Los Angeles, The O.C., and the USBP
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Posted by: Zach
Well, we drove South, we played around in Los Angeles, and we're back on the road.
It's pretty amazing how much of a hassle it still is to get connected to the Internet from some parts of the country. Right now I'm still in the lobby of Vacation Inn in El Centro, California, where they are kind enough to have a single network jack. Vacation Inn describes themselves as the "Finest and Largest Hotel in El Centro." From what we've seen, we can only agree with this declaration. We tried to stay at "Budget Inn and Suites" last night, but the hotel staff was far from friendly, getting into our room was a fiasco, and once we got in there, everything was grody to the max. Seriously. Gross shower, complete with hairs. Gross bed complete with hairs, rips in the sheets, and two big stains, and the wall themselves were sickening. One quick refund later, we were back on the road to find the Vacation Inn. All's well that ends well.
Also, Nirvana's "Come As You Are" is playing on the sound system in the hotel lobby. El Centro ain't half bad.
So, Los Angeles. What a great visit! We got to see Shannon and Vijay, and Jenny got to meet Mark, one of my best friends of all time. It was great to see everyone and spend some time in the usually 72 degree city of angels. We were unlucky enough to end up in California during what local news is calling "The Big Chill". Everything's colder than it usually is, which is too bad. We were really hoping for some seriously warm weather. No luck in that department. But it was still warm enough to see the sights thanks to Mark's famous guided tours, and head down to Venice Beach with Vijay and Shannon.
Most of our visit was spent with Mark and his kitty cat, Sweet Pea. They were excellent hosts, as always, and we had a blast catching up on everything that's happened since the last time we really hung out in person 7 years ago. Mark really is living the dream out in sunny L.A., going on auditions, booking jobs, and appearing in everything from big time movies along side Owen Wilson, to sharing the screen with Eminem, Will Smith, and others in some music videos on MTV. Mark was in four movies this year alone! We're really happy to see you doing so well out West, Mark!
Vijay and Shannon are really getting set up, too. Vijay's apartment is really cool, and within walking distance of the beach. His projection screen TV is about eight (8) feet wide, as you can see here:
Yes, that's Jenny standing next to the screen!
Shannon's working her way into the world of fashion, and loving almost every minute of it! The driving situation can get really crazy in L.A., and she's dealing with it almost every day!
She still makes time to enjoy Nintendo DS. I'm glad L.A. hasn't ruined her priorities.
While we were at Vijay's pad, we played some video games and faced off in a heated game of "Clue" (the real board game... or should I say bored game? Just kidding.) We also watched the first episode of TechTV's The Screen Savers with the new hosts and lack of a studio audience. I'm sorry to report that it wasn't half bad, so I can't completely hate them for making the changes.
Right before we left town, Mark took Jenny and me to a famous L.A. hot dog stand called "Pinks". They have some seriously wacky hot dogs on the menu. Mark had some sort of chili dog with nacho cheese and (I think) bacon. Jenny had a vegan dog with all sorts of good toppings. Onions, tomatos, peppers, guacamole.... I'm not sure what else, or if I even got those right, but it looked great. I had two hot dogs. The first one was called "The Lord of the Rings", and it was a long hot dog with onion rings and barbeque sauce on it. Weird, but yummy. My second was the "Pastrami Burrito Dog" or something like that, which was two hot dogs, chili, swiss cheese, grilled pastrami, and onions in a large tortilla, wrapped up and grilled. Awesome. I couldn't finish all of it, though.
After leaving L.A., we drove south on our favorite road of all time, the Pacific Coast Highway, down to Orange County. We got to see all sorts of really expensive homes. Woohoo. We also drove through Laguna Beach where MTV's show of the same name was filmed. Yawn.
Things really got weird as we turned left at San Diego and headed toward Arizona. We were driving through the darkness and a bunch of extreme curves and hills when we saw one of those "Tune to this AM radio station for park info" signs. I was never one to disobey orders, so we tuned our radio to the station as instructed. Apparently we were right in the middle of a big national forest and park, and they were talking about how the park had just been through "the most destructive forest fire in San Diego County history" or something like that. When we really started paying attention to the roadside, we could see that almost all of the trees were leaf-less and black. Yep, big fire. It was pretty creepy.
But not as creepy as the next part of the trip. We left the burnt out park, drove down through the mountains, and could see, off in the distance, some sort of big roadblock with lots of bright lights. Then we saw a big sign telling us to "be prepared to stop for a vehicle search". It was the US Border Patrol, and they were checking vehicles for people trying to sneak into the US from Mexico. Jenny checked the map and found out that we were right on the "MexiCali" border, as they call it down here. Lucky for us they were really just doing some quick racial profiling, and our white skin got us through the roadblock without any trouble. We could have easily fit a dozen Mexicans in the back of the truck under the tonneau cover, but they didn't even stop us for a second. Maybe we need to start our own little "relocation assistance program" down here.
This morning we'll be figuring out how we'd like to get home and what cities and landmarks we want to see on the way. Hopefully we'll get some great pictures and have something interesting to write about. Thanks for reading.
Miles Driven: 3600
Comments:
Vijay said...
Zach here is the link to the local newspaper if you want to check out the apt listings
http://argonautnewspaper.com
they have deals in there... sometimes
Shannon said...
Zach, you forgot to mention that I am the master detective Clue champion of the world.