From LAX to YYZ in eight sweaty hours

Goodbye, baby...
... hello baby!

I'm home, hurrah.

Picnic in the Park :(

So today was our last day of my trip to LA. It damn well sucks, I'm not even going to pretend. Me and Lance like to go to Griffith Park and have picnics, lay on the blanket in our spot and talk for hours. It's one of those "special things" we do. So today we went there. We go to the old zoo location and lay on one of the hills looking up at this big peak...
As we lay and talked there, we saw someone had hiked up to the top. Click on the photo for a better view:
The area of the park used to actually be the zoo, and all of the caves and cages are still there:
You can have picnics right in there.
If you're feeling adventurous, you can actually GO IN the old caves.
Kinda like a haunted house, non? You know some bad stuff's gone down in here, a la Turnbull Canyon!
When we were leaving the park this lady was riding her beautiful Arabian horse around the park. I tried to catch a magical shot of her galloping past the caves, but as luck/lack of talent would have it, this is what I got instead...
... a beautiful picture. But all was looking up... because guess where we went next....
Cheddar Bay, baby! Lance surprised me with a dinner at Red Lobster. It was effing great times...
... at the most broken-ass Red Lobster of all. Incidentally, all dinner I was trying to get Lance to help me figure out what song I had stuck in my head. All I could remember was the line "The days were longer, the nights were stronger than whiskey". Turns out the line actually refers to "moonshine", and it's called "Ventura Highway" by the band America. Me and Lance are researching America right now, and it turns out we're both totally fans of a ton of their stuff. "You Can Do Magic", anyone? And I LOVE that Ventura Highway song, even though I had no idea what it was called or who did it for years.

I'm keeping my chin up. It's sad to think about saying goodbye. I haven't been home in over four months... but I'm gonna miss Lance. :(

The Wall of Barrettes

In morose celebration of my second-last day on this trip to LA, me and Lance went out for lunch and for a little walk around the neighborhood he lives in. Well - the commercial area with the shops which is about a 5 minute drive from his house. Here's a colour picture of my new haircut - the black and white one from a few days ago didn't do it justice.
We went to a small Mexican place called Maracas Sombrero (not really). It was one of those "real" Mexican places that are all over the place here. So real that the waitress didn't speak English. I ordered tacos and Lance got some vegetarian egg-cheese-rice thing that looked waaay better than my stupid onion-covered tacos.
Then we went for a walk. I got close to that dress shop with the fancy Disney dresses in the window and took more pictures of their ridiculousness. It sucks that there's so much glare in the glass, but it's worth it if you squint. The clothes are absurd.

Look at the Cuban gangster style on the left here:
Then there was the calm, armless mannequin boy, strung upright by a red bandanna:
And, of course, the wall of barrettes:
That's all for today. I completed another hat, but I'm too lazy to take a picture of it right now. I'm going to watch some documentaries tonight. If you haven't watched "Nazi Pop Twins", please do so - it's about Prussian Blue, the blonde blue eyed twin sister music duo who are white supremacists. Oh yeah, and they're 14 - their Mum is INSANE. But watch "Louis and the Nazis" first for a glimpse of Lynx and Lamb when they're 11 and even more creepy, playing at skinhead rallies. Both available on Google Video!

Junk and a rant about a junky place...

Well, here';s a big pile of junk lying on my suitcase. I am leaving on Wednesday and I have too much to pack. Giant afghan squares and 6+ flapper hats notwithstanding. 10 points if you see Gangle.
So tonight I watched the documentary "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices". It's easy to find this for free online, so if you haven't seen it, I'd suggest doing so. I've heard a lot about it and I'm actually annoyed at myself for not seeking it out sooner.

