I guess you can call it a sunny orange afternoon when walking through a cloudless environment in which you’re given fresh-picked oranges all along the way. Today turned out this way.

Carlos and Erin had a tall orange tree in the backyard, from which they invited us to take as many with us as we could carry. Of course, we knew we’d be receiving more oranges from George before leaving town, so can you imagine refusing the opportunity for an extra load of delicious fresh citrus gems..? (We did.)

Carlos dropped us off at the George L. Throop Construction Company, which was only about a mile from his home. Shay and I spent at least an hour there listening to George answer our questions about the history of the business, show us around the construction yard, explain to us the concrete focus of the business, and tell us about his pitching days with the Houston Astros. George and I then got some pics in front of the company signs– a fun post for the day to the website.

After about an hour with George, he dropped us off at the intersection of Colorado & Fair Oaks, where we’d last left off on foot, and it was on to Azusa from there– some 25km away.

We spent the rest of the day walking to Azusa, passing through the cities of Arcadia, Monrovia (HQ of TJ’s), and Duarte along the way– each only distinguishable by roadside signage.

Just after dark, our host Couchsurfing host Kyle met us in Azusa near Route 66, about a mile from his very musical domicile. I first shook Kyle’s hand while upside down, as Shay and I were spending a few minutes propped up against a wall with our feet in the air. The inversion state feels beneficial to our feet after so many miles of pounding the pavement.

We reached Kyle’s place, and ended up meeting over a half dozen friends and roommates, all in their early 20’s, each of whom were a band member or otherwise heavily involved in the arts. They were a fascinating bunch, and being around them definitely brought back those fun college crowd memories…

After having started the day with oranges, we ended it with pears, yogurt, and other goodies…