All of the Lights!

Day 3- was awesome: we were announced ACC champions! Hopefully that is foretelling a second NCAA Championship! Bt anyway, back to the story...

After we said our goodbye's to Lei, we headed to Venice Beach.



Thought it was too cold to get in the water, people watching was pretty awesome! Where else can you find the following all at once?

* Skaters
* Skateboarders
* pot smokers chilling at a bonfire on the beach
* doctors trying to sell you prescriptions to get pot
* basketball players being filmed unwantedly by a wannabe pro
* some actor from the show Glee (the one with a Mohawk)



After having fun here for awhile, we got back into the car, headed for the bright lights of Vegas.

But being hungry, we decided to stop by this In n Out Burger we kept hearing about. And the lines were amazing! Never had we seen so many people waiting just to get a burger! Especially since across the street was an empty Wendy's.



So we ate the burgers (meh...) and kept driving. We reached Vegas at 1 am, and immediately went out to the Bellagio to start winning! We weren't hoping to make a lot- just enough to pay off our student loans...

How did we do? Read the next blog post to find out ;)

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Location:Los Angeles

California Love pt. 2

We awoke ready to tackle LA by storm. First, we headed in the Focus and drove to a local Thai place in Hollywood to eat. After, we took a stroll down Beverly Hills, basically house- and people-watching.



We then headed to pick up my boy David. He became our appointed tour guide, taking us to a strip on Sunset Blvd, and taking us to a bar to watch some of the college basketball games going on that day.


Before we knew it, the sun was setting, so we changed clothes and decked to take LA nightlife by storm too. Unfortunately, it turned out that so was everyone else. The first two places we visited had extremely long lines, with people not allowed to enter until someone else decided to leave.

We finally found a spot that was less packed, though still full. In stark contrast to bars we see in Durham, or even other places on our trip with the exception of Atlanta, this bar had a very ritzy feel. There were VIP sections, a huge fire pit that people were chilling around, and $12 drinks.

Because we weren't balling like Dave, drinking was kept to a minimum, and after late night tacos at a sketchy taco truck in the middle of nowhere, we headed back to the place to sleep. Somehow it was 4 am.


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Location:Los Angeles

California Love

You know that you're in California when:
- the first sign you see is $1000 fine for animal abandonment
- the second is $1000 fine for littering or smoking
- the urinals are waterless (and quite frankly stink)
- brown doesn't automatically mean mexican
- bmx bikers jump over you when you're trying to catch a nap in a park

So were finally in California, the land of $4 gas prices and $1000 fines for abandoning your pet Fluffy. After Crazy Caramel (see earlier post) joined us, we did what anyone would do after driving for a week to finally reach their destination: we slept. Yup, we went to the San Diego park, found our own separate spots in the crowded park, and dozed off.

My nap was cut short, however, whenever I was so nicely awakened by a bmx biker who thought it would be cool to do jumps over me. I wanted to take his bike and jump over him... And miss.

Anyway, after taking a historical trolley tour of San Diego by a guide who probably should have been a first grade teacher, we then headed to meet one of Ruti's friend at a local pub. The first thing he said to Ruti after meeting him for the first time in six years? "Whoa! You look like to Ruti's put together!" Well, we couldn't help but laugh at that.

We then headed to the great city of LA, blasting Tupac's song "California Love" the entire way. How did we greet the The Caramelo Locos entry into our road trip? By making him drive of course! Of course that in itself becomes an interesting adventure. We spent the entire time yelling out things like

"Watch out!"
"No! left turn!"
"I don't wanna die!"

But I am happy to report that the only casualty was a parking lot cone.

We met up with Law school buddy Lei in LA that night. Anyone who knows Lei would be surprised to hear he was quite normal when I met him. I began to think that law firm life zapped him of his quirkiness. But before long, he was back to his old self, trying to rap, joking on folks, and basically assuming his role as stand up comic.



We headed that night to the world famous Roscoe's Chicken n Waffles, which looked more like a nightclub on the outside with a really big guy standing at the door wearing a shirt saying "Security".

But once inside, we basically killed everything they thought to the table. Afterward, the four of us and Fateen, who joined us that night as well, headed to a bar called Stout. I'm sure it was Lei's first time in a bar in years. It was our tenth in a week. We had a really good time, and after bidding farewell to Fateen, finally headed to Lei's place to sleep.

Cali- day 1 was done.


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Location: San Diego, Los Angeles

Introducing- El Caramello Loco

In case you haven't heard the shades of brown is a three person band. We have (in descending order of 'browness') chocolate huggy bear (Mel ) brown sugar (yours truly) and finally El Caramello Loco - or crazy caramel (en anglais) - Alfonso Puente.

For those of you not yet acquainted with El Loco, rest assured that the name is well deserved. Despite his many antics everyone who comes into contact with the Fons can attest that it is pretty damn hard to get mad at him, cause he's, well, special.