I got more and more furious watching it - its methods of destroying the towns it sets up in, driving other businesses to close, its ruthless policies on just about EVERYTHING you can think of. Sexist, racist behaviour, encouraging its employees to go on welfare because they don't provide affordable health insurance for them, not offering overtime but making their employees work stupid hours... I could go on and on. I was BRISTLING. Encouraging their employees to donate a portion of their paycheck to an "emergency fund" to help other employees - which they DO, to the tune of millions - meanwhile the owners of the company are millionaires and only donate their money to support the political campaigns of other rich bastards who will keep the system running in their favour - it's horrible. There is too much to outline, really. Watch it.

The thing that made me the most sick is that, while touring, we go to Wal-Mart ALL THE TIME. At 3 AM, driving out of a city, that's what tons of bands do. They go on a Wal-Mart "run". To stock up the bus with cheap food and supplies. I mean, fuck: I've put on my slippers and track pants gleefully, relieved that there's a Wal-Mart so I can grab a few things along with the guys. It's hard to find time, or shops, when you're in a small town in a remote neighborhood with time constraints. I KNOW Wal-Mart is evil, but I have literally SKIPPED HAPPILY into one of their giant superstores (thank god we weren't attacked - watch the documentary for more on that hideousness). I've always wanted to boycott using a Hilton or Hilton affiliate hotel while on the road, but it isn't practical. Not only do you have to make do with what's there and what's cheap, but when you're touring with eight other people, not everyone is going to give a shit, even if you do. And thus, Wal-Mart shopping becomes a weekly event on tour. And we give them hundreds of dollars.

God, I wish there was something I could do. It's pathetic. I don't want to be part of the problem, but a lot of times there is no alternative, and I think a lot of people fall victim to this and go with the flow because there is nothing else they can do. I mean shit. Even in Toronto, if you want a good selection of cheap yarn, you basically have to go to Wal-Mart. I know I will shop there again, and I hate knowing that. But I can just imagine trying to tell the guys, and our tour manager Jack, that we shouldn't shop there. It wouldn't make SENSE in that situation to try to boycott going there. The band needs food and supplies. Where the hell else are we going to get them on the road? At a gas station?

By the way, in the documentary I noticed that Guelph, Ontario, is one of the cities that has successfully fought against having a Wal-Mart set up in the city. I didn't know that.

That's just beachy!

Today me and Lance went to the beach. It was really nice even though the waves were "rougher" than the last time we went.

In this picture, if you look closely at the water, you'll see the little black dot that is Lance:

And in this picture, you'll see my new haircut. Yes; I chopped off a bunch of hair. I was starting to feel like someone had glued a bunch of straw to my head. This is much nicer.
No hats today! But the night is young...

weird scene, pancakes, and you'll never guess.

Lance got home from work and we were starving, so we decided to go out for dinner - a rare treat in these dark financial times. It's always a bit worrisome, spending money. But you know what's even more worrying? This scene we encountered...
I couldn't figure out the hows or the whys. Two small plastic kid cars. One for a boy, one for a girl. One of them strung up to a telephone pole. Both abandoned. Why? Did an adult do this, as a warning to the neighborhood children? Did the children do it? How would a child sling a rope that high and why would they abandon both vehicles? Is this a statement against women? This is what happens when girls try to ride their Big Wheels with the Big Boys? An eerie scene.
Anyways we went on to dinner and my favourite pancake house...
Where I got the country fried steak with broccoli and hash browns (that white gravy is LOVE), and Lance got the spinach omelet and pancakes. I didn't actually get pancakes, which may defeat the purpose of going to iHop, but who cares?
Yeah, and I made more hats. Lance thought he'd be helpful and model them this time. He's actually wearing lipstick in these pictures, but you can't tell. He put the lid back on the lipstick without winding it down, so it got a bit crushed. Bless his heart, right?

Anyways this one is navy with a slightly rolled brim:
And this one has a 3-leveled multicoloured purple flower on it.
Hurrah!

Fencing caps

It is always hot and sunny here in LA. Like... always. Never a cloud in the sky. EVER. I have been here for two months and it has not rained once. THERE HAS NOT EVEN BEEN A CLOUDY DAY. It is very hot. All the time. Paradise, I suppose.

If you like that sort of thing.

