Roam With Me! Some of my Firsts in California. Part One.

The older I get the less I like to repeat visits to places I've already seen -- unless I'm showing them to someone dear to me because then I can experience the newness and accompanying excitement through that person. So, it was an opportunity I couldn't pass up when my boyfriend and I were invited to his nephew's wedding to be held in Anaheim on July 7th. I'd never been to California; he'd never been to California -- so everything we were about to do was going to be new for both of us. How wonderful.

So, here are some of the many first-time things we did and saw during our first two days in California.

1. Meal at an In-N-Out. This one is near or perhaps still within the giant beast that is LAX, and it's quite popular because you can watch airplanes come in for landings while eating outside.

While the food was fine, it wasn't anything to write home about. I realize that many people have eaten in an In-N-Out, but we'd only heard of the chain prior to landing in L.A.





I wish I'd captured the gigantic airplane that passed over us from China. How those massive things stay in the air will always astound me. 

A lot of amateur photographers hang out where you see the people in this photo just waiting to capture a shot of the very large planes.






2. View of the Pacific Ocean. While I've seen, flown over and even swum in the Atlantic many times, I'd never been anywhere near the Pacific before, so that first glimpse was magical.

 This was taken from Del Cerro Park in the Palos Verdes Nature Preserve in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. From here we could see Catalina Island. 




We also found this little gem engraved with words from one of the best known Nebraska writers! I'm a little known Nebraska writer myself, so seeing this at an overlook of the Pacific gave me chills: 

This was taken BEFORE the killer hike we went on through a portion of the Portuguese Bend Reserve. Look how happy and naive we were. A few short hours later I pretty much looked like death warmed over, but the views were gorgeous! Me? Not so much. 






3. Meal at House of Blues. I mention another restaurant only because of the amazing piece of artwork on display there. This one is in Anaheim, near where we were staying. It's a massive piece of art comprised totally out of Mardi Gras beads, and it wraps around a tall, thick post at the bar. I was drawn to it even more so because of its Day of the Dead motif since I am a Spanish teacher. It's breathtakingly beautiful.

Look to the bottom of the pillar and you'll see the artist's name: Anna Walton, and you can visit her website at www.annanola.com to see more of her very impressive pieces of Mardi Gras bead art.

If you go to House of Blues, I highly recommend their Bloody Marys and their jambalaya -- I had mine with chicken, but it comes with shrimp, too, if you prefer seafood.









4. Views of the Hollywood sign and L.A. from Griffith Park's observatory.

The zoom on my phone's camera doesn't work the best, so I just stick to taking photos as is; however, the sign is there.

 No photo will ever do L.A. justice because it's just too big to get in one shot. Living where there are fewer people in my entire state than can be found in L.A., it boggles the mind to stare out at this huge city. It's o.k. to visit, but I can't imagine living here.

5. Celebrity sighting. Turns out it was our only celebrity sighting, but we thought it was pretty cool to see one on our first full day in the L.A. area. This was in Burbank in a mall called Burbank Town Center. The celebrity? John Ross Bowie who I know as Barry Kripke from The Big Bang Theory. Honestly, if he hadn't spoken within my hearing, I don't think I would even have noticed him, but once I did, I just had to snap a quick photo to show my kids. I cropped out his own child from this photo, and this time I did attempt to use the zoom on my phone, and as you can see, that then distorts the image a bit, but you can still tell it's him. We were enjoying our ice cream and really not paying attention to anyone walking by when I heard a man's voice that could be no other than Bawwy Kwipke's from The Big Bang. We both looked at each other in astonishment, and I caught a couple shots of him descending the escalator with his kid. Good thing, too, since he was the only celebrity we saw, but considering that I don't pay that much attention to other people, it's possible we walked right past someone else famous and I never even noticed.

6. Treatment as if I were the celebrity at Flappers Comedy Club in Burbank. We received the royal treatment by the owners, Barbara Holliday and Dave Reinitz. I met these two ten years ago at the inaugural Great American Comedy Festival in Norfolk, Nebraska which was created in Johnny Carson's honor. Johnny is a Norfolk High School graduate, and he hosted his long-running show from Burbank. 

I was a member of the committee that got the comedy festival up and running, and I was given the honor to be the host to these two zany, creative people. I kept saying that one day I'd get out to California and see the club they opened. It took me longer than I thought it would to actually do that, but Barbara not only remembered me fondly, she also gave us free tickets to the shows we attended and a celebrity behind-the-scenes tour of every part of the club -- the back entrance, the kitchen, the green room, both comedy rooms, the bar, etc. She also introduced us to her club manager who treated us like royalty. We enjoyed a great meal, some drinks, and definitely some great comedy.

This is the YooHoo Room which has an adorable stage and a smaller, cozy room for the audience. The night we were in attendance, this stage was populated by comedians from or connected in some way to NEBRASKA! Can you believe it? It was a total coincidence.

 This is Dave preparing for the open mic auditions which they do every so often. We were able to watch a large group of wanna-be comedians do their three minute tryout sets while we ate supper. Then we attended part of the Nebraska comics show in the YooHoo Room before returning to this main room for a show entirely of female comedians who had just completed a long course teaching them how to do stand-up comedy. They were all very good, and I nearly peed my pants laughing. Maybe someday I'll give stand-up a try again, and if I do, I'll go back to Flappers. It's a great club.

7. Uber rides. No photos of those except for this view of traffic on the the I-5:    I lost count of how many rides we ended up taking during our time in the L.A. area and then in San Francisco, but it was better than renting a car and attempting to navigate ourselves around the mass that is L.A. and beyond. We were initially nervous to try travel by Uber, but once we did the first one, it was simple after that. Our only problems occurred when the very first driver we had didn't speak English or even Spanish at any sort of communicable level (all the others spoke English very well or were natives of the U.S.), and when there was a glitch or a misconnection once when we desperately needed a ride and couldn't get the app to process the credit card -- meanwhile, our phone batteries were fast being drained, so I was a bit of a basket case for about fifteen minutes or so, but that's part of travel, and we survived.

To be continued . . .