I’ve had some bad luck with Northwest Airlines. After some time spent on the de-icing pad at MSP International (it was 70 and sunny), a drunk-sounding head flight attendant, and a pilot who regaled us with fascinating details about turbulence, we made it to LAX pretty much on time. We hopped the shuttle to the rent-a-car place, where we found them out of the basic mid-size cars. We were excited about maybe getting a hot car in California. We were so wrong.

We ended up with a Chrysler 300, the pimpmobile for the geriatric set. My dad loves this car. Us, not so much. Before even leaving the lot, Stephanie declared her undying hatred for it. I hoped it had ‘I AM A RENTAL’ stickered all over the back so people wouldn’t make the mistake of thinking we owned it. We promptly named it ‘Dick’.

It was sunny but too windy and cold to head right to the beach per the original plan, so we decided to drive up the beach to Santa Barbara, one of my favorite sights on my west-coast roadtrip. We got lost on Sepulveda Boulevard (I preferred ‘Sepultura Boulevard’ instead, which meant that I had to mention the band every single time we saw that street after that, no less than 50 times). We finally found our way to Santa Monica, and from there, the PCH. I wanted to take that up the coast, since that was the only stretch I missed when I drove down from San Francisco.

We stopped for burritos at a little place on the side of the road in Malibu, and sat out on the patio in the sun with the too-stereotypical surfer kids. I was thrilled to be having my first perfect California moment of the trip. In Zuma Beach, we were slowed by a movie or TV show; cops were escorting a trailer up and down the highway past film crews in a parking lot. We stopped at Starbucks for iced coffee, and I knew I was in California because the soymilk was out on the counter. It doesn’t happen anywhere else. Also, I love all the crazy beach vehicles in SoCal. It sucks that dune buggies are so impractical in Minnesota.

After the beach towns and naval bases, highway 1 heads inland towards produce farms and industrial-looking towns. We stopped at a roadside stand for fresh strawberries, then drove like crazy to Santa Barbara. I was hoping to get to the beach there, but it was so windy it hurt, and the sun managed to go away the second we arrived. I still love Santa Barbara for the cute little downtown and tall, skinny palm trees lining the beach. Stephanie was unimpressed; we decided to head back to Santa Monica.

After our first run-in with the huge mess that is LA traffic, we made it to the 3rd Street Promenade. I had been there before and was kind of unimpressed with the shopping (although the crazy street-performers and people-watching and dinosaur topiaries make it worth the trip). However, I knew they now had a Kid Robot there, so I had to visit. Also, I really wanted a pretzel, and Wetzel was happy to sell me one.

We wandered for a while, but were tired from all the flying and driving, so we went to check into the hotel. Priceline had secured me a very swank room for a very very low price, right on Century Boulevard near the airport. After unpacking, we decided we needed pizza, but didn’t want to pay $11 to get the car out of the lot. Stephanie had seen a CPK sign nearby, so we set out wandering down Century to find it. We finally stopped into a hotel to ask, and were told it was actually their training center, not a restaurant. We went back to our hotel and ordered room service instead, delivered by a little guy named Pinkey. Then we crashed.

Saturday morning, I had trouble with the time change thing and woke at 4:30am. I forced myself to go back to sleep til 7, lest I encounter a beating from my sister. We were on the road around 8, in search of coffee and then tourism, in order of importance. We drove up to Griffith Park, having heard the observatory offered the best view of the city.

We found the path up the hill and figured it’d be a short hike to the overlook. I had put heavy-duty sunscreen on my new tattoo but had neglected the rest, figuring we wouldn’t be spending much time outdoors until we got to the beach.

Well, the hike was a lot longer than we thought. And steeper. And incredible. Halfway up the mountain, you have excellent views of the whole city to the southwest, as well as the Hollywood sign. Closer to the top, you can see the mountains to the north, and at the summit you have a 360-degree view.

Stephanie kept swearing she wasn’t going to make it, and I was doing my best with the irritating persistence: there’s a path up a mountain. Getting to the top is like winning. It’s inconceivable not to make it. So we did.

There were a lot of people getting their daily workout on that hill. I was marveling at the joggers, some of whom were moving at a pace not much faster than our walk. I couldn’t believe people would run up that path, so I had to try it. It was exhausting, but somehow not as bad as I thought. I spent the rest of the hike wanting to run a lot, but knowing I might get a) yelled at or b) dehydrated.

