Lost in LA

 

“You should have exited.  That was our exit,” Erin said flatly as we whizzed past the exit sign.

“It’s okay,” I respond.  “We’ll take the next exit and circle back.  Don’t worry, we have plenty of time to catch your flight.”

Just then, rounding a corner at 60 miles an hour on the 405, we came to a dead stop.  Bumper-to-bumper traffic in primetime rush hour in the heart of Los Angeles.  A half hour later, creeping along the freeway, we exit, find the freeway entrance going the opposite direction and are back in the thick of traffic.

Choosing the freeway and not traveling the inland streets was a judgment call.  The GPS showed that the route was about equal in mileage – whether traveling inland or going the freeway.  We thought the freeway would be quicker.  We thought wrong {grin}!  Was it because it was Friday the 13th or was this the norm?  I’m pretty confident that it’s the norm.

Have you ever been lost in LA?  I have.  Plenty of times.  Even though I’ve lived in Southern California for more than 20 years (actually, it’s more than 30 years, but, hey, who’s counting?), Los Angeles is a constant source of wide-eyed wonder, nail-biting anxiety, frazzled nerves and wishful thinking (wishing I was back home instead of stuck in traffic!).

And, here I was, lost in LA, with two frazzled, exhausted young women who were silently gritting their teeth as we inched our way back to LAX (Los Angeles International Airport).

In early November, I got an email from one of my favorite nieces (actually, ALL of my nieces are my favorites!  It depends on who I’m talking to at the moment {grin}).  Here’s a picture of this beautiful girl:

 

Anyway, she said:

Hi, Aunt Carole:

I think Lorikeets are native to Australia… I haven’t seen any here; they didn’t even have them at the zoo here! (sidebar explanation:  I sent her the photo below and asked her if she’d seen any lorikeets.  Now, back to her email…)

Erin and the lorikeets at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park about 5 years ago

I was actually going to email you to ask you a question.  On my way back from Fiji, my friend Ana and I stop in LA and we have an 11 hour layover.  I get there on December, Friday the 13th at 12:00 noon and I don’t leave until 11:00 at night!  I would LOVE to meet up with you for a few hours and go to lunch or something if that would work out for you!!!  I think you have Fridays off (I do), but the traffic might be really bad trying to get to LA, so I completely understand if you are not up for it.  Let me know; I would really love to see you!  I love you and miss you lots!

Love,

Erin

 

Of course I said yes!  I already had plans to spend the weekend with one of my best friends, Christin, in Orange County, so I would just drive up earlier!  You can read more about Christin and see a picture of her here,  Saving Mr. Lincoln – May 2013 Update, and here, An Irish Blessing (or two…).

A few weeks before, I called Christin to ask if she was up to hanging out with the 2 girls flying in from Fiji and she said sure!  I actually had an ulterior motive in recruiting Christin to join our 11 hour adventure because she’s lived in Orange County quite a long time and LA County is nothing to her; she knows the ins-and-outs, the wheres-and-wherefores and the nitty-gritty of the whole of it.  And, she knows the best restaurants and the most fun things to do.

Plus, she’s not intimidated by it all.  As a seasoned traveler, she’s been to LAX more times than she is old!

Me, on the other hand, not so much.  Not so much traveling in the last 25 years – once every other year, if I’m lucky!  And, not so many trips to LA!  I go to Orange County every few months, but usually don’t venture into the empire that is Los Angeles and Los Angeles County!  I’ve dubbed it an empire because, with almost 10 million people living in Los Angeles County, it is bigger than many countries!

Anyway, with Christin on-board, we were set to maximize our 11-hour adventure into LA hot spots, tourist spots and restaurants!  Wahoo!  I had a “plan” – a plan to maximize the 11 hour layover for the girls and make the day memorable.

Well, here’s what happened to “the plan”:

Erin’s ticket confirmation said they were arriving via Air New Zealand and of course, it had the flight number, etc.  I arrived at LAX just in time and after parking in a great parking spot (lucky me!), I ran to find one of those arrival boards that flashes updated information on arrival and departures times, gates, etc.  Erin and I agreed ahead of time to meet at baggage claim.

The board was flashing that the flight had arrived at the gate, so I waited breathlessly to see which baggage carousel they would assign.  I’d already made my way to baggage claim and, interestingly, no one was there!  Not one blessed person…how very strange, I thought to myself.  Finally, the board flashed that her flight was assigned baggage carousel #5.  Well, I’m standing right smack dab in the middle of the baggage claim area in Terminal 2 and there were only 4 carousels!!!

