The Great Hollywood Adventure!

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.

Travel Directory

(click on the link to read about it)

Hollywood!

The Get Smart Gathering

Get Smart in the Park

The Post-Gathering Gathering

My News-Dispatch article on the Gathering 

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