I also expect that it's time to move onto what's next, or at very least actually finish all of the business I thought I'd finished before departing.
Still, that said, southern California has been a hell of a good time.
Upon return from Encinitas, I was met by Mark, a friend from Knoxville, and Kate, a beautiful Russian girl he had somehow managed to procure and bring to Los Angeles to visit my brother. I took this to be an interesting and thoroughly amusing development. (In retrospect, that may have been a massive underestimation.) Regardless, still tied to the then-looking-viable land speed racing plan, I steeled myself for a few nights camping out on the floor in my brother's now brimming-full apartment.
A few days' or a week's separation from events tends to streamline them in my mind, removing all of the excess drama, the random indecisiveness, and the small-scale absurdities that actually constitute the bulk of life. Even bigger questions, such as, "How was it again that I ended up in at a wax museum, having my picture taken with fake celebrities?" seem less answerable than they were previously. Fortunately, when blasting off photos by the hundreds, pretense somehow lost, in full-bore tourist mode, there's a fairly linear record of basically everything done.
Here's the full Flickr set.
(Which is about 200 of the 2000 or so photos actually taken, which means I've spent little if any time actually fixing most of these.)
Hollywood was the first necessary stop, which was a lot longer walk than it initially seemed. Craige, for all his many skills, may not be the best at estimating distance, but such is life, and now that temps in the 90s were a distant memory, it was actually not too bad. Walk of Fame, Grauman's, etc. May have been hiding a contemptuous smirk the whole time, but in the face of such genuine enthusiasm for sightseeing, tourism, and the cult of celebrity, even that was occasionally punctuated by an actual smile. Not my bag, etc., but it was still a lot of fun.
From there, a quick cool-off, then a trip to Griffith Park to see lights.
The next few days were a mess in the best way possible. Like much of Seattle, like Mexico, time in LA melted away to somewhere. Dignity (or that's what I call it anyway) would usually have prevented me from getting on a roller coaster on the Santa Monica pier, or jumping in the ocean in my clothes, or throwing a full-on sorostitute temper-tantrum over my friends' refusal to have fun while out one night, but all of these things I did, and so many more. I was even at one point called "fun".
As I said last post, all dials turned to 11.
Mark was in a bad mood here, but (under some duress) put on a smile for a few minutes before running off to find some coffee and clear his head. Craige, Kate, and I then ran amok on the beach and pier.
Kate proved very popular with various street performers when she wanted her picture taken with them.
Being a smartass, I had to...
Craige was amused.
Then we ended up on the roller coaster. Practice:
For reals:
Somewhere in there, Craige got all shred-up.
Not so tough now, huh? (To be fair, the water was really cold.)
You may have noticed 1.) a hugely disproportionate number of photos so far, and 2.) that an even more disproportionate amount of them are of Kate. What can I say? When a pretty girl asks to have her picture taken, I'm glad to oblige.
As you can see, Craige has the same problem.
Check the biodiesel sticker on the rear corner and the handicapped tag hanging from the mirror.
Mark was back to his usual self.
About halfway through these next two, Craige pointed out that there was a double-decker tour bus parked across the street. We are in all of their pictures of the Beverly Hills sign.
Somewhere in there, Kate grabbed the camera and took about 400 pictures of random crap in LA. Buildings, signs, etc. This would repeat itself no few times over the course of the following days. I hear she got 600 between LA and Vegas before the battery on Mark's camera gave up. Dedicated to the cause, if nothing else.
Eventually we went out.
And yes, I am rudolph the red-nosed asshole.
I dunno... more of LA...
Ahh... Philippe's...
Philippe's was, in all fairness, worth the hype. Meat sandwiches done like none others I've ever seen. If you're there, spring an extra buck for the lamb. And buy two. You'll need them.
Downtown was unexpectedly beautiful at night.
By that point, everything was a blur. Craige/Mark/Kate hit one of the studios, then spent Saturday at Disney while I took care of sundry, important bits of things that I needed to do, such as eating terrifying meat sandwiches with Craige's roommate Andrew while discussing various business opportunities such as a dating service, riding out into the desert to get a rulebook for the land speed racing thing, and sleeping off hangovers. I eventually ended up meeting Greg and Greg at a huge party being held by a couple who had just won a major award for a Tatra T87 they'd just finished restoring. Mmmm... crazy Czech rear-engined V-8 goodness. All told, an excellent set of days, despite having to leave my camera out of a lot of it due to lack of a charged battery.
Somewhere in there, we went to a wax museum and did some other random crap.
(And yes, the Monroe replica really was that horrifying.)
One of these people is taking this more seriously than the other.
We found a hat store?
It's only half-racist.
BATMOBILE!
I'm a real 'merican!
It was a good burger. Again, what can I say...?
Eventually, they had to leave for Vegas en route back to Knoxville.
Craige demonstrates the "LA" finger thing that we all know from middle school:
Adios!
At that moment, everything reverted to life as unusual. Back on full-time bike fettling and LSR scheming, which eventually devolved into waiting to hear about bikes and parts and most of all, the front tire I'll need to replace somewhere between here and wherever's next.
We did make it out to Malibu Creek State Park for an afternoon.
Craige, enjoying "wilderness":
Tree split three ways. I'm amazed the third part is still standing.
So Craige said there was a cool place to check out, but that we'd have to do a little bit of a traverse. Alright. I'm in terrible shape and have a camera, but if he thinks it's cool, fine. About five feet past this, he says, "Cool, we're through the bad part."
Sometime later... "Well, that was the worst of it."
Past that... "So, this is kind of the rough bit, but we're clear after here."
Have I mentioned that I suck at this and have a camera slung over my shoulder, because I do. Eventually, I had to quit taking pictures, then surrender the camera to Craige so as to not bang it into the rocks or dump it in the drink.
My expression of the similarity between Craige's distance-estimating and difficulty-estimating:
Fortunately, it was easy from there...
*rolls eyes*
Regardless, we made it through fine. I suggested to these people that it's generally easier to ride bicycles than to push them. They did not regard it as helpful.
Planet of the Apes Rock. It's very big. (Check scale against the climber in the background.)
We ended up back on the coast, contemplating why neither of us had had the good sense to go to college in a beautiful, warm climate, seeing as we've both done so much with our hard-earned (*cough, cough*) degrees.
Malibu, being itself:
And that's about what I've got. More waiting now. More LA. Running around and rock climbing and food and drink and all of it. A beautiful mess this city is. I'm almost sad to leave in another day or two. Almost. It's fast coming time though, and what's next is waiting.