In order to greet our fearless leader we woke up at 5 30 from our cozy Sheraton beds and headed to San Diego all the while gunning the engine so as to reach there on time. That was true until we turned a corner and saw what appeared to be a range of mountains which on closer observation were just piles of Boulders. It was like god was stacking pebbles into triangular shapes, only his pebbles were more like the size of our car. This bore closer inspection.



So got off the highway and turned into Boulder national park (again with the apt names). It turns out that boulders don't like to be climbed, they're pretty damn smooth, that it until they scrape your knee, and arrange themselves in such a way that you either make matrix style moves to cross from one to the other or have to navigate each rock painstakingly. Turns out we didn't watch "The Matrix" enough times.



So though it took us longer than anticipated the band was finally reunited in San Diego.

-AD


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Location:San Diego, CA

Caution: Hikers Falling

At around 8:00 I awoke from my Travelodge bed in El Paso. It wasn't the greatest nap in the world but at least I was refreshed. Ruti was too lazy to run with me so I went by myself. One of the hidden great things about El Paso is the view of the mountains. As I made my way down the streets I couldn't help but admire the grandeur of the scenery. Little did I know I would soon be much, much closer.

We packed the car, grabbed a bite to eat, and headed toward the entrance of the Franklin Mountain State park. Our mission: to climb to the entrance of the Aztec caves.



Our initial steps were quite simple enough. The graded wasn't steep and walking was a much better feel than sitting in a car. But soon, we found ourselves exerting more and more energy to reach the top.




When we finally reached the caves, it was more than worth it. The views were breathtaking, and we couldn't help but take as many pictures as possible. Then it happened:

"uh how are we gonna get back down?" we didn't quite realize that it would be harder to go down than to go up. As we began our slow, careful trek down, I found myself beginning to take bolder and bolder steps until one step was a little too bold..

"oh no," I thought as my feet went up into the air and I found myself falling onto my back. So what did Ruti do when he saw my distress?

"Stay there! I'm gonna take a picture. This is awesome!"

What a great roommate.

We finished the rest of the hike and hopped into the car to head towards Tucson, Arizona.

We arrived there around 8:00 that night, worn out but proud that our Priceline skills scored us a night in the Sheraton. It is a good thing too, because there was absolutely nothing going on in this city. It didn't matter to us. We grabbed a 6-pack of Blue Moon, headed out to the outdoor jacuzzi, and created our own Tucson fun.


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Location:El Paso, Texas and Tucson Arizona

Why the hell y'all driving so far?

As of this post, we are beginning the second half of our road trip. We are officially leaving California and heading to the great city of Vegas. But back to the story...

We awoke the next morning from our night in San Antonio completely worn out from the night before. Still trying to recover, we rushed to get ready for our conference call with someone back east. We then headed on our longest drive yet... From San Antonio to El Paso, Tx.

Now you may think this drive appeared daunting because of it's sheer length. I mean, an 8 hour drive is a pretty long time. But what really made the trip a crazy one were the following key rules we eventually learned:

(1) "Don't mess with Texas cops"- On our trip we were stopped twice by the police. The first time, we were greeted by a friendly officer who proceeded to demand we get out the car and answer questions like "why the hell y'all driving so far", "y'all drunk or somethin?", and "what the hell you got so many stamps in your passport?" He finally let us go, and of course at no time did he ever tell us why he stopped us.




(2) "50 miles to empty is being rounded up from 5 miles to empty" - halfway through out trek through Texas, we came across a large stretch where for more than 30 miles there was no gas station. No worries. Our reliable Ford Escort said we had 50 miles to empty. Then 40. Then 30. Before we knew it, there was 1 mile until empty and we were still 10 miles from the nearest station. Let's just say things got really interesting...


(3) "AT&T covers 97% of Americans... Unless you have AT&T" - throughout this drive, we began to realize just how unawesome an iphone is when there is no reception. This really got us worried when we began to wonder if we would actually make it to the next gas station.

We finally arrived in El Paso at around 10:00 Mountain Standard Time. Too tired to priceline a hotel and too poor to get a nie one, we finally settled on a Travelodge for the night. After what would would happen the next day, we were definitely grateful for the hotel bed...



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Location:Texas

New Orleans, Indian Edition

I don't think Wifey (yes he answers to that) did justice to New Orleans so I thought I'd add my 2 cents.

The city was all dressed up for her big night. The French quarter with it's distinctively quaint architecture housed a number of jazz bars with strains from the trumpets and saxophones floating onto the streets. Each band we heard as we strolled in and out of the bars had it's own sound and quirks. But the best band we heard was an accident, we chanced upon interstellar transmissions (an obscure band with just one video on YouTube which I would highly recommend you check out) playing us at a street corner and joined the crowd who like Us were drawn to the music.







If you disregard for a moment the overwhelming male majority in Bourbon Street that place was quite awesome! The fatigue of the trip was forgotten as we got caught up in the grenade swilling, bead throwing, and boob flashing atmosphere which might be hard to replicate.

On a parting note in case you have any doubts about who the light weight is suffice it to say that I have photographic evidence which I will be willing to part with... For a fee of course.



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Location:New Orleans, San Antonio