A Weddings Adventure Part I

Just as a basic rule, if I'm going to try to keep people updated on my exploits, I should probably blog about any 3 city, 2 country, 2 wedding trips that I make.

I got off work at 5:30 am on January 4th 2012 for hopefully my last ever night-shift, which is good since if I mentioned Mexico to my coworkers one more time I would have come to bodily harm. Got home, packed the remaining few items in an intricately organized system*, woke Becky up and we were off. The taxi came on time, though  did park in front of the wrong building. Luckily, at 6:30 in the morning, you can kind of assume any taxi about is probably yours.

*It fit. okay?

We had a direct flight to LA with JetBlue.  The flight was relatively comfortable as JetBlue is built more for 6 foot 2 people than your average airline.  We got in about a half hour early*, even after having to wait for the gate to open up.

* I don't really understand this concept of early.  My experience with flying is that something random and unprecedented will go wrong leaving me or my stuff stranded in some random and often unplanned for city.  In fact, I have a friend's phone number saved under the name "stuck in ohare" and Becky and I have often played the "guess what city I'm in now game", but flying with Becky rarely involves things going wrong.  It is kind of unnerving.

LA was a steamy 81 degrees, which would have been even nicer if I wasn't wearing a winter coat.  I know, I know you are just brimming with sympathy.   There was an intricate mosaic along the walls to the baggage claim where colors faded into other colors which Becky really enjoyed.  The first sign we were at LA was the swarm of drivers in dark sunglasses holding up names of people they were picking up.  One of the signs looked like it was for a record label.

After some momentary confusion we waited for a shuttle to the hotel.  After about 4000 vehicles* passed by for various hotels and parking lots our ride arrived. We stayed at a Travel-lodge outside of the airport.  It was the quality you would expect if you chose a hotel entirely based on price and location, which makes sense since that is exactly how I chose it.  I'm used to hotel beds being way too firm, but generally the pillows aren't made of stone.  On the other hand, it had a 24 hour Denny's attached, which makes up for a large amount of flaws.

*yup in LA

We spent our one pre-Mexico night in LA in exciting fashion, alternating between sleeping and trips to Denny's. I got to bed at around 3:00 pm pct which is 6:00 pm est or absurdly late into the middle of the night in Joel's inner clock time.  Oh, how I'm not going to miss having to reset my hours again.