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Published: March 15th 2009
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Me at the Pacific Ocean for the first time“In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.” Albert Schweitzer
After the train leaves Flagstaff I get in my car and sit for what seemed like hours but it was only minutes. It was time to get going. I tuned my IPod to Neil Diamond, the Movie Album and I start driving. Somewhere along the road, I stopped at a McDonalds for breakfast and eventually arrived at my Dad’s trailer around 10am. We talked for about an hour, I had a nap for about 45 minutes and then it was time to hit the road again.
I drove through to Joshua Tree National Park. I had about an hour and a half to explore the park. I took the main drive. It was hard not to stop often as it was a nice park. I didn’t get a chance to really get out and hike or explore areas, but it was pretty cool nonetheless. I then hit the road again to Palm Springs. Just outside Palm Springs, I came across
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The rain is coming soon literally thousands of windmills. The sight was awesome. To top it off, the sun was just setting so the colours in the skies were a beautiful backdrop.
After stopping half a dozen times along the road to take pictures of the windmills, I finally made it to the resort where Cindy was staying. I joined her, Peter and a couple friends for dinner. I enjoyed a comfy sleep on the sofa, did a hike in the morning and then it was time to head to the coast. I got to Santa Monica around 3pm. After settling into the hostel room, it was a priority to get to the ocean. The rain was coming in, but I had to get to the water as I had never been to the Pacific Ocean before. After walking in the water for about 5minutes it was time to leave as the rain was starting.
I spent a total of 9 days in Los Angeles. A lot of it was spent reading, relaxing or just thinking. Outside of that, a few exciting things did happen. One day while I was walking in Venice Beach, I came upon an “on location” shoot of a
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Santa Monica Pier pilot show. It is a spin off of NCIS starring Chris O’Donnel and Mark Harmen. That was very cool … both actors literally less than 10 feet from me. It was neat to watch the making of the scene as well. So much time is spent just to record Chris walking into a restaurant.
I also went to a couple taping of some shows. One was to the show “The Doctors” which was sort of interesting. Again, it is interesting seeing the behind the scenes stuff. Of course, the icing on the cake is that I went to a taping of the Ellen DeGeneres show. There was a 99.9% chance I would not get in. I called for standby tickets in the morning but I didn’t get a call back. I decided to go on tour MGM Studios anyway so I could see a little of the behind the scenes. This was great as well. Saw the old set of Friends (sat on the sofa) and saw the current sets of ER and The Mentalist. Anyway, I digress. After the tour, I walked over to where people were standing. I got in the line for standby but given you
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Typical can at the beach even need tickets for standby, I was pretty sure I wasn’t getting in. Well, as I was standing in line reading “Steppenwolf”, this woman came up to me and asked me if I had tickets. When I said no, she told me to come with her as she had extra tickets as her friends could not make it. I was so happy that I almost cried when Ellen came out to do her monologue. Her guests for the day were Carol Burnett and Taylor Hicks.
I spent my last day in Beverly Hills and Hollywood. I walked up and down Rodeo Drive, visited “The Grove”, hiked up Hollywod hills and walked along Hollywood Boulevard to see the “stars”. I also took a tour of the Kodak theatre where the Oscars are held. The last thing I did was took in a movie at the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre ( a lot of movie premieres are done here). I am starting to feel sick. Tomorrow it is time to finally head up the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH). LA is fine, but it is not somewhere I would want to spend my life.
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