A Beautiful New Year's Day in LA

Today I am off to LA for the Rose Bowl. My flight left Eugene at 6am, which means I left my house at 4:30am. The flight from EUG to SFO landed 10 minutes early. Unfortunately when we arrived at our gate it was still occupied. It took 30 minutes for the little Brazilia to load up and tow out. This meant the 30 of us on the flight from Eugene that were on our way to LA had approximately ten minutes to make our connection, which inconveniently was leaving from gate 98 in the international terminal. I made it to the top of the escalators at the gate when the agents were doing their final call. Shortly after boarding the three class 777 I was out in my business-class seat. (Thanks for the free domestic upgrade, United.)

After arriving at LAX I ran into the United Club to grab a yogurt. I then picked up my rental car and attempted to check into my hotel. Unfortunately no rooms were ready, so I had to change in the bathroom and then was off to pick up my friends Andrew and Matt.

Andrew and Matt hadn’t spent much time previously in LA, so they wanted to see the sites. The first order of business was visiting the ocean. We chose to head for Manhattan Beach because it is close to LAX and in my opinion offers a nice taste of what an LA beach is like. Matt wanted to swim in the Pacific in January, so he braved the waters while why Andrew and I watched. When Andrew was sufficiently cold we walked the pier and watched the surfers and paddle boarders. I don’t care for the expense, nor the traffic of LA but having the ability to walk to the beach and enjoy it in the month of January does have its appeal.



Next the boys wanted to see Rodeo Drive, so we made our way to Beverly Hills. We snagged a sweet parking spot and wandered for a half hour or so. I think Andrew and Matt enjoyed the fancy cars as much as the fancy stores. We decided to eat lunch at an outdoor cafe. It turned out to be a total Californian hippie like restaurant. The M Cafe, self described as “Contemporary Macrobiotic Cuisine,” was actually quite good. It also provided the perfect quick Beverly Hills lunch restaurant experience.

After lunch we made our way to Hollywood. We specifically sought out the Hollywood sign and the stars on Hollywood Blvd. From there we went to the Santa Monica Pier in hopes of catching the tail end of the Ducks Pep-Rally. Unfortunately at this point we hit our first taste of LA traffic. It took us north of an hour to go 15 miles. Even though I missed the rally I had a good time at the pier with the guys. The atmosphere was very festive. There were tons of football fans around. The majority were Ducks but there were plenty of Badgers as well.

Matt decided he wanted to check out the arcade on the pier. He saw a few skee ball machines and suggested we place a bet on a game. The terms were the high game wins. The loser has to wear the winner’s team hat during a quarter of the Rose Bowl. I pointed out that this was a two against one scenario and Matt just grinned. After acquiring the necessary quarters Matt rolled a 130. Then Andrew played. He rolled a 110. Finally it was my turn. I rolled a 250 :~) Now my only problem was I didn’t pack a Duck hat, no less two!

Walking back to our car we saw a group of people wearing “Petal Pusher” shirts. The guys had asked me what these meant earlier in the day and I had no idea. They had also expressed an interest in attending the parade but said everyone they had spoken with suggested that they either spend the night on the streets of Pasadena or leave the hotel between 2 and 4am. I hadn’t been to a Rose Parade, so I suggested we ask the people in the Petal Pusher shirts.

I approached one of the older ladies on the corner and asked her about her sweatshirt. She told me a Petal Pusher was someone who donated his or her time to help put together the Rose Parade floats. The person’s job could range from plucking petals from flowers to gluing petals to the actual floats. I asked how many years she had been attending the parade and she said this was something like her 14th year. I figured based on this she would be a good person to ask about what time we should head to the parade if we wanted to see something. She suggested that we leave now. We laughed and said, well let’s say we didn’t want to go until the morning, she then said somewhere between 2am and 4am. I then tried again and said, “What is the latest possible time you think we could leave our hotel by LAX and still see something at the parade?” She then said, “Well... Are there only three of you?” I looked at Andrew and Matt and said, “Yup. It’s just us.” She then went on to tell me how they were from a Lutheran church in Iowa and because of the work they do on the Lutheran float, a Presbyterian church on the parade route puts out some chairs for their group. She said she didn’t know if there would be any chairs for us but that she would be willing to try and snag us a few if we showed up reasonably early the next morning. We thanked them and said we might see them tomorrow.

Our next stop was back up toward Hollywood to Universal Studio’s City Walk. Andrew had an old periodontal friend named Steve he wanted to meet for dinner. It turned out that Steve had seven other people with him including two other older gentleman, one girlfriend and three of their “kids” who were all students at Wisconsin. We ate at Bubba Gump’s. It was a very enjoyable meal. We had wandered the city walk before dinner while waiting for Steve, so at the conclusion of the meal we made our way back to the car and hit the road back to the hotel.

Being that I agreed to pick Andrew and Matt up at 5:08am. I need to hit the hay. Tomorrow is sure to be a fun filled day and hopefully it will include a Duck victory!

Until tomorrow,
Katy