Los Angeles - Watch the old man explode

Well, I'm writing this sittin in my room at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Anaheim, after a day that started at 7am on May 1st Brisbane time and is still going at 5 pm May 1st Los Angeles time - although I guarantee you it's been a lot longer than the ten hour period suggested.

The flight to Los Angeles went via Auckland, so we had a pleasant enough little jaunt from Brisbane that lasted about 3 hours (plus the 2 hours to check in.) Managed to exchange my cash for American dollars, and marvelled at the size of Andrew Jackson's gigantic nostrils on their 20 dollar bill, as well as the fact that my 80 Australian dollars only bought me 50 American dollars. So much for the Free Trade Agreement.

Nevertheless, with money in hand I fronted up for the flight from Auckland to Los Angeles. Nye had warned me about how the flight would seem absolutely interminable - and rightly so. After 12 hours of sitting in a plane, having watched everything worth watching on the entertainment system and feeling decidedly airsick due to unceasing turbulence for the last two hourse of the flight, you're about ready to harm yourself. Fortunately, Air New Zealand managed to dump us on the tarmac in time to prevent me from manual strangulation of myself, where I promptly walked into what I thought was a 3 ton truck, standing in the corridor. This however, turned out to be an American, one of many that size I was to see. No wonder they had wall-mounted defibrilators mounted at LAX - they need it with some of the fat bastards roaming round the place.

So then, it was onto the car ride. I should explain at this point, the nature of the trip, ie, who is along with me. This initial part of the trip is somewhat of a family affair, with my parents and my sister Anna also with me here in LA. After about a week half together at LA and Vegas, my mother and my sister are continuing onto New York, London, and eventually home to Australia sometime around September or so. Dad and myself however, are spending an additional month in the US, before he returns home and I continue onto England, where I should be there until this time next year.

Anyways, with that aside, the car ride, from the airport to our hotel at Anaheim. The car we hired was a Pontiac Grand Prix, and immediately the old man starts perspiring and crapping on about how he hasn't driven on the right hand side of the road in twenty years. (In Australia, we drive on the left.)

After reminding him that it was his bloody idea to hire a car rather than pay for transfers and cabs and crap while in LA, he starts it up, beetles round the carpark for a bit, tries very hard to remember that the indicator and windscreen wiper switches are on different sides to normal and heads out onto the road.

Where everything immediately starts to go wrong.

For starters, he doesn't know what the speed limit is. So he refuses to go faster than 30, despite the fact I knew full well it was 40 in LA, and had told him this repeatedly. So he's complaining about people tailgating him. While pissing and moaning about this, he misses a turn. Nothing major, we can easily catch up by going round the block. But nonetheless, this minor error elicits a random assortment of vulgarities and even more mopping of his bald dome. Anyways, we get onto the freeway, and start heading across town. He's seen the speed limit is 65, so he winds the Pontiac up and is motoring along, thoroughly enjoying himself.

Until he exits by mistake. In Australia, most highway exits are one lane only. This one was two lanes, and, we, being in the second rightmost lane, were exiting before we knew what was happening. This provoked yet more tourettes from the old bloke that would have come close to registering on the Richter scale, however, by careful navigating on my part I managed to get us back onto the freeway and onto Anaheim without further incident.

I must say, to be perfectly honest, Los Angeles is a pretty ugly city. Sure, the tourist trap area here at Anaheim is swank, just as I'm sure areas like Beverley Hills, Hollywood etc are as well. But the vast majority of the city is just a formless gray mass, covered in smog. Aeth mentioned over msn that in the US, functionality is valued over form - I'm starting to see what he's on about.

Anyways, that's my first impressions of the US so far - everyone has been very friendly, and the hotel I'm in is quite nice. I'll blog tomorrow - hopefully with some photos and an account of Disneyland.