All The Way South

I'm aware that we have fallen a bit behind on this so for those of you that await each update with baited breath I apologise. You will get another one quite soon after this to bring it all up to date. Well, here we go:

So on the second night at the RV park the opposition for the LA Lakers in the Western Conference Semi-Final was finally decided. They were due to play the Houston Rockets with the first game of the series in LA on Monday night. I went online to buy tickets - Ticketmaster provide a service where people with season tickets can sell tickets to individual games if they are not attending. I picked out the tickets I wanted and went to pay but found out I had to have an American Credit Card to purchase them. A few phone calls later and I was in touch with Brian, a friend of Jack's girlfriend. He bought the tickets for me, printed them out and we organised to go and meet him to pick them up.

Brian worked in Long Beach and our next port of call was Huntington Beach so we stopped by on the way and gave him the money and a big bottle of Grey Goose vodka to say thanks. I was really excited but had to contain it as the game wasn't until 7.30 on Monday and it was Sunday afternoon at this stage. We continued on south to Huntington Beach, or Surf City USA as it is known by the locals. We found a parking spot for Ita and strolled down to the beach.

It was early afternoon so there was still a good bit going on. We walked along the beach to the pier past all the beach volleyball players, cyclists, skateboarders and roller bladers to the pier where we passed a good few people fishing all the way to the end. When we walked back to the start of the pier a street performance was going on. We arrived near the end but we still got to see a guy doing a front somersault over 7 people!! We went back to the RV for some dinner and I persuaded Emer to hang around for sunset so we went down to the beach and were treated to a great one. We stayed in Huntington Beach overnight and spent the following morning chilling out on the beach. Once we had lunch it was time to go and see the Lakers. Finally.

After coming so far south we didn't want to have to drive back into LA for the game so we drove a small bit North and parked in Long Beach. The blue line metro goes from downtown Long Beach to right outside the Staples Centre for $1.25 so it was ideal. Finding parking close to the stop proved a little tricky as there was street sweeping starting at 7 in the morning but a little bit of driving around and we found a space on a road with Wednesday morning sweeping and space for an RV to park so we took it.

We grabbed some food, had quick showers and then headed for the train. The metro (a tram over the length of the journey we took it for) took us north through the heart of south LA. And if there is one piece of advice I can give you it is never visit any of it - it's a run down area with nothing going on but windows with bars in front of them. Nonetheless the metro is a good service and it got us to the Staples Centre at 5.30. Doors didn't open until 6 so we had a quick stroll around to see what was going on. There was purple and yellow everywhere and a good few people queueing to get in so we headed back to our door. At 6 they opened and we went in.

We had the usual metal detector check and a quick search of our bag (thankfully quick as they only allow camera lenses up to 3.5 inches long - I had my big long one with me but hid it well). We were then given a free XL lakers t-shirt to wear and make the arena look comletely yellow. A nice touch I thought. We went to check out our seats - they were incredible, well worth the money. We were in line with the basket on the right as you look on TV (where the Lakers play into in the 2nd half), 17 rows up from the floor. We watched the players go through a bit of their warm up routine and then went to do a bit of shopping. I got a Kobe Bryant jersey and a couple of other bits and bobs. We got some food and a couple of $10 beers and before we knew it the national anthem was being sung. And then tip off.

The atmosphere was incredible as I expected it to be for a playoff game. The match we were at was similar to an All-Ireland quarter final in football but they play a best of 7 game series. This was game 1 and the Lakers were favourites for the series. Kobe had been a bit sick over the weekend and started a little slow to let the Houston Rockets take an early lead. They clawed this back and took the lead in the 3rd quarter but the Houston ROckets finished the stronger and ran out 100-92 winners in the end. Yao Ming (the massive Chinese fella) and Ron Artest both played amazingly well for Houston and despite "only" scoring 32 points Kobe had an average game by his amazing standards. He had a couple of incredible moments (including a self pass off the backboard that he scored a slam dunk with) but they were just too few and far between. Despite losing it was an incredible experience which will live with me forever. We got the blue line back and hit the hay.

We woke the following morning to find a parking ticket on our front window. It turned out that it was Wednesday sweeping on the other side of the orad and Tuesday on the side that we parked on. We filed it away and hit the road. Next on the list was Laguna Beach - another picturesque Californian seaside town. We parked in a free parking lot, made some lunch and walked down to the beach for the afternoon. Here we just chilled out, threw some disc and watched the dolphins fishing and jumping out of the water no more than 100 yards from where we were sitting. We strolled through the town with some ice-cream and then rejoined I-5, our old friend from Seattle. This interstate was still going strong and we drove it to Carlsbad.

In this town we went for dinner and had a couple of drinks watching the basketball. Since we saw so much of Laguna Beach we decided to skip the long walk around Carlsbad and hit the road again in the morning. We were due to hit San Diego so booked into an RV park on the outskirts to empty and recharge. On the way to San Diego we drove through La Jolla. It's another nice town but there was nothing that really intrigued us enough to get out of the RV so we kept driving. This enabled us to get to the park relatively early so Emer went online while I prepared the BBQ. After food we went into the TV room and did our kettle bell workout while watching the Boston Celtics beat Orlando Magic. We then got into the hot tub for a while, grabbed showers and watched the second half of the Lakers game (game 2 of the series). Thankfully they won this one to tie the series at 1-1. I managed to stream the last 10 minutes of the Chelsea v Barcelona semi-final 2nd leg which seemed to be all that I needed to see.

