I made it to LA!

Yesterday I headed to LA with my mom in a 1996 Jetta loaded with suitcases, snacks, and a 13" TV I salvaged from the "donate or trash" pile in the garage. With stops and traffic, the drive took about five hours. Interstate 5 is a long and desolate stretch of highway dotted with roadside fruit stands and the occasional dairy farm, so those five hours passed incredibly slowly.

We stayed in a hotel in Torrance just south of LAX, chosen by my mom because the area is inhabited by a large number of Japanese immigrants. We ate a delicious dinner of sushi and tempura we stumbled across in a nondescript strip mall. A few doors down from the restaurant was a windowless establishment called "Zebra Room" that claimed to sell cocktails. Upon closer inspection, I noticed a sign announcing that it opened at 6am daily. That's right - 6am. Cocktails. I didn't want to know why it had no windows.

After lunch today (more Japanese food), my mom and I headed to a casino outside San Diego. For some reason, my mom decided not to follow the driving directions she printed and instead chose a different route with the help of a very vague map of the area. Not surprisingly, we got lost. The good news is we had no schedule - we were just going to the casino for a couple days of sun, gambling and relaxing - so it didn't matter that the drive took a lot longer than expected. Our meandering took us along the ocean and led us past the San Diego Wild Animal Park (incidentally, I just heard on the news that a rare and critically endangered white rhinocerous died at the park today).

So for the next couple of days I'll be soaking up the sun and trying my luck at slots. This afternoon I ventured down to the gym but I'm not sure I'll go back. The gym is a strangely designed room with two walls of glass situated between the pool and one of the bars. All the cardio equipment faces the glass and I was the only one in the gym so I had an audience watching me the whole time I ran. Awkward...