LA, Day #1

[bjarvis]

We slept in a little this morning. Not a lot, but it was such a late bedtime last night that it was more or less inevitable. Good thing it was a comfortable bed & room, not that we really cared when we were that tired.

Once dressed, we popped down to the lobby to check out the surroundings and seek out coffee for cuyahogarvr --you don't want to be around him in the morning until he's had his first gallon of high octane. Immediately, we ran into Roy Gotta and canseefour, joined soon thereafter by Barry Clasper, Betsy Gotta and Mary Hutchinson.

Roy gave us great advice on where to graze in the area of the hotel: as expected, the restaurants inside the facility are fabulously expensive but he pointed us to a Denny's down the street. Denny's also had the advantage of free wireless, whereas the hotel is charging $12.95/day for cabled 10baseT Internet access. Marriott bastards.

Once fed, e-mail read and LJ updated, we stopped at our hotel room to drop off our bags and collect our cameras. cuyahogarvr conferred with the concierge who gave us superb directions and travel tips to get ourselves to the pier in Santa Monica for an afternoon of photography and site-seeing.


I took nearly as many photos of hotties in the area as I did of the sites themselves. God, it's fun being shallow. I'll do a mega-posting of those later when we return to DC next week.

The beachfront and pier visit were... interesting. There was an incredibly powerful wind blowing off the ocean such that I had to brace myself multiple times to take stable photographs. My beard was being blown sideways and I was whacked twice by bits of tree flying through the air. Worse, as we walked out on the pier, the wind was picking up the sand from the beach and effectively sandblasting all exposed skin. I'm still tasting mineral salts and sea salt in my moustache.

LA or Riyhad? Who can tell?

Once we got past the duststorms, the ocean was indeed lovely.


After spending some time mosying around the pier and its amusement park, we headed a couple of blocks inland (and sheltered from the wind) to walk along the 3rd Street Concourse before stopping for a drink and rest. When we were ready, we boarded the Big Blue Bus #3 (only $0.75 fare!) to head back to our hotel where we napped lightly and watched a little TV while attempting to make telephone contact with misc local friends Peter & rexsteed.

There has been a conference for accessibility technology & the disabled in our Marriott the past few days and was in the process of wrapping up. Rumour has it that Stevie Wonder was attending although we didn't see him. Hell, I thought he died several years ago so what do I know? And I haven't seen so many dogs in one spot in years!

As much as I wanted to pet & play with the lot, they were all working dogs on duty so I --and they-- behaved themselves appropriately.

We had a small appetizer at the sports bar in the hotel, then spent at least two hours chatting with Betsy & Roy Gotta, John Marshall, Mary Hutchinson, Barry Clasper & canseefour before we all calld it a night and headed back to our respective rooms.

Comments

[paigemom.livejournal.com]

Kent looks like he's about to be run over by a stroller...