What to do?  What to do?  After pondering this dilemma for a few minutes, I walk the entire length of the baggage claim area looking for the mysterious baggage carousel #5.  No #5.

Heading to an information counter, I wait in line to ask my question.  Finally, it’s my turn (ticktock; time’s a wasting!) and I ask the gentlemen where is baggage claim #5?  He says “there is no baggage claim #5.  What airline is she arriving on?” 

“Air New Zealand,” I respond.

“See that gray wall over there?” he points.  “Go stand there with all the other people.  She will have to clear customs with her baggage (duh?  now why didn’t I know that?  Me, the world traveler should have figured that out!) and you aren’t allowed beyond that area over there.  But, she’ll have to come through that portal, so if you wait there, you’ll meet her.”

I thank him and head over to the designated spot.  And, I wait.  And, I wait.  And, I wait.

Nothing, except more people are gathering to meet arrivals.  Maybe she took another “portal” to a different part of the airport (or a different part of the universe; LAX is a big black hole after all!).

So, I call her.  When all else fails, use your cell phone!

“Erin, are you here?”

“Yes, I’m at baggage claim.  I don’t see you.”

I tell her the story and she starts walking to meet me.  And walking.  And walking.

She calls me back, “I don’t think we are in the same area.  Where are you?”

I tell her that I’m at Terminal 2 – Air New Zealand and there’s a Starbucks.

“I think I’m in a completely different part of the airport.  Stay there, at Starbucks.  I’ll find you.”

By this time, an hour has passed.  It’s way past my lunchtime and I’m starving.  I decide to buy coffee and a snack at Starbucks and sit down at one of the tables to wait for Erin.  They call my name to pick up my tall, caramel latte with a shot and a half, extra caramel and whipped cream, and as I stand and turn towards the pick-up counter, I am tackled by my beautiful, very petite niece who envelopes me in a bear hug!

Whew, was I ever glad to see her!  But, where was her friend, Ana?

“Ana’s flight leaves at 9:30 p.m., so she wanted to see if she could catch an earlier flight.  She’s at the ticket counter trying to change her ticket.  She’ll meet up with us when she’s done.”

So, we order Erin coffee and a snack and sit down to catch up.  It’s then that I learn that she arrived via Fiji Airlines and NOT Air New Zealand, thus the reason that we were lost in LAX!  And, she had no idea WHY she arrived via Fiji Airlines and not Air New Zealand.  But, the bottom line of this snafu is that she arrived in a completely different part of LAX (LAX is its own mini-country; the 6th busiest airport in the world).

While waiting for Ana, Erin tells me that she’d like to change her flight reservations, too, if possible and try to get home to the East Coast before a major storm develops and shuts down airports.  10 hours from now, she’s schedule to board an airplane bound for Chicago, then has a 3 hour layover in Chicago before boarding her next flight for the final leg home.  We agree that when Ana joins us, we will go to Erin’s airline and see what we can do.  Erin tells me that they are not traveling together once they leave LA, since their final destination is two different cities!

About a half hour later, Ana finds us.  Not successful in changing her flight to an earlier flight, she has checked her baggage and obtained her boarding pass.  Whatever we do, she needs to be back between 8:00 and 8:30 p.m.

 

We take Erin’s luggage and both girls’ carry-on luggage to my car and then head to another terminal to try to change Erin’s ticket.  LAX occupies 3,500 acres, so trudging from terminal to terminal, on foot, is no easy undertaking.  But, neither is parking at LAX and I didn’t want to give up my really good parking space!

15 minutes later, we arrive in Erin’s terminal (I think a 15 minute walk equals a mile? {grin}).  Now I’m really pooped (I’m no spring chicken, remember?) and the girls, while 38 years younger than me, are pooped too!  After all, they’ve now been up more than 24 hours without sleep!

There’s only one line to queue up to ask questions at this terminal.  All the other ticket counters have been replaced with self-service ticket kiosks.  So, we get in line.  At that point, Erin notices an 800 phone number  flashing across the message boards above the counters.  The 800 number is for rebooking flights.

“Should I call that number?” she asks me.

“Couldn’t hurt,” I respond.  “We have to stand in this long line, anyway, and maybe you’ll get through to someone before we reach the counter.”

She tells me that the “wait time” per the phone message is 30 minutes.  I shrug my shoulders and say “go for it.  It may still be faster than this line!”

I should have NEVER said that!  I jinxed us with the Friday the 13th jinx by stating this out loud!

An hour later, we are still in line.