We sat on a table at the top for a long time, enjoying the sun and the view and the amazing luck of a fairly un-smoggy day in Los Angeles. There were people on horses up there, people being in love, sweaty half-naked guys showing off doing pushups on tables, old Chinese men singing as they hiked, kids scrambling around, and a couple garbagemen who totally cheated by driving their truck up to the top. We finally decided to walk back down; the whole hike took about 2 hours altogether. The view is not to be missed.

We got Dick (the maturity level is high with us, yes indeed) and found ourselves a Trader Joe’s near the park. We bought fresh fruit and such for a picnic, then headed back to the beach at Santa Monica. The place was crazy, with the people on the promenade and the pier. It was sunny and would’ve been pretty warm if it weren’t for the wind. We crossed to the pier, went down to the beach, and had lunch, and then I laid on the blanket for a while. When it got too cold, we headed up to the pier, walking down to the end where we were nearly blown off into the ocean.

The pier was the same as the last time I was there: tacky gifts, people fishing, and stray street performers from the promenade. Also, I found about 10,000 potential boyfriends for Stephanie, and I don’t even think she appreciated it one bit. We decided to head back into LA to cover the obligatory touristy stuff, hoping we’d get more time at the ocean when the wind wasn’t quite so intense.

One of Stephanie’s favorite things about LA is KROQ. Even if they’re not playing great stuff constantly, it’s at least listenable 99% of the time. I was happy to hear them playing Hysteria by Muse, even if it kind of sucks when a song you like a lot becomes a radio single. But there there were two songs that began to plague us within 24 hours: that one about Beverly Hills by Weezer (which was funny for all of 10 minutes because of the novelty of being there), and this song by Pepper that goes, ‘why won’t you have some dirty hot sex with me?’ Which was funny for probably 2 seconds, and then became the worst song ever to be played over and over and over on the radio.

We stopped for coffee before heading to the La Brea tarpits. Stephanie was amused at the Chinese businessmen in Starbucks who kept reading my hoodie; I was just hoping it didn’t say something offensive.

The tarpits surprised me. See, you walk through the gates next door to LACMA, and you smell tar. I didn’t know they were active! I thought it was all prehistoric and such. But no, even to this day, you could stumble right into a tarpit and in hundreds of thousands of years, the robots of the future can excavate you and put you in a museum, too! That’s some exciting shit, if you ask me.

After the tarpits, we went over to see Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. We parked a few blocks away, one car in front of a guy who looked exactly like Johnny Knoxville (but looked lost enough to not be Johnny Knoxville), and two cars in front of a burnt-out car, which was pretty awesome. The insides of the windows were all black. I don’t think there were bodies inside, but we couldn’t have known for sure.

There was some big event going on at the Kodak Theatre, the whole red carpet/limo bit, and the impersonator-folks were out in force. We saw Darth Vader and a Stormtrooper, Superman, Catwoman with her ass exposed, Beetlejuice, a fat Spiderman, and various others. Grauman’s was mobbed as always. We took a look at the footprints and the stars on the street, and were generally unimpressed. Hollywood celebs don’t do a whole lot for me.

We wandered down Hollywood Boulevard, trailing Beetlejuice. There was a couple sitting on the street holding a sign saying they were pregnant and stranded from Pennsylvania. We walked past a booth full of geeky-looking folks and I heard the familiar beep of AIM; it cracked me up that a dude was sitting on the street IMing. I just now looked up what they were all about: liningup.net. Hahaha.

We took Sunset Boulevard into Beverly Hills, and spend some time driving through the neighborhoods gawking at stars’ homes. Again, not so impressive. We drove way up in the hills, and then down again, and could smell Dick’s brakes. We decided to let him rest for a while, so we drove down to Rodeo Drive to check out the shopping. I didn’t expect I’d find anything to interest me there, but then I found the Taschen store. I love their books. I didn’t see anything different than what Amazon could sell me for cheaper, but it was cool to see all their stuff in one place. We went up to Via Rodeo and saw the really high-end stuff. I admit it’s an irritating habit of mine to get pissed off about it, but I do. God knows I can shop, but there’s a level at which spending that amount of cash on something becomes really obscene. Anyway. My sister pointed out a Maserati on the street, which I guess was a big deal. We’d been seeing Bentleys all day, so I wasn’t sure how it was different.

