Travel stories: LA Edition Pt. 1

Good day dear readers of the corn,

Hope you all are having a great week so far!!

I thought I'd change pace a bit and riddle you with a tale of my week long impromptu trip to LA, seeing as it's been almost 3 years since then and my buds and I were reminiscing of the same in order to have an excuse to go back next year... If I've learned anything from this, it's that impromptu trips birth the greatest of stories and here's one that has fondly been referred to now as "Carlosfornia";

No doubt you have many questions so let me start from the beginning, though that may just serve to confuse you even more and perhaps make you laugh,. Anyhow.... Ready? No? Well too bad because we are starting right now!!

It was early 2012 and my 6 best buds and I had been saving up to go to Europe in the summer months, however as the date approached, 3 of the 7 had to cancel for different conflicts reasons, leaving only 4 of us to go, which wouldn't have been as exciting we felt, so we hung our heads down and cancelled the trip, a few weeks passed and one of my best buds, Patrick, spoke up and said, hey, I've never been to LA why don't we just go there? Within a few weeks the remaining 3 of us bought tickets, this was extra tough for me since I had to ask for vacations from my boss and buy the ticket, due to his neglectful attitude I almost missed my chance to go on my trip, thankfully it all worked out in the end, and our impromptu LA adventure was set to begin.

Sunday July 29th, 2012

As a quick prologue addition I'd like to mention that since I am currently living in Costa Rica, whilst all my buds still live in Virginia, USA, I had to leave a day earlier, and boy what a trip, this was the first year I started really rockin' my goatee look (sure, let's say rockin' haha) and I guess it along with my super excited smile must have seemed suspicious to Houston's airport security as they had me randomly selected to go through another room, and in my naive mind I simply thought "Cool beans, a short cut!" alas it was not a short cut it was a closed off screening quarters where this handsome blonde lady guard and her Michael Chiklis look a like partner snatched my bag and stared me down, I remember being too excited to question it but looking back on it now I guess I can see why they thought I was being smart with them... the interrogation wen something like this;

Lady guard: "Sooo Costa Rica eh? That's a long way, what will you be doing on this trip, I see you are off to DC and then California, that's a radical destination switch from one day to another... Plans?"

Me: "Yeah, I am going to meet up my friends in DC tonight and we are all heading off to LA in the morning?"

Lady guard: "Your friends eh? That's certainly nice, soooo Costa Rica--" *pulls my suitcase closer to her* "--I heard that the alcohol is cheap there and quite good, is that true?"

Me: "I wouldn't know, I don't drink."

Lady guard: "Of course not, but it must make a nice gift for your 'friends' yeah? I bet it'd be pretty easy to get some on board with you for distribution in the states"

Me: *shrugs* "I suppose so."

Lady guard: *She begins unzipping my suitcase; slowly* "What about Marijuana, it's all the rage in Cali, I'm sure that some Costa Rican cannabis would fetch a pretty penny..."

*Chiklis guard has had his arms crossed this entire time, his death glare hasn't left my face*

Me: "I honestly don't know much about that, but that sounds like a risky business" *laughs*

*Guards give me a not amused group glare at me*

Lady guard: "So, you are telling me these opportunities never crossed your mind? If we open your bag right here and now you'll have no narcotics nor smuggled alcohol. is that what you are telling me?" *Continues to slowly unzip my baggage*

Me: "That's correct"

Lady guard: "So when I fully open this, you are telling me that there will be nothing of the sort in the bag? You are basically telling an oath here, you know it's a crime to lie to law officials right?" *She finishes unzipping my bag, and stares me down before opening it*

Me: *I smile* "That's what I am saying ma'am"

*She begins to uncover the luggage when suddenly the top is slammed down by none other than Chiklis guard*

Chiklis guard: "BOY! We are giving you a chance to come clean here!! I've seen you smug types all throughout my career and you NEVER win!" *He stared me down; I kept silent*  "Grunts, suit yourself."

*He flings my suitcase open and starts digging into it, Lady guard joins in, my clothing and the like are starts pouring out of the bag in a cloud of confusion and distrust... in the end nothing was found; (obviously)*

Lady guard: "I--I'm so sorry for this inconvenience sir" *The two guards pick up the clothes that had spilled out of the back* "Please have a good flight!"

(Truth is because of the delay here I missed my flight and had to wait 5 hours for my make-up flight as it were)

Anyhow, I arrived at 10 pm and slept at my buddy Patrick's house both excited for the LA adventures that awaited us at dawn!

Monday July 30th, 2012

We awoke a few short hours later and met our other travel companions Ale and Carlos, yes the Carlos that inspired the title of "Carlosfornia", I'll get to that, just settle down; anyhow the four of us were set to venture to west coast unknown in search for adventure, we had a list of places we wanted to see, and a bunch of money, the world was our oyster...


