Chris Halverson’s Blog

Going Back to Cali, to Cali, to Cali, stylin’, profilin’…Her bikini small, heels tall - LL Cool J

Tomorrow morning, bright and early at 6AM, I will be on a plane heading to Californ-i-a. I’ll be lugging a six foot long snowboard bag across country to take my son snowboarding. In the interim we’ll be in LA for a total of 3 or 4 days. The rest of the time will be in peaceful Big Bear.

My LA experiences have been interesting. Two years ago on our first time there we (my son and I) landed at 10:30PM on Saturday night. We go get our car and head out looking for a hotel. Next thing you know I’m seeing signs that we’re in Compton. Uh, great. It’s 11:30ish on a Saturday night and I’m driving through Compton. Keep in mind that we are stereotypical “white”. We live in the Midwest, in the most Scandinavian state there is, I’m 6′ tall, blondish, and I’m Norweigian/German (in the 1800’s there was a marriage between Halvor Halverson’s son and Chris Christopher’s daughter, now that’s Norweigian). We have a saying around here called “Minnesota Nice”, basically we are very laid back here. As a side effect of this, we are not the most diverse city in the world. The word “Compton” to a good Midwestern boy like me brings up images from “Colors”, Bloods, Crips, etc. Needless to say I put the hammer down and got through there in a hurry I see there is a casino in Compton now, I think I’ll pass. Mr. Whitey walking out after cashing out cannot be a good scene.

We then go boarding for a week and come back to LA. I get us a hotel near Venice Beach. On Friday we decide to go look at some things and the go to Six Flags. Have you ever seen National Lampoon’s Vacation? I felt like Clark on that day. First we decided we’d go to try to find the “Hollywood” sign. I drove around forever looking for somewhere that had a decent view and such. We ended up in Beverly Hills somehow. By this time I’ve driven all around and cannot find jack. We then decide to go to Six Flags. After driving something like 6 hours (ok, it just seemed like it) we get there only to find out it’s closed! WTF? “Closed for maintenance, come back tomorrow” Hello? Wallyworld anybody? Needless to say, by this time we’re fried and head back to the hotel after accomplishing NOTHING. The next day we sign up for a tour and end up seeing a lot of the city, so that worked out.

Last year we fly in and land at about midnight (there are remarkably few flights from MSP to LAX). I’m dead tired after having our plane delayed for three hours at MSP (thankfully we were in the terminal). We get the car and head out. I wanted to head East to get us on our way to Big Bear (of course, West of LAX is the ocean, so…) We drive for what seems like forever while I look for landmarks that I may remember from the year before. I just “know” there is a row of real hotels at some point along the way, but then again, it was dark before too and I didn’t write down what roads I took exactly, so…We finally decide we need to stop and get some rest and pull into a mom and pop hotel. Oy. The desk clerk was behind like six inches of glass, there were people hanging out on the balconies (the rooms opened into the parking lot) and the cops were showing up as I pulled in. We get a room and it has “cable”, basically 3 non-broadcast channels and about 6 porno channels. That’s good when you have two 14 year olds (he brought a friend along). We took everything out of the car and buttressed the door with it. When we made it back to LA and went to Six Flags it was open. We went on exactly 7 rides in 8 hours. Unbelievable.

This year will be different. We’re heading to Huntington Beach to watch a paintball tourney then to Big Bear. Back to LA to hang with Henry, which involves poker of course I can’t wait.

Checklist:

• Bags packed: Check
• Paper started: Check
• Expense checks CASHED for casino money: Check
• Money moved into Neteller for online (including Planet): Check
• Itinerary, boarding passes, and directions printed out: Check

Looking good. My next entries will be coming from sunny California.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 19th, 2004 at 8:29 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.