From the Del to the Dive

Well, its been a good couple of days since the last post, and believe you me, I've wanted to have posted just to get all this out of my head...  As I will show in the following post, the Historic Mayfair Hotel and my computer didn't really see eye to eye... So, without any further waiting for the internet to work, I give you 'From the Del to the Dive'

THURSDAY - 6 November 2014

Thursday was a truly 'holidayie day', where I overslept by about 2 hours, then spent the day doing close to nothing.  Per the end of the last blog post, I did intend to go to the zoo... But, I kind of slept through my alarm (I didn't have one), and eventually woke up when Dad came back after his morning work thing... A quick shower later and I was off to the free lunch; chicken for the 'entree' and some super rich chocolate cake for dessert... See the meaning of the term 'junket'...

Ridiculously rich chocolate cake

Fair ol' turnout for the free lunch

I again had the thought to leave the Del and head out to the world famous San Diego Zoo, or to downtown, or even to the other side of Coronado Island... But low 30s weather kind of caused my enthisiasm to leave me, and I settled in beside the pool for the afternoon.  I got to chatting to four people from the Grand Canyon, gave me some information about the Grand Canyon, how to get there from Vegas, places to see etc, and I dispelled the myth that we play rugby instead of football and one seemed very happy to talk about Daniel Riccardo.

Quote of the day: *the two out of shape Americans are having a swimming race*
American 1: JOHN!! JOHN STOP!!
John: What?!?
American 1: Frank's not racing anymore, he stopped about 10 feet in!
John: *turns* Why?
Frank: *yelling from other end of the pool* IT WAS A WARDROBE MALFUNCTION!!

I spent about 30 minutes chatting to these guys, and another 10 minutes chatting to some guy from Atlanta (who assured me that Americans were crazy)... The Grand Canyon guys asked as to what the conference was, so I told them and started telling them what my father did and all that jazz; as I did that dad yelled at me from the balcony and said he was seeing his work colleagues for a drink.  Lucky I wasn't talking badly about him right...

I went then went to the balcony overlooking the beach and fought the crowd for that one photograph of the sun setting over the Pacific Ocean.  See below:

Sunset over the Pacific

Sunset at the Del

Sunset over the Pacific

Dad and I then went to the last dinner of the conference which was held on the beach.  Extravagantly catered, difficult to walk on the sand, and a wonderful setting for our final night at the Hotel Del Coronado.

Dinner on the beach

I can't remember too many hotels that have their own brand of toilet tissue

We spent much of the evening around a fire pit.  I managed to chat to a few ladies from Boston, and one from Las Vegas, who all had good advice of things to do and things to see in their respective cities.  The general gist of what I got to do in Boston was to rug up.

Eventually headed back to the room and went to bed, ready for check out the following morning.

FRIDAY

Friday morning we woke up, showered and I figured I should try to get a free breakfast for at least one day this week... So, I followed my Dad to the breakfast room and wearing a card that wasn't mine I managed to get a full breakfast.  In keeping the ruse that I belonged there I followed the crowd to the final event they had on their schedule, which was some artist guy who was supposed to talk about something... Uh... I want to say it was about paradigm shifting, but that could just be Terrible Terry Tate videos on YouTube... He wasn't bad to watch, managed to created a painting of Bono from scratch in the time it took to listen to U2's 'Beautiful Day'.  I didn't know what the fuck he was doing, so to end up with Bono was a pretty good result... He also did Steve Jobs and Einstein, but they didn't write their own backing tracks... Anyway, I'm assuming my Dad won't read this, so I'll say it here, as much as I may have taken something from the session (and it was a very enjoyable session), after 3 days the impact has dissipated somewhat...

After this we went back to our hotel room and packed up, before heading into the reception area to share a taxi to the train station with the partner from the accounting firm who hosted the conference.  This was a good result for me, as I didn't have to pay for the cab (and later didn't have to pay for the train ticket, or for dinner... Gotta love the corporate junket!).  The cab ride was interesting, we were riding in this massive Ford Escalade, and our driver and my father were conversing but not understanding each other... They were both speaking English, but were speaking entirely different languages...  He was a slow driver, who disobeyed the road rules and seemed to be trying to drag as much value out of the fare as possible; at one point he drove through a coned off section of the road in order to make a right turn, but in doing so completed fucked the fabric of the road work road rules, as everyone else sick of waiting decided to follow him.

Due to his ineptitude we missed the 12 noon train to Los Angeles by 3 minutes... We had to wait until 1:40 PM... So, during this time we went to a UPS Store and tried to print our tickets to the Los Angeles Clippers game the following day... This proved to be more of a headache than it should have been, but due to the broken equipment in the store they didn't charge me for printing two pieces of paper (how nice of them right?!)... Dad also made a bunch of phone calls, apparently his masseuse in Australia was getting something shipped to him from Canada and having it sent to the Del, but because they didn't put it in the post until well too late it is still in transit, so Dad is having to try to get it re-routed... This took way too long... But it did kill time before the train left...

The train ride was uneventful, though some entertainment was garnered from the needlessly over the top Amtrak conductor.  She was a bitch... I think she enjoyed it though, because she loved a good fight!  We didn't fight, but it was like a train ride with a show at most stops!

Arriving at Union Station we all found a cab and made our way to our Downtown hotel, the Historic Mayfair Hotel.  When I booked it I had based it on how close it was to Staples Center for the basketball the following day, and didn't really consider the neighbourhood it was in... This will be discussed in more depth in a later chapter...

Once we found the room we quickly worked out that we weren't at the Del anymore... I could touch all 4 walls of the bathroom if I stood in the middle of the room, extended my arms and spun around... Like a bad hotel bathroom Vitruvian Man... This wasn't the only issue, I turned on the computer ready to blog the last two days and found that I could connect to the network but not to the internet, which was a source of amazing frustration for me... The TV in the room was something that I hadn't seen since I spent a week at a shak at Victor Harbour 15 years ago, though Happy Gilmore was on the TV, which was a good result.

The view from the Mayfair was probably the best part!

We made our way to dinner across town with the partner from the accounting firm (who was staying in West LA as opposed to our Downtown location.  We had to get on the freeway (or 'a' freeway rather than 'the' freeway), and it took much longer than I had thought, but a Friday night probably plays a role in that... Fair old cost in the cab fare as well, but being a business trip and all it was good that I didn't have to pay...

That bear doesn't look happy...

We walked down by a few restaurants and found that my empire was expanding again... Though I didn't think I would ever make it into the world of hairdressing...

Fantastic Sams

 I guess Fantastic is pretty good

Expanding Empire

Had some Indian for dinner, then headed home (after talking about how kangaroo tastes with some Venezuelan bellboys) and went to bed ready for the Clippers-Trail Blazers game the next day!

It is just too bad that the beds weren't long enough for my father and I, and that some guy knocked on our door at 3 AM offering blankets, but yeah, moral of the story is this... Never, ever, ever, ever, take a nice hotel for granted!

Writer's note: At the time of writing it is Sunday night in America and late Monday afternoon at home, we are safely in Las Vegas and I am about to start watching the new episode of The Walking Dead... I'm aiming to get to a Poker tournament tomorrow morning, but I can't really be arsed to be up all hours writing this thing... So, rather than catching up on this blog I am going to watch TV... I can catch up another time... You all know me well enough to know that TV comes first 95% of the time...

Next blog will cover the opening of the sports gluttony, and the beginnings of Vegas nights!