(left to right: Patrick, Me, Ale, and Carlos)

...The flight to LA went by quick and we arrived on a sunny and beautiful day, we got on a shuttle that took us straight to our hotel where we got ready and headed out to explore the sights..! We were lucky in the fact that our hotel was just 4 blocks away from a metro station that passed by all the hot spots. We walk around north Hollywood and eventually found ourselves at Madame Tussaud's wax museum, which is where our antics began, here's a small taste....

Just me acting natural with the J-Chan

Ale with Tupac; hardcore stuff

Chaplin trio

This is why you should always wear a helmet

Pat realizes that Timberlake uses L'Oreal (cuz he's worth it) 

We had to spend the night in the pokey

The infamous Carlos shower theme, censored in all 50 states

Pat showing that educators need lovin' too

Last but not least, Carlos hover handing Waxnnifer Aniston (remember this point, it becomes an important to the trip's sub-plot)

... As I'm sure you can tell from that show of photographs, we are all masters of self-control and undoubtedly, the coolest kids around. After the museum we walked all around N. Hollywood soaking up the sun, pop culture, and sights, and before we new it the day was done, we finished it by going to the famous In-N-Out Burger, it was quite good (but not something to explode over either, just saying). Day day closed with a visit to a night mall in N. Hollywood, in said mall we got souvenirs for those back home and got random metro denizens asking us for change, Carlos intelligently whipped out his entire wallet full of 20s in front of the guy and obliviously exclaimed "Sorry, I don't have any cash."  needless to say Carlos ended up giving the dude 5+ dollars before calling it a day. Haha.

End of the Arrival.

Tuesday July 31st, 2012

After our first day of adventure ended we had high hopes on day 2, beach day, the TV's and Radio's were blaring the Olympic's women's volleyball matches, the sun was shinning, and the people were smiling; It was a day full of good vibes and potential! We get our beach gear on and head out to the bus stop, Carlos lost his bus pass and had to buy another one, the first sign that the day may not be as perfect as we may have originally thought, but we weren't a superstitious bunch and keep moving on. We eventually get on the bus only to realize everyone had the same idea of going to the beach that morning as we had to stand the entirety of the way, however such things would not dampen our mood. Whilst on the bus we noticed a couple of things, 1. that there was a really beautiful young lady that was being bugged by some loud European man, and 2. that Californian folk are quite friendly as we struck conversations with plenty of folks, most notably an energetic 9 year old boy. You see, this boy had been watching us interact on the bus and he noticed how we were talking to Carlos, we were telling Carlos that he should go talk to and rescue that cute girl from the European loon, the kid took our encouragement as bullying and made space so that Carlos could sit next to him.

A few awkward moments passed as Carlos squeeze into the seat next to this kid, the kid's mom and little bro seemed distracted so I can only assume he was bored, but he began consoling Carlos, that he shouldn't listen to bullies. We explained to the kid that we were going to use this California trip to get Carlos a girlfriend, after we saw how awkward he was with wax Jennifer Aniston we wanted him to get more comfortable around women, and the girl on the bus was single, lonely, and attractive. The kid stared at us for a second, murmurs from other bus goers and the sound of the Bus' wheels ripping through the pavement filled the silence before the kid spoke again; "You guys are bullies, but I understand you are friends too, so it's ok, just don't be so mean." to which Carlos proudly agreed with "Yeah bruhs, ya'll need to chill". The tension dropped and we all started conversing about where we were going and what we were doing, the kid was a fun conversationalist, after which he asked us what we all wanted to do when we "grew up" to which Carlos replied with "I want to be a Social Scientist!" 

The kid's face lit up, "Wow a scientist like with chemicals and germs and stuff"
"No, not that kind of scientist Carlos continued."

"Ooh... so is it like a technology or bomb type of scientist with weapons?" The kid interrupted once more.
"No, no, not that kind of scientist either," Carlos insisted

"Then what kind of scientist is it, what do you do??" The kid argued

Carlos thought for a second and replied with "I--I don't really know, it's hard to explain."

The Kid lost his patience at this point and called Carlos a loser, and the tables had turned we were laughing trying to calm the kid down whilst he became the bully towards Carlos. Funny stuff. You see reader Carlos has a special gift where everyone who meets him has an urge to make jokes about the things he says or does because they just can't believe it. Anyhow, after an hour we arrived at Santa Monica beach, the day was gorgeous and the breeze was heavenly as we stepped out of the bus we noticed that the cute bus girl also got off at our stop; "Go for it Carlos" we encouraged, Carlos told us to chill and we began walking behind her. Now before you say anything, it isn't stalking if we were all headed the same way lol; as we continued down the path she stopped by the pier and looked out to the ocean, Carlos took another step, could this be the one for him?? Nope! She promptly whipped out a cigarette and started to smoke, Carlos continued forward without giving her a second glance, When we asked him why he didn't go for it, he said he doesn't dig chicks who smoke, to which I inquired what he 'digs' and if he 'digs' anything, to which he replies "Yeah bruh, I'm diglett!" the 3 of us looked at each other in confusion, laughed and continued to the beach.

