LA, the end... and going to see the doctor!

On we rocked, and rocked we on... shutup. Harbouring up in Malibu after the short drive from Santa B we got a quick mcdonalds and headed to the beach! Finally letting getting some use of the surfboard we had been lugging around in the van aimlessly for the whole trip, suffice to say Dave was delighted! Finally reaching the beach we were still all pretty spent from our antics in SB the night before and took the first chance we could to lie down. However this didn't impede Farzo, taking off down the beach without prior warning, disappearing on the horizon and not returning for a considerable period. Drowsiness and things not really worth remembering happened and next thing you know we were in LA!

We spent a nice majority of the evening driving around the city looking for a hostel and eventually settled for another dodgy motel towards the end of Hollywood Blvd. Two of us went into the check in desk and talked with the chinese guy behind the counter who seemed a bit sketchy but eventually let us stay! We had noticed a lot of trucks and camera gear in the parking lot of the hotel but we didn't really think anything of it. On the way into the room however we bumped into another guest of the motel who told us that Fergie was shooting a video over the next day or two in the same motel we were staying in! Suppose we were in Hollywood afterall :) None of us could claim to be huge fans of her music or anything but still lads, she is daycent!

We went into the rooms anyway and balmed for a small bit. Then got brushed up for another night on the tiles but on the way out we passed between two cars and a curly haired character wearing sunglasses who looked vaguely familiar. It eventually took Jamie to pose the question while we were leaving the parking lot "Lads, was that Slash?" (ie slash from guns n roses!) We got talking to one of the camera crew and he told us all that was going on, himself and fergie from the black eyed peas were filming a video for some new song they were bringing out!! The guy told us they would be around for the next day or two and said he would try his best to get us a meet and greet or whatever with the two! Totally unexpected but still pretty unreal!

Anyway, we bought copious amounts of some cheap vodka and headed towards the other side of Hollywood to The Viper Room, the club formerly owned by Johnny Depp and the one famous for River Phoenix overdosing and dying on the door step right outside! Dave had booked us all tickets for a gig that was going on there that night for a band called 'warner drive' (I think! Memory is getting hazy) After a fairly long stroll and taxi ride we got there and all I can say after going to the show is that rock n' roll certainly still exists! In California anyway. The night just had a real essence of 'fuck you i'll do what i want about it'. The main singer of the band, during the build up for the solo in 'whole lotta love' by led zeppelin, started tripping majorly on the stage.. Licking the guitarist while writhing on the ground in agony doing the 'ah ah ah ah ah ah' bit
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXKboDqiSbE <-- about two n a half minutes in]
for the two minutes. Then proceeding to go absolutely spastic for the rest of the performance! There was a massive fight in front of the stage between two absolutely cracking women tearing lumps out of each other and afterwards the scrawniest drug addicted looking performers in the band had some of the best looking groupies I have ever seen completely HANGING off them. The vibe in the place was just immense (definitely nowhere near Bandaoke in reardens on  wednesday though).

Afterwards then outside was just manic. Again, you had the best looking women in Hollywood absolutely hanging off these tattooed punk rocker type dudes who drove really strange muscle cars converted from really old models. It was all just a bit surreal! I felt like I was overdosing outside of there and the drink had well and truly been sweated out of me at that point!

 Dude doing his "having sex with the ground and orgasming multiply" act

Ja Biys

It was about this point we were starting to get narky and tired and wanted to go home so we taxi'd it back to the motel! (lies, that was just me being a tired unenthusiastic negative prick)

So we got back to the motel and as it just happened; Fergie and Slash had just finished filming and were going  for a drink afterwards in their famous person truck. We bumped into the camera man who we were talking to earlier and we got to party with both Slash and Fergie and their respective entourages for the night. Seriously living it up!! (Lies, that last paragraph never happened....ever)

Heres the video they made anyway... dont think it was particularly successful... but anyway

If you squint you can see our white van at some stage (also lies)

So the next day we got up, shook off the hangovers and took a trip down to venice beach! Probably one of the coolest places you will ever go... All sorts going on down there. Dudes selling rap cd's while playing it on their boombox. Girls walking around with snakes on their shoulders. About a million and one places to buy medical marijuana, not being advertised very medically! Basically its a pretty cool place with a lot going on! Myself and blake had a game of paddle tennis practically on the beach on these cool courts they had there, the game got so intense blake had to take off his shoes to keep playing. results of that can be seen below.. the lads took a sconce inside muscle beach, one of the most famous gym's in the world! There was also one of the coolest urban skate parks Ive ever seen down there with skaters doing absolutely ridiculous tricks. This place is just a hotspot for seeing weird shit. It was definitely one of the most eye-opening places I have ever been to. A place where the most artsy and creative people of LA meets gangster rappers in a pretty cool backdrop! Heres some pics anyway..

