Obligatory writing

I honestly, don't know where to begin writing about life from the last two weeks. From the last time I sat down and wrote, I did a whole lot of things, traveled to various places, watched some baseball, saw some strippers, gambled a lot of money, and came back to normal life in the blink of an eye.

So it's safe to say, that I am kinda like the lion hunting the gazelle, and I'm trying not to get overwhelmed with thoughts and things to write about, to the point where I just lose my focus, turn off the monitor, and just say "screw it," and let another portion of my life go undocumented. So I'll try to keep it short and, hopefully sweet.

Two weeks ago, I headed out to California, to meet up with a close friend of mine, for a vacation of baseball, gambling, and bidding his bachelorhood a slow and eventful goodbye. I've been on lots of trips where I've had doubts about having done it afterwards, but I can say no such similarity occurred after this trip. I got off my plane in Atlanta ready to be back home, and feeling pretty good about myself afterwards. No confusion, no financial woes, nothing bad. As far as trips go, it was a perfect success all around.

The picture above is probably my favorite picture of the entire trip. Yeah, better than the photos at the ballparks, or with the smoking hot replica of Vanessa Marcil at the Hawaiian Tropic Lounge, because it is a simple photo that says so much more than all the others. It's a photo of my friend and I, standing in the middle of the blazing hot desert of Baker, California, in front of the World's Largest Thermometer, while he is eating Alien Jerky. To me, it defines a lot of things - being random, doing fun things, visiting strange places, and the fear of nothing, really. Visual proof that we were somewhere strange on the planet, or something like that. It's a photo I like, and perhaps I just can't coherently explain why.

The first leg of the trip was to Los Angeles, California. No less than an hour after getting off the plane in LAX, it was off to the car rental to pick up our chariot for the next week, which turned out to be a Dodge Caliber, and not the possible equivalent (Which turned out to be a Kia of some sort.) After getting in the car, it was off to the first park for our exploration - Dodger Stadium.

I've seen Dodger Stadium several times on television, from the few times that I've overzealously stayed up late to watch the Braves take on the Dodgers on the West Coast, but it was nothing like I imagined when I was walking through the place myself. Being one of the older parks, it gets away with cramped walkways, uncomfortable seats, and nothing really that spectacular in a bigger perspective. But it's Dodger Stadium, which makes it alright. Palm trees everywhere, was total culture shock to me. I've seem them, yeah, but integrated with the aethstetics of a baseball venue was really blowing my mind away.

Dodger Dogs were alright, but honestly, I'm not the biggest fan in the world of ballpark hot dogs, when I know that I can make some killer ones on my own.

We had the distinction of seeing the debut of Dodgers rookie, Clayton Kershaw. If he goes the rest of his career pitching like he did that day, we may have witnessed the birth of greatness.

Anyway, I realize that most people who come to read here typically could give two shits about the sports blathering I do. So that being said, I will do the crass thing, and redirect those who might actually be interested in reading my writing elsewhere: I am more or less becoming a bigger contributor to the baseball sites where I do a lot of my sports gushing, SBNation. I go under the user name "royhobbs," as in the fictional character portrayed by Robert Redford in the Natural. The ironic thing is that I do quite a great deal of writing there, since it caters a lot to my fellow sports-fans. And in turn, it's like it sucks up my writing mojo, and I feel more or less inclined to write for my own site, which is a huge no-no to me.

So with that, I cease to write about sports here, because I too would like to keep my overall word count to a lesser - it's late, and I'm kinda tired. But I do genuinely feel like I've fallen behind in my overall writing, and would like to alleviate that.

After the Dodgers game, there was a lot of driving around in California. Aimless, driving that resulted in often getting lost, which was something that I didn't really mind. However, I did mind the escalated cost of fuel, which in California was quite more expensive than that of Atlanta. But after picking up a map at Ralph's, which I realized was an off-brand of Kroger supermarkets, we found our way towards a beach; at the time, we were just looking for any beach. Turns out, we hit the Santa Monica Pier. Not exactly the best place for two bachelor guys, but it was still pleasant to walk down it, and take in the sights of the beautiful Pacific Coast.

Despite doing a lot of the touristy stuff in Los Angeles, lodging was in Anaheim; It was closer to the second day's game with the Angels, and therefore, would make getting out of the LA/OC area that much easier come the time to leave.

