Random Musings and Nicknacks

Venice Beach

Getting out of LA was nowhere near as simple as one might expect. First off there was the problem of buying gas for the rental car. I drove into a nice looking gas station, swiped my credit card, and it asked to authorize a 75c charge – weird, but I thought OK, said yes, and it asked me for a PIN. I don’t have a PIN for my credit card so I went inside and asked, and was told that they only took cash or bank card. I told the attendant I would pay cash then, and she agreed, and reset the pump. I walked back outside, pushed the cash option, and was told I had to go inside (where I had just been, saying I would pay cash), and prepay. Dumfounded, wondering why she let me walk back out without mentioning this, I said “F*** this place” drove to the station across the street which took credit cards, and swiped my card.

It asked for a zipcode – not a trivial question for a Canuck, and I didn’t see letters on the keypad.
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Grand view over LA – I’m curious if we got lucky, or if the skies are clearer?

Sunday we woke up, barely.

After breakfast we went to Venice Beach – Ling and Tim weren’t sure about going to a beach, but I insisted. This is *the* crazy beach in LA. The one you see in the movies that want to show the young innocent person arriving in LA shocked by how decadent and weird it is. I was really curious – I had looked it up on Trip Adivsor and the reviews were split between “Must see” and something along the lines of “I’m from the mid-west, and while I think I’m relatively forward thinking, this was disgusting and a display of everything that we teach our kids not to do. Nobody should go there”.

How could I resist?

It didn’t disappoint.
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You can’t get more “LA” than this!

Here we were in LA. Moderately rested, and rather suddenly I must admit (the Monday work conversations were interesting – “What did you do on the weekend?” – “Flew to LA” – “Huh?”

We got up the next morning, and immediately hit google to figure out what we were supposed to do now that we were here. Yes, that was another thing we had not gotten around to yet. The majors: Disneyland, Six Flags, Universal Studios, were out – none of us are rollercoaster people, and we didn’t really have the time. So we narrowed down a shortlist, and as proper practitioners of Agile project management, categorized them into the must-haves, nice to haves, want to haves, and if we have times.
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Walking over some of the most famous people in the world

The idea came about on Tuesday: Ling’s sister Lu Yuen was going to be in Los Angeles (she was touring the US on vacation), and maybe we could drive down there for the weekend and visit her. A quick check of the driving distance killed that idea – it was way farther than i remembered. On a whim I decided to look up plane tickets and discovered that not only did we have enough points to get us all down there for free (plus taxes), but when you put it together with a rental car, it would cost less than the gas to drive there and back. Even the timing was perfect – we would fly out Friday at 6:00, and fly back Sunday at 9:00 – so we wouldn’t have to miss work, and we would get two full days in LA! Yeah baby. So we booked the flight (there were four seats left), and forgot about it [1]. Thursday night I remembered that it would be a good idea to book a hotel and a car as well.
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