My "Great Hollywood Adventure" began months ago
as I was trying to make flight, hotel, and misc. arrangements for "The Get
Smart Gathering." Hollywood was always the kind of place I'd dreamed about
going, but never anticipated actually going to. The bottom line is, I was raised
in Pennsylvania and grew up in Indiana... two different worlds than Southern
California. The furthest west I had been, until Nov. 6, 2003 was Peoria, Ill.
Ooooh.
That all changed when the Get Smart Gathering came about.
Our Get Smart List serve "Chief" Carl Birkmeyer had, through a ton of
effort, arranged for the cast and crew of Get Smart to be present at a dinner
in which fans could buy tickets to. Now there's no way in heck I was going pass
up seeing Don Adams and Barbara Feldon in person and meeting my fellow list
members.
That Thursday I got up at 5 a.m., my parents picking me up
a half hour later, and headed to South Bend for my flight. Be it noted this was
my first time in a plane. I have acrophobia, but I'm okay when I know I'm enclosed
in something. My concern was not flying itself anyway. I was just wigged about
making my connections and figuring out where the heck I was supposed to go.
Fortunately everything went smooth -even at O'Hare!
There's not to much to be said about flying that probably
hasn't already been said. The window seat I had proved to be interesting form of
entertainment. The world below was either white fluff, a patch work quilt or a
series of veins carved into the earth.
Arriving at LAX was even more interesting. I had no idea
where I was going or what I was doing. Part of me felt like I had been dropped
in a strange world -kurplump! I quickly regrouped and found the LAX's wonderful
world of ground transportation. My choice of travel was a shared van called
Super Shuttle. They're a bit cheaper than cabs (and cabs are pretty steep in
L.A.) and give a nice tour of the city on the way from the airport. The ride
also gave a great view of the Hollywood sign... wow...
The rest of my journey is in the table on the right. I'd advise
going to those pages in order as I've got a novel going on here. Oh,
yes, there are pictures on the other pages.
|