5, 6, 7, 8 and Left Jab

It seems we've done some sort of (very) unintentional weather exchange with the UK and it's getting me down dammit. The last 3 days have been ridiculously 'fresh', i.e cold and a miserable shade of grey while I believe you guys are getting crispy in the sun. This was not meant to happen! Hopefully it will pass sharpish but when I heard the locals going 'Oh it's May grey and June gloom every year' in Cali I was not impressed to say the least.

Anywaysss...that hasn't stopped me getting going on the kiting and i've done a couple of land sessions with Nudge which is kinda intimidating but cool...and horribly expensive. The local kitesurf scene is thriving, it seems everyone knows everyone and I'm getting quite a few 'Who the hell is she?!' looks at the moment. My first sesh was with a 9 meter kite and the second a 12 meter which kept me on my nervous toes as I had visions of be yanked up the beach and into the air like Mary Poppins while the surf community watched on with smiles on their faces. Luckily that didn't happen and I seemed to do alright.

Thursday night was interesting as in true Chris form he came home from work and litrally dragged us into a local bar for '1' drink.

6 drinks later I learned you're not allowed to jay-walk in America and found myself screaming and running acoss the middle of the road away from the cops. Thank god I didn't get a $50 ticket but still got the embarrassing megaphone treatment of "Get on the sidewalk miss, I repeat, get on the sidewalk". We all legged it into blockbuster and must have been a little tipsyer than planned as ended up singing an orchestral rendition of the Jurassic Park theme tune in the horror isle.

Last night we had dinner with Chris's best friend Brian who's hilarious and as we drank copious amounts of red wine and port he informed us of all the closet gay leading males in Hollywood (Tom Cruise and Keanu Reeves) and talked about the A-listers he's hung out with a spotted over the years.

This morning I went to our local gym for a box aerobics class with Gary. I have never, ever, ever felt more American in my whole life but loved it! Gary is this 'all American' 50 year old legend who does his box aerobics class to 80's synth music (Cat, you would love this class!) and warm downs to The Beatles. He had everyone singing Yellow Submarine while working those abs and stretching those hamstrings. He throughly loved having a new Brit in the class and I'll be back next Sat.

After that I went down to the beach to have a gander at this 'swap meet' thing Nudge told me about. It happens once a year and is basically a chance for kitesurfers to sell used gear. I didn't see anything suitable but am in the process of negotiating my first kit which will cost an absolute fortune and I'm trying not to hyperventalate when thinking about it.

In the afternoon Loz and I cycled down to downtown Long Beach which was pretty unimpressive to be honest! Everything obviously happens in Santa Monica up the coast so when the weather picks up we'll just metro up there instead.

That's it for now, just watching some films and eating my ice cream tonight...

Camera Rolling......Action!

Touchdown, we made it! Loz and Simpson have sneaked through the United States borders, rocked up to Belmont Shore, Los Angeles and boy, life is goooood.

So May 24th was a bit of a random day, it all started with some fresh salmon and a giraffe. In Terminal 5. At 9am.
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As Loz and I talked over our crazy plan and how it had got us to where we were we heard 'Last call for flight BA279 to Los Angeles'. Argh, runnnnn!!!! Luckily we made the flight and even had time for a few cheeky snaps along the way. This was Loz's first time in a long haul jumbo and he was, I quote "as excited as a 5 year old".

The 11 hour flight went suprisingly fast, we watched a few movies including Benjamin Button which we wern't too impressed by. A little down beat. Bride Wars was much more suitable for the light hearted vibage and before we knew it we had landed at destination 1 in the US of A. After 10 hours of probing by the US military services and having our fingers and eyes scanned like something in minority Report we got on the Super Shuttle and cruised it down to the big PP (Pomona Place).

We knew we'd hit gold when we arrived as our friendly neighbours Shane and Sarah escorted us to le crib, a french/Italian inspired villa type pad. Chris (our flamboyant flatmate) was out for the day but totally chillaxed and left the place unlocked, access all areas top Alex and Loz, sweeeeet. We spent the rest of the day checking out the neighbourhood on our new beach cruiser bikes (courtesy of Chris) and learning that all the American stereotypes are true. Big trucks, big shades, running with tiny dogs in oversized LA Lakers hoodies. Amazing.

Day 2 Loz was in heaven as we grilled it up on the patio in the sun with copious amounts of booze. It was steaks at dawn as we all tucked right in. We also got to meet around 10 other locals and have secured lots of invites everywhere. Leon (who owns a gym in Santa Monica) is taking us to Hollywood to play 'beer pong', fun! We rounded off the day with a tipsy beach power walk with Chris and his boyfriend and checking out the millionaires mansions in the marina.

And yesterday was the day of days. It's true, when you're open to anything, anything will come your way. Our 15 min bike cruise down to Huntington Beach turned into a 2 hour sunstroke mission along the desert. All good banter though. Easily the equivilant of Worthing to Brighton Marina.I was up for visiting Huntington which is in the OC to find my kitesurf instructor. I had no idea where to go but luckily and randomly bumped into Nudge (his very surfer like nickname) on the beach and have taken the plunge and booked in for my 6 hour lesson. (First three hour one should be this afternoon).

We sunbathed, played in the waves, had a few beers with Nudge and dreaded the return back to Belmont so at sunset decided to get bus 1 which SHOULD'VE taken us home. But instead, decided to take us to a near death experience.

After chatting to this rather disturbing ADHD skateboard kiddie at the bus stop we managed to escape him by jumping off the bus at what we thought was our stop but turned out to be really, really wrong. We were completely lost in American suburbia...
Sunset had been and gone, the light was fading as was the temperature and Loz and I couldn't have stood out more if we'd tried in our swimwear with towels round our necks. At this point my main concern was making sure we didn't wonder into Compton or I might not be here to write this post today.

Why not grab a cab home? Because we had the bikes and ditching them was not a cool option. So we rode, we rode like our lives depended on it...except in the wrong direction.
Our chillaxed beach cruise had turned into a shady race against the light to safety and Loz and I had decended into hysterical fits of laughter fuelled by the disbelief at how bad our situation was getting.

Just as we thought we'd hit jackpot with the right road we noticed a steady increase in traffic and then it hit us....the FREEWAY. Loz and I were riding on the bloody freeway in pitch black on beach cruisers with no lights on. As the cars screamed past us I thought silently "We're screwed".

In our desperation, Loz, while pedaling for his life shouts across to a surgery-fied woman in her massive truck "Where is Belmontttt Shoreeeee????"...................."Oh dear. Way back that way i'm afraid dear" comes the response.

After some freak outs and more pedaling on the hard shoulder our guardian angels threw us a lifelife and three teenagers rode past on BMX's. We asked them for directions and thank god they were not only heading to Belmont, they said they'd personally guide us home. We spent the next hour following these dudes and getting a private stunt show as they were increbible bikers and pulling tricks the whole time.

We were relived to get home to say the least.

Anyway so we're off to a phone store in a minute to get American sim cards and then some beach action followed by our first grocery shop this evening.

I'm going to buy a 10 litre vat of vanilla ice-cream, oh yeah :)