Besides, the driving around in the area wasn't nearly as bad I thought it would be. For the one city that always seems to trump Atlanta every year in traffic, it seemed like a relative cake walk to me.

So, I decided to tackle all the touristy crap as we could. The La Brea Tar Pits, Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards, the Walk of Fame, and Mann's Chinese Theater. All interesting things to look at, and I'm glad that I experienced them, but to a simplistic jock like myself, it means nothing more than just being able to say that I did them once in my life. If I went the entire rest of my life never going down those streets again, I could give two craps less.

I was actually more interested in the local dining - we hunted down a Tommy's Original Hamburgers, and it turns out that they too are better than traditional fast food hamburgers, but I would still place them in a peg beneath both In-and-Out, as well as Five Guys.

We also had a brief scare of brain-washing on Sunset Boulevard. Apparently, there is this Ministry of Defense-slash-church of Scientology funded propaganda museum exhibit, known as the "PSYCHIATRY: The Industry of DEATH" which is just some scare tactic that essentially blames every single bad thing that happened in the lineage of mankind on psychiatry. Never have I seen more made-up numbers in my life, but hey, it was air-conditioned, and they had clean bathrooms. Which is all we really wanted...

After a 12-inning marathon game which ruled, it was goodbye to Los Angeles and Anaheim, and on the way to San Diego. A part of me couldn't believe that I was doing the things I was doing on the trip, because let's face it - three cities in three days, and four cities in four days was pretty wild. I had a pretty content feeling in my head during all the drives in between cities.

After a brief stop through Huntington Beach, the rest of the drive was just taking in all the wonderful scenery. Instead of driving directly driving down the I-5, I had opted to take the scenic route, and drive down the Pacific Coast Highway, until it ended, and put me back onto the I-5.

All the beaches, I realized that it's only a matter of time before television execs create more crappy shows all named after a different California beach. They've already got crap like "The OC," "Laguna Beach," but they've still got Seal, Manhattan, Crystal, just to name a few. They're all beautiful places too, so it's not like they'd have to stretch the truth too-too far.

Anyway, San Diego.

I love San Diego. I fell absolutely in love with the place. It's clean, it's on the water, and it's beautiful in all aspects. Admittedly, I'm not the biggest fan in the world of California, and a lot of it had to do with my previous experiences in Los Angeles and Anaheim, years prior. Despite the fact that I had a good time in both cities prior to the drive down to San Diego, neither had further impressed me beyond my initial impressions. But San Diego was a whole different thing - prior to my travels, I got to chat with a lot of locals, while asking questions about their ballpark. And if their behavior was any indication to how the city would be like, I was in store for a lot of plesantries.

And it did not fail to disappoint - it's a wonderful place. The Gaslamp District is classy and interesting, and I could easily spend plenty of not-baseball-ambitious hours walking around, and people watching. It's got an Old Town feel, a Little Five Points alternative-ism, and a dining selection that is interesting and unique, with few mass-produced commercial entities. The harbor and waterfront were great places to walk around and enjoy the seaside views of ships and the Navy boats.

If there was one gripe I could possibly have about the city is the fact that for car drivers, it's a red-light hell. They're apparently so promoting of greener living, and alternative transportation, that it makes driving in cars downright unbearable in certain areas. There were times when I'd be green-lighted, only to get stopped immediately by the next stop signal.

As far as the parks I visited, I'd give my nod to Petco Park as the best of the three. I appreciate history and lineage, sure, but Petco was just straight up cool. A modern looking face, an interesting design on the inside, and a lot of things that I find aethstetically pleasing.

But that pretty much did it for all the baseball on the trip - the home team won in every instance, and I saw extra innings twice. Three home runs, but all in the last game alone, which was a little strange, considering the games prior had the two most explosive offenses in the American League, and one of them had his holy lord Pujols playing in it.

Prior to leaving San Diego, I went to go see the city's Balboa Park. As far as parks are concerned, I don't see it as much of a "park" in the sense that there are lots of trees, walkable land, swingsets, etc, but more or less a conglomeration of museums, galleries, and commercial entities. Regardless, the buildings there are all beautiful and architecturally interesting, and most certainly worth the trip out there. I've heard a lot of good things about the place from others in the past, and if I had a little more time, I wouldn't minded having gone to the other chunks of the park (the place is gigantic) by car, and seeing like perhaps the sports complex.