Erin has been transferred twice on the phone and each time starts the 30 minute wait over again.  The line has not moved ONE PERSON the entire time we are in it.  The same people are at the head of the line at the counter talking to the airline staff, that were there an hour before!  At one point I notice the airline employee, helping the two men standing at the counter, is holding 8 passports!

And there is, apparently, no other airline staff available to answer questions.

By this time, the young man in front of us starts talking to us.  He’s been eying Erin the entire time and would have probably talked to us sooner, but Erin’s been on the phone the entire time, waiting for help!  Ana has left to wander the terminal looking for a place to sit down and relax.  Interestingly, the only “waiting area” with actual seats is cordoned off and every seat emblazoned with printed signs that read “wheelchairs only.”  Now I ask you, if a person is in a wheelchair, what are the chances that they will transfer out of the wheelchair to sit in one of those seats?  Ummmm…..

Anyway, he’s good-looking in a jock kinda way and when he speaks, he has an accent.  I learn he’s from London on his way to spend the holidays with a friend in Santa Barbara and he’s arrived in LAX with no connecting flight booked to Santa Barbara.  He’s trying to flirt with Erin and she’s totally clueless!  Clueless.

Just then, an airline employee comes whisking through the line, asking everyone what they need help with.  She quickly dispatches everyone from the line, directing them to other areas within the terminal.  When it’s our turn, she tells us that we need to use the self-service kiosks.

The self-service kiosk doesn’t give Erin any options to do anything except check her flight, check her baggage and print her boarding pass.  We get out of line, frustrated, and she’s still on the phone waiting for help.

I spot another airline employee and flag her down and ask her how we can change Erin’s ticket.  She explains to us that everything is done via the self-service kiosk and if the self-service machine does not give Erin any choices, that means there are no earlier flights – they are either all booked or there just aren’t any earlier flights.

Duh!

We’ve spent more than an hour, in line, to be told that we are outsmarted by a machine!

Disappointed that Erin can’t change her flight, we head outside.  It is now after 3:00 p.m. on a Friday at LAX and Christin lives an hour away.

“I have a confession to make,” I announce.  “LA isn’t my ‘hood and I don’t know my way out of here past the freeway entrance.  I was relying on connecting with Christin and having her chauffeur us around LA.  It’s too late to meet up with Christin.  And, I don’t have a GPS in my car.”

What, no GPS?  No, I don’t have a GPS.  I’m a particular breed of dinosaur – a Noneedforagpsasaurus.   No.need.for.a.gps.asaurus.  I have no need because 99% of the time, I’m in my ‘hood.

And my husband, who surprised me for our 20th anniversary 4 years ago with this car, bought one with no GPS because he’s another particular breed of dinosaur – a Doesnotuseacomputersodoesnotunderstandtheneedforcomputerlikedevicesasaurus!  Does. not. use. a. computer. so. does. not. understand. the. need. for. computer-like. devices. asaurus!

So, I tell the girls that one of them will have to be the navigator using an app on their phones.  Erin volunteers for the job and we trudge back through LAX to the parking lot to find my car.

Christin had texted me the address of her restaurant recommendation, Mario Batali’s Pizzeria Mozza in Highland Park, plus told me that Griffith Park was THE place to go.  She also tells me that she’d attempted to make reservations at the restaurant for us, but they are booked.  She recommends we try it anyway, because once we get there, we might get a seat.

Not wanting to tempt fate that we may not have enough time to go to both Griffith Park and Pizzeria Mozza on Friday the 13th in LA, we decide to forego the outing to Griffith Park and head straight to the restaurant.  After all, it’s after 3:00 p.m. and the girls have not eaten anything but their Starbucks snack for 6 hours!  To say they were hungry is an understatement!

45 minutes later, using navigational skills inherited from her father (he’s an Air Force C-130 airplane navigator), Erin navigates us straight to the restaurant, which is located in the very trendy Melrose neighborhood of LA.  They offer valet parking and we take advantage of it.  The parking valet hands me a ticket (remember this for later) and we head in to the restaurant.

The host tells us they are booked until 10:30 p.m. (popular place!), but there are 3 places at the Pizza Bar.  Did we want those seats?  Sure!  We are ushered over to the busy pizza bar with front row seats of the chefs creating the very popular and delicious pizzas.  The restaurant is small, packed to the gills, and noisy.  A very “happening” place (if small, noisy restaurants are your thing), this is the place to be and be seen on a Friday night in LA.

Immediately, a wait staff approaches us with menus and first thing out of my mouth I blurt, “do you have that butterscotch thingy?”

