The thinker’s place…

One of the strangest places I’ve ever been to and the place that I vow to go once a year is in the hills of Los Altos, CA and the name of this place is moody road. Now, I remember the subsequent times that I’ve been there and every time I go there, I just sit back and my brother and I chill with some of our buddies. I remember one of the first times we went I was only 15 and I still remember feeling a little freaked out by being so high up in the hills. I have also been up there with my cousins from L.A. and it is one of the most beautiful sights that you can look upon just from sitting in your car. Whether it is in the day time or night time, it sparks a feeling like you have never had before because you feel the need to be one with mother Earth and nature. I have three memorable trips there, one being in June 2004, another being in July of 2009, and one last one being in June of 2006. In june 2004, it was memorable because it was my brother’s birthday that day and I also discovered that my brother was my best friend at that time because we were close but we were also inseparable to the point that people could tell that we were very good friends. My brother, Jesus, that day brought along his friend Enrique that day and before that day I hadn’t known much about him except that he orked with my brother at safeway and he was into Oakland sports teams. But that day, I discovered all three of us had something in common because we all liked discussing movies, politics, sports, music, and (even though this didn’t come till later) we all engaged in discussion about work and how much it sucked, (although I just asked questions along the way). The cool thing was that night I discovered that some best friends are meant to be and even though I consider Jesus one of my best friends, him and Enrique deserve that title because they will do anything for one another so that the other can make it. I have a vague memory of that because it was so long ago but I remember that being the road to a great summer full of baseball, vacations, and fun. June 2006 was also the end of something great because my birthday was the day we decided to hit moody road up which for whatever reason was around the time I was graduating from high school. I felt a bit disappointed that day because I had done something the day before that I will go into detail later on down the line on this blog(stay tuned)! But anyways, to comfort me, that day my mom had bought me West Wing Season 6 from the Big Red Machine and I was so happy to have it because I had already owned 4 of the seasons and I was waiting for this one to come out. However, later on in the evening my brother invited me to come with his friends to moody road once again and this time I was more comfortable speaking with his friends than I was before. This time, it was funner because we decided to buy meat and chicken and even though it seemed awkard at the time to grill at night in the middle of nowehere the food was still pretty damn good. The discussion was centered on work, movies, and life. I remember one of the girls, Lily, asking me what we as a family felt proudest of and my brother answered that I was about to graduate from high school and I felt great for him saying that about me. The last time I went, July 2009, had to be something I will put into a time capsule forever. For one, it was not planned, two, I feared for my life that night, and third, you couldn’t write this into a TV show if you could because it was that damn real. The night started off pretty simple with my brother suggesting that his friends Enrique and Aldo were coming over to drink a few beers or whatever it is people do these days to stay enertained. After all the anticipation, they came over and of course we had the plan to just stay home and talk like men. But we end up going to safeway on Wolfe Road, and Enrique comes up with the brilliant idea of heading up to Moody Road and we had no idea what was about to hit us. The drive up there is pretty fun because of all the turns that you make as a driver and even as a passenger. Everytime I go up there, I get a little lightheaded but after a while it settles down. I remember as we were going up there, we were discussing Enrique’s potential departure from being free among the guys to settling down with his eventual wife, Yvette. I thought about the impact that it may have with my brother because him and Enrique had been so close for so long that it became impossible to imagine. After that discussion had begun, we eventually settled down and talked guy stuff, like sports, movies, music, and work. But then the fun began. The fog was thick and the summer was in full swing, what could possibly go wrong? Well, this night we met Ryan, one of the strangest encounters I’ve ever had for the reason that he was a  schizophrenic. Right away he told us that he thought that Enrique’s Jeep Cherokee was nice and it had a nice structure. He introduced himself as Ryan and he asked for our names as well and we told him our names as Jesus, Aldo, Enrique, and I told him my name was Manuel. This is when he told us that he was a scizophrenic and I knew right away that this guy had some crazy thoughts as well as some realistic thoughts. He started talking about he sometimes hears people insulting him and he thought that people should always be helping each other and he thought that people that talked shit just “needed to die”. I knew from my reading about sciziophrenics, that this guy was not to be messed with cause he had such an out there personbality that only real people with degrees could handle. Ryan proceeded to call us good people because he had let us accept himn for who he was but I started to get a little scared when he started talking about how his own parents were trying to help him out but he refused their help. Ryan got the closest to Aldo, because Aldo is one of those guys that really can care less who has the personality of being able to talk to anybody because he such a cool guy like that. My respect for Aldo grew that night because he handled him well enough to ask him questions like “why are you up here tonight?” “When you hear voices what do they tell you to do?” and things like “what do other people say about you?”. Aldo thought it would be a great idea if we could document this guy and make a video about him but I just thought that would be nuts. I knew this guy had problems when he said that some people had just insulted him over on the other side of where we were parked. Then I just about lost it when he mentioned that he loved fire and he liked to draw dragons that breath fire but here’s the kicker: He talked about the use of the prositute service on Craigslist and how nice it was but he couldn’t talk about it. He said that people had laughed at him when he was younger because he had fallen down in church. Ryan went away to talk to more people by his motorcycle and we conversed in spanish about what we were going to do and Enrique told Aldo not to get too close to the guy which me and my brother were trying to do. I just listened at the aw of the moment that was before me. Eventualy we fed him food because he hadn’t eaten in three days and after I don’t remember much because he just started talking nonsense about stuff that didn’t make sense. That night showed how much being at the right place at the right time really means something because decisions you make can impact you for the rest of your life, have a happy sunday everybody!