Thursday, October 19, 2006

LA For The Day

How much of LA can one person see in one day?
Quite a lot actually.

I arrived into LA and walked out to the exit of the Airport disappointed. One of my favorite TV shows is LAX, not just because of Heather Locklear (but that is at least 70%) but I actually like the show. Thinking about the show and the airport I am not convinced that they actually film there. The airport isn’t that flash (maybe it was just the part I was in) and I did not see Heather. I thought she would have been waiting for me at the arrival gate.

I noticed a few things about LA straight away. I am very poor. Most people there are not. If you do not have a dog you are not cool. Everyone has a dog and if they don’t have the actual dog they have pictures of it. Our driver had a pic of his dog on his dashboard and so did many other cars that I drove past.

I got on a shuttle bus because I wanted to see the sites ASAP. The last time I was scared in a Taxi was in Spain but that was nothing to the horror that this driver put us all through. He was very verbal (and not the words you would say in front of your parents) he was horn happy and I was genuinely scared. He dropped me off at the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre which is the central tourist point on Hollywood Road. It is parallel to Sunset Boulevard and leads you to Rodeo Drive where all the expensive shops are. Outside the Theater is where all the hand prints are in the concrete. There is a vast range of hand prints and many names I have never heard of but I have pics below.

I was planning on sleeping in the Airport but I decided to drop my stuff off at a local hostel as I didn’t want to carry all my stuff around.

I dropped my stuff off and headed back to the Theatre as this was the pick up for my City Tour. This was a cool tour as it took you round all the areas of Hollywood that you would want to see. We went to the Magic Theatre on the top of the hill. The theater was not that exciting for me but it is the best place to view the Hollywood sign.
(Interesting fact about the Hollywood sign. It used to read Hollywoodland as it was used as advertising for a real estate company. But after a dejected actress jumped of the H to end her failed career they decided to review what it was known for)
The tour was great and the guy who did all the talking was fun. He like me cause I was from Belfast. The rest of the people were other Americans and Asians who couldn’t speak English but liked to take pics. We went all around the celebrity’s houses (pics below) drove past the shop that Winona Ryder had sticky fingers in, the park where George Michael became ‘famous’ and the House of Blues club where many musicians start off their careers.

I never did get to see someone famous but I was given an invitation to the unveiling of a star. The stars are all along the sidewalk. You get them awarded for 4 reason: movies, music, radio and television. I was invited Bruce Willis getting his star presented. I didn’t go as I had to be on the plane.

After the tour I was talking to some random guy and got a free ticket to be in the Audience for a live showing of Family Feud (hosted by a guy who was on Seinfeld)

After the show I walked up the town and went into the Guinness Records Museum, Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum, and the Waxwork museum. These were all fun. I then headed back to my hostel and was about to enter and realized that the road had been closed off. They were filming the new Ford commercial and it was a big job. I didn’t realize how many people they needed to film a commercial. It was cool to watch, I had a look in the new car chatted to some random people and headed off to get a sleep before my early rise and hopefully not scary trip to the airport (and yes it was scary and he nearly got me there late. I think it was Samuel Jackson driving. He told me he fought in the war. I told him that I have never fought in a war. The conversation stopped there and I went back to closing my eyes.

I jumped on the plane. Next stop Toronto.



LA


Grauman's Chinese Theatre

Steven Segal

Frank Sinatra

Julie Andrews

LA.

Sylvester Stallone

Bruce Willis

John Lennon

Mic Jagger

Dr Phil

LA..

Charlies Angels
Hannibal Lectre

Chuck Norris

Guinnes World Records fattest man

Beverly Hillbillies

LA...

The Joker

Captin Hook

Captin Jack Sparrow

Jesus

Samuel Jackson
he looked the most real out of them all, he also looked like my Taxi driver
(the one that fought in th war)

LA....

Tom Hanks

Terminator

Willy Wonka

Titanic

Star Wars

LA.....



Guinness Records - Gretzky

Funny RIP

Guinness Records - Marino

Another funny RIP

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

October Fishing Trip

The other morning myself, Dave and Tania set off at 7am and headed for our lengthy journey in to the middle of nowhere to fish for a few days. The first hour and a half of traveling was fun because it was on regular roads. The last 2 1/2 hours were on a one dirt track road that you average a speed of 35 kms an hour and it is extremely windy. We arrived at the car park where we unloaded and started our hike to get to our boat. The boat was a 1 hour walk into the bush and it was pretty tough. We only found out at the end that the walk was a continual climb and by the time you got to the boat you had climbed 1000ft. (the walk back was definately more enjoyable)

We jumped into the rowing boat and made our way in the rough winds over the lake for a good 3 km row to our cabin. The cabin was cool. Cool in two ways. 1. the cool being that is was good and 2. the other cool that means that it was freezing.

The fishing was really fun. Over the course of the 3 days we caught about 21 trout ranging from the smallest one (that Dave Muckle caught) to the 2 largest that Tania and myself caught. The weather was very random. One evening myself and Dave went out and we got soaked during a down pour. The next day we couldn't see 20 ft in front of us because of a Snow Blizzard, on the last day when we got up everything was frozen with snow on the ground but after an hour or two you would have needed Sun Lotion.

I have added pics below of the trip.

Fishing Trip

Gotta love the boat (we ended up having to use our life jackets as a pillow. I never knew how much your ass could hurt after rowing)

Our lovely little cabin. It sleeps 18 but we were the only ones there.


Wild horses on our trip down. Tania was very excited and MADE David get out and take a pic.

In the middle of the lake there was another island.
If you climb up these steps you get to a lake within a lake.

Tania standing at the lake within the lake


Fishing Trip.

My first catch

One of my biggest catches

The end of the trip. Packing up

Tania rowing when the blizzard was starting

Tania's good catch

Fishing Trip..

Outside the cabin

We moved the boat

I like this shot

Our lovely boat
Picture Perfect

Fishing Trip...

Fishing Rocks!

View on the last morning from our cabin


Rowing into the hut to drop off the boat

Hard Life

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Cream Crackered

I am completly cream crackered. Just went through a pretty intense few weeks.

Friday 15 - Organising and running an auction to raise money for the work we do here at the springs. Raised $12 thousand big ones.

Monday 18th - Friday 22nd - Sports camp. A week of sports for the North Harbor kids. (over 200 kids)

Saturday 24th - Leaders training (the leaders come in for a days training before kids camp starts)

Sunday 25th - Friday 29th - 210 kids and 70 leaders arrive for kids camp

Friday 29th - 2nd Oct - kids leave and teens arrive for Teens Camp. Had about another 70 here for that

2nd Oct - Leaders arrive for junior kids camp

3rd Oct - approx 50 junior kids arrive for 4 days of camp.

So sleep is looking good. I will write an update of what is happening over the next week or so.

6 / 7 October going to the Leaders Summit conference in Tauranga (run by Willowpark)
9 / 10 / 11 - Going deep into the bush for some fishing / relaxing.

SO that is about it. That is the reason as to why there has been no updates lately. Oh and i haven't cut my hair in months. Look like my mum but longer and more out of control. I am just keeping it going cause some people here don't like it. Gotta be annoying.

And my ipod got nabbed at teens camp so i don't have an ipod any more. Conacted my Insurance to see if i can claim back on it...... fingers crossed.



Peace...