We needed food and still wanted pizza, and were beyond trying to drive around and find something with all the vegetarian healthiness I needed and the general goodness of pizza (I have found this place; it’s in Minneapolis, and it’s called Pizza Luce). So we went for what we knew: CPK. We found one at Beverly Center, quite possibly the most irritating mall ever invented. We were amused at the other patrons waiting for tables: there was a very friendly boy-band, and a woman named Sammi with her passel of kids, who was so Beverly Hills it wasn’t even funny. Throughout dinner, we could hear her smoker’s-voice reverberating in the restaurant as she referred to herself in the third person. LA is awesome like that.

Sunday morning, I started flopping around again at 4:30, but stayed in bed til 7. I got up and headed off down Century Boulevard in search of coffee. It was awesome outside, and finally not windy. I walked past a bus stop with a homeless guy on the bench, and was pretty sure he was jerking off. I walked faster.

I found Starbucks at the Marriott about half a mile down the road. The lobby was packed full of teenage girls in town for a dance competition. I got the hell out of there quick, too.

We were on the road to San Diego around 8:30. Our first stop was San Juan Capistrano, my favorite of the missions I saw the first time around. The gardens there are incredible.

I’m not sure why I have such a thing for missions. I’m not a religious person, and am fairly disgusted by the history of missions in general; I think it’s the combination of the creepy and beautiful that’s fascinating. Also, I’m drawn to the bizarre trinkets in the gift shops.

Right as I walked into the mission, my camera informed me that the memory card was full. I spent too much time going through and deleting duplicate photos so I’d have some space for the many pictures I was compelled to take there. On the way out of town, I told Stephanie we’d have to find us an electronics store so I could get another memory card.

In La Jolla, we found a store called Good Guys, which wasn’t so much good as merely sufficient. I got myself 256MB of photo-storage happiness, and we were on our way to Old Town for lunch.

Last time I was in San Diego, I thought the Gaslamp District and Old Town were the same thing, and I disliked the Gaslamp District a lot, mostly because I couldn’t find a vegetarian restaurant, and the stores sucked. Old Town was at least something more to look at. The parking was a horror, but Stephanie exercised remarkable skill in navigation. She had already successfully backed out of a miniature parking lot that wouldn’t allow the world’s largest car to turn around, and then she was about to back into the tiniest, most cramped spot in the city when Dick died. Just shut off. I may have mentioned how much he sucked.

We had lunch outdoors at a Mexican place recommended by the parents (the second they knew we were on our way to San Diego, they were inundating us with travel-advice-filled phonecalls), which was pretty touristy, not terribly authentic, but good for what it was nonetheless.

Because Old Town is so touristy, it features excellent people-watching. We spent lunch trying to figure out what the deal was with all the people around us. I told Stephanie that she had to be sure to look at this girl behind us on the way out, because ‘she has a certain completely non-charming innocence.’ She laughed really hard at me and declared that ‘a patented Jenni Ripley diss’. I was proud.

We wandered around Old Town in a post-burrito coma, examining all the crappy souvenirs we could’ve been buying in Tijuana for a quarter of the price, but ten times the hassle. It didn’t seem much like a state park, because it’s so damn commercial. It’s strange to have shops in all those historic buildings. They had some cool gardens, though, and I kept threatening to toss my sister’s ass in a cactus. Then I made her take my picture in front of the largest aloe plant I’d ever seen in my life, after which I examined the photo about 50 times, saying, ‘THAT’S THE HUGEST CACTUS EVER!’

I am so easily amused.

Leaving Old Town, we got some sugar-free ice cream. It was awesome and made me really sleepy and goofy. We were in such hysterics on the way to Cabrillo that she was begging me to stop laughing so we didn’t get in an accident; I wasn’t even driving.

Per the parents’ recommendations, we drove out to Cabrillo National Monument, which had an awesome view of the city, the harbor, and the ocean on the other side of the peninsula. We walked up to the lighthouse, then drove to see the tidepools.

After that, we drove through downtown San Diego, got caught in cruise-ship-loading-and-unloading traffic at the Embarcadero, then found our way to the Coronado Bridge. You see, my sister has a fetish involving the Hotel Del Coronado, the legendary Hotel California, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it involved Don Henley in some way. I don’t ask.

We parked along the beach and walked around the hotel. It has a mall for rich people in the basement! I admit I got a little crabby again, just like I did on Rodeo Drive. It’s just so much. So much money, just to get away from poor people. I got a kick out of wandering around there looking like a total slob. It’s what I’m good at.