Anyways, here's a picture at the bottom of the hill in front of Lance's house. I like the pretty pink flowers. They, apparently, love the heat. There are pink flowers everywhere here. Flowering trees, cacti, and tarantulas on mountains.
And, as I predicted, I made some more cloches. I got fancy with this little gray number down here. Double and triple crochet, wool instead of acrylic so it's all soft, and the flower is lower down this time - as well as being a different flower pattern from the one I used yesterday,
I know I'm wearing the same shirt as I was yesterday but it was taken today. I'm just lazy. Here's the last one for now. All double crochet. Cute times.

What occasion could this be for?

Well, now we know where the Disney Princesses shop and get all their custom multi-crinolined, ridiculous ball gowns. Did you notice that each Disney Princess has their own trademark colour? Pink being Sleeping Beauty, blue for Cinderella, yellow for Belle. You can buy little versions of all the Princess dresses for little girls. I have often wondered if there is a child-sized version of Pocahontas' costume, and if so, do Native Americans find it offensive? It is stereotypical, with the buckskin fringe, feathers and wampum. I would think that even Jasmine's "Arabian harem" look could be offensive to some people, and inappropriate for a little girl to wear. It's like little kids doing a tap-dance routine to Lady Marmalade, dressed like prostitutes.

The Mannequintessentials at the Museum

I have definitely noticed, through starting this blog, that more times than not, I end up wanting to post more than one picture. This whole "experiment" of trying to find something photo-worthy every day has worked. Some days it is harder than others. But I'm just going to do what I feel and hopefully it still remains interesting. Let's start off today's post with....


... yes, mannequins in a parking garage. You know... just CUZ. Noticed these while me and Lance were driving to the Getty Museum to watch a few of his friends DJ and some band play. It was a nice evening...

... with patios and botanical gardens. We had to take a tram up the hill to the museum, everyone has to. So there's a pretty view from all around. And nice grassy places to picnic and be photographed by people above you...
... but that's okay. The music went on until the sun went down, and me and Lance left before the band finished so we wouldn't have to be stuck in a giant line for the tram.
That is all.

Sad doggie and Echo Phone

As promised, here is my picture from yesterday of Lance descending Echo Mountain. I think this is a great picture. :)
Here is a photo from today of Marie. Marie is Lance's roommate's dog. She's really sweet and well-behaved. Half the time you don't even know if she's here, because she's so quiet. This week, Lance's roommate isn't home, she's gone to Burning Man. Marie misses her mama. She doesn't eat very much and she lays on her little pillow because she's sad.

To cap things off, here's my video, also from yesterday, of me using the Echo Phone on top of Echo Mountain at the White City. It's kind of difficult to hear the echo in this video, so make sure your volume is up or use earphones or something.

Echo Mountain: The "Haunted Forest" to the White City...

Yes, here are your two adventurers. Here's the story. Altadena, California, is the home of Echo Mountain, atop of which there used to be a giant resort: a chalet, a 70-room hotel, casino, zoo, all the fix'ns. There were two fires up there, in 1900 and 1905, which pretty much destroyed the place. However, the ruins are still accessible. The place is called "the White City". I've been looking into cool stuff to do around here, so when I read about the White City it seemed great to go check out. There's some urban legend crap about the forest at the base of the mountain being haunted. Even better. We decided to go up there.

I was excited and wanted to get started around noon, but Lance warned me that the sun would be really hot at that time of day and we should wait. I was irritated by this. I'd read that the hike was 2.5 miles to the top - how bad could that be? Finally we headed out and drove to Altadena, which was maybe a half hour away from Lance's place.

