is SO much more to California (and to LIVING in California) than the Inland Empire, LA, and San Diego…so stay tuned for part two of my California Adventures!

Ma Chère Marmalade, The Real Lady…

Posted on September 7, 2024 by Tara Lynne

Ma Chère Marmalade, or Mermalerms, Marms, Mumsiekwims, KiT-Ten,

My beautiful, sweet, perfect kitten-cat…where to even begin, with these 14 years, 9 months, and 26 days of memories that I have of, and with, you?

I suppose it’s best to begin at the beginning, despite the cliché…

Thank you for choosing Steve and I all those years ago*. While you had a home on my family farm after being abandoned elsewhere (and by the way, HUGE loss to whoever abandoned a perfect princess such as yourself)…from early on you knew what you wanted, and you were never shy about asserting yourself…which was one of the innumerable amazing things about you. Because when Steve and I arrived for a short stay on the farm while waiting to close on a house, you had already decided you were a house cat, not a barn cat, and I’m not ashamed to admit that we were easy targets. I mean, how could ANYONE say no to that face?

ma chère marmalade adoption pic — 11/10/2009 – The day we realized Marmalade was ours or bust 😉

I remember my mom telling us “If you let that cat inside, she’s going to want to stay inside”. You’d already been trying your best with my parents and Jenni (who saved you in the first place), but mom & dad’s dogs were NOT cat friendly, and Jenni already had five indoor/indoor-outdoor cats. So there we were, your new marks, with one dog (at the time) who LOVED cats…and “only” three cats of our own. Did you know that we couldn’t refuse a kitty in…well, if not need, then certainly ‘want’? Did you sense that our ‘third wheel’ cat Ducky wanted a buddy of his own?

Either way, of course we couldn’t see you constantly trying to sneak inside, or sitting outside the kitchen window with Ducky sitting on the inside windowsill and OBVIOUSLY interested in meeting you, and simply spurn your advances!

And so we invited you inside…and even if we hadn’t been told, in no uncertain terms, that if we did so you’d end up being OUR cat…it was immediately clear that you fit in perfectly with our menagerie…and again, we simply couldn’t say no to your always assertive, entirely sweet, sometimes clarw-y self 😉

Truly, you were The Real Lady, and as effuse in my praise as I want to be, I’m not sure it would or could ever be as much as you deserve. So I will simply say:

Thank you for being one of the most loving and friendly cats alive – for making every person who met you feel as if they were special, as if they were chosen, even if some of that was just because you were a perfect little princess who loved attention from pretty much any and everyone.

Thank you, most of all, for being exactly the cat I needed after we lost your “brother” Stitch. I loved you to the moon and back, exactly as you were, when he was alive…but when he was gone I wasn’t sure what I would do without my “empath kitty” who knew exactly how to console me, often before I knew what I needed – or even that I was about to need consolation at all.

Of course you didn’t ‘replace’ him, or become him – you were, I think, always that kitty too. And so you seamlessly blended your own personality into what had primarily been his role. In a way I wonder if I should apologize for not recognizing that you were an ’empath kitty’ too, back when our boy was still alive…something I probably should have seen, based on how you made yourself memorable to and beloved by so many, from cuddling my friend Laura’s pregnant belly to attaching yourself to one of your ultimate faves, Ren, because I believe you sensed they needed a kitty in their life.

ma chère marmalade laura — Marms cuddling Laura’s pregnant belly <3

I loved how, despite your idyllic small size, you never ceased to stick up for yourself when necessary…whether Ducky (or later, Appa) was bugging you to play or just simply messing with you and you told him what’s what…or when one of the dogs (who you were generally chill with, because again, you were the best) was a bit too ‘up in your face’ and needed to be, shall we say, taken down a peg.

That said, I do apologize for every foster – cat or dog – that I brought into our home who stressed you out…and I’m as much – if not more – sorry for displacing you so many times.

From one Greenville house to another…to Florida, and then from one house to another while we were there…back to Greenville (but to the same previous house, at least?)…and then all the way to California, where yes, you met new family and friends, but then, sadly, were here too long to see all of the east coast people you loved before you had to leave us.

But there again, I have to thank you. For being such a trooper, even through flying cross country, and for showing the immense amount of love you had to give to Dean and the kiddos (especially Cam), and to our friends out here who probably never would have met you otherwise.

