Two days have passed and it’s been pretty interesting so far. The flight was pretty painful. 14 hours is a long time, please remind me to try and sleep next time – if only to pass the time. Hiring the car was painless, so too the first few minutes of driving. Sure, it required complete and uninterrupted concentration, but after a while it all became more natural and required less and less effort over time. So now it’s really only turns and car parks that worry me!
I was pretty much straight into LA traffic – and what an introduction. It is unbelievable! No literally, it defies comprehension. 6 lanes of traffic – all going in the same direction, so 12 in total – and it still regularly slows to a stop. Even if there were 20 lanes this would still occur – like on of those mathematical paradoxes – LA traffic just IS.
My first port of call was the AT&T store which I magically stumbled upon. I was drawn to a mall, a little lost and craving caffeine. I thought “hey we can kill two birds by heading to Starbucks and thus getting coffee and using their wifi to use google maps and find out where the he’ll I am”. So while sipping my double shot latte I was able to pull out my iPhone, find myself and realize not only was the hotel just up the road but there was an AT&T store directly across from me. So the next port of call was to get this phone a new SIM. The woman at the shop was so friendly and made it an absolute breeze to get set up. I was informed however, that data was unavailable on an unlocked iPhone, which was one of my main fears. Fortunately for me I had my iPad too so I got another sim set up for that. This required an extra stop and a trip to Walgreens for the purchase of a pre-paid Visa card (I read all about this before I left). Once I registered the card, which required an hours wait (so I headed for Carls Jr for some food – um… I got a small cheese burger meal – which here is same size as a large Quarter Pounder meal at home). After the meal I headed back to Starbucks where I logged in, registered my Visa card and then setup my iPad on their wifi.
Now with my 3G iPad up and running I opened my Navigon app, punched in the hotel address and let the kind female voice coax me and my Chevy Cobalt to the hotel. It was about 10.30am when I got there and I held out little hope of checking in, but figured I could at least find out when and then go and pass the time. To my surprise I was checked in, unpacked and lay down. I promised myself to not sleep till 6pm to reduce the impact of jet lag so I amused myself flicking through the tv and getting my laptop up and running on the hotel wifi. After a couple of hours I felt a little refreshed so decided to hop in the car again.
I headed down the coast to Laguna beach but the traffic was horrendous so I decided to call it quits and headed back. The Candlewood Suites
where I was staying had a small kitchen area so I decided to get some breakfast stuff and find a stereo cable to I could connect my iPhone to the stereo for some tunes – LA you do not have one good radio station!
It was getting closer to bed time so I grabbed some dinner and headed back to the hotel for 14 hours of straight, uninterrupted, black beautiful sleep. So in one foul swoop I was able to get all the sleep I’d missed by staying awake for more than 24 hours.
OK I’ll do day two later.
Heart | Soul | Machine 