2007年 08月 20日 月曜日 14:47

Well, I had a long day, the day Beth finally took me to see Los Angeles… It's a long story but I'll try and be short.

It started just fine, we went up through our refuge of Orange County, just as we crossed the Irvine Spectrum we listened to All I Wanna Do, she smiled at me and told me her story about how she one night after clubbing with her friend she had to pull her car over on the sidewalk and sleep when the 'Sun Came Down Over Santa Monica Boulevard'. I smiled and appreciated her nice story, it had more details but, I'm really trying to cut this down short.

Soon enough we came up to Redondo Beach, and of course I had to have 5 cups of coffee before our little road trip, so my poor bladder was about to explode, not a toilet in sight from the road through Redondo, Hermosa and Manhattan Beach. I think it was when we were almost in Santa Monica, we finally found a Ralph's. But my sweetie could not find a parking spot so I had to run out, crouch-running because my bladder just couldn't take another beating. Went inside and probably had the longest pee ever, I think I peed for about 5 minutes… I have never been so relieved.

We finally left the whole trouble of finding a bathroom behind us, and went up through Santa Monica up to Venice Beach, we parked our car and went around looking at various people doing various things. This was my first trip ever to LA, and Venice Beach was just as I imagined it to be, lots and lots of people, doing the weirdest things you can ever imagine. A 'guy' (I wish I still remember what he called himself, because his music kicked ass) came along with a bundle of CD's and a pair of headphones hooked up to his CD-Walkman. He said: 'Yo, mr. all in black, (me) Can you guys help me out? I just need you to listen to my demo for 30 seconds, please?'. And as nice as I am, I listened to his Rap demo and I was actually shocked how good his music was. My baby took a picture of me and him together in front of Muscle Beach, it turned out to look pretty cool :) He called me a pimp, shook my hand and I complimented him on his talent and he ran off to ask someone else listen to his 'shit'.

And then me and Beth strolled on down the beach and she bought me a pair of sunglasses, they look really cool!

We got to our car, drove off up Santa Monica, drove and drove in bumper-to-bumper traffic, later on we found out why we were bumper to bumper, they were recording something outside a church, and since it's LA, almost everyone have to slow down and check it out…

By that time, we were almost starving to death, and we said, first thing we see, even if it's a McDonald's, we'll have to have it. And there it was, a McDonald's buried inside a concrete bunker filled with other restaurants… We took the drive in, which was actually a cave into the building, looked like the entrance to a parking garage… We drove off and found a nice shady spot outside a big house, almost like a mansion… And then I had my first McDonald's in one and a half years! (I was so proud to have resisted it for so long)

After we had eaten, we drove up and found Hollywood Boulevard, we carried on due east and drove past the Chinese Theater, I even got a glimpse of the Hollywood sign, lots and lots of people, and I saw celebrities such as Wolfman-Boba-Fett-With-An-HK-mp5 (?), Elmo, Tigger, Spongebob and Spider man going to work.

We drove up the Hollywood freeway towards Universal City, and that's when the car started having trouble. The 'check oil' lamp came on the dashboard, and the car started beeping, Beth got really nervous because she just had the car taken in 2 days ago, I told her to pull over at the first gas station we saw to check on it, which she did. I went out and checked the oil, it seemed to be okay, but she called the service line for her car and found out that it should be checked up on, and that we had to tow it to the nearest dealership which was in Santa Monica (about 10 miles from where we were).

We waited for about one hour in the heat, listening to my mp3 player, songs like Hollywood Swinging, until the AAA tow truck came along and put us back on the road. With the car up back we rode towards the VW dealership in Santa Monica. After about 30 minutes of waiting, they checked out the car and found out we had a huge sludge problem in the engine, and the local dealership hadn't told Beth anything about how serious the problem was. The guy that worked there told Beth that she'd have to use nothing other than Synthetic Oil for her turbo engine or else this type of sludge would happen, he also let Beth know that if people don't actually ask for Synthetic Oil, they don't put it in their engines, which was really ironic to me.

They expect you to repair your car and maintain your car at their place, but they are the ones that actually fill up with shit oil and damage it for you.

We waited at the dealership for about another one and a half hour… I looked out over Santa Monica Boulevard, which was right by the dealership, I looked at beth and said… 'And the sun goes down over santa monica boulevard' She looked at me and scoffed… And I said, I don't think I'll ever be able to listen to this song again…

Another tow truck came along, since it was too dangerous to drive our car all the way back home because the engine might have blown up if we tried. This really nice guy called Jesus put the car up and we were headed back home…

We drove through downtown LA, down through South Central, I never expected a tour but Jesus gave me a great tour through the LA county. When we were 10 minutes from home, yes, ten minutes, Jesus' truck started slowing down… Slower and slower, yeah… My gut feeling told me that 'this car is breaking down too…' and very well, it did… The tow truck, broke down with our broken down truck on it… TEN MINUTES FROM HOME!

Jesus radioed in for another truck to tow him and our car, we were parked in the median divider, just by an exit ramp on the freeway! Help was on the way, but it was from his company, NORTH OF LOS ANGELES! They said it would take about 2 hours to get down to where we were…

We sat there in the Median, with rigs swooshing past us every single minute… For 2 hours… … … … … … The time kept passing slowly… … … … … until finally the other tow truck came, we jumped inside, towed the broken down tow truck up on a bridge, they backed up back to back, and drove the car over from the broken down one to the functioning one… Because the broken down tow truck could not pull down his ramp because it couldn't start it's engine.

Beth was almost panicking, because we were facing cars in the opposing lane, but I kept her calm while they put our car up on the new tow truck.

After that, we finally got home… I looked at the clock and came to realize it had taken us about seven hours, and thirty minutes to get home from LA…

We went and got ourselves a 12 pack of beer, had two and fell asleep…

I'm not going back to LA for a while…