We went in and enjoyed the very swank marble bathrooms. We saw the atrium and the multiple pools and tennis courts and patios and restaurants. I had a really bizarre moment when I rounded a corner, caught of a glimpse of someone, thought, ‘hey, that girl looks interesting,’ and realized I was looking at myself in the mirror. I swear to god, I’m losing it.

On the way back to the beach, we passed a 7-person tandem bicycle contraption. I really really want to see one of those in use, but we were not so lucky. We spent a long time laying on the beach in the sunset. I wandered along the water, which was so cold it numbed my feet. While she stood on the shore watching the ocean, I tried to warm my feet by burying them in the sand. Then I had an excellent idea and set to work making myself a new foot. I took a bunch of pictures and sat there giggling, hoping someone would come along to see it.

It was getting late, so we decided to head back to LA and hopefully find dinner along the way. Stephanie drives like I do (although with less phone-talking and text-messaging), so it only took a little over an hour. We decided to pull off for dinner in Huntington Beach. As she dodged cars on the exit ramp, she yelled, ‘DICK, DON’T FAIL ME NOW!!’ Which of course began the driving-off-the-road-laughing routine again.

We froze at dinner; the sunburn seemed not to help. We ate half our food and headed back to our hotel for the night.

Monday morning, we went to the farmer’s market on Fairfax. It’s confusing because the outside looks like a cross between an outlet mall and a regular mall. I figured there had to be some kind of farmer’s market action in there somewhere, just based on the name, and we did find that at the center. They had a bunch of booths; some of them were actual produce stands, but mostly it was all manner of different foods and souvenir shops. It would’ve been awesome for lunch, but it was a little early in the day.

By now, the sunburn had reached the painful stage, and no amount of sunblock seemed to be preventing further scorching. I could feel my arm burning as I drove. We spent a lot of time in the car, just getting around the rest of LA; we decided to go see Chinatown, so I headed off in the direction of downtown, not realizing how monstrous that place is.

We drove through a business district on Melrose I thought was downtown, until we happened upon the real downtown. We found the original pueblo, so we stopped and walked around there for a while. They had another large array of Mexican-trinket shops there as well, so of course I had to look at them all. We thought the pueblo would be a bigger deal (or perhaps one specific building), but it was interesting anyway. We decided we wouldn’t have time for Chinatown, and I wanted to dine at my favorite LA restaurant from last time around, so we headed over to Real Food Daily on La Cienega.

I love this restaurant not only because it’s next to Trashy Lingerie, but because I can eat every single thing on the menu. That never, ever happens. I had a bigass bbq tofu chop salad, and she had a bean and tempeh burrito. She didn’t seem thrilled by the weird food, but I was loving it. After that, we drove down 3rd, drooling over all the shops I really needed to go to, even though I knew I shouldn’t. We passed them all except for one irresistable one: the Paul Frank store. I’m not a huge fan of Julius the monkey, but dude! I got skull flipflops, a Wienermobile hoodie, and another sweatshirt with amps on it. Stephanie got a pink skull purse. It’s impossible to not love that store.

Sadly, it was then time to head to the airport. In true Dick form, our rental car almost got himself backed into in the parking lot right as we returned him. He made the most horrible noise as I slammed on the brakes. I’m pretty sure it caused me a mild heart attack.

At the airport, we waited in security for the hour that felt like three days. We finally got to our gate, and found a rather small plane awaiting us for our totally-booked flight. We both had middle seats on opposite sides of the aisle; Stephanie got to spend some quality time with the extremely angry dude who talked to himself a lot. I talked to a nice lady about her son, the doctor in Wisconsin, and then every single person on the plane stopped by to examine the flames sweater I was knitting. Or it felt like it, at least. I was a little weirded out when the flight attendant held up beverage service for a long time just to talk knitting with me; later when I went back to use the bathroom (I always use the bathroom on planes, because I enjoy the novelty of peeing at 35,000 feet), she grabbed me again and made me grope her yarn and the scarf she was knitting. Dirty.

Apparently Northwest Airlines has some Dick-service of their own, because we landed on time and then had to sit on the plane waiting for a gate, because some other plane forgot to leave or something. After they finally loosed us upon the terminal, we all sat waiting for our luggage to be vomited out onto the carousel for another hour. They have really excellent service.

My parents were nice enough to drive my car to the airport, so all I had to do was rush on home, whereas Stephanie got to ride back with them, and listen to my dad complaining about the flight delay. Lucky girl.

[Note: I didn’t want to be all duplicative here, so you may find ten different favorite photos from this trip (in larger format) on my journal.]