From Venice beach we took our travels back inland and said we would go get a look at the Hollywood sign while we were at it and it was still bright! Driving in LA is pretty hectic but we got through all the traffic etc. and on the way swung into the wildcard boxing gym owned by Freddie Roach. This is the gym where the (disputably) best pound for pound boxer trains and condition, Manny Pacquiao! We threw our heads into the gym on the off chance we might see either of them but to no avail. All we got was some pretty mean stares from ridiculously well built fellas hammering into punching bags and each other. So we left fairly briskly! Pretty cool to see the inside of the gym though which looks like it could be anywhere in the world. Just a normal day-to-day gym with people working out inside. Weird to think how Floyd Mayweather probably has a multi million dollar strength and conditioning facility in his own home where he trains and Pacquiao trains somewhere you could find off Blarney street. Thats us here anyway in the token group photo..

After that we went rambling around Beverley Hills looking at all the rich houses and doing the norm thing. Had a look at the hollywood sign, turns out its smaller than you would think. Still better than the Dingle one though.. 

Cant really remember anything particularly exciting happening after that so we went back to the Motel and got dressed and stuff for drinking again!

Blakes socks after his demolition by Roger Keverer

Rose and shone the next day after a pretty uneventful night wandering up the hollywood strip looking at all the stars on the ground and all that craic. Today was a poor day though as we were losing another two of our crew. Jamie and Scott were flying home :( So we packed up the van, yet again, for another adventure off somewhere else! The lads flight wasnt until the late afternoon so we took a cruise through compton just to see what all the fuss was about. No shootings or gangster related activity detected we headed towards Inglewood and tested our luck a bit further. Still with a few hours to burn we parked up in Inglewood and got the hurleys out to have a bit of a puckaround. A stupid idea? Yes, Had to be done? Of course. Pulling out our camáns in a dodgy, dodgy black neighbourhood of LA definitely wasnt one of our better moves! Wonder what Dr.Dre would make of that if he saw it! Probably would incorporate it into his next tune....

On that note we got our last picture of the hols as scotty owned the camera so no more visual aid from here on in!..

Dropping the lads off we decided to take another spin down to venice beach for a look around! It was here we managed to somehow blag our way into being in the audience for a Dr. Phil show being filmed the next day! That in mind we decided to kip up in the car that night and chance our arms at being on the show the next day! Cue some dodgy characters freaking us out, a strange man designing an imaginary recording studio for us and assigning us a band name and what our roles in the band were (crystal meth must be a hell of a drug), an encounter with a very dodgy fear dúbh on a bicycle and the James Bond incident! Way too much detail involved in that to explain at half 2 in the morning... So after running away from a couple of suspicious people we parked up in what we thought was a safe spot and eventually got some shut eye. Awaking in the morning looking forward to going on Dr. Phil we realised our parking spot hadnt been that safe, with police cars coming and going left right and centre! We managed to park outside the hollywood police station. 

That debacle behind us we parked up and threw in the best clothes we had left; soggy, wrinkled jeans and shirts that hadnt been touched since vegas. Suffice to say they put us at the back of the audience! Queueing up to get on the show we were delighted waiting with our free capri suns and ryvitas. We went into the studio and took our place at the (very back) of the audience and watched an episode on cyber bullying being filmed right in front of us! The initial thoughts of jeering everyone that came on were kind of blown out of the water when all of the guests were crying and talking about this sensitive issue we left a tad disappointed. Also disappointing was the hampers and DR. Phil memorabilia we were promised wernt given to us. The guy who said we would leave with "bags of stuff" and that it would be "just like christmas" was clearly a spoof... Either way we were on Dr. Phil which is still pretty cool! 

It was with that in our heads we took to the road back to San Diego and the last leg of the journey :( the road trip and J1 as a whole was coming to a very realistic end. On the way we swung by Huntington beach and Newport for one last ride on "the wedge". A spot up the coast from San Diego we had fell in love with over the course of the summer! It's basically a (slightly) man made wave that because of the dip in the sand and refraction from the wall next to it jacks up to a huge height just as it approaches the shore and becomes a massive wall of a wave. Waiting to absolutely destroy you! Heres a video just to give you an idea... 

What an unreal spot!.. I seriously fell in love with this place the couple of times we were here and would recommend anybody in cali to have a look. Its free and time consuming. Happy days!

Blake n myself there at the early stage of july!

Blake on driving duties we got a couple of cans for the final 2 hour furlong back to SD. (I still owe ya for those cans farzo)... Trip over. The car was returned to hertz and we were left to survive out in San Diego for another week or so with absolutely nothing to our names! 

Some unbelievable few weeks though, better than any holiday I have ever been on and definitely comes highly recommended!