I started to worry as we approached the mountain range. I'd anticipated a hike, sure; but this was looking a bit menacing. We'd picked up two litres of water, though - it would be just fine. Eventually we finally arrived at the end of Lake Road, which is where the trail begins.
This is the beginning of the trail: the gates of the old Cobb Estate. Apparently beyond these gates lays the HAUNTED FOREST.
HERE IT IS! BOO!... yeah, it wasn't scary. It was damn hot though. First we'd have to walk past where the ol' Cobb Estate used to be, to get to the Sam Merrill Trail - the trail that would take us to the White City.
As we passed the overgrown field where the good ol' Cobb place used to be, there were helpful plaques to tell us the history of the site. Luckily for us, some kind vandals totally destroyed that information with their ridiculous and indecipherable tagging. Thanks, guys; who cares about history? You just saved me from wasting five minutes I'd never get back!
At the beginning of the trail, there was a small box with a log book. Lance signed us in: 3:53 PM. There were houses just over the fence and I noticed a giant crocheted blanket in many colours hanging on the clothesline. The presence of veriegated yarn made me shudder, but I took this as a good omen for the trip ahead. We started walking.
Here's Lance, standing in a shady spot about thirty seconds into the hike. Notice the content look on his face. Notice the orange fruits on the cacti. I wonder if these fruits would have water in them? We proceeded up the trail and started to ascend. It became evident that this was going to be a very, very hot hike, but we took a break and drank a shit-ton of our water. I mean, haw haw; how far could it possibly be to the top?
Higher and higher we went, pausing here and there in shady spots to take short breaks. The sun was high and hot, despite its being late afternoon, and we began to sweat. We'd gone quite a way and were still feeling optimistic, and encountered a descending couple. We asked them how much farther; surely we were halfway to the ruins at this point? Nope. The man told us that the halfway mark is a set of electrical towers, and we still had quite a ways to go. We continued up.
Here's an odd fenced-in structure. It looked like it was an underground building. Notice the carved-out steps in the mountain beside it. I think it was around this point that I was sweating so much I got sunscreen in my eyes, as it rolled down my forehead. My eyes watered and burned. It sucked. We kept stopping for water. It was hard to catch our breath at times. Walking uphill in that blazing, blasting heat was nasty. You'd think that there would be more shady spots to rest than there actually were.
Finally we reached the "halfway mark". Both of us at this point were pretty miserable. We were actually worried about running out of water, like a pure survival scenario. Which is ridiculous in retrospect, but at the time, I mean, it was hideous heat and we couldn't breathe, it was dusty and we had no idea how much farther the stupid White City was. Plus now we had to conserve our water.
I was very unhappy at this point, and tried to document it, but I don't feel this picture does our discomfort justice. Now, I am not an old woman, and neither is Lance, but this sucked. If it was this bad in late afternoon, I can't imagine how crap it would have been in HIGH NOON HEAT.
Yay, the two-mile marker! I have to say, there was some amazing, gorgeous scenery going on all around us. It was really beautiful. But all we could do is stagger from switchback to switchback, our backs bent with pain, sand up our noses, pausing in the pathetic shadows of CACTI to drink the dregs of our warm water. I'm being melodramatic, but that's how it felt. I was wheezing. We even entertained the notion of turning back. It was that draining. We were taking breaks every time there was even the tiniest spot that had shade. Ugh.
AT LAST! We encountered FLAT LAND and plaques! It made us feel refreshed to just stop with that awful uphill walk. The path in this picture behind Lance would lead us to the fabled White City. And we still had water left! It had taken us an hour and forty-five minutes to get up here.
I guess the guests at the old resort came up here on some kind of incline railway. Here's one of the plaques at the head of this path.
There was a little picnic area off to the left of the path. Not that we'd brought refreshments, bwa-ha! Pretty though.
Some sort of gear-thing. Heh, I have no idea. Something to do with the old railroad? I guess I shouldn't document what I don't understand.
Okay, look how high we are! We were definitely feeling better at this point. That's not a fake smile. It sucks how photos can never accurately translate how amazing scenery is. It was *beautiful* up there, and I have so many crap pictures that absolutely FAIL to convey it. Note the lack of railings everywhere. I was slightly nervous.
