Life of Wry

Peter, Jim and I took off, largely uneventfully, from Davis at a reasonable hour. We hit the usual milestones (literally in this case) at the usual times.

Couple sights from the road…

(I don’t think this had anything to do with California’s recently passed recreational marijuana law!)

And a nice sunset over the coastal range..

As expected, we hit LA at rush hour and things slowed down.

But then, we made a fateful error… we missed the bear-off of the 405 and didn’t realize in time to turn around. Now, sort of stuck in thick traffic of southbound 5, we had Siri give us a new route.. thinking, well… how bad could it be to drive through the heart of downtown LA at the peak of pre-Thanksgiving rush hour traffic?

This bad:

Clever how I got this shot, eh?

Zooming out, not much rosier:

Here are a pair of shots I did actually take myself.. from ground zero:

We were a bit weary and bleary-eyed:

I’ll just add, downtown LA is also a tough place to pull off if all you’re doing is looking for a place to pee… that was about a 45-minute adventure.

Suffice to say… we were late for dinner.

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We got into the south bay, made a quick stop for a birthday cake and salad fixins’ (our pre-planned contribution to dinner), and arrived as mom’s famous chicken dish was coming out of the oven (our travel status was at least well communicated along the way).

Chris turned 57 yesterday… so we got to celebrate. Here’s the birthday boy… NOT as surly as he looks here!

Fifty seven, but still has pipes:

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After dinner, Peter, Jim and I headed down to the Crown Plaza.. which turned out to be a great place, well located! We won’t experience much of it, but it’s nice to know it’s there.