NorCal Pt 1

Leaving the magnificence of Yosemite behind, 7 tired bodies continued north. We came down the north side of the Yosemite Valley and the landscape changed to a grim, more barren one. Lots of loose, rocky terrain with brown and wasted looking grass sticking up everywhere. Still pretty cool though! Once down and out of the valley we happened upon a petrol station ("Gas station"). The bodies weary and the pockets starting to feel considerably lighter it was here that we happened upon our first hiccough and the first disagreement of the trip came about. As it was regarding the unfair distribution of hamburgers it was nothing too sinister and all was well 3 hours up the road. This was the only bit of friction on the whole trip which I think is testament to everyone considering we were living out of a car for two weeks straight!

Anyway, we drove on for the rest of the day and seeing as it was late when we were leaving Yosemite due to afformentioned hike we found some dodgy little backwater (Gardenerville I think it was called) and had our first (of many) stays in a dodgy motel! Parked up in some backwater on the California/Nevada border we pulled in, got the room and a couple of cans, as natural. As the night aged we toyed with the idea of going into one of the local saloon type bars and seeing what happened however one or two people passed out in the meantime and we said we would give our bodies a rest...

We woke up in the morning and went across the road to the Walmart to stack up on some breakfast and supplies for the road ahead. While everyone else was munching on, myself and Blake realised that Cork were playing the dubs in the semi final of the football. Because of the time difference we managed to most of the first half however we didnt exactly have anywhere to watch it either! As we had nowhere to access the internet either we decided to take turns sneaking into the office of the motel and jumping onto the proprietors computer while he was in the back. Each time after about 15-20 minutes he would come in and kick one of us out but we eventually got to see the result! A narrow and, apparently, undeserved Cork win. Who cares, we'll take it!

So we loaded up the van yet again and off we went. Leaving Gardnerville someone managed to spot a group of very attractive girls in slightly wet t-shirts advertising a car wash. Our thoughts..... HAPPY DAYS! We swung the car around and passed by the same girls advertising it and somebody commented on the fact that the girls looked a tad young. We pulled into this kind of parking lot where the car washing was taking place we realised those suspicions were well and truly correct. One look at the even younger looking girls washing the cars confirmed it for us. And the sign saying girls u-17 soccer fund-raiser really drove it home! While we were parked up (of course we werent still thinking of getting the car washed, we were just stopped..... trying to tune the radio) we noticed our big white van had attracted a few stares. These stares were not of the Gardnerville u-17 soccer team but their hell's angels type biker looking fathers. That was dis-invitation enough for us. Scoot.

A pretty good marketing ploy it must be said, putting the tallest, oldest looking girls of the team out in the middle of a main road wearing wet t-shirts however maybe they should have made the u-17 section of the sign a bit bigger. No pictures of this incident fortunately (or unfortunately, depends who's reading!)

Leaving Gardnerville with a bit of a bitter taste in our mouth we tore on up the mountain ahead to see what all the fuss was about this Lake Tahoe spot. Scotty managed to grab a couple of snaps out the window on the way, and just as well. Yet again, serious landscape!

-This photo is just as we were approaching the ascent to Tahoe

-Here was looking back on where we had just come from!

Once we arrived in Tahoe, like Yosemite, the scenery was absolutely stunning. Nature at its finest! Deciduous trees, crime fighting squirrels all that jazz. However a lot of the place has been ruined with massive signs selling you this, that and the other thing. Kind of took away from the place a small bit, especially after being in Yosemite where there was only one licensed shop in the whole one thousand odd square miles! Meh, troop on regardless!..

We stopped at a shop so a certain somebody could make a couple of "quick" phone calls to his nearest and dearest. 2 hours later we were absolutely fuming and getting a bit impatient as the cigarettes were starting to run out. We did happen to chance upon an absolute lunatic however who gave us his business idea for a kids toy. I wont say anymore on it just in case he has a patent on it however I will say for it that it was an absolutely terrible idea with no appeal to anybody... anywhere. Phone call finished we went off to find the booze cruise that the girls we had met in Yosemite had told us about..

Before you get any ideas of an inbetweeners style magaluf booze cruise I will stop you right there. This cruise involved us bringing a case of our own beer onto a rented raft and doing a whitewater style journey down the river. I will say however that the rafting wasnt very extreme. Hence why we were drinking. Midway down the river we needed to pull in to the side to relieve ourselves while families with young children and couples swanned past us. Inappropriate? Yes, but that was beginning to become a common trend.

Here's an idea of what we were up to... Add beer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqZQRJmwx7w

Once we drunkenly found the end point there was a bus back to the start so we hooked up with the lads there and tore west for San Fran. Not before we could get a picture with the token fat chick however...

(apparently she used that stick to kill her prey)