Part LVIII

When Mary and I officially broke up as she headed off to UC Santa Cruz in August, I was confronted with a strange situation. At work, some of my co-workers had told me that one of the servers, Kristine, had an interest in me. Since I was involved with Mary at the time, I thought the easiest response was, "If anything ever happens, she is the one I would like to date most out of our co-workers." So, one day in August, I came to work and let my co-workers know that Mary and I had broken up the night before so I was a little down. Even though Mary was not right for me, I still cared about her and it was hard to let things go. Much to my surprise, Kristine did not wait an hour from the time she heard about it to ask me out and I just told her I was a little raw right now and didn't want to think about dating at the moment.

Not much happened for two months. But, on Thursday, October 19th, I was feeling much better and asked Kristine if she wanted to have dinner after work. It was the year the World Series was between the SF Giants and Oakland A's. We went over to a restaurant nearby just before 5pm. Just after 5pm, the world began to shake. It had been since 1972 since we had an earthquake that bad and I was frozen in my seat while Kristine just tried to get under the table. The glass in the windows shattered, plates crashed and broke, some of the ceiling tiles fell out. Then it was over, no power, no lights (it was still bright outside), no certainty of when the aftershocks would start. Since we all lived in California, we knew they were coming, but the size and scope of the aftershocks are always a fear. Kristine drove me to my motel and dropped me off. We had no power and by some estimates, we had well over 100 aftershocks in the next few days. My motel room was on the 3rd floor and that building rocked every time an aftershock hit. It was pretty scary.

Life goes on, and after a couple of weeks, it was just another good story. The "where were you during the Loma Prieta Earthquake" stories added to the richness of conversation for some time. I heard some good ones, but those are not mine, so I will let those people tell their own stories. Things settled back to normal and a few weeks later, I began to DJ for a mobile DJ company. It was ironic since I had no car. In early November, Allan and Paul asked me if I wanted to try out a new church that our old friend and High School Pastor from Valley Church had moved on to. The church was called South Hills Community Church and it was pretty far into the South of the greater city of San Jose. To me, this was the boonies, out there, far away. But Allan picked me up and we went to the church.

I walked into a college group of more than 100 people. It was the largest and most vibrant college group I had seen at any church. At a folding table right at the door of the room were two girls who introduced themselves to me as Elisabeth Wilkes and Cathy Thompson. The entire group was very inviting, the message was pretty good and I immediately felt like it was a place I could fit in. Besides, they had really cute girls.