I'm not really a big fan of zoos - so I didn't bother going to the famous San Diego zoo, either.

But instead, my friend and I decided to take advantage of an interestingly layed-out courtyard and stage a brief Street Fighter scene.

And after a brief detour through the MUSEUM OF MAN, which I suppose was worth the $8 in admission just to be able to use a clean bathroom, it was time to say good bye to San Diego, and time to say goodbye to California.

It was time to go to Las Vegas.

The drive through the California desert was a little intimidating to think about, but even with my lack of faith in the rental I had, it was still a relatively young car, and should not have any worries making the long trip. But just thinking about what to possibly do if there were ever a problem in the middle of the desert was something I didn't really want to think about. Fortunately, the drive went pretty smooth, and the car held out just fine, as it should have. Amazingly, with as much straight driving there is all through I-15 from California through Las Vegas, there was an inordinate amount of traffic that resulted in some irritating stop-and-go action. But after we put the Los Angeles area behind us, it was relatively smooth sailing from there. Having never really done the drive myself from California to Nevada, it turned out to be not as bad, nor boring as I thought it might've been.

So Vegas was Vegas - nothing really new, nothing really a surprise to me anymore. The only real difference this time around was that my friend was with me, instead of me just being there with just my perverted orange brother.

One of the chief differences however, this particular Vegas trip, was the fact that my comps were a bit on the depleted side, as they were for my brother, so getting a comped room for the weekend was pretty much impossible, since there was apparently a fight between who knows/who cares at the Mandalay Bay, and as we all know, lodging on a fight night is downright impossible to acquire unless you're a filthy high-roller.

So despite staying for free at Harrah's the first two nights, I actually had to pay for a hotel room at the lesser-quality Hooter Hotel and Casino for the weekend nights. For what it is, Hooters is a shoddy hotel, but it's not like they're trying to hide it. If I were by myself, I wouldn't mind staying there, my only real gripe is just the speed of the elevators, but it is what it is - a place to put my things, and lay my head down at night.

Besides, they have really hot women there, often, as if that should be any surprise as well.

And speaking of hot women, a new place was discovered that might possibly be on my list of re-occurring visits the next time I'm out with the boys again - the Hawaiian Tropic Zone. Hot women who serve in bikinis - what more else do I need to say? Hm, perhaps the hotter women in the smaller bikinis who come out and dance all night after like 10 p.m. God, I love the Planet Hollywood casino. I think I can forgive them now for getting rid of the Aladdin.

Overall, the trip was successful. I didn't lose too much money, and I had a lot of fun losing it. I didn't sleep a whole lot, which is kind of odd to me, but I suppose it has something to do with being on the West Coast for a couple days prior to even showing up in the State of Nevada. When I got into Las Vegas, the excitement and novelty didn't bite me in the same way it normally does when I step off an airplane at McCarron International Airport.

I'm never in a real huge rush to begin gambling; to me, it's always like the equivalent of dipping a toe into the swimming pool to gauge the temperature. I know I'll have fun once I begin, but it's always that initial hesitation of "you know what you're getting yourself into" mentality that stands in the way for an extra second that has to be overcome.

One of the newer things discovered during this trip was the Gambler's General Store. I felt like a kid in a candy shop running around that place. An enthusiast could easily pick up things like replica felts, cards, and any casino supplies. Even entire tables, and casino furniture. All I know is that one of these days, I'll have my own house all to myself. At that time, I already know that I don't want to have a dining room table, when I could easily have a blackjack table, or a roulette table, or a pool/airhockey table instead.

I picked up a nice little set of chips and several decks of retired playing cards from various strip Casinos - I figure, if anything will allow me to enjoy blackjack more, is to be able to play it anywhere I want, with actual regulation size chips, and Vegas-equivalent playing cards.

I don't really have much more to write about, since I'd prefer to share stories about strip clubs and fine dining in person, or through verbal words. So I'll end this batch of long, albeit kinda forced writing with one last thing:

Yesssssssss keeep eeeeeeeeeeeting, here i brought you another diet coke, keep eeeeeeeting...