Still…your being here and my frequent lengthy trips back east lead to my final apology – the one that, no matter what I say or how much I try to forgive myself, will haunt me for some time to come. That being: I am so sorry I had such awful timing. Sorry that I didn’t see how you were likely suffering more than you let on, sorry that I was perhaps so afraid of letting go TOO soon that I almost certainly waited too long.

ma chère marmalade outside — This is the way I remember you – happy, healthy, energetic, your gorgeous colors against the vibrant grass and trees

And above all, I am so, so, so very, deeply, heart-wrenchingly sorry that I left you for 12 days and only had hours with you before having to let you go. I know you had the kids here the whole time I was away, and Dean for part of it too, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you waited for me – even if it wasn’t a ‘conscious’ choice to wait, thank you. Thank you for holding on, despite everything, so that I could at the very least have that small catharsis of being with you at the end. That we could cuddle and sleep together for a bit, and even watch some Jane the Virgin, because I know how you always heard the narrator’s voice and were suddenly interested in being directly in front of whatever I was watching it on.

I am doing my best to take solace in the idea that you are healthy again, safe and happy with a never-ending supply of cups that are completely full of just-poured water, and all of the fresh boiled chicken and stinky seafood flavored cat food you can eat, cuddling up to Wendy and Stitch and trying to boss Lilo, Rigby, Ducky, and Stubbs around.

Like those who went before you, you will be forever loved. You will never be forgotten. You are another perfect pet of legend, and like your sisters and brothers who you’ve joined on the other side of the rainbow bridge, a part of my heart will always, always belong to you.

“i can’t wait to see you again
it’s only a matter of time…”

*Marmalade was born sometime around January 2009, and rescued by my youngest sister Jenni sometime in the spring of 2009. My now-ex (but still best friend) Steve and I officially brought her into our home on November 10, 2009. She lived a wonderful life, including living approximately 2 years and 4 months past being given a “level 3 or 4” CKD diagnosis.

If you are reading this and are at all able/inclined to do so, donations in remembrance of Marmalade should be made to Odd Paws Rescue in Georgia.

I’m Not Part of Some Made Up Conspiracy Theory: Alec Peters & Bullying, Part 6

Posted on August 16, 2024 by Tara Lynne

It’s been a LONG while since I’ve had the time or energy to add to this series, but there have been some recent comments made regarding a supposed “press release” coming out soon that is apparently about a “conspiracy” that is being “investigated” by the Axanar “legal team” and “other agencies”. And that led to my realizing that..huh, I have a lot to say about the faux “conspiracies” they blather about…might as well do it now!

Continue reading →

Disneyland Half Marathon: My 5th RunDisney Half Marathon Experience!

Posted on January 15, 2024 by Tara Lynne

On January 14, 2024, I completed the Disneyland Half Marathon, which was my 5th half marathon – all of which have been RunDisney races! Overall I had a decent experience, but let’s just say it did NOT add up to the races at WDW…

rundisney disneyland half marathon castle pic 1

Normally I would would write up a story version of ::gestures:: alll of this, but I have a LOT to say about my first RunDisney experience at Disneyland, so this time I’m going with pro and con lists 🙂

BIB PICK-UP & FITNESS EXPO

PROS:

Because this is a much smaller race numbers-wise, check-in/bib pick-up and the fitness expo were all in the same building – the little convention center attached to the Disneyland Hotel. This made the process very quick, and it was neat that we were able to walk right over to Downtown Disney from there.
That said, if I had known how quick it would be and how small the expo was, I would have checked into our hotel (the Camelot Inn & Suites right across the street from the main park entrances) first and therefore only had to pay THEIR parking fee instead of also coughing up the money to park in the Disneyland garages. True, it was a reduced rate of $10 (from I think $35?!), but it’s $10 I didn’t really *need* to spend, and only did so because we arrived in Anaheim at about 2:45 PM and I was worried about having enough time to both pick up my bib and wander the expo.

rundisney disneyland half marathon fitness expo

CONS:

The expo was tiny and pretty lame compared to the one at WDW – and therefore not really worth spending more than 15 minutes checking out. I knew it would be smaller, but the only really neat thing about it was the Percy Jackson photo op…and that only because my younger step kid was with us and is obsessed with that series.

HOTEL – CAMELOT INN & SUITES

NOTE: We did NOT stay at an official Disneyland hotel, so what I have to say here – the good and the not-so-good – obviously isn’t a reflection on Disney or RunDisney.

