San Diego, CA to Garden Grove, CA

Day 13: Sun 3 Aug: It was up and at it early, with a nice breakfast and then to the road. Robert and Michael sent me on my way with fresh lemons and homemade chocolate chip cookies to share with my next hosts, since my previous hosts had given us some delicious organic peaches that we had eaten with breakfast.

Thanks guys! It was great seeing you on your home turf.

Nothing too exciting about the drive from San Diego to Garden Grove. It's pretty much one continuous city down here. Oh, two things to mention: Garden Grove uses an old-English style font for their overhead street signs, and Hugh, Mark, and Kurt live in a part of town called 'Little Saigon'. Most of the store signage is in Vietnamese.

Man, it was good seeing these guys again. And also Chloë and Bubbles (the cats). It had been a really long time. We weren't quite sure -- maybe since 1999? Way too long.

We had lunch at a good sushi joint and then they took me on a tour of their new house in Long Beach (where they will be moving in several weeks). It's in the midst of being renovated, but has a lot of cool features and a great floor plan. We stopped at the Home Depot on top of the hill for a great view of the Port of Long Beach and also an oil well in the parking lot. The oil wells pre-date the development aroud here and so the buildings seem to have grown up around them. It's an interesting look. Then we met up with their friends Warren and Rob and headed off to see The Dark Knight, in IMAX. The line for people who already had tickets was all the way around the building when we got there, but we still got decent seats.

The Dark Knight is really, really, dark. Heath Ledger did a great job as the Joker. It was disturbing. During parts of the movie, I felt like I felt when I watched Se7en, which set my personal standard for 'disturbing'. Hugh (Hugh couldn't come with us), you'll really like it.

Afterwards we all went to Johnny Rebs', a BBQ joint. Good food and great service. I guess this particular one had had a kitchen fire not too long ago and preserved some of the singed décor. Anyhow, good conversation and good food. They go together like ... well, like good conversation and good food.

In the sprawling city that is greater LA, I discovered that the natives talk about roads and traffic the way we Vermonters talk about the weather. In Vermont, the roads and traffic don't change, but the weather does. In LA, it's very much the opposite.

Went back to Garden Grove, hung out, caught up, and went to bed.