Old stairway. Again, gorgeous and you can't tell. But anyways. There was some hiker guy sitting by himself up here. Pleasant enough chap, but since I am always on red-alert for psychopaths, I was wary of him. The good news is, the higher we got on the mountain, the less garbage and graffiti were around. Why? Because NO ONE is going to hike up there unless they're DEAD SERIOUS about hiking. Clowns with spray paint aren't going to traverse through that heat! You can rob and kill just as easily underneath a shady train bridge as you can on top of a mountain!
The ruins of the area where the lower-floor guest rooms were.
AHA! Fooled ya! See, no matter where, no matter how high or hot or historical, someone's gonna ruin it! Wandering around up here, we found this hidden bench. And someone's ruined it! At least it says "Love Bench". There are many other things it could say that would make it so much worse.
Echo Phone! You cup your hands around it, and yell through it. It worked amazingly, echoing multiple times through the valley beyond. Someone somewhere in the mountains yelled back, too, which was kind of creepy and kind of comforting at the same time. I have a video of this which I'll try to post another time. (I don't know how posting video works and I am dead tired.)
More ruins. The whole spot had a really cool, mysterious atmosphere to it. You knew that this was an expensive, celebrated, high-class place at one time. I imagine it was amazing, especially with the surrounding scenery and dangerous cliff-drops. The thought of a fire destroying this place is really sad. But it was a very peaceful vibe.
This was the old resevoir. You can see this if you zoom in on this area in Google Maps. It was bigger than I thought it would be. We had a good time walking up here, it was fun to explore and rest and relax and everything - but we knew that we still had the walk down to dread. Lance's legs were really hurting him. We wanted to get down as quickly as possible.
I just had to stop real quick and pump some iron. Derr-herrr! Real funny.
Down we went! Lance trailblazed. This time we had gravity on our side, plus it was cooler out now, so we really motored. Look how dangerous, with the cliff both above and below the path. I'd be terrified to walk here at night.
Ka-blam! Here we are, approaching the half-way mark already! I like this picture.
Look how insignificant we are in comparison to the size of the mountains. Going back, I definitely had a chance to look around and appreciate where we were, as opposed to the hunchback-shuffle going up. Plus I could see this time; I didn't have sunscreen sweat burning my eyes. It was weird though. I'd look down, out off the path and my body would almost steer itself into walking OFF THE CLIFF. A weird vertigo. I'm not afraid of heights but this whole hike, up, down and at the top, made me nervous. Dangerous stuff. Not a railing in sight. The sun was going down at this point too. We really wanted to be down and out before it got dark.
The sunset was beautiful. But it was very odd. As we were descending, hurrying down, people were still climbing UP. A female jogger, alone; some guys on bikes (one from Canada, hurrah); a family with a little kid; some teenagers; an old couple. As we reached the bottom, the sun was almost gone, and I found it a little creepy that there were still so many people on the mountain.

Lance signed us out: 7:28 PM. It had taken us one hour to come back down - with gravity on our side. We didn't even take a break! Proud of ourselves, we limped back to the car. We drove back to Lance's neighborhood, got a frozen pizza and came home. Now I'm writing this and Lance is knitting baby booties for his friend.

I am tired. As last time, I've saved my best picture for tomorrow! So you have to come back!

My arms taste like salt. I am filthy. Shower time, then bed.

****EDITED ON WEDNESDAY: So I Googled this hike and someone who hiked it two days ago saw TWO TARANTULAS. UGGGHHHH! Also, apparently it is common knowledge that there is no shade during the afternoon on the trail, and that afternoon in the summer is the worst time to climb the mountain. Good to know that me and Lance picked the worst season, at the worst time of day, to do this hike. Oh well - it's good to know that others have suffered on this hike in the blazing summer heat, and the reason we sucked so bad isn't because we're morons, it's just because most people FINISH this hike by 11 AM. It's even classified as an intermediate level like - which kind of makes me feel better because I am not a hiker at all. And at this point I'm just sweaty-palmed thankful we didn't see any god-damn TARANTULAS. I feel sick just thinking about it.