PROS:

This hotel is SUPER convenient if you are ever going to Disneyland and don’t want to cough up an additional $100+ more per night to stay at a Disneyland hotel – it’s literally across the street from the main park entrances.
Furthermore, I got very lucky, having booked this hotel right after I registered for the race and then finding out right before race weekend that it was at most a 5 minute walk to the corral staging area for the half marathon.
The room itself was spacious and the beds weren’t completely uncomfortable, at least.

CONS:

We were ‘upgraded’ to a room on the 4th floor over Harbor Boulevard so while we had a view of the fireworks, the glass on the windows was weirdly cloudy or warped or something and it wasn’t exactly a great one, heh. Admittedly those aren’t really cons because it was a free ‘upgrade’, but I wouldn’t want to stay in one of those ‘park view’ rooms again. The noise from the road (and possibly the stairwell right by our room) was so bad that I barely got any sleep at all…which would be frustrating just about any time, but even more so when I only had about 6 hours TO sleep before getting up a little before 4 AM for the race.
Granted, some of this was surely a problem of thin walls/improper window sealings/etc. But I’m pretty sure that if we’d been staying at the back of the hotel we at least wouldn’t have experienced the noisiness of Harbor Boulevard [being right outside our window].
While the parking fee wasn’t too terrible, I don’t like that I had to hand over my keys in a valet-type situation for a parking situation where I could see my car in the lot. It was inconvenient, especially when we were putting stuff in the car for check-out purposes prior to heading over to Disneyland after I finished the race.

HALF MARATHON START

PROS:

Many [non-Disney-owned and therefore somewhat cheaper] hotels were within <10 minutes walking distance of the half marathon corral staging area, including (as mentioned above} my own! So I was actually able to get at least 45 minutes’ more sleep 😀
Because there were fewer people running the race as a whole, the corrals were of course smaller (numbers-wise) which meant that despite being in corral E *and* them starting about 5 minutes late, I crossed the start line at 5:33 AM. (Meaning even if they had started on time, I would have only waited 33 minutes instead of the 45 I waited the last time I was in corral E for a RunDisney half marathon…seemingly a million years ago, ha)

rundisney disneyland half marathon start

CONS:

This might have been better served in a “pre-race planning” section, but as most of the info for that is never available until the race guide comes out fairly soon before the event, it seems a bit silly to separate it out. Essentially, they needed better-labeled maps in the race guide for where you could enter the staging areas. I had to compare (1) my pinpointed location in the maps app on my phone to (2) the map my partner brought up in Google maps to (3) the graphic in the race guide that only had the cross streets labeled just to figure out APPROXIMATELY how I could walk over to the staging area…and even then was [granted, pleasantly] surprised to walk out of my hotel on race morning and realize that the entry (which at this point had an A-frame sign pointing where to go) was between my hotel and the Tropicana hotel next door. So yeah, the ‘where to go’ maps for pre- and post-race were terrible, haha.
*If* there were any pre-race photo ops or anything of the sort, they weren’t at all visible from where I entered the staging area, and as cast members were very pointedly directing everyone right to the corrals I didn’t feel comfortable wandering around to try to find any pre-race photo ops etc. that might exist :-/
I will say that I saw posts in the big RunDisney Facebook group that the security lines to get into the staging area were terrible for the 10k. One person said they got in line for security at about 4:15 AM and I believe claimed they didn’t get through it until around 4:45 AM. Whatever the issues were for the 10K, they were either (a) for another entrance, (b) they fixed them before the half, OR (c) the security lines were just cleared out if you arrived a bit later, because I walked right through when I arrived at about 4:35 AM through the entrance between the Camelot and Tropicana on Harbor.

THE RACE ITSELF

rundisney disneyland half marathon park pics

PROS:

Having experienced 4 previous RunDisney half marathons at WDW, the park portions of the course I ran often left a lot to be desired – the Princess Half is my personal least favorite course, because while sure! you get to run around Magic Kingdom!…the only other park (at least for the two I ran) was EPCOT and then only the front portion of it. So while there’s a lot to be said about the ‘meh’ organization of the Disneyland half marathon course, at the very least you got to run through a huge portion of both parks 🙂
As for the rest of the course, in this section I’ll just say: hey it was kinda neat to run by the Ducks arena and Angels stadium?
One thing I noticed that was really great was the number of spectators. I’m guessing the frequency of spectator groups along the course was due to so much of the course being on [fairly] easily accessible public property, versus at WDW where you can tell it’s really difficult for spectators to get to most portions of the course due to it all being on Disney roads and there not being publicly accessible side roads and parking lots. So as far as I can tell, if you want to cheer on a RunDisney racer, Disneyland is THE place for this! My amazing partner was even able to take a brief walk from our hotel to a spot on the last 0.1 mile of the course to support me 🙂

rundisney disneyland half marathon anaheim

CONS: (Ohhh where to start.)

