getty & slater

Went to a place called "The Getty" on Friday in Santa Monica - one of the coolest places I've seen recently. It was awesome. It is a free museum, with the most BEAUTIFUL gardens! We didn't even go into the museum...We just checked out the gardens. It was gorgeous and I could totally see myself spending LOTS of time there! Check out my pictures at www.photobucket.com - type in TJD as the album.

east side takes west side...

On Saturday, I watched the battle of east coast surfers vs west coast surfers on Saturday. We stood along the shore and watched as the surfers got creative with the little waves they had. Both X Games experiences were by far the coolest things I've gotten to be a part of. The surf competition was killer. I got burnt to a crisp after sitting in the sun for about 5 hours, but it was well worth it. I stood about 30 feet away from Kelly Slater - a legend in the game of surfing, a 6 time world champion. HOW COOL IS THAT? I got a bit star struck, and couldn't stop talking about it. But it was so fun to watch, and we eventually made it down to the water, and stood in the water to watch the competition. We were front row. Doesn't get much better than that. So, that was definitely a most memorable experience.

We then headed to San Diego. That was quite the adventure...Not one I'm sure I'd like to relive. It took us about 3 hours to get there from Huntington, when it should have taken about an hour (gotta love CA traffic), and when we got there, no vacancy in almost every hotel we tried. After many attempts, we ended up at a most luxurious Motel 6 (note sarcasm here). That hotel was the most expensive of all my hotels on this trip - how crazy is that? Oh well... We had an awesome dinner after that however - can't remember the name - but this really cute little place. We then walked around down by the marina, and just enjoyed the beautiful weather of San Diego. The next morning, we headed home and decided to meet up with some fo Sara's friends. Ate lunch at In and Out - a must if one is in California. We went to a bookstore that I had wanted to run to - Book Soup (it's on Sunset Strip) and that was really cool. Sara's friend and I both bought a couple books we had been seeking, and we ran into Leelee Sobieski who was shopping for Flannery O'Conner. That's the only famous person I've seen outside of the X Games. So that was kind of cool. Then we drove up past the Hollywood sign, and enjoyed the view from up there. We then headed to this little cafe called The Borgeois Pig (if you check out my pictures online, you can see the cafe there...). It was SUPER cute - really dimly light and very artsy. Very cute. I also had the best chai I've ever had. Definitely worth the trip.

Today I'm in Pasedena - that's where I'm writing this from. My brother has a friend who lives here, and so I met up with him for lunch which ended up just being smoothies. We tried two different places for lunch - the first one had moved, and the second place wasn't open on Mondays. How random! It was a good little walk around Pasedena though, so I enjoyed it. We had good conversation. I then headed here to post on my blog and update my pictures.

We are headed to Manhattan beach tonight for my first attempt at surfing. Due to the schedule I kept while I was here, this is the first chance I've had. So that should be fun. Tomorrow is some last minute shopping, possibly trying to catch the movie "Garden State" and then a concert at The Gig on Melrose tomorrow night. Still more fun to come. Hopefully I'll get another blog in here before I leave, but we'll see. I've been thinking a LOT about the political unrest in our country (maybe it was because of the guy standing on a street corner in San Diego yelling "Bush is a coward!" that made me keep thinking about it). I'd like to post some thoughts I've had on that as well. But these are turning into novels - with updates and all that jazz. So this will be all for the night.

Hope you are all doing well. Miss you guys - see ya soon!