April 1 - United States: Los Angeles, California
The First in a series of guest appearances by Jon
We've been in the US for a couple of days now and I'm on my way back home to Washington D.C. to buy a car and drive back to LA. To help keep me from going crazy I've decided that I'll document my exploits for the website, so there will be a few guest appearances by me for the next week or so. Imagine Heidi's surprise when I actually volunteered to write up the journals for a while - surprise is a term of understatement.
Catching up on lost sleep
After depriving ourselves of sleep for what amounted to being about 40 hours, with about 4 hours of napping thrown in, we finally headed to bed last night at about midnight. At noon today we finally decided that it was time to get up and join the rest of the productive members of society! 12 hours of sleep. Aside from being sick, neither of us could think of the last time we had slept in this late.
Once up I headed out to this great grocery store near Ketron's place. Actually, I tried to find a bagel place Ket had showed us the night before but after failing miserably in trying to find it I decided to go to the grocery store. A great choice, since I actually knew how to get there. Anyway, I was in awe of the deli: Boar's Head turkey and cheese and baguette bread. I picked up some avocado and tomatoes and headed home with my hunting skills reaffirmed.
Getting in touch with my cousin
After lunch I got in touch with my cousin Rob who I had been emailing prior to leaving Australia. It turns out that Rob's father-in-law has great season tickets for the Dodgers that he has had since 1972 or something like that. Unfortunately he doesn't get to use the tickets very often himself and Rob was able to talk him into giving him the tickets to the season opener at Dodger Stadium. Unfortunately, Rob and Sandy couldn't make the game and Cindy, Brian, and Laurie were all out of town either in college or on Spring Break...this meant that Heidi and I would get to go to the season opener, but since Rob and Sandy couldn't make it we'd end up with 2 extra tickets. The next question is, how do we get the tickets? Rob offered to FedEx the tickets but we really wanted to get to see Rob and Sandy so we told him we'd leave in 15 minutes and head out to Ventura.
The drive out to Ventura took about an hour, and the last 15 minutes or so was all in the area where I was born. We passed Port Hueneme Naval Base, where I was born, and Point Mugu Naval Base where my dad was stationed until I was about 3 1/2. It was neat being so close to where I was born, but I don't really remember much of this part of my life since we left before I could actually cross the street by myself!
We met Rob at his office, RJR Engineering, which he founded several years ago with another partner. The firm does civil engineering, geotechnical engineering, and geology. Basically, because of the difficulty in building on the various terrains in California, between steep landslide-prone hills, rugged terrrain, and earthquakes, before you start building residential or commercial property you must engage a registered civil engineer to conduct site worthiness studies and recommendations for construction. Rob showed us the big projects he has currently going on: Will and Jada Pinkett Smith's several hundred acre estate that they are building, complete with 28,000 ft/sq house, pool of nearly the same size with underwater grotto access to the hot tub, 3 or 4 guest houses (I forget whether it's 3 or 4, but they're all about bigger than any house I've ever lived in); Nicholas Cage's several thousand acre undeveloped property that I suppose he is considering building on. Evidently Rob's business is doing well as he and his partner have 15 employees and lots of movie stars seem to keep recommending him to their movie star friends!
Mexican for dinner again
After a little while Sandy, Rob's wife, and Laurie, Rob and Sandy's daughter, stopped by the office and we all caught up a bit more and then started to think about what to get for dinner. Remember that Heidi and I have been craving good Mexican food for months now, so despite the fact that we had Mexican last night I was more than excited when Mexican was offered as an option. We settled on a restaurant and we followed them to the restaurant.
Can you ever get enough chicken fajitas? I decided that given the opportunity I could eat Mexican every night for the foreseeable future, variety be damned.
Jon, Rob, Sandy, and Laurie after a big Mexican dinner
We had a great time catching up with Rob and Sandy and Laurie. I hadn't seen them since I worked on a project in Irvine in 1997 or 1998, and they had only heard about Heidi. It really is nice to talk with family that you don't see often...I guess that's true as long as the reason you don't see them often is just because of geographic location, and not some other reason! Anyway, geography is the reason we haven't seen Rob and family so we had a great time. Rob had lots of great stories about my dad, which are always good to hear. Before we knew it it was close to 9pm and we still had an hour's drive ahead of us to get back to Ketron's place in the Hollywood Hills so Rob gave us the tickets only asking for a bag of stadium peanuts in return and we made plans to see everyone again after I got back with the car.
We made it home in the expected hour or so and hung out with Jen for awhile. Pretty soon it was 11:30 and we were ready for bed. With the 14 hour flight and the 18 hour time difference from LA we really expected to be up at some odd hours because of the jet lag. What jet lag??!! We're sleeping pretty well, luckily!