The following day had us at the most South Westerly city in the US - San Diego. We had a few things to do in the RV park so we didn't hit the road until lunch time. We headed straight for Pacific Beach, found some parking and just took it easy at the beach for a while. There were alot of surfers out in the water and there is beach as far as you can see both ways. It's a pretty nice area and there is a very good lifeguard presence with them doing patrols in jeeps and having water skis, surf boards and rescue vehicles at every outpost. On the way back to the RV we took a stroll down towards the pier where they have a hotel setup, well a number of 1 bed houses for rent which looked like a nice place to stay. We drove out to the zoo that evening and parked by the entrance to give us a good chance to see the whole place.

For those that are unaware, San Diego Zoo is one of the best in the world (and probably one of the biggest). We had a thoroughly enjoyable day here viewing all the wildlife on show. There really were too many to list so have a look at the photos. We spent the majority of the day here and headed to check out what was around Sea World for parking as we were going there the following day. We had dinner in their car park and ended up going back to Pacific Beach as it was only a mile away and had plenty of parking. We went to "Pacific Beach Ale House" to watch the third game in the Lakers Rockets semi final series. The Lakers won 108-94 to take a 2-1 lead in the 7 game series. We headed back to get a decent nights sleep to be up early for Sea World.

And up we were. We made it to the gates at just after 9 and enquired about the swimming with dolphins program they run. There was space in the afternoon but it was almost $200 per person so we just settled for the behind the scenes tour which was starting at 11.45. We had a couple of hours before this so we went to see "Believe", the Killer Whale show, featuring Shamu (the parks famous killer whale). It was really good, the funniest part being when Shamu swims around the edge of the tank and soaks anyone within 10-15 rows depending how far he fires the water up.

We then participated in our behind the scenes tour. During this we were brought to where they care for animals and do all their testing and rehabilitation. It was really cool to see the dolphins up close and all the work that goes on behind the scenes to make the place tick. We then headed to the Sea Lion and Otter stadium and had some lunch while waiting for the show to begin. The stadium was full about 25 minutes prior to the scheduled start and it became apparant why. A guy came out and started miming TV show intros to the music. It was really good and setup what was a very entertaining show. It contained a number of sketches parodying various TV shows, all involving sea lions. After this we headed over to dolphin stadium for what we expected to be a higher octane show.

And it gave us exactly what we expected. Fast swimming, some flips and high jumps from the dolphins and people in the front few rows getting soaked. Again, a really entertaining show and exactly what we came to Sea World to see. We headed over to the Arctic Area to see some polar sea animals and were treated to a simulated helicopter ride before going into the area. The whole place was done really well to make it look like an Arctic outpost and while walking through there were various viewing areas to see the polar bear, beluga whales and penguins. They cool sea water from the bay before pumping it into the various enclosures which is nice to see. The enclosures are done really well and the animals look well cared for. We finished the day at the shark encounter which culminates in a moving walkway that goes through their massice tank and you get to look up at all the sharks as they swim around. After this we went to the same bar to have dinner, watched some more Basketball and drove downtown to find parking close to the water. As we took the freeway downtown, an airplane was landing in San Diego airport. For anyone who hasn't experienced it the planes fly really low over the freeway to land just past it - a spectacular sight which we were treated to.

The first time at the bar in Pacific Beach I saw an ad saying the Red Bull Air Race was on over the weekend so we went online and got tickets. The tickets were for the SUnday so we got up and headed down to the water and joined all the locals and tourists alike to watch the race. It's basically a stunt pilot race against the clock where the pilots have to manouvere their stunt planes around the course over the water in the quickest time possible. The planes reach speeds of 230 mph and the pilots experience up to 12G forces as they navigate around the course. It was a really fun day and one of those things we just happened to be lucky enough to be in the right city at the right time. Afterwards we strolled around the Gaslamp Quarter, stopping for massive burgers and some more televised basketball along the way. We had to be up at 8am the following morning to avoid getting a parking ticket so we didn't go too mad.

After our early alarm we hit the road. Unfortunately something went wrong with our brakes so we spent a couple of hours getting them repaired. We then stocked up on supplies in the various shops before heading to the outlet malls south of San Diego. We did a small bit of shopping and grabbed some lunch. We were only a couple of miles from the Mexican border so I thought it would be a great idea to head over and see what it is like. Probably wasn't my greatest idea. The quality of life and standard of public services deteriorated rapidly the second we crossed into Mexico. The Sat Nav refused to work as she had no Mexican maps so we drove for about 5 minutes before turning around and joining the massive queue of vehicles to re-enter the USA. Here we had all sorts of vendors trying to sell us stuff before going through two checkpoints (it's alot easier to leave the US than to get back in, we didn't even have our passports checked leaving). The photos will give you an idea of what it was like (up until I was informed I was not allowed to take photos, quite sternly at that). I didn't feel comfortable for one second while in Tijuana and I was quite happy to be back in the US. From here we began our journey East.....