As we proceeded down the pier we took in the sights, soaked up the sun, played soccer and volley ball, Carlos was humorously hit in the balls, which caused a random beach goer to collapse in laughter which was fun, and ate some shore burgers and fries, with milkshakes, simply put, life was good! But instead of enjoying the amusement park on the Santa Monica pier we decided to keep walking down the coast line, we eventually reached muscle beach which as the name implies was full of equipment and musclebound beach goers, therefore we continued walking further down...

...As we continued walking the sun began to set and the beach didn't have the same family friendly glow as it did when we first started our trek, we found ourselves at the entrance of Venice beach, Patrick was excited because he thought that we may get lucky and run into Kassem G (we didn't... Sadly); regardless of the reason, we crossed over into Venice and were immediately approached to buy weed and or "free" demo cds, my goodness the demo cds scams were ridiculous and in large numbers, but after we got past all the random cd and drug offers we found ourselves exhausted and at the end of the line, thankfully the afternoon sun was still shinning bright  the hour. We walked up to the bus stop into a crowd of people., at this moment in time my buddy Ale and myself noticed this girl crossing down the street holding a bunch of boxes, when suddenly a car almost runs her down right in front of our eyes, the man then proceeds to scream profanities at her as he drives off, naturally Ale and myself yell at the man back and begin to walk towards the girl to help her out, that is until Patrick tells us to stop because it was a film project and we had ruined the shot haha; the awkwardness subsided and we proceeded to wait on the bus... and that's when HE arrived..!!

*Drinks water* 

Huh? oh sorry, didn't mean to leave you hanging, where was I? Oh yes! HE arrived, now who is HE? HE is some random giant black guy with anger issues, but boy did he leave an impression on us and is forever a key memory of this trip; basically as he arrived some random car drove past all of us and the guy yelled out something along the lines of "Don't ya'll wish you had a car like us? LOSEEERRRS!!" we, as most people shrugged that off, but HE, HE was not like most people HE took great offense to this and started yelling and talking down to us, repeatedly screaming "What kinda car ya like nigga!?!? What kind of effin' car you like??" It started out him yelling to himself and those in his general area, he was making such a scene Ale and I couldn't help but look over to his general direction, HE then seemed to look back at us and scream "What the hell are ya'll looking at!!!?" 

Ale and I looked down immediately freaking out as the rotund maniac began walking towards us, thankfully he wasn't referring to us, but instead this hippie bicyclist who was standing directly behind us, the hippie tried to calm him down but HE wasn't having it and started shoving the poor man, we took this chance to scurry to the other side of the bus stop, as we did the bus arrived and HE noticed... HE charged and blocked the entrance to the bus, yelling that it was HIS bus now, and he wouldn't let anyone on, a man tried to calm him down and was grappled, we realized there was no getting in, the bus driver opened the back of the bus but we refused to get on as the Californian bus maniac was still rampaging... As there wouldn't be another bus for a good long while we decided to just walk back.... oh my goodness, to say the journey back was grueling would be an understatement. We were slightly sun burnt, already sore from walking the entire 3 beaches, dehydrated, and all had to use the bathroom desperately, but there wasn't anywhere to stop, we went on like this for a good couple of hours, before we reached a McDonald's, we paid for fries and water in order to get admission to their bathroom, and then we dragged ourselves to the last bus of the day back home, it was a fun, tiring, and unforgettable day, but that wasn't all LA had for us as we would soon come to find out.

End of the Beach Antics.

Wednesday August 1st, 2012

Wednesday was here and we woke up surprisingly energetic and not at all sore from the previous day's slog, which was great since our day revolved around going to the 100tg anniversary of Universal Studios! We got up early as usual and went for breakfast at Denny's, as everybody is eating in peace Carlos sees Patrick eating onion rings, this troubles Carlos greatly and he exclaims that he isn't eating them right, he needs to eat them with Dick!!! Everyone laughed and Carlos spent the rest of breakfast trying to convince us that he actually said 'Dip'; sure thing buddy. Anyhow after everyone finished breakfast we headed off to Universal studios, we got on the metro, Patrick, Ale, and I had to stand as there was only one open seat next to a beautiful blonde girl, and our man Carlos sat next to her and they started talking!! Was love in the air for young Carlos? Not this time... Despite hitting it off and playing with someone else's children on the metro the 2 parted ways without even learning each others' names, quite disappointing really. Carlos told us to be quiet and we proceeded to the park, and it was amazing, they were debuting the new Transformers ride that day, which we didn't get on due to the ridiculous 5 hour wait time, yeah, no thanks...  though the guy in the giant Megatron suit almost kicked a kid, so that was pretty intense. 

