A couple of international students from my soccer team looked like they were flying down to LA for the weekend – they were asking if anyone else wanted to come. I was vaguely interested – I’ve been to LA before, but not on this trip. I sent an email reply saying that it would be cool to go. Those friends said there weren’t any seats, but some people might want to organise a car to drive down there. About three minutes later, I got a call on my cell phone and I was going to LA for two days, spontaneously.

Two magic words – Road Trip. It was great – I woke up at six am, walked down to Telegraph Ave and was picked up by this German guy named Adrian and a Canadian called Joanna. Us three were the only ones going down by car, and I couldn’t drive because I was under the age for insurance, so those two were the only drivers, and they quickly showed their worth. In two days they ran four red lights (none of them on purpose, but one in front of three lanes of oncoming traffic), went the wrong way down two one way streets, got a speeding ticket for going 92 miles an hour in Merced (60 mile per hour zone) and generally swerved back and forth over as many lanes of the freeway as possible to take up. Never let anyone tell you that New Zealander’s are inconsiderate drivers again!

Needless to say I was the fun-Nazi voice of reason in all of this – but what in New Zealand would be broad hints aren’t at all hints in the more direct American culture. For example, five minutes before the speeding ticket I spotted how fast we were going and said to Jo ‘If we get a speeding ticket, who is going to pay it?’ Pretty obvious right? Apparently not.
‘Margaret! Why didn’t you say anything about me going too fast?’

The crossing in front of the three lanes of traffic thing was done by the German guy, Adrian. He saw the green light for going ahead, but not the red light for turning, and so just turned. It was pretty frightening for me, and I still can’t help but laugh as I talk about it now, because Adrian didn’t even notice until after we were safely through the intersection. He was then so horrified that he lost concentration and almost took out two pedestrians on a zebra crossing. All in all, not one of the more successful driving experiences of my life.

We drive 350 miles down the central valley from San Francisco to Los Angeles, which was a nice drive but quite boring. The landscape is very flat, devoid of all vegetation aside from a very short brown scrub, and occasionally farms. Every 30 or 40 miles, so regular you could set your clock to it, there was a ‘town’ that consisted of three or four fast-food joints and a motel. I suspect they cater for the truck-drivers that come up and down this route, but it was amazing how none of these ‘towns’ had a supermarket or anything. It was literally just some fast-food places and a place to stay.

Our first stop on this road trip was at one of these places, called Wasco, where we had Denny’s. Denny’s is an American fast food chain which is somewhere between Cobb and Co and McDonalds – very unhealthy, huge portions. It was very crowded when we went in, and every single person there was overweight – it was like the America you see in those bad movies about the ’hollowness of life’. We quickly worked out the reason for everyone being overweight – I took one look at the menu and ordered a side-order of toast for my meal. (A side note: everything in America is about choice. When I ordered my toast is wasn’t just ‘white or brown’ it was ‘do you want rye, sour dough, white wheat flour, corn flour, ect. And this was at a fast food place!) I scraped a lot of the butter off and it was quite nice. The other two picked the mega-breakfast and it was massive and covered with grease. They enjoyed it!

Then it was back on the road, and I had to work very hard to prevent us stopping within the hour at the International House of Pancakes, better known as iHop. This decision to not go to IHop right then and there was a mistake which later came back to haunt me – but that’s a story for later.

After about 4 hours a line of hills appeared up from the horizon. These hills are pretty random, because there is nothing but plains before them, and nothing but hills after. Through these hills more and more green began to appear, until we entered into LA county and from there to LA proper.

Driving along the freeways is a hassle – and although I kept telling the driver which exit we were to take we missed it anyway. Honestly – this is the last time I take a trip with fully spontaneous people! No... it wasn’t that bad – they’re brilliant people. They’re just a little flighty. Anyway, we ended up in Venice Beach, which isn’t very nice. We got all the way down there to go and stay with these other two people from our soccer team, but they’re a couple, and they weren’t that keen to have us around. They ‘suggested’ we’d find more accommodation in Hollywood than in Venice Beach. They’re funny people. Anyway, we drove for another hour to get to Sunset blvd, which was very dodgy. My car-mates told me ‘the first place we find to stop and stay the night we’ll take’ and so I delighted in pointing out all the tumble-down, paint-flecked ‘hotels’ with hookers standing out the front. Eventually to my disappointment we found a motel 6, which was pretty much fully booked except for a double room in a smoking section, and a single room in a non-smoking section. We went for the double first, but it stunk so badly we moved into the single room. I slept on the floor in my army sleeping-bag while Jo and Adrian slept in the bed. Perhaps this sounds a little odd – why would one girl sleep on the floor while another girl and a guy who don’t date or anything sleep in the bed? By this stage I had come a-cropper of the dreaded lurgy, and was sick with the flu. I didn’t want to give them it, so I stayed away from them. We met up with our friends and strolled down Hollywood Blvd, which was nice. The stars on the walk were fun to watch, the stores were all very cool (if a little touristy) and the Chinese Theatre especially was worth a visit. All those hand-prints were excellent! My favourite was the harry potter actors’ handprints. The whole courtyard with all the handprints was smaller than I expected though - What happens when they run out of space?

