My native driver was a native of Iran. It was quite a drive to get to Costa Mesa, so I had the time to hear the short version of the story of his life. He had an MBA, but couldn't find a job, so he drove the cab as much as possible while taking computer science courses. His house cost him $250.000, which was a bargain, even for being several kilometres outside L.A. I soon learned that $70 isn't an awful lot of money in L.A., no matter how much further a New York cab would have taken me for that amount of money.
After 45 minutes I started getting a bit worried, as he had told me we would be there in less than 40 minutes, definitely. When I asked him how far we had left to go, he told me he didn't really know, would I be so kind as to take a look in the map he kept in the glove compartment? Lifting the gun out of the way I took the map, and after a while figured out where we were, and directed him to do an illegal U-turn and get off at the right exit from the freeway. So, after close to an hour of driving, I finally came here, to what must be the fanciest Mall in Costa Mesa. The worlds largest Nike store, Niketown, is 40 meters to my right, and EVERYONE around me wear Nike gear. It's not that strange, as Nike's headquarter is in this town, but I feel pretty sure people around here make enough money anyways.
So... Here I am, sitting outside Virtual World, a cyberspace gaming place, where I am supposed to meet Mo and some friends of hers ten minutes ago. I don't complain, though. There is really a lot of interesting sights wandering by. Judging by the way women dress, this is a beach. I think I'll have an icecream.
From there they pulled me into a nice, white Mercedes and when they let me out of it again, we were at Knott's Berry Farm. This is a huge amusement park, and me not having seen anything like it before was enchanted by it. It is about half a Disneyland, where the Disney figures have been replaced with characters from the Peanuts cartoon. I really enjoyed Montezuma's Revenge and other hip names for roller-coasters and water-rollers which might have been even more fun if it had been in the middle of the day so that we could dry up afterwards. Oh well. Definitely the best amusement park I have been to, even if that doesn't tell a lot about it.
Wet and hungry we snacked on mexican pizza and nachos supremo at Taco Bell.
Then it was time to find a home for the night for me, and I ended up here,
at the Colonial Inn at Huntington Beach, where surfers come from all over
the world to experience the unique waves of this area. It is nice here,
even though there are a lot of Swedes here. It is clean, all the gadgets
seem to work, and there are people from all parts of the wor... of Europe
here. Now I am very ready to go down to the beach and just stay there for
a long while. Yaaaay!
After 3 hours of hard lying around, I went to some spooky place along the beach and ate sea something for lunch. Worthwhile. Then I checked out the shops along Main Street (which has shops on one side of it and the beach on the other). They all seemed to sell bikinis, surf boards and postcards with pictures of bikinis and surf boards on them. Having relaxed walking around a bit, I returned to the hard lying around on the beach again, watching the surfers.
I recognized one of the guys from the breakfast at the hostel, and he offered to let me have a go with his board. I was not very good at it. I think there must have been something wrong with the board. It kept moving.
I also arranged with Maureen to pick me up at the Wherehouse Mall tomorrow, so that she can show me around in the area and take me to the Greyhound station in Anaheim, where I will leave from for San Francisco tomorrow. Tonight I just stay at the hostel and chat with the others here. Not being a surf freak it is somewhat hard to break into the conversation, but I can cope with it. One just has to throw in like, a cool word, two or three times per sentence. Yah. Tsjah.