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My dad used to live on Long Beach and I have been in and out of LAX over a dozen times, therefore Los Angeles felt like
a home away from home. And considering I was put up by fraternity brothers this stop was less about exploration and more
about intoxication.

Jeremy Delaplane, Austin Blasingame and Nick D'Angelo, three of my favorite college characters and the fourth roommate
Mike, had one of the sweetest set ups imaginable. Delaplane is notorious for pontificating about the cooler aspects of his life
in emails he sends out like quarterly press releases so when he told me of an awesome beach front set up, 100 steps from the
waves on Venice Beach , I tempered my expectations. There was nothing to tone down, their house, Bungalow-24, is a spacious
second floor, four bedroom, two living room pad complete with an ocean view terrace and pool table. And was one of the most
compelling reasons I could imagine moving to California for... Well that and the fact that Dela does need sunglasses to go on his
lunch-hour.

Knowing about the infamously bad traffic in the greater LA region, I came prepared to spend some time in traffic and stepped it up by
renting a sporty, red, black leather, V8, drop-top Thunderbird. I figured, “why not?” and it was especially well worth it. Driving to see
a good family friend, Belinda Perez, in evening rush hour traffic took me just shy of two-hours to get to her house. Where as driving
home three hours later only took 40 minutes—going the speed limit, of course.

For this New Yorker I thought it was very “ California ” when Austin came home form work at 6-pm with a hustle in his step saying
he could catch a few waves before sunset. He offered me a board but after living half my life in Florida if I didn't surf by now it wasn't
going to happen. I did, however, grab my camera and catch some fantastic shots of some smooth Cally-surfin'.

Another notably fun California thing we did was go back to Florida , Univ. of Florida that is. As is the case in a lot of other places I visit,
Gators here stick together and one afternoon Dela' and I went to a very cool midday roof top barbeque where all but three people were
from G-ville. No doubt that California is very fun indeed.

Saturday Nick and I convinced two girls at a bar to tie their shirts together. They thought it was funny until they they
wanted to get another drink at the bar.

As much fun as the surfing and skating is, not too surprising I flelt at home in a place like Rodeo Drive...