(Daniel) After searching the internet for a suitable rental car, The team found ourselves heading into Koreatown to collect our Honda Odyssey, a huge people carrier with a muscled V6 engine.  Our lodgings in Downtown were obviously not suitable for an extended stay, so we headed out in our temporary transport to find a better place to stay.

Driving through the streets of Los Angeles is a bit like having a tour of the movies.  Everything here is larger than life, the streets go on in straight lines for miles and miles.  Buildings are spread out over huge expanses, and everything has a familiar movie-like twang!  There are drive thru pharmacies, cashpoints, restaurants, and pretty much anything else you can think of.  The car is an essential piece of kit, as to get from one end of a street to the other can take and hour when there is no traffic!

People here seem friendly enough, although it feels like the face you meet is all an act of sorts, not everyone mind you, there are some wonderful people here, but the man on the street, or the server in a restaurant has a stock line, everyone asks you how you are today, and wishes you well as you leave, but they really don’t seem to care.  It is just a line, rather than say ‘goodbye’, they say, ‘have a nice day.’  Instead of ‘hello’ it’s ‘how are you today?’  But once you realise that the answer really doesn’t matter the question seems to loose some of it’s meaning.

With the Wolf having been delayed, we are stuck in the Los Angeles area for a couple of weeks, a fact that breaks my heart, not for myself, but for the Home team, who have joined me for the next few weeks, and will spend most of that without the vehicle, wandering the streets of LA.

We found better, cheaper, and apparently safer accommodation in El Segundo, just outside LAX airport.  After checking in Nick, Amy, Oli and I headed to Venice beach, where my cousin Tamsin, Rowan’s sister was waiting for us.  Tamsin has spent a long time in LA, and is determined to live here, although without the proper papers, she is forced to spend time as a tourist, although she is working hard on a solution to her visa problem.  Venice beach is an amazing place, filled with the finest of the freaks of Los Angeles area.  From the world famous Harry Parry, a Jimmy Hendrix Look-a-like on rollerblades, to people selling hugs, or holding signs that state that they will work for Marijuana.  A substance which has achieved an almost legal status here in California.

Over a lunch of Hamburgers and other American stalwarts I found out just how strict the American Alcohol laws are, as I was refused a beer, I had no ID.  I could understand this fact, even though I am pushing 30.  But what jarred me was the fact that the server agreed that the two people with me were my brothers, and that they were obviously my younger brothers, but even though they had ID, the fact that genetically it was obvious that I had to be old enough, I still couldn’t get a beer!  I started to feel like LA was not the place for me.  We returned to the Hotel, making a plan to leave the area for a while, returning in a few days to meet Rowan and Gabby when they flew in from New Zealand. 

That night, Tamsin asked us to join her in Hollywood for a festival that was being held.  We drove up to Hollywood, expecting to see rows of movie stars and fabulous everything, but were surprised to find that apart from a few nice spots, Hollywood, is almost a slum, with pawnshops and streets that we certainly wouldn’t want to do anything more than drive through!  In one of the nicer areas, which turned out to be the gay area, we stopped for a bite to eat.  Whilst attempting to eat a huge ‘sub’  I noticed a small green larvae biting my wrist, and causing me a huge amount of pain.  I caught the bug on a tissue, and showed it to the restaurant staff, none of them had seen it before, nor had the few customers who came over to see what the creature was.  An unusually large amount of blood seeped from the area where I had spotted the bug, and a thought crept into my mind, had this creature just crawled out of my skin?  It was a larval bug, no wings, green in colour with what appeared to be pincers on it’s tail.  No-one here had seen it, and people usually know about the bugs that bite.  My skin crawled!

After eating we headed up into the beautiful hills overlooking Hollywood, where the festival that Tamsin was already at was being held.  We drove up and down the various entrances to the park, until finally some uniformed guards waved us up an entrance way.  The road had been marked off with cones and had attendants placed all the way up who waved us past.  Finally we reached a car park at the top of the hill.   As we drove in, I noticed that the cars were being parked end to end, with no gaps to create lanes.  I stopped, not wanting to be blocked in by the hundreds of other vehicles around, asking an attendant what would I do if I wanted to leave early.  He explained that this was something called stack parking, and if I wanted to leave, I would have to do it on foot, or at the same time as everyone else.  The first sign of something wrong!  We parked, and walked down to the front gates to a concert hall, the second sign of something wrong!  A man approached us and offered to sell us a George Clinton T-Shirt, oh shit, this is the wrong place!

Strangely enough, I have seen George Clinton play once before, he’s pretty cool.  So I decided that as our car was ‘stack-parked’ in, we should maybe see how much the tickets cost.  The lady at the desk told us that on site tickets would cost a whopping $60 each!  Just as the mood began to dive towards the bottom of despair, karma stepped in, as a lady walked over and gave us three free tickets!  She had apparently won them, and did not need them all, allowing us to buy a fourth ticket and spread the cost between us! 

Inside the crowd was an eclectic mix of African, Caribbean and Hispanic people, making the four untanned English people stick out rather more than comfort would require!  The crowd were obviously die hard fans, as even before the music started they were already out of their seats calling and dancing wildly.  The dress code was pastel colours, bowler hats and parachute pants, again the four English people were not very well assimilated. 

In the end, we actually had a pretty cool time, Oliver especially liked the music, and several times got up to dance.  When the concert finished, we walked back out to the car park where the waiting people walked from car to car chatting, and sharing drinks etc.  The mood was quite party like, I remembered that people here actually drive to the ball games and park outside in this way without even entering the stadium, enjoying the game on TV sets in the back of pick up trucks etc.  Eventually we were able to leave, driving back to EL Segundo and a good nights sleep.    

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