LA

So I spent Monday and Tuesday in LA aka Los Angeles and it was somewhat interesting.  

First, I took a shuttle bus from the airport because I'm trying to be thrifty.  $14 vs. $40-$50 seemed like a better deal.  Well, that's when you get into the time value of money.  Among the 9 people we had on the bus, we had a young man who wanted to go to the Guest House on the UCLA campus.  He didn't have either the address of a phone number to call anyone mind you, but he was adamant he needed to go to this place.  So the ever obliging bus driver proceeded to cover every square inch of road within the campus at least twice (this would be a very, very large campus) and there was no guest house to be found.  After driving for about 15-20 minutes, he asked someone where it was and the young man said it was across the other side of the campus so off we went again.  We drive around then for awhile on the other side of campus and finally ask a young woman where it is and she says, "Oh, that's on the other end of campus".  Hm, I'm starting to see a trend here, are we on Candid Camera?  Finally, the driver is just about to dump this guy out on his ass, which he totally deserves) and I look to the right and ask my fellow bus riders, "Is that what you're looking for"?  Everyone looks to the right and there's a building with an inconsequential sign reading, "Guest House" in front of it.  

Two of the largest in the group finally get off the bus and the rest of us start to cool down (a couple of real hot-heads were in front of me).

Then, that night, I ordered room service and I asked the lady on the phone if the bottles of water were small or large and she says small so I order two.  They show up on the tray and I swear they were each about 10 inches high and big, round bottles.  I called the number again and said, I can't drink both of these (sparkling in nature) so they agreed to take one back.

On Tuesday afternoon, I ran up to my room on a break and my key didn't work.  It was deadsville so I had to go back down to the desk where they tried the key and it said it was fine.  They looked at me and thought better of asking me to try it again (of course I had to go to the bathroom) and they gave me a new one.  I chalked that one up to my magnetic field problem.

This was the view out of my room window (from the balcony if it hadn't been so cold).

Then we get to the airport (LAX) yesterday late morning and got in the security line which was both long and slow moving.  I got up to within 10 people of the end of the line where you take your shoes off and they say no, you need to walk down to the other end of the hall and go through the other line because one of the machines broke.  There were the typical whiners in the crowd who pulled out every cuss word in the book and got put through the line early.  The 

rest of us stood in line for a total of about an hour just to get through to walk out to the gate. This is the reason you get to the airport early kids.

Otherwise, the trip was great.  I was staying on the Avenue of the Stars and that sounded very important.  Well crap!  I just looked on Google and this was the street where Grauman's Chinese Theater and the sidewalk of stars was, I just don't know how far away it was from me.  I know I didn't see it anywhere close-by.  I hope it wasn't too close, I would have loved to have seen Lassie and Bing Crosby's paw prints.  I'm quite sure 3 out of every 4 cars were some luxury model and we did drive past the entrance to Bel Aire on the way to the hotel.

Anyway, an interesting two or so days.