Week 13- Southern California

In the first week of the posting from the road trip, I posted some quotes during our first few days of traveling.  One read, "If the trip happens to abruptly end in either Las Vegas or New Orleans, I'm ok with that."  Well, I'm happy to announce that the trip did not end in Las Vegas and we were able to continue on to week 13 of the trip.  On the plate for this week, Southern California, where the sun shines all the time and it rains 3 or 4 times a year.  We stayed in Los Angeles with Allen's sister, Emily, for 4 nights right after Las Vegas, went south to Huntington Beach to stay with my mom's cousin for 2 nights and then to San Diego for 2 nights.  (November 1st through November 8th)  If you are happening to just be joining in on the reading, I am traveling around the country in an rv for 15 weeks with 2 of my best friends, Bub Hunter and Allen Bradley, attempting to keep the economy going and trying to stay out of trouble in the meantime.  If you have been following all along, thanks for reading and welcome to week 13.  If you missed week 12, check it out here.    

After departing Vegas in the late evening, we headed west to Los Angeles for a few nights.  We stopped about an hour short of the city, but got close enough to catch a noon taping of the game show, "Let's Make a Deal.", the next day.  If you aren't familiar with the show, it is somewhat similar to "The Price is Right", in that you have a chance to win prizes playing really random games.  Wayne Brady is the host of the show; you may know him from "Who's Line is it Anyway" and his famous cameo on the Dave Chappelle Show.  

A past pic, but these were basically our "costumes" for the show.  

Emily told us what we needed to do and where we needed to be by 11:30 the next day.  We showed up for the taping of the show and signed a few liability forms before waiting about an hour before doing anything.  Next, we went through a screening process where a lady went through and interviewed everyone going into the show.  She would ask people random questions while a few other people watched and took notes.  The end goal was to choose people who would be high energy and good for tv.  Emily, Allen, Bub and I made it to the interview and we all talked about the road trip and the crazy stuff we were getting into lately.  If you have ever seen the show, everyone is wearing crazy costumes, from baby costumes, to celebrity look-alikes, and even random homemade outfits.  We didn't really have much to work with so Allen went with his huge sombrero, Emily dressed up as a police woman, I went with my "Everyday I'm Shuffling t-shirt' and my football helmet/toboggan, and Bub went with his Canadian tuxedo, mustache, and American flag bandana.  

The game show then strategically placed everyone in the audience based on who they were going to pick to play.  We ended up in the first 5 or 6 rows, right by the aisle that Wayne Brady walked down.  I couldn't tell if this way good or bad for our changes to be on tv, to begin with.  Once we got in, they told us that in between taping segments, they would play music and watch on the camera who was dancing and being enthusiastic.  These people would have a better chance of getting on the show and the pre-air screening wasn't the only factor they considered.  Well, I figured, what the hell, I'm gonna jump up and down like a madman while the music is going.  There was no way I wasn't putting every bit of effort into trying to get on to this show.  I was jumping as high as I could between every segment pretty much without stopping.  

So they taped about 7 or 8 people playing crazy games and winning random prizes with 5 minutes or so in between segments.  A few times they even went back and taped a segment again, whether it be their version of Vanna White (The good looking chick on Wheel of Fortune who turns the letters) showing the prize, or anything Wayne Brady or the announcer guy messed up.  I wish I could write about my crazy experience of being on a game show and winning something or at least being entertaining on tv, but none of us were chosen.  It definitely wasn't from my lack of enthusiasm, because my legs were sore for the next 2 days from jumping up and down.  Our explanation for why we weren't picked?  A combination of not having an outrageous costumes, (there were a few unusual ones in the crowd….. a guy was chosen who was dressed as a baby outfit with his girlfriend, and another girl had a colorful homemade outfit) and the fact that Allen, Bub and I were not very camera friendly.  Through 12 weeks, no one had shaved and I'm not sure we were the people they wanted to show on television.  We didn't make it on the show, but I had a damn good time.  Check it off the hypothetical bucket list.  (There were two tapings of the show that day, but it will either be on tv March 30th or April 20th on CBS.  Like I said, we were in the first few rows and I know you will be able to see us.)

