California Love (reference at the end)
Mark (strikevalk) told me he would be in San Diego for a wedding. Then the next week, he would be in Arizona with his family. He said he wanted to meet up before going to AZ. We discussed options.
The plan was Saturday after the wedding or some time Sunday, catch a flight to San Francisco. A couple weeks go by and we talked about the options again. It was expensive.
Then he suggested that:
“maybe we can hangout in San Diego“.
I will go over the constructs of Wandering Leopard, but I thought about it for literally a couple seconds, looked at my wife and said,
“I’m going to drive to San Diego”.
With Mark on the speaker phone and Jasmin looking at me… She asked,
“are you gonna drive the Sienna”?
My reply,
“There is only one way this has to happen and that is in the M30. I am going to drive the M30“.
A Southern California (SoCal) trip has been brewing in my mind. I had unfinished family business I needed to attend to. I contacted some people to see their availability. I pulled up my map of the SoCal Infiniti Dealerships and I looked at where I could take pictures.
I started to plan.
Saturday
I dropped my wife off at the airport around 7am. I got home and started to get things going on my M30. Did all my checks, made sure I had everything and by 11am, I was heading to Oceanside.
It was over a 100 degrees in the middle of California on I-5.
-
- Grapevine!
I got into Northern part of Los Angeles about 3:30pm.
I met up with my cousin Sid and spent time with family.
After that, I headed started to hit up some of the Infiniti Dealerships that I had planned. I did some on the way down to Oceanside.
Infiniti Dealership challenge SoCal
Finally, Sunday Night I met with Mark and stayed at his cousin’s house. Thank you Alex!
The plan was to stay until Monday since I had it off.
Sunday
We woke up, I checked over the M30 and we were on our way to Murrieta. I wanted to meet with Alec as he hit me up when he bought his M30 in 2017.
We hung out for a couple hours just talking shop. It was blazing hot that day!!! It was great to meet Alec and check out his Kaido F31!!!
Thanks again Alec for meeting with us!
I had talked to Edrik (Nightmoves) recently and said he would meet us up by Petersen Automotive Museum. I wanted to check it out, but wasn’t sure if we would make in time. Once I arrived, Edrik and I would go check it out.
Petersen Automotive Museum part 1 – Japanese cars
Afterwards he took us to a Pho and Teriyaki spot to eat. After we ate, we talked even more!
Meet with Edrik aka Nightmoves
I then hit up Roger V (Hachiboy). I’ve always enjoyed his car and our interactions on FB. We always post 80s/90s stuff LOL.
He gave me his address and we headed to his place.
We rolled up and again, we had a great time!!! We talked for hours!
We started to go to a few dealerships and it was past midnight. I was I-5N and decided to just head to San Francisco from there.
So we started driving.
We didn’t get to the bay area til 6am!
Monday
We woke up and started show him around SF. Bay Bridge, Inner/outer sunset, Ocean beach, and started to head towards Burlingame and hanging out a bit in Foster City.
The final destination was Stanford. I had called Jacy and he wanted to meet!
After that, we called it a night.
Tuesday
The plan was to hit up Sacramento, but I forgot I was on call, so I had to stay nearby just in case. I hit up Ricky (C4nitriousboi) and Gil (Gilly Gil) and see if they could meet up. They said they could.
After I got off work, we headed to Bayview/ Hunter’s Point area. We met Gil at Gilman Park near where Candlestick Park used to be. Went around and took pictures…
We went to Gil’s place and started to hang out. Gil mentioned last time we hung out it was a year ago… and I could not believe it!
Strikevalk meeting with Gil and Ricky
But before we called it a night, I wanted to meet up with Malik from the facebook page. So he gave me his address and we went there to check out his M30.
Malik showed us his car and we talked for a bit. Couldn’t stay too long as I had work the next day and both our wives and kids wanted to video chat.
Thanks Malik!
-
- Malik
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- Malik
We called it a night after that.
Wednesday
The final night before Strikevalk leaves. We went through my M30 parts and got what was needed for some R&D.
Shortly after that, we headed to Northern Sacramento.
It was deep!!!! I had to stop by Antelope (town on I-80 North) to buy some toys for my kids. After that, we headed towards Mike’s Place.
Meet up with F31pilot and SlappinM30
The nostalgic Late night Jack in the box, 2 Tacos for 99c and the street races feel LOL.
We didn’t get done til 2am!!!
Conclusion
The M30 was solid on it’s trek to SoCal in 100+ degree weather. I had faith in her and I knew I’d done good to keep her strong. I tested her and she prevailed!
I am working on explaining Wandering Leopard style in another post, but it is traveling and experiences through the lens of F31club/M30 relation.
I did a live video and Jay B said, “The M30 audience (viewing the video) might be small”. I wasn’t doing a livestream for an M30 audience, I was documenting meeting up with brothers. Superficially, It was about the M30. You can only know the historical importance, if you knew what we did to build F31club in the mid 2000s.
Bringing Mark to meet people that also helped build F31club and putting faces to names… I can’t tell you the impact it has. It is like we haven’t seen each other in 13yrs. But our conversations picked up like we were talking yesterday.
The other component is going out and meeting people. We can talk online all day, but nothing like meeting up and talking shop.. the dynamic changes.
Most Importantly… one of constructs of Wandering Leopard’s framework… it’s about the people.. M30 or not.
About the name… Wandering Leopard – California Love retrieval mission. It is my sense of humor (Wandering leopard), but if I do something significant (such as going to SoCal, getting Mark, meeting M30 owners, infiniti dealerships, taking him up to NorCal), I want to theme the experience.
The theme is California Love (song by 2Pac and Dr. Dre) because of what 2Pac says:
Say what you say, but give me that bomb beat from Dre
Let me serenade the streets of L.A
From Oakland to Sac-town
The Bay Area and back down
Cali is where they put they mack down give me love!
I basically drove the streets of LA (and Oceanside), drove back to and from Bay Area, we drove to Sacramento (Sac-town) and now Mark is flying back down to SD.
So the lyrics fit.