February. 29 Wednesday
As we make our way from L.A. to Oakland (7hrs or so) we say goodbye to all the hotels, and hello to a permanent residence (for 3 and half weeks). Ahead are the days of a kitchen to cook in rather than the camp stove on the t.v. stand. I look forward to not washing the dishes in the bathroom sink, somehow that just seems not quite right—isn’t that how the plague premiered? As travelers on a budget we (I) have done our (my) due diligence to keep ourselves on budget by making breakfasts, lunches, and dinners in the hotel. We have splurged on the occasional meal out, and the continental breakfasts at the Ramada in Carlsbad were a real treat, but I am looking forward to the counter space of a real kitchen so I don’t have to worry about dripping tuna juice on the carpet or Freddie wiping her hummus fingers on the sheets.
We spent the last two nights in L.A. (27 &28) at the Historic Hollywood Hotel. It was a really nice place. It was surprising to finally stay at a room where everything worked! It made me think of some of the places along the way, like the Days Inn in Oceanside. What a great place, lots of space and a king size bed! We had chosen it because there was a pool and hot tub, but upon closer inspection realized that the hot tub was tepid and you couldn’t actually see the bottom, it looked like a witches brew including a few flies for effect. Well we grumbled a bit and they cleaned it for us but the next morning we woke up to a bathroom covered in ants. I’m not exaggerating when I say covered, there were at least 100 ants swarming the bathtub. We debated saying anything because we knew we would be offered a different room and the idea of moving all of our junk was enough to make us want to overlook the ants but we had to open our big mouths and complain. They offered us a different room, we declined and said maybe they could just spray them? The maintenance man came by while we were out and when we arrived back at the end of the day our room was ant free. Why does ant spray smell like athlete’s foot? We moved to a different hotel the next night, The Ramada Inn in Carlsbad. There was a nice pool and great hot tub, continental breakfast (waffles, muffins, bagels, cereal, fruit etc.) and although the bathroom sink didn’t drain and we could only have luke-warm baths and showers because of a broken faucet, we stayed two nights and stole enough english muffins and apples for three lunches.
There have been a lot of funny places, but the Historic Hollywood Hotel was not one of them. We had a view of the Hollywood sign from our window and the sink and bathtub faucets worked. We slept great and had fun looking at all the old-timey photos of 20’s-50’s actors and actresses along the hallway walls. We did some window-shopping from the car and drove around Beverly Hills and down Rodeo Drive. We didn’t see any famous people but we did see a lot of other people. We walked along Venice Beach and saw a number of oxygen bars and medical marijuana outlets sandwiched between the sunglasses and t-shirt shops. L.A. is a busy place especially when you are trying to drive the 20 kms from Venice Beach to your hotel at 3 in the afternoon. It took us 3 hours but at least we can say we had a real L.A. experience.
View from our room.
KFC
Cool Sculpture
Things around L.A. and Venice Beach
Setting up for reality obstacle course type show on the beach. Also a piano player.
Traffic jam
The scenery on our drive to Oakland reminded us a lot of Kelowna. Steve kept noticing these funny bells along the roadside.
March. 2 Friday
We have been away from Vancouver for over a month now. It has gone by fairly fast although I feel like the next two months will go by a bit slower. We will be staying put for the next three and a half weeks here in Oakland, and then the final stint will be spent in Oceanside. Steve is already busy and spent the last two days at a close by coffee shop buried in his computer along side all the other coffee patrons. He has a lot of work to do now as he catalogs and edits footage and he has quickly morphed into ‘Work Mode Steve’. You could say Steve has a handful of different personalities, like most of us do I guess. I know I have a number of them myself, most of which I try and hide from the outside world, but let's focus on Steve today. Steve, can be very serious and even angry at times, a side which few have seen—John, our crack head neighbor got a taste of angry Steve once or twice last fall. I like to see 'Angry Steve' occasionally because it makes me feel less guilty about being a jerk once in a while. But the side of Steve I want to look at today is the one that the majority of you have been lucky enough to see—Good Times Steve—this was him last night after finding a six pack, two bottles of wine and a tall can all for under $15 (booze is cheap down here). Don’t worry he shared.
Most of you know Steve is a pretty smart guy. He says some funny things and usually he knows when he’s being funny. But occasionally he says something hilarious without knowing what he just said was a joke (this is ‘Good Times Steve’). This Steve likes to relay information to me that I have very recently told him forgetting that I was the one who told him in the first place. He acts as though it is breaking news, an incredible find--I won’t believe my ears. Sometimes I act as though my mind is blown but other times I’m a jerk, burst his bubble and say “I know, I told you that last week”. Usually you can catch him exaggerating about this or that—he likes to stretch the truth a little to make his stories more entertaining and captivating. Very regularly you might even catch him believing one of his tall tales—he has the habit of turning his stretched truths into truths, convincing himself they are nothing less than fact. One example of this is from 10 years ago when I had recently visited A&B sound. I was telling Steve about their deal where they buy old c.d.’s off of people. I said to him “I wonder what they do with those old c.d.’s? Maybe they re-sell them somewhere in a big warehouse or something?” Steve agreed, this was probably what they did. Later that week we were hanging out with our dear friend Ryan Sawatzky and Steve (‘Good Times Steve’) brought up A&B sound’s used c.d. purchasing business. He continued “Ya , they buy them and re-sell them at a big warehouse.” A few days later he happened to be having another conversation about the c.d.’s: “Ya, they buy them and re-sell them at a big warehouse in Calgary, you know, cause Calgary is full of big boxed type stores.” This went further, a third conversation: “Ya so A&B sound buys old c.d.’s, sells them in a warehouse in downtown Calgary, because of the big box stores thing they’ve got going on there, and everyone goes to it, they’ve got thousands of great used c.d.’s!”
As you can see, it’s easy for the story to get away with itself. I probably should have never called him on it; I wonder how much further that story could have gotten stretched? But not to worry ‘Good Times Steve’ is always close by; something funny is sure to pop out of his mouth eventually. For example, the other day we were driving to a few sights—the longest burning light bulb for one, and the Atwater Air Museum was the next stop on the list. We were about 30 minutes away and Steve said “This is going to be so cool; I wonder what they keep the air in? Jars? Is it a museum full of jars?”. My mouth flew open and an uncontrolled sound blasted out of my throat. I agreed that a museum full of jars of air would probably be more interesting than a bunch of old planes. He giggled to himself and immediately a light bulb appeared over his head as he planned a possible sketch he might act out somehow with the person at the reception area of the museum—he would ask where the jars were, they would look puzzled and ask “what jars” etc. What will he come up with next?
Let’s all raise our glasses (jars of air) to ‘Good Times Steve’!
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