L.A Trip

This last weekend we needed to get out of San Diego and away from thinking about construction. So we decided on a day trip to LA. It was a long day and you always have to deal with traffic day/night/weekend it does not matter.

towards the end we decided to go to Santa Monica and then we saw THIS. It made the whole trip worthwhile.

Apparently the BatMobile was in the shop because Batman was having to ride a bike.

San Francisco Road Trip

 ♫ Headin' up to San Francisco
For the Labor Day weekend show♫
-Come Monday, Jimmy Buffett

So this Labor Day we drove to San Fran Friday and Saturday, then on Sunday drove to Pismo Beach and returned back home today.

We haven't taken a trip together since Christmas and wanted to get out of town for the long holiday. We went straight up I-5 and didn't run into much traffic so it took about 8 hours.

A friend who used to live in that area told us about Twin Peaks (not the TV show). She said that it is not that widely known and researching places to go we never heard of it. So before we even checked into the Hotel we drove up to the top. Gorgeous views of the city and bay. The weather for our trip could not have been any better. From there we drove down the "most crooked street" in the world, Lombard Street. Last stop before the hotel was the "Painted Ladies".

Crossing the Bay Bridge

View from Twin Peaks

Alcatraz from Twin Peaks

Panorama. Click to enlarge

Lombard Street

Lombard Street

Painted Ladies

Our Hotel

Unfortunately we couldn't get tickets to Alcatraz and we didn't want to drive across the Golden Gate because the BART bay rail tunnel was closed this weekend so the bridges were really busy.

We stayed at The Rex Hotel near Union Square. The Rex was built in 1907 just after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. We paid more by staying right down town but we could walk anywhere and by did we walk. Friday night we just walked to Union Square then went to dinner. Saturday we must have walked 10 miles total. Did I mention that San Fran has some of the steepest hills I have ever traveled for a city? First we drove near Fort Point to take some photos of the Golden Gate, then the walk from Hell began.  First stop the Ferry Landing Farmers Market. From there we went to Chinatown where we got one of the cheapest lunches I can remember having. Since this place did not have any seating and there was none in the area at all we walked back to Union Square where we ate. I could not believe how many people there were in Chinatown. I have never been to China before but I think I have a good idea of what it is like. Don't think I will book a trip there anytime soon. It was very tiring dodging and moving through the crush of humanity. Incredibly we did not take a singe picture of Chinatown, probably because if we stopped we would have been ran over, it was like a river of people.

Union Square

Golden Gate

Transamerica Pyramid

Stumbled across this. Church of Scientology

Cable Car

Curved Escalators, never seen that before

We still had time before dinner so off we trekked to Japantown. Chinatown and Japantown could not have been any different. Where Chinatown was chaotic, dirty, and bustling; Japantown was quiet, clean and orderly. We walked down Post street to Japantown and part of that trip was through some sketchy neighborhood. We had to dodge vomit on the sidewalk and saw a black guy wearing a blond wig, wearing a midriff shirt and looking 9 months pregnant. Yes it was a guy!! So we decided to go back on Sutter street and what a world of difference one street can make.

Japantown

Our walk

 We thought that after such an exhausting day we would sleep soundly the 2nd night and we did until 2:40am when a bunch of drunk young adults decided to take an after party to the room next to us. We tried to go back to sleep but it didn't work so we got up early and headed to Pismo Beach, our 2nd stop. On the positive side the hotel took off $115 from our bill due to the noise.

On the way to Pismo I wanted to take "A" down the Pacific Coast Highway 1. Beautiful drive but also very demanding on the driver. By the time we reached the end,  we had enough of the twisting turning road.

Along Highway 1

We stayed at The Cliffs Resort and got a room upgrade to a full ocean view. Don't know what we did to deserve that but we were happy. So we went down to the "beach", funny thing about the central coast, their "beaches" are not really beaches. At least not to anyone from SoCal. Everything is rocky with a small part of smaller chunks of rock they must consider sand.

Our view at Pismo Beach Hotel

Giant room at Pismo Beach

The "beach" below our hotel

For dinner we went back to a wonderful Sushi restaurant.

On the way home we see "Herbie the Love Bug".

Herbie the love bug

Overall it was a really fun trip that I am glad we took.

L.A. Day Trip

Lately it has been go to work, come home, go to work, repeat.  So yesterday we decided to take a day trip to L.A., where every day is Halloween.  Of course "A" set us up with a few estate sales to check out, usually we just check out the houses but at times we will purchase something.  Most of the houses that we look at are really outdated inside and crappy. I guess when you deal with that much money and with the prime locations, they have no desire to make them nice. Sometimes people will buy a property for millions of dollars just to tear it down and build a new place. 

The first stop was a house in Malibu. The house was OK, but the location was amazing, it was right on the beach. It wasn't currently for sale, but it last sold in 2013 for $7,000,000.

The other noteworthy house was in Brentwood, and no it was not O.J.s house.  This place is listed at $8,195,000 and it is currently pending.

It was really amazing how much money is in that area. Every vehicle was one of the following, Lexus SUV, BMW SUV/Sedan, Range Rover, Mercedes SUV/Sedan, Maserati, Jaguar, Tesla. In San Diego I have seen maybe 1 or 2 Teslas, Yesterday we saw over 20 of them. Yes, we actually counted them because we just don't see them here and they were literally everywhere up there. 

