US stairways

After getting up at 4am, we drove to the car rental return of Alamo. They have shuttle buses that drive you 4 blocks back to LAX, and dumped us at terminal 1. We were right on time for the flight to Philly. But after taxiing for 2 inches the plane had to stop. Apparently 4 of the 200 computer systems were offline, amongst which the GPS system! Great start. They contacted Pittsburg, did a total reboot of the plane and after a 45 minutes delay we finally flew off! The pilot pushed the Boeing a bit, so we only arrived 25 minutes later. After rushing through the airport at Philly from gate D to gate A-east A8 , we made the connection flight to Brussels. Another flight of 12 hours delivered us totally exhausted in Belgium. I did get to see the same movies from the 5th of September on the plane: X-Men First Class. Not too bad actually... After the fun with US Airways, we had a nice ride with Belgium railways, and finally got home, deader than dead! Home sweet home...

This is your wake up call!!

After some rooster's noise on the phone at 4:30 AM, we know it's time to get going to the airport of Los Angeles for another exhausting 24 hours of drowsy awakeness in at least 2 plains and 3 different airports... Wish us luck! 0_*

Panem et circenses et aqua

Sunday! A whole day at Universal Studios Hollywood! After about half an hour drive from the hotel (Jesus! What an enormous city!...) we arrived at the gates and got our tickets. We started off with the Studio Tour... It took about half an hour to get on the tour bus! It finally started off with a decent history and explanation of filmmaking... The American Way. Following the 2008 fire at Universal Studios Hollywood that destroyed the King Kong attraction, it was rumored that Kong would not return. But the Australian Way came by! Peter Jackson made a wonderful remake of King Kong and offered the idea of making a 360 degrees-3D rendition for the theme park. It lasts only 3 minutes but it's pretty thrilling and funny. Meaning most screamed their heads off, I laughed off mine. We still could see some remains of the Halloween Horror Nights in between the sets, which it more interesting. Two hours later we did the some of the other attractions. Krustyland and Shrek 4-D were ultimate fun, Terminator 2 in 3D was excellent in its build-up, the Special Effects Stage sounded promising but turned out to be Ultra-lame... Haunted House of Horrors was also lame but funny, but the best attraction was the fully live production of Waterworld! Nice pyrotechnics, hell yeah! We ate a wonderful Rib Eye at the Saddle Ranch Chop House and drove all the way back to the hotel. because tomorrow we get up at 4:30 in order to be at the airport at 5! Another thrill ride of exhaustion till we're back in the homeland.. Nighty-nite kiddies!...

MS-13

We saw this nice documentary about LA street gangs! Actually about one of the most dangerous gang, which is starting to spread internationally: MS-13... MS-13 stands for Mara Salvatrucha. It's a very dangerous gang and is starting to take over the whole world. They kill people and deal in drugs. To become a member you have to pass the initiation rite: for a boy that
means being beaten up during 13 seconds, for a girl it means being raped for 13 seconds by several gang members. There's only one leader, but practically nobody knows who that leader is. Young people join the gang 'to belong' or because they feel worthless. The youngest members are eight years old! The El Salvador branch is 35,000 members strong, the total worldwide is 100,000 members. Kids of eight years old get assignments to kill some one. Some ex-members are trying to get others out of the gang but it's still very tricky. That was our LA night of National Geographic for you...

AT&Tinseltown

Apparently Tinseltown is incommunicado! The news bulletin from LA announced that there was practically no cellphone communication possible in the whole area, for people who use AT&T. About 900 antenna towers were out of service, due to some software error, and they weren't able to fix it overnight. Great going! The weather in Tinseltown is as good as their cellphone network. We came from a 100 degrees in Laughlin to a mere 70-79 in LA, with cloudy grey skies. I think this is a reminder that we have to go back to Belgium soon...

Barstow to LA

After a 265 km drive we got off on Main Street in Barstow to get something to eat. Met some Highway Patrol guys handing out safety leaflets. I think one of them owns the nice Ford Thunderbird 50 th anniversary edition parked out front. I'll go ask him... After we finished our Angus burger at McDonalds... apparently its not his!...
We continued our drive towards LA. This town is so big one could loose his entire family plus inlaws. We took a wrong exit and went looking for some gas in Downey. By pure accident we found the oldest Macdonalds still open. It dates from way back in 1953, got badly damaged in the 1994 earthquake but got restored thanks to the fans.
We got to the Custom Hotel, checked in, and immediately took a tour around LA by night on a bus with our guide Peter Smith and his witty comments. He told us the history and the full name of the city: El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de los Angeles del Rio de Porcincula..He showed us downtown LA, Beverly Hills, Hollywood Boulevard, Sunset Strip and also the baad neighborhoods. On Hollywood Boulevard, We ate the most delicious french fries with mayonnaise! Actually as good as our Belgian Fries! That was at Shelly's Cafe, which was used in a scene from Million Dollar Baby... We drove up to Universal Studios where the Halloween Horror Nights were just started for 40.000 plus fans at the price of 65$ a ticket. But we didn't indulge, because tomorrow we have our full day of Universal Studio visit, so enough for today! Back tot the Hotel Pete!...

Grand Papillon now!

After breakfast we really didn't want to wait till 2pm to do the helicopter tour at Papillon Grand Canyon tours. They were so nice to change it for us to 10:15 am! After watching safety regulations for three different choppers we had to go to the Next waiting room. Until they finally called us out get in a heli by four people. Amazing view of the Grand Canyon! Amazing! Crappy music on headphone though...inter spliced with Dutch explanations about the canyon and the native Americans. After about half an hour we were on our way again and had the chance to go see the Sun Crater Volcano. We took a shortcut through Kaibab National Forest on a hardened forest road, the NF-9150. Piece and quiet among the trees (if you turn off your engine) but there was still some traffic: Hunters with buggies driving around for game! We got back to the civilization on highway 89 and went to visit the Wupatki National Monument: several ruins of native American pueblos in Box Canyon. After that we had a nice picnic up in the mountains with a panoramic view of the Painted Desert. Following that route we came through Coconino forest into volcanic landscapes with the old Sunset Crater in the middle, climbing prohibited... It was already 4pm, so we Stopped the sightseeing and went back to the highway, all the way to Laughlin, a smaller version of Las Vegas. The three hour drive went pretty smooth as I followed to other mad driver at an average of 85 mph! I even passed a 100 mph with these race maniacs. We only saw a highway patrol car once while I was driving 90 but he wasn't interested! And all that on a highway with a 75 mph speed limit, go figure!... We arrived at 7:15pm in Laughlin where the temperatures rose to 101 Fahrenheit (38 Celsius)!!! We checked in at the Aquarius Casino Resort, had some lunch, and took a stroll on the strip. Piece and quiet in miniature Vegas... Good sleeping too. And tomorrow off to LA