Hooray For Hollywood

I know you were dying to hear.  Montezuma was a miss.  I got lucky I guess.  Man, it was a good margarita too.  Perfect, both of them.  Maybe the best two margaritas of my entire life.  I am really glad their memory didn’t get tarnished. 

At this point the trip needed to take on an official tone.  I had a work conference to attend at the end of the week, I couldn’t have any van related problems while attending that.  To that end I was landing in LA a few days early to locate close, safe, parking the van could sit in all day.  I had done a fair amount of research before arriving.  Done some “driving around” via Google Street View so I knew the general area.  When I got there though, wow! Traffic was bad.  Finding even a short term parking spot to do walk around reconnaissance was very difficult.  Eventually I found a pay spot and got out to walk around the general area I wanted to land in.  I found a really nice spot next to a grocery store.  Grocery stores are great spots for the van to blend in.

Barnsdall Art Museum, closed.

My other mission, after I found my overnight parking spot, was to see if I could get a good picture of the Hollywood sign.  I used my phone to kind of guess the direction to walk.  When I thought the angle was right I tried to walk up into a neighborhood with hopes of getting a clear view of it.  At one point I stopped a young fellow who was walking toward me.  I asked him if there were any scenic views of the sign.  He assured me that if I simply went straight forward there would be two spectacular views.  If I went far enough.  I realize now… That young man was bullshitting me. The street was a steep, tree enclosed cave with no cell signal until I was far beyond the sign.  Ah well, they gotta have fun too.

The sad American Margarita
I had to celebrate my survival.

It was getting dark when I arrived back at the van, there was a shady dude casing it.  I think he was waiting for his moment when the street was empty and I showed up too early.  Then, to add another layer to the drama, I was a little low on gas.  A little under a quarter tank when I pulled into the spot.  But the spot was sharply angled down on the passenger side.  Deep gutters here in LA. So when I started the engine, a little bit shaken up by the shady dude who is now giving me the stink eye, the first thing that happened is the low fuel warning pinged.  As I pulled out on the street the gauge stayed at rock bottom empty. The dash lit up with the message “LOW FUEL RANGE!”  In my head I ran through all the possible scenarios of someone cutting a fuel line to chase after me.  Finally, I think it was about four blocks later the gauge started going back up.  My guess is the fuel tank sensor must have been on the uphill side of the tank and it takes its sweet time to update the gauge.

The next day I got lucky again when I found a perfect spot to work from.  A Frank Lloyd Wright designed art museum that was closed for repairs.  Side note: I bet the roof leaks.  Anyway, the grassy hill surrounding the building was available to walkers.  Their parking lot was beautifully landscaped, barely occupied, and had great solar so I got my batteries charged up to a hundred percent.  The temperatures for working inside the van were perfect.  Three mornings I pulled into this museum parking at 6:30am from my night spot at the grocery store.  I put my Starlink dish on the roof of the van and logged in.  What a great way to work!  Perfect temperatures and amazing tacos just outside my door!

At the end of the day I would drive somewhere close to where the conference was going to be held and walk around.  During this daily moving around I kept being wow’d by suddenly seeing some name or some place I have heard of for years.  I don’t think I have ever before felt the level of surreal I felt in LA. I can’t count the number of times I walked or drove and sang Sheryl Crow’s, _All I Wanna Do_ when crossing Santa Monica Boulevard.  It was crazy, and it was fun!  I think it has been my favorite part of being here in California.

This is already getting long but I am going to slide in one other story.  It was just too good.  The BV is just what its initials imply, Big. Van.  I am big. I am old, rolling up on 300k miles.  I am heavy, because my van is plush and I love collecting rocks.  So I am super slow, and being careful.  This van is everything I own these days.  About mid block at one point I picked up a large black Mercedes on my back bumper.  At the end, I turned right onto a busy four lane street.  I was in the first (slow) lane and the traffic in the fast lane was zooming by and heavy.  The Mercedes was back on me in seconds.  Trying to get around but there was never a break in traffic.  Suddenly there was and he shot into it.  Flying past with his horn blaring.  Once in front, his head was turned toward me and giving me the finger because of how slow I was driving.  I was in fact slowing down. The light at the upcoming intersection was yellow.  There was another guy making a left hand turn from the oncoming traffic, he gunned it to get out of the intersection.  Whack!  Karma!  The oncoming traffic guy never stopped.  He just kept going.  After a moment the Mercedes guy took off after him.  Man, it’s exciting out here!  I was pricing dash cams later that night.

It was on one of those recon nights I saw another opportunity.   I never miss a chance to experience Indian food.  Just outside of Hollywood I found an Indian place on Google that didn’t look like takeout only.  On the map it was confusing, it seemed like there were three Indian places in the same corner mall.  One was a vegan place.  I was quite sure I didn’t want that one.  So when I arrived, I asked to make sure was not a “vegan only” restaurant.  Or, that’s what I meant to ask.  There were some language issues.  He didn’t understand later when I ordered chicken and had to explain it wasn’t vegan.  It was a confused deal.  

So the guy who took my orders, I feel like he was the co-owner of the place.  Back in the kitchen, I believe it was his wife who was cooking.  These two people were engaged in an epic scale fight.  She was yelling at him.  The was a second woman  who he was on the phone with yelling at him as well.  At one point four or five people, the employees, scurried out from the back and hung out in the dining area with me.  It was an interesting study looking at their faces.  The Mexican dishwasher looking nervous, what happens to his job if they don’t resolve this?  A young woman looking bored, scrolling through her phone.  A young fellow who seems to be listening to what the woman says and smirking around, he was the scorekeeper. 

It looked so promising!

Big surprise, the food wasn’t good.  I had ordered “Indian hot” because I am convinced these California people don’t know how to properly spice things. What I got was a chicken dish that tasted only of black pepper.  Very disappointing.  The Saag Aloo, spinach and potatoes, was ok, but not creamy at all like it should be. Lastly, the vegetable was not very well spiced.  Didn’t taste good.  It might have been black peppered too.  Definitely a one star experience.

Walking back to the van I dropped off the leftovers with a sleeping homeless man.  A surprise for him when he awakes.  Ethnically he looked like he might review the food much as I had.  But just like me, he would scowl, shake his head, shrug his shoulders and eat it.