We had hamburgers for dinner, and then I went home to bed (because I felt like rubbish) whilst my friends wandered off and visited famous nightspots, and Sushi restaurants. My University American Football team also lost (which was a big disappointment), but the floor was surprisingly comfy. The next morning, well rested, we went to see the Hollywood sign. We followed the directions given to us by Adrian’s iPhone (which is amazing by the way), but the directions that it imported had a large flaw. It didn’t realise that some of the routes were ‘authorized’ vehicles only, so in the end we had a great tikki-tour of the Hollywood hills, but saw no Hollywood sign. We did see it in the end, but only from a great distance away. Such is life.

We then swung by Muscle beach and the Santa Monica pier. It was Veteran’s Day in the USA and they’d placed thousands of crosses out on the beach to commemorate Iraqi war soldiers who’ve died, and they were holding a ceremony on the beach. We watched them until a protest group showed up with ‘9/11 was a fake made up by the govt!!!’ signs. There were quite a few of them, and the memorial service didn’t acknowledge that they were there, but I still thought it was in poor taste. We didn’t go on any of the rides on Santa Monica pier, but it was interesting to watch other people do it.

After this we went to see UCLA, which was very nice (but it looked like someone had designed it using a huge ruler) It was conveniently right next to the Bel Air gates, so I got a photo of that as well. Jo was trying to find the UCLA store so she could buy stuff, and I pointed to some blue parasols in the distance and said ‘that looks like food, and so the commercial area. It’ll be over there in the commercial area, surely.’ Jo and Ad decided to check the map and settled on the Student Activates Centre as being the most likely place, even though I said it was likely to be the gym. So we walked over the campus to the gym, discovered it was a gym, and then walked down to the memorial fountain. Jo went and asked someone where the store was, but she didn’t speak English. I pointed out to Jo that the lady had a UCLA store bag, so we just had to walk in the direction from which the lady came to find it. Jo’s response? – ‘This is why we keep you around Margaret.’ So we followed the trail of people carrying UCLA bags to the courtyard with the blue parasols in it. It turns out the blue parasols was the student store. There Jo spent money and I wandered around looking for something that I could give to Annabel. Eventually the money ran out on the parking metre, so we went back and headed out of town.

We didn’t go back the same way we drive in – we went up the coast towards Santa Barbara and stopped there. The scenery was much nicer on this leg, but I wasn’t impressed by SB. It was like I thought America was going to be like all over the place when I arrived – very two dimensional. American flags lined the recently brick-laid streets, pseudo-Spanish architecture dominated the area, and the main street was like an outdoor mall for chain stores. The food we had was very good though, and it was interesting to visit three University of California towns in a couple of days.

From here we drove to Santa Monica. Remember how I said I regretted not going to iHop on the first day? Well, the other two got obsessed with the idea of going there, so I pulled up Adrian’s iPhone and we went on a mighty hunt for them. We probably went an hour out of our way, and 100 miles further, to find one, and only then by heroic efforts on the part of the iPhone. We did find one however, and the food was good – massive MASSIVE portions of pancakes which made me VERY full.

I was pleased to get home to Berkeley but I had a great time. I hope everyone else had a great weekend, and I’ll talk to you guys about everything going on later.

Again, if you’ve got questions it’d be good, because then I’d have something to write about.

written by  Crosswood on November 10, 2007 from Los Angeles, United States
from the travel blog: New Zealand Student, American University.
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Do you remember the first time we saw all those hand prints? Cause i remember not being very impressed because it seemed kinda grimy. Or were you too young, you would have been 9 or 10.

written by  Rebecca Harris on November 12, 2007

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ROOOOOAD TRIIIIIP! Haha sounds like you had a blast! xxx

written by  annabel harris on November 25, 2007

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Don't you remember Santa Barbara? Thats where Andy went to Uni. - I think we satyed at a motel 6 which you girls thought a bit of a let down. We drove up and back from LA all in the same car. Doesn't seem like that long ago actually....

written by  Mum on November 27, 2007

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