We spent our 3 days in Los Angeles doing plenty of driving around the city, checking out all the nice cars and famous places that you hear about in Los Angeles.  Emily lives in a nice part of Los Angeles (with her awesome dog, Becker, who is small and fluffy and loves nothing more than doing circles when he gets excited) and we were actually able to park the truck and the camper on the streets in 2 hour parking spots.  The spots were supposedly only checked from 8 am to 6 pm so as long as we did something with it during the day and moved it before 10 am in the morning, I thought we were golden.  Since southern California is warm pretty much year-round, Bub was able to sleep in the camper both nights on the streets of Los Angeles.  Didn't expect that in LA, huh?

Safest place in LA, all the street lights in one area

Emily let us take her car two separate afternoons to drive around and check out the city.  One afternoon we made it up to the hills of the city with some overlooks of downtown, and the next day we attempted with no luck to find the Playboy Mansion. Our drive took us though Beverley Hills and then to Rodeo Dr., where we stumbled across a Bugati.  A Bugati happens to be a million dollar car with over 1,000 horsepower.  If you don't like cars much, maybe you wouldn't appreciate it, but this car will take your breath away.  It is a 2 door sports car and a million bucks seems to be a little steep for a car that only sits 2 people but hey, if I was a billionaire, I would probably have one.

View from the Hills

Bugati 

China Theater

Speaking of cool cars, we found a car museum to go through on one of our days in Los Angeles.  It had all kinds of exotic cars ranging from Ferraris to Rolls Royce, to another Bugati and some of the very first cars ever built.  You name it, it was there.  We had the camper attached to the truck while going to the museum and the only available parking spot was at least a quarter mile away.  I'll be damned if a minute into our walk into the museum, it starts to pour on us.  This qualifies as the first time we have been stuck in the rain on the trip and it happened to be in southern California, you know, where it rains 3 or 4 times a year.  At least the cars were cool. 

Batmobile from the old movies

The Green Hornet Car

Another Bugati

I have spoken many times about seeing a city during the day, and seeing what it had to offer at night.  Well, luckily for us, Emily works at a nightclub.  She deals more with the stuff going on during the day, so she was free to hang out with us at night.  Speaking of free, Emily definitely hooked us up, as we got bottle service at a table with her and her friends for the whole night.  She told us that the minimum amount to spend for a table was $1,000 for the night.  Well that seems outrageous, but if you are rich and famous, then screw it, right?  Bub talked with the lead singer of the All-American Rejects while we were there, and Emily said Paul Pierce had been there earlier that week.  The place was pretty legit.  Not to mention, the bouncer at the club is the guy from Forgetting Sarah Marshall who talks about going scuba diving with the turtles.  Davon, or better known as Big D, has been in multiple comedies over the past few years is a good friend of Emily's and ended up eating Chinese food with us after we left for the night.  I have never eaten a meal with a guy I've seen in a movie, but this guy was as cool as they come.  I told him I was thinking about getting the shrimp lo mien at the Chinese place.  "Nah man, you don't want the shrimp, it's nasty.  Get the chicken lo mien, it's way better."  I stayed the hell away from that shrimp.

The crew with Big D.