Anyhow, as both Patrick and I are ridiculously afraid of heights we decided to try the Jurassic Park boat tour as it sounded peaceful enough...

One hardly ever sees such bravery these days

At that point we split up for a few Patrick and I blew $20 on arcade rail shooters whilst Ale and Carlos took the Mummy ride, we  then met back up to take the 100 anniversary 3D tour, but while we were on our way there was another possible girlfriend target for Carlos, it was Shaggy, Scooby, and DAPHNE (the sassy and attractive red-head); alas Carlos preferred to hang with Shaggy as Daphne made him nervous or something, they all noticed Pat's #Squarian shirt and they all asked about it, Pat tried to explain but they didn't get the meaning (basically it is the name for XV followers, creative types that never conform)  but in the end we just told them it meant "Jinkies". After I said that however Daphne took a long hard look at me and frowned.

Daphne: "Oh, so you prefer Velma huh?"

Me: "Oh, uh no no, but you are with Fred, I don't want to come between canon as it were"

*Daphne leans in close*

Daphne: "But Fred's not here, is he?"

My eyes widened, I didn't have a response so I just smirked back at her, then photo op;

Carlos' failure landed me Daphne Blake; Achievement unlocked: Weakness for Redheads

Soon after the photoshoot we found ourselves on the amazing Universal tour, which if you haven't gone to it, the King Kong 3D part of the tour blew my mind, recommended! We had a wonderful rest of the afternoon and left the park with giant smiles on our faces!

It was evening by the time we got back to N. Hollywood and we decided to get something to eat, as we went down the road we noticed a huge crowd, it was the premier of the Total Recall remake, very cool and frantic atmosphere, the security guards were very nice too, normally you think they won't let you nearby or answer any questions, but these folks were quite friendly, unlike Houston airport security haha. Anyhow we keep on going trying to find a restaurant where we haven't eaten before, to try something new, as we are continuing up the street, some guys pop out of a Hooters, advertising their free comedy show, As we are all familiar with Hooters we thought it best to go somewhere different, so Ale declined, Patrick declined, I declined, but Carlos was another story, before we knew it he was inside the restaurant telling us to come on, so lame, or so we thought, we were actually taken to the top floor and the comedy show was quite entertaining, there was even a Lady Gaga impersonator at the table next to ours. The comedians came and went and they all had their style to them, but 2 comedians stuck out the most, and it wasn't them necessarily so much as the Carlos involvement in both their acts. The first of these two was this stoned Mexican guy, who freaked everybody out, he was honestly way too high to be doing a show, and he managed to make everybody uncomfortable, no one wanted to be part of his act; this went on for a while until he tried one last desperate attempt, he played the it's hard to be Mexican card and then asked if there were any Mexicans in the audience, the crowd kept an eerie and uneasy silence for a few seconds before it was completely shattered by a monotone and slightly disinterested sounding "UHH, YEAAAH..." It was non other than Carlos, it was so awkward that the 3 of us started laughing at him, which in turn prompted the Lady Gaga impersonator to burst into tears from laughing so much at Carlos, her constant "Oh my God! Oh my God HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA's " pierced the room's atmosphere and made everyone laugh, Carlos nor the Mexican comedian were amused...

Finally the final comedian took the stage and he liked picking on our table specifically, saying things like how we are the only table without any girls, and asking if we were a group of homosexual lovers, and the crowd was loving it... This continued until the comedian noticed two German tourists siting at the adjacent table and he asked them if they would be interested in love, more specifically dating us "lonely guys"; the Germans actually agreed to going out with two at our table, immediately Patrick pulled away as he had a GF already, Ale volunteered to go out with them too but one wouldn't go without the other, therefore the comedian put pressure of who would go out with the other one, I told Carlos to go for it, he told me to shut up, the comedian got inpatient with Carlos and asked what was up, at that moment the restaurant froze in silence, so what I said next was not whispered, and I accidentally replied that we don't need to worry, that we knew HE, Carlos, was gay... due to the silence in the room, my comment echoed throughout the club making everyone laugh (especially Lady Gaga impersonator, she was dying), except Carlos who didn't talk to us for the rest of the evening.

After dinner we went back to the Hotel for some much deserved rest...

End of the comic and park day.

(Due to the length of this story I will end it here... Part 2 to be up in a couple of weeks... Stay tuned)

To be continued....

(Like what you read up to this point? I'm glad, and I would love to hear some of your funny travel stories as a well, maybe even create a new post on the funniest stories I hear or not.)