Letter From LA

[Snoop Doug]

Wow

The family Snoop has just left Southern California, in more or less the same shape as we found it. What did we see...?

Well we barely saw the Olympics . What little coverage their was centred on how the USA were winning the medal race. They are the only country I've ever been to who count total medal haul before golds.....strange? I did see Romero win [color=#FFBF40]gold[/color], yee harr!!

On the business news, China was always referred to as Communist China. Sitting over there, taking our jobs type stylee.

LA on sea (Santa Monica) very nice, had a very enjoyable time riding a laid back bike with Keira on a tag along up and down the beach (even went under the boardwalk)

[img]http://i34.tinypic.com/30ng5jc.jpg[/img]

Hollywood dirty and unpleasant, just as expected then.

Joshua Tree National Park great fun - hotter then the inside of a pizza oven, didn't smell as nice tho. We did a 1 mile hike (ha ha ) quite enough in 120+ temp thank you.

San Diego - great city. Zoo is fabulous, Seaworld is great fun tho slathered with pure USA cheez which makes you want to barf if you do anything but ignore it.

Disneyland. Park cynicysm at front desk, enter and enjoy. Two days spent having a real blast on some monster rides.

I haven't been Stateside for a few years. How the hell did America get so fat...? I know I'm not exactly Mr Trim of ACC but jeez, I was shocked at how many people are so grossly (in every sense) overweight. It quite gave me the heebie jeebies don't you know.

Fantastic trip, glad to be back to the cold weather. Got bike fitting booked in for Saturday to cheer me up

Snoop

[Jon H]

[quote="Snoop Doug"]How the hell did America get so fat...?

[Mike I]

Cool shades, Snoop.

Not yours, Keira's.

[Snoop Doug]

[quote="Mike I"]Cool shades, Snoop.

Not yours, Keira's.

[Alex P]

The US, probably the only country in the world to show the opening of the Olympics twelve hours later (no live showing) so that they could maximise the advertising potential. There seemed a commercial break every five minutes but they did not pause the recording just kept it running during the commercial break so missed the likes of South Africa, New Zealand in the parade and nearly missed the UK!

There was a furore the next day in the press as the Americans felt that everybody was at a party but they were not invited - good old NBC!!

And as you say Jon, they have certainly eaten all the pies!!!

Great place for a holiday though...

[Roy Green]

Took me back a few years, Snoop. Wife Jean and I visited American friends in Long Beach in 1997. Cool place, people there a bit fitness conscious, but plenty of fatties even then in places like Disneyland and Universal Studios. Good places to go if you are worried about feeling a bit lardy. Venice Beach the weirdest place. We saw a dog wearing shades that made your Keira's look conservative. One of our friends rubbished most of what was on his TV, but then he'd lived for years here in Croydon!
Agreed on niceness of San Diego, one of our favourite cities there. and echo your thoughts on Hollywood — Tackysville. We moved up to San Francisco for a week, another top city. Weather a surprise after Southern California, similar to here. But much more variety of places than LA, including one area, Castro, that mades Brighton seem quite straight.
Friends moved on to Phoenix, Arizona so we visited there in 2006. Now if you want to see a bit more class Stateside, that's the place to go, especially around Scottsdale, and Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright's desert home. The people we met there were real human beings (we didn't hear one good word about G. Bush). And taking in the Grand Canyon and Tucson made us feel very rosy about USA, the better parts, anyway. Biggest regret was leaving it too late to visit our much-travelled friends when they moved from Long Beach to New Orleans; they were washed out of there by Hurricane Katrina!
Roy

[Snoop Doug]

Nice one Roy. Our short detour into the desert (2.5 days) was really interesting. I can see now why they need all these fans, it was baking hot.

[img]http://i34.tinypic.com/equqvo.jpg[/img]

Maybe a couple more pics to follow.....sometime