You see, I’ve eaten a couple of times at Pizzeria Mozza in Newport Beach.  And, Christin introduced me to the fabulous Butterscotch Budino, Sea Salt and Rosemary Pine Nut Cookies dessert that is so satisfying on so many levels!  Creamy, sweet, salty with several layers of decadent deliciousness plus the tiny rosemary pine nut cookies served on the side!  Every bite is heaven {sigh!}.

Yes, he assured me.  They have the butterscotch thingy!  My world is complete and I’m a happy (and tired) girl!

The girls sit on my left and to my right is a couple with the man on my right.  Within minutes of us taking our place at the pizza bar, this couple is served several different appetizers.  I butt in and ask the man about their choices.  He tells me that we have to have the Meatballs Al Forno and the Chicken Livers, Capers, Parsley and Guanciale Bruschette.  After consulting with Erin and Ana, we ordered those plus a Margherita Pizza and a Fennel Sausage, Panna Red Onion and Scallions Pizza, recommended by the waiter.  And, of course, the butterscotch thingy!

A few minutes later, our first appetizer arrives…

 

The girls are not a fans of the chicken liver bruschetta (more of an “acquired” taste), but inhaled the margherita pizza.  We only ate half of the fennel sausage pizza (again, an “acquired” taste and the girls were underwhelmed).  However, the wait staff was exceptional, with multiple people checking on us throughout our meal.  And, of course, the butterscotch thingy was to die for!

In any case, I dominate the conversation, giving the girls my sage advice on life, elder care, hospice care, their future as the oldest ones in their respective families, the joys of blogging, etc., while they nod politely and try not to nod off!

Back outside, I ask the valet for my car.  He asks for a valet parking ticket.  I rummage through my purse and mutter, “I don’t remember getting a valet ticket.” 

The valet is a completely different person then the one that checked us in an hour and a half earlier.  As I’m rummaging through my purse, I’m silently thinking “did I give my car to a complete stranger, in downtown LA, in an alley, and NOT get a valet ticket?  How stupid am I?  Maybe that person wasn’t even an employee of a restaurant, but a car thief who has now stolen my car?”

The valet on-duty talks into his walky-talky (speaking Spanish; so I’m clueless!) for several minutes.  Just as I’m starting to really worry, my car arrives AND I realize that my valet ticket is in my pocket!  Silly girl!

In the car, Erin expertly navigates us back through the Melrose neighborhood and we decide to try the freeway.

 

Off to a good start, “bam” we are stalled in bumper to bumper traffic, in the dark, in LA, the city of 10,000,000 people all converging out into the night, Friday night, Friday the 13th!  Keeping my cool, when Erin tells me I’ve screwed up (after all, I don’t want to worry these two East Coast girls and let them think, for one little, itty, bitty minute, that they might miss their flights after roaming the streets of LA with a clueless, middle-aged {actually pre-elderly} aunt), I expertly get us heading in the right direction.

We arrive at LAX at 8:15 p.m., just in time to drop Ana at her gate.  A quick good-bye, Erin and I drive around LAX a few times before we get our bearings again and finally decide to park.  We have an hour and a half before her plane boards and the terminals at LAX are not “user-friendly”, in other words, they don’t have much seating, there isn’t anyplace to get a drink or a snack and we are too exhausted to explore further.

So, we sit on a bench and Erin tells me about her studying abroad for the last semester and she shares her pictures…

 

 

New Zealand is known for their educational system and Erin’s college has a program for education majors to study abroad at the University of Auckland.  The experience of a lifetime, a few of the girls took a side trip to Fiji on the last couple of days of their semester abroad.

It had been 2 years since I’d last seen Erin.  She had grown from a high school teenager with dreams to a young woman with career goals.

How do you condense a 2 year absence into a 10-hour day?  10 hours dealing with airport issues, driving the neighborhoods of LA with no clue where we were, followed by dinner in a crowded, noisy restaurant where you had to yell to hear each other, and negotiating LA traffic in the pitch-black dark?

You don’t.  But, you remember the underlying love that is family.  And, with family, there never really is an “absence” in time because of the love in your heart.  And, every moment is an adventure, even if it’s a small, 11-hour adventure lost in LA.

Tootles,

 

Related Posts:

(other posts about travels)

• 6 Balloons
• 42 Things to do in San Diego
• An Irish Blessing (or two)…
• Bloggy Boot Camp Revealed
• Disneyland on a Dime
• Operation Swallow Adios
• Really?  Seriously?  Are You Frickin’ Kidding Me?
• Running A-Fowl with Coots
• The Call of the Whinny:  Yet Another Story from the Farm
• The Magic of Fairy Days
• We’re Not in Kansas Anymore