Our First Day!

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Well, I'm writing this from a hostel on Hollywood Boulevard, Clauds sitting next to me - probably talking to Kevin.

Flights were knackering: the main events were my expectance to be fully groped through Gatwick security while Clauds got tickle-searched, the girls making friends with a drunk aussie called Eddy (pronounced "Iddy"), iceburgs near Canada, hackysack (sp?) in NewYork Newark airport: Spud says "If anyone loses this, you're going home" before swiftly losing it himself, getting free samples to the point of shunning from a sushi lady, RUNNING to the flight - it wasn't on the screen and they hadn't announced it, yet we were almost late, y'know that little apprehensive wait at the gate before you board? Yeah, we missed that. Blades of Glory: "If you can dream it, you can do it" in-flight movie. Phew, Jet Lag is fun too, we got to bed at 9am British time, so that's 27 hours awake (for me with just two hours' sleep. Illadvised.)

Last night's stay was at a hotel. Posh? No. Complete with "luxury" pool. Most dubious indeed. And first up today was getting our rental cars, we preordered small hatchbacks (or similar) but they don't really do them in the US, so we have a big hatchback (Rachel driving, ably assisted by "Mr James" and Soph) and a people carrier (!) which I'm driving and sharing choooons with Clauds and Rich. Automatic transmission is fun, aptly described as big comfy go-karts!

So we're staying in Hollywood right now, we've seen the big sign and went to Sid's - with the celeb handprints. We got Dickie on TV though, that was cool:
Producer: "We're looking for single guys, are you guys single?"
Me:"HE is" (Pointing at Rich)
He then lead him to a large camera and we're expecting a very brief appearance on a late chat show. So Rich won the stardom race, in terms of starspotting, we've chased a few celebrities...
...P Diddy cut me up in his SUV, so we followed him 'til we got lost then went after Paris Hilton ("hang a left", then it's the ninth house) and family, got lost then looked at the map to realise we were right outside Brad Pitt's house. Ok, so there's a little fabrication invoved here, but it's all good!

That's all the news. Other than that, you may (or may not) like to know that we're all well and coping with the time difference much better than I'd expected at least. Just a nice early night would be nice I think!

Please leave us messages here, we'll check them at every stop we can. I've run out of dollar bills. Tomorrow we're heading up the coast thru Malibu and towards Santa Maria (Pacific coast). We'll try and get some photos up very soon. Well I won't because I'm pretty sure my camera is sitting on my desk. At home. Useful, Dan. Useful.

Hope you're all doing well.
Until next time,
DB

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