L.A. Story

We got up pretty early at Susan's and packed the car to set off. Unfortunately, Susan left for work early and her daughter Samantha was still sleeping so we had to leave without saying goodbye. We packed up the car in the already hot Nevada weather and prepared to finally reach California.

The last 3000+ miles have left their mark on Liz's car. The layers of filth on the car are like the rings in a tree trunk, showing where we've been and what we've done.

This is the outside of Susan's house. A nice little place in the suburbs outside of Vegas. This whole area is pretty interesting. There are practically no commercial buildings to be found in Henderson. Everywhere you look there are endless houses and apartments. It took Liz and I nearly 20 minutes of driving down major arteries just to find a convenient store.

On the interstate at nearly 4pm in the afternoon, the temperature was well in to the 100s. Nevada was definitely hot, but I think that Florida is still worse. Humidity makes all the difference.

Once we were in California, things stopped looking so dead. It was nice to see things green again.

Wow... Los Angeles! Downtown is just barely peeking through what I thought was smog. We were told later that it is actually just ocean mist. Well, that's a relief.

Everywhere you go in California, you see houses stacked up the sides of hills.

The Pre-Barbecue

Liz and I arrived in Los Angeles late that afternoon. We had planned on staying with Liz's brother, Rob, and attending his barbecue the next day. We beat Rob to his house and let ourselves in with the hide-a-key. Rob and his friend, Sean, pulled up a few minutes later with over $400 worth of food (mostly meat). We quickly said our hellos and then it was off to work.

Rob's a serious barbecuer that has won several awards at barbecuing competitions, so everything had to be made from scratch. Personally, I just toss meat on the fire and pray. If it comes out bad, then you just shalack it with A1. Its always worked for me, but I guess that's why hundreds of people don't come over when I have a barbeque. We worked prepping meat for around 6 hours that night and a few more the next morning.

It was truely a sight to behold, seeing Liz tenderizing ribs. You see, Liz is quite content to think that meat is built in a factory not from a living animal. Handling large racks of ribs and watching them bleed does a pretty good job of shattering that illusion. I have to admit I was a little squemish myself when Rob had me cut the tips of chicken wings off with a pair of scissors. Cutting throught flesh and bone with a pair of scissors made me feel a little like the bad guy in a mob movie. Pretty nasty.

The Barbecue

People started showing up around three. Rob's an executive in the music industry so there was a very wide assortment of people there, ranging from band members to lawyers.

Early on in the barbecue we heard some shouting coming from down the street. It turns out that an oriental girl, that the neighborhood referrs to as the 'Dragon Lady', was in the midst of having a bad break-up with her ex. Her ex, who we'll call the black guy, was apparently trying to retrieve some of his things from the dragon lady's house. A white guy, who we'll call the frat boy, was with the dragon lady in the house screaming obsenities at the black guy. The black guy brought another white guy with him (i guess as backup). We'll call him the dork. The black guy was trying to get into the house but the frat boy and the dragon lady kept pushing and screaming at him. The dork just hovered behind the car, guess he didn't want to get in the mix. Things escallated and finally chump fighting erupted. A barrage of sissy slaps and kicks to the butt ensued between the frat boy and the black guy. It was all rather comical. Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worst when the frat boy went and grabbed a 2x4 and started swinging at the black guy. Finally the cops were called and we went back to barbecuing.

Rob had made a few predictions about the barbeque before it started, and I, having never been to one of these events, disagreed with all of them. First, Rob said that there would be at least a hundred people coming to the BBQ. Second, he said there would be no leftovers. Third, he said the BBQ would be over around midnight. I thought, yeah right, to all of those predictions. First of all, a hundred people may say they're coming, but less than half show up. Second, there was over $400 of food... of course there will be leftovers! And third, you always have people that don't know when they've overstayed their welcome and stay untill 4 in the morning.

Well, I will forever know Rob as a man of his word because each thing came true, seeming on cue. First, the BBQ was packed. The backyard had at least fifty people in it most of the time and people came and went constantly. I'm quite sure that more than a hundred people showed up to this BBQ. Second, people were absolutely ravenous. It looked like a scene of the nightly news from Iraq where people are fighting for water. This is exactly what people were doing for ribs and pork! There was shoving, grabbing, and yelling. This was not just musicians, but executives also. Liz timed how long it took for people to devour an entire pan of sliced beef. 20 seconds! The pan went from full to clean in 20 seconds (and this was one of the slower ones). Needless to say, there was absolutely nothing left over after the end of the BBQ. Finally, Rob had predicted the party would be over by midnight. Around 11:30, I figured I was going to be right on this one. There were probably 20 or 30 people left in the backyard drinking and making lots of noise. Mysteriously, everyone (almost all at once) packed up and left. At 11:56 only Rob, Liz, and myself were in the house. Amazing!

The Incident

After the BBQ was over the three of us talked for a few minutes and then headed off to bed. I piled all of the contents of my pockets on the dining room table and headed off for bed. I awoke to the sound of Rob banging around in the backyard. He had gotten up early and started the long job of cleaning up. I thought about going back to sleep, but began to feel like the lazy house guest so I got up to go help. After working for a few minutes, I went to get my stuff off of the table and reload my pockets. I noticed that my camera was not on the table. My first thought was that Liz had packed up my camera in one of the bags without telling me. I looke through all of our bags and could not find it. I asked Rob if he'd moved it, but he figured that I left it somewhere in the house and that it would turn up sooner or later. The trouble with this theory was that I keep the camera with me at all times. I am psychotic about the camera and always have it with me incase a photo op arises. I went back over to the table and looked again. This time I noticed that my neat pile of thing was not so neat anymore. I grabbed my wallet and looked inside. All of my money was gone. I finally knew for sure... we had been robbed.

I awoke Liz and grabbed Rob. Rob had never had a problem like this and was stunned that it happened. Liz was more concerned with the fact that someone had been in the house only a few feet from where we were sleeping. We didn't notice it at first, but Liz's keys were also gone. We ran outside, but were relieved to see the car was still there and appeared to have everything still inside. Later in the afternoon we also determined that Rob's cellphone was taken as well. All together around $1000 worth of things were stolen. My camera and memory card were worth around $500 and Rob's cell was worth about $200. The big shocker was the price to replace the key to Liz's car. Because her SUV has one of the high security keys (the one's with the microchip built inside), it cost $275 to get a new one. Unbelievable!

Rob covered the price of the door key and has asked the community to chip in $10 each (under the threat of stopping the annual BBQ) to cover the expenses. People have already begun to respond. Everyone is shocked that something like this happened. We called the police so that we could get an official police report for insurance reasons. It took over 5 hours for the cops to arrive, which was not a big suprise given the rest of our LA experience.

Anyway, that is our 'getting robbed in LA' story. That is also why you've been reading for the last 15 minutes instead of looking at pictures. I plan on purchasing a new camera in the next day or two, but until then there's not going to be much to show. In the last three days we've witnessed a violent domestic disturbance, been robbed, and had to wait all day for the police. We feel that we've done all the major things in LA so we can finally head out and continue our trip. We do wish that we could have squeezed a riot and maybe an earthquake in, but there's always next time.