On Saturday afternoon, after grabbing lunch in Los Angeles, we headed south to Huntington Beach.  My mom's cousin Harva lives there and had been talking back forth with my mom about us coming to stay with her for a night or two.  This all sounded great, except for the fact that I had never meet Harva before.  She sound excited for us to come, it was a chance to meet a new relative, and it fit right into our schedule, so why not, let's give it a try.  We arrived around 8 o'clock on that Saturday evening, and Harva and her husband Frank were two of the nicest people in the world.  They took the 3 of us in like we were their kids, and an hour into our visit, Harva had already made ice cream for us.  During our visit, Harva and Frank not only let us take over their living room to watch football on Sunday afternoon, but let us do all of our laundry, (at this point, only 2 and half weeks remained, and after doing laundry, I had enough clean underwear to last the rest of the trip, which meant I had no intentions of doing laundry again until I got home.) borrow their car while the truck had an oil change, took us out to dinner once and cooked for us one.  Talk about getting the ultimate package when you first meet someone.  I would have been fine with sleeping in the camper outside of their house.  (Actually, Allen did sleep in there both nights.  It is really dark inside the camper to his credit.)  

On a totally random note, Bub's family lived in Huntington Beach for a short time when Bub was younger.  His parent's gave him the address so we plugged it into the gps, and set out to find it.  Once we arrived, we snapped a picture of Bub in front of his house, and then decided it was best to leave before someone called the police claiming that three homeless guys were taking pictures in their neighborhood.  We ate lunch at a diner on the pier in Huntington Beach, and then checked out the city a little before going out to eat with Harva and Frank at a southern-style restaurant.  I am not a sweet tea drinker (don't fall out of your chairs you sweet tea addicts, that stuff is garbage) but Allen and Bub hadn't had sweet tea in awhile and claimed this was some of the best they had drank in awhile.  We all had some sort of bbq with a few southern sides, baked beans, mac and cheese, sweet potato fries, and all the good fix-ins.    

Bub's old house

The three of us with Frank and Harva with their two dogs.  

We hit the road shortly after to stay in San Diego for 2 nights before the legend of 742, Mr. Jordan Dale Vance, joined us for the last 2 weeks of the trip.  Jordan, like Allen and Bub, is a old high school friend who did all he could to join us for the longest time possible.  Jordan works at a restaurant in Little Switzerland, a little mountain town about 30 minutes north of Marion.  This is a seasonal restaurant that closes the first week of November, enough time for him to spend 2 weeks with us.  He was due to fly in to Los Angeles in 2 nights, so let's head on down to San Diego, retrace our steps back to Los Angeles, and keep this train rolling.  

San Diego is known for its great weather, its laid back lifestyle opposed to Los Angeles, and well I'm not sure what else to be honest, but hey, that's why we came to check it out.  We arrived late in the evening at the coolest campground of the trip.  This place had multiple restaurants, a beach access area to the ocean, an arcade, an ice cream shop, and a 24 hour security guard to top things off.  In the massive, 1000 page campground book that my mom gave me before we left on the trip, this campground has advertising on the entire back cover of the book.  We have looked at this picture at least 500 times so far, and now it was finally time for a stay at this magical place.  

The 3 amigos (trademark: Bub) set off decently early the next morning to check out the San Diego Zoo, the best zoo in the United States in terms of the number of different species.  This may seem like a bit of a childish thing to do for 3 dudes in their 20s, but I am a kid at heart and truly enjoyed every bit of it.  Most of you have been to a zoo before, so enjoy the pics. 

On Monday, we set off to check out the city of San Diego.  When you go to scenic sites, you go to enjoy the views and nature itself.  In a city you 

A)  Find things to do from past experiences in the city 

B)  Go on recommendations of any family, friends, residents of the city, or in extreme cases, homeless people.

C)  Type things to do in (insert whatever city you are in) into Google and go from there

D)  Drive around and see if anything catches the eye

So I have spent an afternoon in San Diego when my sister, Rachel, lived in southern California and we did a segway tour of San Diego.  (We were those people for a day, but it was pretty fun to be honest.)  This time around, we left the camper at the best campground in the United States and roamed around San Diego for a little while.  We caught a quick glimpse of Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres, drove through the supposed historic district of San Diego, and eventually settled on a battleship tour.  (Right near the harbor where UNC and Michigan St. played a week later.)  

