this morning we got up at early to get ready for the long drive. my dad and i were going to drive
bao to la for school. my mom ended up not being able to go and didn't want my dad to drive back
by himself. so i took today off of work and decided to go along for the ride. my mom has a history of
not coming along on long car trips. she sort of gets car sick. but she also has a history of making
sure we're prepared with home made sandwiches. but when i looked around the kitchen i didn't see any bread
or anything that could remotely make sandwiches. i thought maybe the tradition would be over and
we wouldn't have any more sandwiches. but she was in the kitchen cooking away and at one point turned around
with a handful of eggs and exclaimed, "sandwiches!" i thought maybe she was trying to convince us that eggs
were sandwiches. but it turns out she'd scrounged up some biscuits and the tradition was saved. we
left with a belly full of egg and sausage sandwiches.
ice cream!
... for someone with nothing to think about
the drive to la is about 7 hours. luckily i got to sit in the back and sleep. at around hour 2
my dad decided we needed to take a break and we pulled over at some rest stop on the side of the
road. rest stops are interesting things. i'm amazed that they still exist. they always make me
think of 1950s-60s america. the kind of america that's depicted in life magazines of that era. where
everyone's in campers having a barbecue. they seem like such a throwback. this one was exceptionally
nice/clean. and it was full of modern day vending machines. an entire army of them. there was even
an ice cream vending machine. it was pretty hot driving across california and i decided that we
should have ice cream. i ended up getting an oreo cookie klondike bar. but i really wish i'd gotten the
creamsicle. i don't even know why i decided on oreo cookie...
country pride
wouldn't it be nice?
a little while later we had to pull off the freeway for gas. we also decided that since we were already
stopping, it might be nice to grab a bite to eat. originally we were just going to grab something and
go, but we realized that we were ahead of schedule and besides, my dad wanted to stop. we ended up deciding
on a diner called "country pride." the food was just okay and we probably would have been better off
going to denny's. actually my food was just okay. bao's was pretty miserable and my dad's was actually
pretty good. so i guess it really just sucked to be bao. sidenote: earlier in the car we had been talking
about the beach boys and i couldn't, for the life of me, remember the name of the first song on
pet sounds. neither could anyone else. but when we walked into the diner, "wouldn't it be nice" was playing
on the radio. so at least i wouldn't have to spend all day trying to remember what the song was.
shitty radisson hotel
nobody walks in LA
we arrived in la around 4pm. we had reservations at the radisson hotel near the airport. none of
us really knew the area (my dad and i had never been there, and bao had only been in the area once).
and so it was a pretty blind stab at hotels. we'd made the reservations online and it was supposedly a
4-star hotel. but i have stayed in better best-westerns/comfort inns. so i don't understand how this is 4-star.
i think perhaps 1 floor of the hotel might be 4-stars and that's probably where they put the reviewers.
our room was shitty. our view was shitty and the beds were shitty too. but since we did it online, we'd
paid in advance and so it would've been a waste to leave. after we were checked in we drove around la
and headed up towards the campus and the surrounding neighborhoods just looking around. once we'd had
enough we came back to the hotel and fancy pizza in the hotel restaurant. at least that wasn't shitty.
sidenote: later we realized we should have stayed at the holiday inn
near ucla. it's right off the freeway and neat looking. but we didn't know that. so we filed it for
future reference.
