In the beginning, there was Los Angeles

Day 1
Chinatown, Los Angeles, California
Sunny, warm, some parts smelled of urine
This entry written by: Craig

Well, WACKO, we're back and traveling and blogging. Hoorah!


Let's start at the start. We had the smoothest pre-trip ever this time, with everything going like clockwork! Train on time, bus on time, Melbourne-Auckland plane on time, hoorah! We even got to use the awesome Dyson hand-dryers in the airport toilets (I have an obsession with Dyson vacuum cleaners, and now I can stick my hands in one, it's awesome).


WE DIDN'T EVEN GET FRISKED THIS TIME (even after I wore my special "friskin' undies.")

But it all went a bit dodgy with the flight from Auckland to Los Angeles... we sat in the plane as it rolled out to runway, rolled all the way back, and sat there in sweltering heat for 90 minutes, since part of the 'engineering fault' included the air conditioner. Waaaah! Tired, hungry, and hot! The biggest smack was when the announcer said that if they were delayed much longer, they'd come round with refreshments. They were delayed longer, but instead came around with Visa and Entry cards to fill out. Neither fun nor tasty.

But hey, why do we fly Air New Zealand? Because they're almost always good, AND THEY GIVE UPDATES FROM "THE FLIGHT DICK".

The flight itself was BUMPY, too. Cripes. Eating breakfast was like trying to juggle milk on a runaway stagecoach. And the constant mini-plummets near landing had Crystal grabbing my hand with THE FEARS, even though a bunch of 4 years olds spent the whole time squealing with joy, thinking they were riding the Scenic Railway at Luna Park.

Talk of swine flu was everywhere, but the closest we think we came was when someone 3 rows up had what we dubbed, "Blur Flu". It's normal flu, but when you sneeze, you sing, "WAA-HOOO!"

But we got to LA! And we hired a car! And then it was MY turn to go all white-knuckled and get THE SWEATS. With almost no sleep, I didn't want to experiment with driving on the other side of the road. So Crystal drove and I just freaked out. Freeways. Merging. Even just TURNING A CORNER. I couldn't wait to get to the hotel, even though I knew it was a 1.5 star hotel.

My fears of our bullet-whizzing, night-lady walking, police-patrolling hotel turned out to be delightfully unfounded. I expected The Shield, or at least My Name is Earl, but got The Karate Kid. Not flash, but comfy and good, with a chance of defeating the Cobra Kai, should those bastids ever show up.

Here are Crystal's highlights of the day!

* Disembarking from the muggy plane
* Customs man saying he likes it when he gets "The Pretty Australian Girls", despite her being unkempt and unshowered. (Craig's note: the same guy also freaked out a lone, traveling nerd, by saying ,"You got swine flu yeah okay go through cool", so perhaps cannot be trusted. Bam!)
* A crazy shopping experience at 'The Garage', a Los Angeles warehouse of tightly packed bargain clothes, headed up by an old ex-hippy in a Madonna-style headset, fronted by a Beyonce-style singer on a table (who'd occasionally break her Michael Jackson back catalogue to say, "Hey, bargains in here..."). Crazy place, good times!

Back in the hotel room, we saw this ad, which has been the funniest we've seen so far!


And we can't go a blog post without JUNK FOOD OF THE DAY:

Abba-Zaba: It's "chewy taffy" with a "peanut butter center". Think of a Snap Crackle or a Zombie Chew with peanut butter instead of sherbert in the centre. Kinda weird, but Crystal kept going back for more (after chowin-down like a cow - it's really chewy stuff).

Oh, one other thing I gotta mention. I seem to have developed a super-power, where I can shut down electronics with my mere presence. I'm thinking of calling myself 'The EMP Cannon' or at least 'Captain Zappy'. I crashed the Homeland Security computer when they tried to take my photo (screen just blacked out when she pressed 'click'), I then rebooted the hire car place's electronic signature machine by touching it with its own plastic stylus, then we had AWESOME dinner in Chinatown, and I managed to freak out their new TV, and make the antenna nearly kill a guy, JUST BY LOOKING AT THEM!

Thank goodness my electro-magnetic pulse powers haven't yet affected our new blo----