While I admit that the logistics of a half marathon where most of the race has to be on public roads – meaning Disney has to work with the city of Anaheim, which was the reason the Disneyland races were put on hold from 2017 until now – have to be really difficult, the fact that most of the first mile of the race was on city streets, followed by miles 2, 3, and 4 in the parks, then hitting 5 as you exited Disneyland and spending the rest of the time on Anaheim roads…I don’t know, I expected it to be something like this, but it was still disappointing ::shrug::
Despite being warned of the problems with bottlenecking, I don’t know that any number of warnings could have truly prepared me for how often they happened and how bad they really were. The absolute worst was at the first water station – I came around a corner at a run, in that ‘dodge and weave’ zone as I tried to keep the pace I wanted to keep (but was of course having trouble with because I was randomly placed in corral E after having not seen a corral below C for any Disney race since the WDW Marathon Weekend half in 2019)…and then BAM! had to quite literally skid to a stop because there was a dozens-of-people-deep crowd shuffling along as they tried to make it through an already narrow path made even more narrow – and slow! – by the fact that THIS was where they chose to place a water station?! Argh. And there was at least one other in-park water station placed about as terribly after that!
I haven’t bothered to stop for a character photo op during a race for a long time. I don’t want to eat into my time by waiting in long lines, and the last time I stopped for a character that didn’t have much of a line the photopass person took two extremely blurry and unusable photos so it was a wash, anyway. Still, even I recognized that the character stops were often in odd places and badly lit to boot, making them really hard to notice – in fact, I ran by all but two of them and the rest of the ones that I DID see, I only realized after the fact that I had actually passed them by. While this might not be a big deal for ME, I’m frustrated on behalf of those who DO want to pause for photo ops.
And it wasn’t just the character photo ops! The only race photogs who had their places well-lit and obvious were the ones shooting people coming out of the castle. Granted, these were for sure the most important ones, but yet again I ran by the rest of them and only realized was doing so when I saw that the people I was passing were hamming it up for a camera. And while this might have caused me to miss some of the photogs along the course, I still doubt there were many more than a half dozen of them total. In fact, there are just 8 total photos in my photopass account, and only TWO of them are actually from the course itself.
Once we were out of the parks, no character stops, no course photogs, and I saw at least one person eat it BAD when they tripped over the white pavement markers in the center of the roads…not to mention reading numerous comments in the RunDisney Facebook group about others falling because of those, potholes, or railroad tracks. Thankfully for me the rest of the course was whatever because I was just trying to make up some of the time I’d lost in the park bottlenecks and while pausing for more photos than usual, and as previously mentioned the spectators were numerous and GREAT…plus it was neat to run by the Ducks arena and Angels stadium. But otherwise, meh, because at least with even the worst WDW courses, you get at least a bit of time in a park before that last tenth of a mile or so to the finish line.
Some of the mile markers in the parks (including the much-panned mile 3 marker) were in bad places, for sure, but the mile 13 marker was an effing TRAVESTY. As awesome as the spectator situation was for the rest of the race, the fact that they didn’t block off an area around THE FINAL MILE MARKER was *terrible* planning/a really bad decision…and also really disappointing.

rundisney disneyland half marathon 13 mile marker

THE END/POST-RACE SITUATION

PROS:

I was able to get back to my hotel room to get warm (because wow we had a cold snap here in CA and this was in the top 3 coldest RunDisney races I’ve ever run, of 11 total) in just a few minutes after exiting the post-race staging area…though let’s be real, this was entirely by chance, as I had no idea when I booked it that my hotel would be that close to the start/end point of the race. Sad to say, I legitimately have zero other pros for the post-race situation. So much so that I’m calling it a “situation” rather than an “experience”, ha.

rundisney disneyland half marathon post race

CONS:

Maybe other people have better photos, but I don’t have a single finish line picture that shows the finish arch.
No merch tents. No food/drink options other than the Powerade, water bottle, banana, and snack box they hand out (WDW has food and drink carts). No character photo ops that I could find (this is the time I usually stop for them 🙁 ) Not even the little “I did it” signs to hold in front of the RunDisney backdrops. I felt bad that my partner got up to meet me at the end of the race because if I had known the post-race staging area would be this lame, I would have told him to stay in bed, heh. (Note: I do understand that the area they use for post-race staging is much smaller than what is available at WDW, but at least when I was there it wasn’t really crowded at all and it looked to me as if they definitely COULD have had some of the aforementioned things available.)

rundisney disneyland half marathon finish pic — Seriously this is the best image they took of my finish. By far. ::sigh:: (I was flat-out running, too…weird that it looks like I’m walking haha)

IN CONCLUSION…

My official time was 2:39:19 – my third best half marathon time (again, out of five half marathons, and by about 5 minutes, to boot)…which to be honest isn’t bad considering the bottlenecks and my extra photo stops. And this race did teach me something – to allow myself some grace: by actually stopping for some photos (since I had obviously never run through the Disneyland parks before), and by listening to my body, including making a restroom stop but even more importantly, pausing for some additional stretching when my left hip started feeling tight at around the 11.5 mile mark. These things all served as reminders that no race is ever the same, and no matter what, I’m still proud AF of what I accomplished – including finishing 2,959th of 11,186 runners 🙂

Would I do another RunDisney Disneyland race? Honestly, I don’t know. I’m not entirely ruling it out, but I do feel for the people who traveled from afar (vs. my 50-ish minute drive to Anaheim and one night in a hotel that, with parking, cost $300). I think that if you’re a HUGE RunDisney fan and you’ve never experienced a Disneyland race, it’s…let’s say mostly worth it. But to be completely honest, if I had been on the east coast and paid not just the race registration fee + 60 miles roundtrip in gas + one night at a hotel, but instead, the current insane flight prices + rental car or rideshare fees from an airport + more than one night in a hotel…I would have been less in the “I’m glad I had this experience” boat and more in the “why did I do this to myself” boat, heh.

rundisney disneyland half marathon finish

The Aftermath of an Interview: Alec Peters & Bullying, Interlude 3

Posted on March 26, 2023 by Tara Lynne

I suppose I should have assumed that my participation in an interview regarding this blog series would lead to my having to write yet another interlude post, but I guess I hoped that speaking my truth for 58 minutes would speak for itself…so to…speak. (lol)

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it didn’t go unnoticed/ignored for long.

Of course, it seems as if the only reason my interview came under fire in the first place – at least to the extent that it has – is because Alec Peters was recently accused of allegedly buying YouTube views for his channels.

I’m including some screenshots that were shared as possible proof of this happening, because I feel it’s important to note that these accusations certainly weren’t baseless – YouTube channels that do not produce viral-level new content do not usually get tens or hundreds of thousands of views in a day, period; also, YouTube often negates views for a variety of reasons, but very rarely if ever do they negate tens of thousands, or HUNDREDS of thousands, of views at a time…unless those views were from bots, or possibly from the purchase of real views from a questionable provider – particularly if those views happen in large chunks that do not mesh with a channel’s usual average daily/weekly views.

Now, YouTube will also remove views that come from the same user watching something multiple times and views that are under 30 seconds long. Also, if a user changes a video from public to unlisted or private (or deletes it entirely), that video’s views will be removed from the channel’s stats unless/until it is made public again. Therefore I leave it up to you, the reader, to draw your own conclusions regarding the stats pictured below and what they might mean:

Data like this – which comes from a website called SocialBlade – was shared in Axamonitor at least as early as March 13th. To be fair, there were certainly some other things going on around the same time (i.e., a new filing in the case between Alec Peters and Paul Jenkins, as well as accusations of Alec possibly participating in GoFundMe skimming), but it makes the most sense that it was the calling out of those allegedly purchased YouTube views that led to the following post being made in the “””Real Truth About Axanar””” Facebook group on March 17th (screenshot taken from an Axamonitor post made that same day):

First, I have to be very clear that I really don’t care about the number of YouTube views that this interview has received. Apparently that’s a point of contention, but I have participated in a LOT of webcasts/video interviews, and let’s just say that if I truly cared about the number of views they got, I would have stopped bothering with them a LONG time ago.