I know my breaks work because I damn near T-Boned a Prius that decided to turn left in front of me.  Had to lock them up and the dumb b**ch just went about her business like everything was OK and she didn't narrowly miss a trip to the hospital.  We were outside of the really nice areas, otherwise I might have tagged her and gotten a new truck.

Got to see a LA hipster with his "man bag". You can only see the strap across his chest, the bag is hidden. Hard to take the picture, the light had just turned green and "A" was yelling at me not to take the picture. She doesn't like it when I do that.

Say hi to your neighbors

The cement pond

LA Hipster

Virginia Trip

Last week duty called and I had to go to Stafford Virginia for a conference. I am never enthusiastic about having to go on business trips. I figured I did enough of them for 20 years and that was my fill. But being the good drone that I am I did a right face and forward march.

I flew into Ronald Reagan Airport in D.C. and I was lucky enough to be on the left side of the aircraft so that I could capture all the landmarks. I got a good picture of the Watergate Hotel and then decided to turn on the video to record the landing and was able to capture the Lincoln Memorial, WWII Memorial, Washington Monument, Treasury, the Capital, and the Jefferson Memorial. So if you ever fly into Ronald Reagan Airport in D.C. try to sit on the left side of the plane.

I didn't get a chance to tour DC but I did get a few hours free to tour the National Museum of the Marine Corps. It is one of the few Museums that doesn't bore me to tears. There is so much that a few hours just isn't enough. I did snap a few pictures of what I think is really cool, especially the two Medal of Honors awarded to Dan Daley. To see the actual medals that he wore is magnificent.

Flying back into San Diego I snapped a few pictures from our very low reservoirs.

Leaving San Diego

Watergate Hotel

Dan Daley's Medals of Honor

 

The US Capital Building

Low Reservoir in San Diego

Another Low Reservoir in San Diego

Target Shooting

Last weekend some friends from the neighborhood went out to Ocotillo Wells to do some target shooting. Honestly, I didn't know there was anyplace in Southern California that you could go out and shoot that was not an "official" shooting range. I also had no idea that there were quite as many people in the neighborhood who owned guns and liked to shoot.

Getting there was an adventure, actually a scary adventure. The normal way is to take I-8 East through the mountains, and we did, but that weekend the Santa Ana winds were howling. We all rode in one of the guys RV and with the winds blowing around 40mph with gust hitting around 60-70mph it was all he could to to keep the RV on the road. In fact we almost turned around.  What normally takes 1 1/2 hours took over 2 hours thankfully, when we got in the desert, the wind wasn't blowing there.  But around 1PM the Highway Patrol closed the highway for a few hours. Going back we took the S-2 highway, no wind but it took us over 3 hours to get back. So the drive there and back sucked.

We had a whole mixture of weapons from the .22 rifle up to a 300 Magnum hunting rifle. One guy made his own AR-15 receivers and the little black gun I am shooting is one of them. Another guy had some WW2 rifles (M1 Carbine and M1 Garand) which were really cool to shoot.

(L-R) Mini 14; M1 Carbine; M1 Garand; don't know what the far right one is

L.A. part 2

Last Saturday, 23 November, we made another trek to LA in search of a great deal at a estate sale and the elusive Eames chair. We began our quest early that morning without breakfast but plenty of coffee. Our first way point was at the home of Michael Jackson's dermatologist, Dr. Klein. Apparently he was bankrupt, his home sold at auction and the estate sale held to pay his creditors. The home was built in 1914, about 11,000sqft and ended up selling for around $4 million and according to one of the workers the new buyer planned to put in another $2 million to fix it up and it really needs it. I guess Michael Jackson actually lived at the house for a period of time and they really played it up with identifying his room/bathroom/patio.

View down the street

Michael Jackson's bathroom

We arrived on the last day of the sale and most everything had been sold but I guess there was a boatload of Michael Jackson stuff. It wasn't cheap either, there was a fedora that he wore in a concert that was going for $5,000 and a picture on the stairs that was listed at $55,000(see picture). Needless to say we didn't purchase anything.

Yes that is really listed at $55,000

The other estate sale we went was a short distance away and this treasure trove featured a lot of rugs which is why we wanted to go. Of course we also wanted to see the house, and what a house it was. It sat on almost an acre in the middle of LA with a pool (of course) and a 4 car garage (of course). the house was smaller than Dr. Klein's at only 8,000sqft built in 1924 but was in almost pristine condition. It sold for over $8 million. The rugs were beautiful but really overpriced. Of course they were saying to make an offer but when they have the tagged prices between $6,000 to $20,000 I don't think they would like my offers. Besides most of the rugs were way too large, we need them around 8'x10'.

The Driveway

"A" really likes steel frame windows and this place had an entire wall of steel framed windows (see photos). We would have liked to get them for our house but unfortunately I am sure they would have been way too expensive.

From there we decided to eat before the final journey to our Eames chair was completed. After lunch we proceeded to Burbank where the chair located and got to see a really neat site. Once we parked I looked over and saw a doe come out of the bushes as I told "A" another doe came out followed by a really nice looking buck. In the end 4 does and 1 buck came out to feed on the apartments landscaping. I asked the owner of the chair and he said they came all the time but usually in the morning. It was quite a site in the middle of LA to see a family of deer.

Our quest ended with the capture of the chair and an uneventful drive back to San Diego.