On this legendary segway tour, I saw the USS Midway (a docked WW2 battleship) but didn't get to check it out that day.  Second time around, let's check it out.  The battleship hasn't been in use since World War 2 and has since been turned into a tourist attraction.  On the top deck, there were all sorts of planes and jets used during the war.  Each station throughout the tour had an short audio tour you could listen to through the free head sets they gave out at the beginning of the tour.  We went through the whole ship seeing the intricacies and how it functioned as a whole.  It is like a city on water, and they had to have enough supplies and accommodations for all the crew on board.  What do you need to stay somewhere for an extended period of time?  Everyone has to have a place to sleep, enough food to feed everyone as well as a place to eat, and somewhere for the crew to shower and what not.  

The living quarters for the crew consisted of endless amounts of bunks in very tight spaces.  Move up to the captain's quarters, and they had their own room with a small living room and a bathroom to themselves or only sharing with one or two other people.  We moved through the mess hall and the kitchen, wondering what damage hundreds of hungry men could do to the meals.  We went up to the communication room in the 1940s, which today has been replaced with satellites, phones and upgraded methods of communication.  Up next, there was a tour of the control room, getting an actual account from a volunteer who was on board a ship very similar to this during the war.  He gave a very detailed account of what it was like during the war on board the ship and the methods used to guide the ship and how they communicated with the Navy and the rest of the military during the war.  

The USS Midway

Old School GPS

The whole experience was pretty fascinating, because I had never been on board a battleship, especially one used during World War 2.  By the time the tour was over, it was already dark, and time to go pick up the camper and head towards Los Angeles to pick the legend of Jordan Vance.  We had a few house guests during the road trip (Kaysee and Sarah, Tab and our new friend Spotacus the dog) but none for longer than a few nights.  Time to add another member of the crew, and a good one at that.  If anyone could come right in and blend in with the 3 of us, it was Jordan Vance.  We left around 7 o'clock, with about a 2 hour drive to Los Angeles ahead of us.  His flight wasn't supposed to come in until midnight, so that left roughly 3 hours to kill.  Well, from my past experience in southern California visiting Rachel, let's just say that I happened to know there was a casino on the way.  

This would end up being the last casino stop on the trip, because by the time Jordan joined us, it was a mad dash across the country to see as much as possible.  After Las Vegas, I had basically broke even through 13 weeks.  On a quick tangent, let me explain gambling in California.  It is actually illegal for the casino itself to deal with the money coming and going from the players, so a 3rd party sits in the corner at the table and either takes your money and pays out your winnings.  This is a separate person from the person dealing the cards in blackjack.  The crazy loop holes in the laws these days.  I mean, you can gamble online through foreign countries, the lottery is legal, and people can completely wreck the United States (cough, cough, Wall Street) so why not make gambling legal throughout the United States and let the rest of us have fun.  Oh wait a minute, that sounds like a good idea and all, but most people just lose all their money at the casino.  Ok, scratch that idea, let's continue to outlaw casinos in most places.  

I went in for a first stint, stayed about an hour or so and walked away up a little bit.  It was enough to cover a tank of gas and a place to stay for the night, but we still had some time to kill before picking up Jordan.  In retrospect, I had an opportunity to walk away the whole trip up a few hundred bucks, which in going to casinos in 13 different cities, this is a pretty solid accomplishment.  Well, needless to say, I walked back in and tried to sling it around.  This was not a good idea, I lost all my winnings and then the money I started with.  I should have got into the truck and drove away, but what's the fun in that. 

 "When in doubt, sling it out."  

The casinos ended up being a true battle on the trip, and I ended up a little below even for the whole trip.  My record ended up 5 wins, 5 losses, and 3 ties for the cities, with the money amount in losses outweighing the money in the wins, leading to a negative number overall for the trip.  Stay tuned for the last 2 weeks of the trip, and thanks to anyone who is following my travels across the world.  Dad, thanks for making all the traveling possible.