For posterity’s sake, here is the interview in question:

Regardless of WHY Jon Tessler suddenly started harping on a week-and-a-half-old interview (by the way, see my Interlude 2 post for more on this particular person), the most absurd thing to come out of my interview being brought to the forefront is that in the 58 minutes I spent talking with Matt of TrekZone, the 3-ish minutes that I spent talking about Crysstal Hubbard’s accusation regarding a man named Curtis Short allegedly assaulting her has become a sort of focal point – and Crysstal Hubbard lied about what I said regarding that situation.

RE: Her lying, I am specifically referencing the line “You want to talk for an hour about not believing a man hit me” – I spoke about that situation for about 3 minutes, and I did not (and have never) said that I do not believe that he hit her. What I *actually* said was along the lines of: if it – or anything like it – happened, no way was Dean involved in encouraging or celebrating such behavior. (Additionally, how the heck I’m supposed to know anything about Curtis as a person when, as I’ve stated more times than I can count, I don’t know him *at all*, is also curious. heh)

I’ll give her this – there are people in the Axamonitor Facebook group who I would moderate out of existence, if I could. In fact, I said that in my interview – not that she would take note of that, and not that anyone from their camp would understand that I do NOT see every single shitty comment or have the time to take care of all of them on my own – because unlike them, I do not actually spend every moment of my [very limited] free time watching this bullshit.

That said, lying about what someone said in a publicly available interview – and then being called out for your lies and rather than retracting them, giving the reasoning “this might be what you say publicly but *I* believe you feel differently”…OOF.

I honestly can’t believe this is something I even have to state, because one would think it’s obvious…but apparently there are some people who actually might not understand that the only person who looks bad when YOU lie about someone, is YOU.

(And let it be noted, this is not the first time she has attempted to lie about me – I detailed one of her previous lie-ridden diatribes in part 3 of this series.)

Of course, I do understand that people are often going to assume whatever they want to assume – but a person’s assumptions don’t change the truth. To be more specific, Crysstal’s assumptions about how SHE believes I think or feel are (a) her own assumptions, (b) do not change how I actually think or feel, and (c) obviously also do not change the fact that the only argument I have EVER made is that my partner did not do what she said he did…and again, LYING about what I ACTUALLY said doesn’t make ME look bad ::shrug::

Funny enough, while the main reason I haven’t yet posted part 6 of this series is because I’ve been SUPER busy (I do, after all, have a day job and a family, take Taekwondo classes 2-3 times a week, run a convention that is happening in just over a month, host regular webcasts/podcasts, etc.), I’ve also put it off because I was having a difficult time coming up with a proper segue from all of the online bullshit that happened in the summer of 2021 to an incident that happened at Dragon Con 2021…an incident that I knew nothing about until after the fact yet was somehow still accused of participating in. But as further recent comments in the “””Real Truth About Axanar”””” Facebook group have brought that up as well, I think this segue will be quite a bit easier than I originally expected.

For now, until I have time to go into detail regarding THAT situation and how, despite my complete lack of involvement in it, there have been some over-the-top accusations levied against me surrounding what happened, I leave you with this reminder: Both Dean and I have Alec Peters, Crysstal Hubbard, Jon Tessler, and a few others from the Axanar camp blocked on Facebook.

It’s more difficult to block all of them on other social media platforms (i.e. Twitter and Instagram), but as I can, I do. I recognize that because my other social media accounts are public, there are still ways for the people I block to view them – which yes, they seem to be doing on a daily (or at least near-daily) basis, but hey, that’s on them. And really, the lack of self awareness regarding the fact that these people have so much free time on their hands, and feel the NEED, to follow every word that comes out of my mouth/every single thing I post, particularly on Facebook and Twitter (even things that have nothing to do with them) – and whine about so much of it, to boot (which we tend to learn about from others, usually when it gets shared in Axamonitor) – is just sad.

