I turned onto Sunset Boulevard (I am ready for my close up Mr. DeMille...) these roads were cool.

No matter my eyes were bloodshot red from the dirty air and tears were streaking down my face. It was cargasm, plain and simple.
Unfortunately for me the exit I had to take was the same as the Hollywood Bowl, at 730pm it was packed like crazy with people headed to see Tony Bennett. Oy, the traffic. I guess I was there about an hour. It's not like NY traffic though, as everyone was resigned to their fate. They weren't trying to cut each other off. No public transportation, that would be too smart. Yes, I was afraid if I did ANYTHING interesting on the road someone would shoot me.
Police police police everywhere in California in those cruisers like you see in the movies. Black and whites. At Fred's I got good news and bad news. He was in better shape than I thought, but I was really unhappy with his iMac and AOL service. There was no way to increase the fonts in anything but his email text, and the drop down list was impossible for him to use to retrieve his mail. 6 versions of AOL and more than 20 million users and it never occurred to them to have a single icon for downloaded mail retrieval? Never occurred to them to have an option for those of adult eyesight to have a font size large enough to read on drop down lists? And what is Mac thinking with keyboards in black with faint white letters? Are all Mac users 12?
All I could do was set some fonts in some places for large size and fix his sound. Fred signed my books, I carried three, one for me, one for Dean and one for Anne. We talked about the Amphicar he was responsible for producing, he mentioned that Dan Akroyd has 2. He kept saying "What do people want these cars for forty years later?" At 1130pm I set back off in Emmy II with my printed instructions to get back to the hotel. Naturally, I hit the traffic leaving the Tony Bennett concert on the way back to the hotel and sat in traffic for another hour.
People were not so friendly at night. I realize now why the Cali folks are freaking about the price of gas, my tank was 1/3 spent and I had only driven 40 miles.
I didn't get lost. Well I did get lost going the wrong way on the street the hotel is on, Vineland Avenue. I saw a police car- as always- and motioned for them to roll down their window. (First they had to roll back off the crosswalk.) He said "Thanks for slowing down." I asked if I had been speeding- it's hard to tell in this town, speed limit signs are rare and I couldn't have been doing more than 40 while looking for cross streets. But I was behind cars doing 5 (yes, five) mph more than once that day. Then there are those weaving drivers that just drift all over the road, despite those helpful little bumps. Don't forget the cars that just drop dead in front of you. Anyway... he said he was just kidding and I thought he was in dire need of a bona fide sense of humor. So he pointed me in the right direction, gave me a nice compliment and went his own way. That is another phenom in LA. I thought with all those tan bikini clad gorgeous women, an old paunchy broad like me wouldn't get a second look. Not so. Everywhere fellas were making me feel like somethin special and I was digging it to the max.
7
Goin' West
Part 1 ~~ Part 2 ~~ Part 3 ~~ Part 4 ~~ Part 5 ~~ Part 6 ~~ Part 7 ~~
Breakfast of Champions
Part 8 ~~ Part 9 ~~
The August 5th Malibu Canyon German Roadster Rebellion
Part 10 ~~ Part 11 ~~ Part 12 ~~ Part 13 ~~ Part 14 ~~ Part 15 ~~
Part 16 ~~ Part 17 ~~ Part 18 ~~ Part 19 ~~ Part 20 ~~ Part 21 ~~ Part 22 ~~ Part 23 ~~ Part 24 ~~ Part 25 ~~
Part 26 ~~ Part 27 ~~ Part 28 ~~ Part 29 ~~ Part 30 ~~ Part 31 ~~ Part 32 ~~ Part 33 ~~ Part 34 ~~
Stockton, San Francisco and Getting Home
Part 35 ~~ Part 36 ~~ Part 37 ~~
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