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Disclaimer: The views expressed in this web log are the personal opinions of Ian D Smith, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff or members of the Official Lord of the Rings fan club. Trip to LA - Breakdown on High 10 |
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We left Phoenix around 1.30pm, somewhat later than planned, but still on schedule for a 7pm arrival in LA to meet up with
Val (Valkyrie Crush) and Pixie (AngryPixie) for a small reunion before the madness starts (over 85 people at the pub moot,
100 at the DVD viewing party!). Silver had travelled down to Phoenix in record time and the three of us set off in
Pip's shiny new Mazda
About 3.30pm a funny whipping sound started up - we had a puncture. The last time I changed a wheel was a few months ago in the dark and pouring rain in central London. This was much easier except that in the searing heat of the desert everything is red hot and it's hard not to burn your fingers. The emergency tyre meant that we could not go over 45 miles/hour and the nearest main centre (Indio) was over 50 miles away. However there were a couple of short stops on the way - the first being at Desert Center. As we pulled into the single building in Desert Center, I was reminded of a Stephen King novel set in Hicksville, USA. The rest rooms were the most disgusting I've seen in a very long time, in fact ever. The single store had no food or drink, and despite advertising 24 hour service, it was hard to see what this service was as the only thing available for sale was gas - and ALL the pumps had "Out of order" signs on them! The sales "assistant" was straight out of a horror movie - all long slow gaps between the one or two monsyllabic words he was prepared to utter. We left as fast as we could! The next stop was no better. In fact it was arguably worse! We decided we had to cross everything we had that we made it to Indio. We made it fine - 15 minutes after the tyre store had closed. Fortunately, people were still around, they seemed almost normal after our scary encounters at previous stops, and were prepared to replace the emergency tyre with a proper one. It wasn't until they'd taken the old tyre off that they revealed the cost: $295. Moral of the story: when buying a new car don't go for fancy 16" wide tyres! When Pip decided this was too expensive they then told us we'd have to pay $70 labour for work already done and to put the original emergency tyre back on. The words "rip" and "off" came to mind for some reason. In the end I decided we needed to just get the tyre replaced - and we were then told the price had escalated to $350 when labour and tax were added. This was turning out to be a very expensive trip! We managed to make the famous windmills on Highway 10 just before sunset. This was like entering the twilight zone - miles upon miles of spinning windmills generating power, shrouded in a strange kind of mist. Very spooky! There was some confusion at the hotel ("We're full") on our arrival but we eventually got sorted and met some old friends - Moochelas, Val, Primula and DesertElf amongst others, and some new ones (Icarus and Anaba - my new second bestest friend). Despite a long day we foolishly decided to go for a drink (Primula was sensible and went to bed) and found a local bar called "The Powerhouse" which was great - very lively with loud (but good) music. While Val and Pip went to get "water" (that would be the brown version in a bottle labelled Jack Daniels, right?) Icarus and I headed back to room 408 where Prim was already sleeping. We got waylaid - not by orcs, but by Moochelas and Anaba (who just happened to be looking through her room peephole as we passed - ooooooooookay!) who invited us in for a beer. Foolishly we agreed and so ended up staggering back to our rooms at some ungodly hour, with an early start the next day (I got two hours sleep and I don't think anyone else in our room got much more!) I'm getting requests, via email, for photo's of friends and family to be posted here. Please realise that it takes about 10 minutes per photo to sort things out my end - and that's before resizing them, uploading them and writing the HTML to display them. I am here to have a good time and the next few days are a pretty hectic schedule - which is a polite way of saying I'll do what I can, but couldn't possibly accede to every request. Missing photo's (there are a lot of them!) from previous days reports will eventually surface - probably as a separate index page - but only when I get time after I've returned to the UK. Web Log for August 9th - Beach Moot and Pub Moot Post Script Thanks for all the emails. Unfortunately my service provider doesn't like AOL being used to try and send responses as it thinks any messages sent are spam, so replies will have to wait until I'm back in the UK. For the people who asked about the Weta t-shirt - yes it's the same one featured in the DVD and I will try and get a scan in when back in the UK. For the chap who told me he'd got an unbroken Merry in the UK - congratulations! It sounds like your figure is fine - the six that arrived broken I was told were snapped off by the flowers in his arms. Ciao. |