Big 10 Football Tour

My last day at work prior to vacation was a very challenging one.  I was surprisingly productive, but my mind was already on southern California.

When arriving at the airport on Wednesday evening, a light snow was falling and I began to worry that mother nature was going to delay my flight.

Southwest Airlines was as reliable as ever and had me in the air on time once again...

We landed at LAX and I made my way to the rental car station (which no matter the time of day, will take you nearly a hour) and was handed the keys to this disguisting car shown below.  It's a yellow Chevy Aveo.

To my defense, I knew I'd be spending quite a bit of money during my stay and went with the economy car as I'd be driving over 1,000 miles; but little did I know that they'd equip me with a car that could pass as Bumblebee from the Transformers.  The good news was that, no matter how big the parking lot, this car was easy to find!

So as a guy who doesn't like to commit to a reservation until 5 minutes before it happens, I waited until the night before to book a hotel room.  With New Year's on the horizon, most rooms were booked in Los Angeles.  There was however, a scrappy Quality Inn in Koreatown.

Koreatown?  Other than a DVD of the 1988 Olympics and a dictator with a serious lack of fashion-sense, I knew nothing about Korea.  That would all change when I stepped into a local Koreatown bar and ordered a "Hite."  I had literally never seen Hite before ... and I hope I never see it again.  It was advertised all over Koreatown, and it really needs to advertise to get sales, because it was really really bad.

I needed to get that taste out of my mouth, so I returned to the hotel, where I saw one of the most unbelievable sights of my life.  A "Surge" soda machine.  I hadn't seen this stuff since I was taking girls on dates to McDonalds in the late 1990's!!!  It was a dream come true!  My dreams came to a screeching halt however when the same old suspects: Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, and others occupied the machine.  No Surge.

Despite my frusteration, it was now 3:30 AM Milwaukee-time and I needed some sleep.  After all, I had 10 days ahead of me to contemplate where I could find obsolete soda and I needed to get up early to get my H1N1 virus vaccine at the Walgreens across the street.

It would be just a matter of hours before I would be taking the Metro (and the many many escalators to tour Hollywood!