But as sad as that is, it’s also extremely problematic – though not as problematic as people insisting that I was involved in some sort of [non-existent, mind you] conspiracy to commit a crime [that did not in fact happen]. So stay tuned for part 6, I guess ::sigh::

Previous Installments:
Part 1: I’m Not a Star Trek Fan
Interlude: Proving My Point
Part 2: I’m Not an “Axanar Hater”
Part 3: I’m Not Perfect
Interlude 2: Too Little, Too Late?
Part 4: I’m Not Required to Ignore Attacks Against Me
Part 5: I’m Going to Protect My Family

I’m Going to Protect My Family: Alec Peters & Bullying, Part 5

Posted on March 4, 2023 by Tara Lynne

In part 4, I talked about how I exercised my right to cultivate my Facebook friend list so that I no longer had mutual friends with Alec Peters or Crysstal Hubbard, who at that point were both stalking and harassing me (I have cited many examples of this in my previous installments, but part 3 probably contains some of the best ones). I also mentioned that thankfully, I personally didn’t have very many people to remove, as I didn’t have many friends in common with them in the first place. My partner Dean, however, was not so lucky when he made the decision to cut ties with their mutual friends.

Dean had, after all, actually known Alec – something I can’t claim (so again, interesting that Alec and his rabid followers started harassing me in the first place).

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I’m Not Required to Ignore Attacks Against Me: Alec Peters and Bullying, Part 4

Posted on February 20, 2023 by Tara Lynne

My original reason for beginning this series was due to the fact that Alec Peters had joined a so-called “anti-bullying” group called Trekkers Against Bullying. I actually had this installment written and ready to post just before I found out that he had either been asked to leave the group, or left of his own accord, as I detailed in the recently-posted Interlude 2.

To be honest, if his exit from that group had been handled differently – both by the TAB admins and Alec himself – I might have considered taking a bit of a break before continuing my story. But sadly, despite their claim that they asked Alec to leave, the TAB admins allowed him to post an exit diatribe, then removed their public page from Facebook and made their group unsearchable…and then to punctuate things, Alec posted an additional tirade to the Axanar website. (Again, see Interlude 2 for screenshots)

So because I already had this written, and because Alec used his exit from an anti-bullying group to attack more people, it seems apt to continue telling my story. As a reminder, I detailed in part 3 that I came under full attack by Alec Peters – and his girlfriend Crysstal – in the summer of 2021…

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Too Little, Too Late?: Alec Peters & Bullying, Interlude 2

Posted on February 17, 2023 by Tara Lynne

I started writing this series because I was seriously concerned about Alec Peters of all people – someone who has threatened, harassed, and bullied me for a while now – joining a supposed anti-bullying Facebook group called Trekkers Against Bullying (which, in an attempt to link said group in this post, I am being told no longer exists, meaning it was either deleted or has been hidden from searches or even direct links – OOF).

I was in the process of writing part 4 of my series when it came to light that “TAB” had asked AP to leave their Facebook group. My first reaction was “good, you finally removed a bully from your anti-bullying group”, but unfortunately it turned out that there was more to it than that…and this is where I have to digress (not entirely, but more than a little bit) from my own story to explain how things have evolved since I began writing this series.

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I’m Not Perfect: Alec Peters & Bullying, Part 3

Posted on February 8, 2023 by Tara Lynne

As I mentioned in part 2, I joined the Axamonitor Facebook group at the end of 2020, well after my partner had been sued (again, in the wrong jurisdiction) by Alec Peters. My “membership” in said group is what has [apparently? supposedly?] led Alec Peters, his girlfriend, and his flunkeys to deem me a “hater”…but that cohort involving me in their drama began well before I was an active member in Axamonitor.

But I need to begin this part of my story by admitting that I. Am. Not. Perfect. I can’t say that I haven’t made mistakes, screwed up, hurt people. What person can? But the thing is, I OWN my mistakes – I mean shit, that’s the reason I’m still very close friends with my ex-husband. And it’s why I’m not afraid to post what I’m about to say – because I wouldn’t lie about anything, let alone shit that is easily provable. Period, full stop.

So that said…

From the time I joined Axamonitor in November 2020 through the point where everything really came to a head in the summer of 2021, I commented on a total of 13 posts in that group…and there were a LOT of posts in that group in this time period. Of the comments I made, 40% were silly jokes. Of the others, one was me calling out the so-called “Axanar dog rescue”, and was from a position of someone who actually volunteers for a legitimate dog rescue. Another was me questioning them selling cheap messenger bags for $50 each when, from my personal experience with mass-producing items with screen-printed logos (which I do for my convention), one could mass produce those same bags for around $5 each (if not less).

So imagine my surprise when I came under full attack – not just as a “hater”, but as a “stalker” – and also as someone being threatened with lawsuits…among the other absolutely incorrect and awful things they were saying about me!

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