My trip to Los Angeles began like this. “That will be $25 for your first bag and $50 for your second bag.” Followed by a pat down and wanding because I have a steel rod in my right leg from when I broke it in 1998. Then a 10-minute train ride, a two-story escalator and a 200-yard walk to gate number N-247. I was bound for a Thanksgiving visit with my three kids and grandchildren in sunny Southern California.
I wandered down the ramp to get on the plane, where they took my carry-on luggage because they thought it was too big. This was after I had carried it onto a few dozen other flights with no problem. The problem here was that I had a seat on a Bombardier Jet, a company that also makes a snowmobile in eastern Canada. It is a toss-up on which method of transportation is the most uncomfortable. The small jet carries 50 passengers, but comfortably only 25 who are under the age of 10 years old. I had changed seats with a family of four who wanted to all sit together. I wound up in seat 13B. The number should have told me something. I was on the aisle less than 24 inches from the toilet, whose door hit my shoulder when it opened unless I leaned against the lady who was sitting next to me, snoring. I figured someone was using the toilet every three minutes on the two-and-a-half hour flight. Without a doubt, it was the most uncomfortable flight I had ever taken.
When I got my carry-on back in Los Angeles, my cell phone inside of it was crushed. There are no pay phones anymore in airports, so, instead of calling my daughter to pick me up, I had to have the lost luggage manager place a phone call for me.
There is as very nice hotel that I usually stay at in Redondo Beach. When I checked in, I was informed that they were remodeling the rooms and assured me that the workmen did not start working until after nine in the morning. That’s when they started working, but they started showing up at about 8 a.m., loudly discussing what they did last night and at 9 a.m. sharp, the skill saws began running.
When my daughter drove me to the hotel, there were about 19 white trucks in the marina parking lot across the street, surrounded by a fairly large crowd. It was a location shoot for an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. It takes that many truckloads of stuff to film one guy. When I was making movies, it was one guy, one camera and two skis. What else did I need?
The morning after I checked into the hotel, my daughter drove me from Redondo Beach to Studio City in the Valley to play golf with an old friend. As we eased down the ramp into the freeway (with six lanes in each direction) it was amazing to watch that many cars moving at one time. In the old days, I used to have a super-secret shortcut from the South Bay to Hollywood, so we took it and it was still secret without much traffic.
Memories flooded back as we drove by the Hollywood Bowl and drove on the old Cahuenga Pass Road where the big red streetcars used to rumble along beside it. At the summit was where I saw my first skiers making turns on pine needles and riding a rope tow in 1936.
I played part of a no-score round of golf with an old friend, Jack Smith. Jack and his wife, Abby Dalton have been married for a lot of years, but in the early years, had a bit of a rough time and got a divorce. A couple of years later they were remarried. Appearing on a TV show one night with several other couples who had married the same spouse for the second time, the master of ceremonies asked Jack what the most important reason for marrying his wife the second time was?
He replied, “I just wanted to get my money back!” Jack and Abby are a hoot and they have three great kids.
The last morning when I was to fly back to Seattle, the hotel remodelers decided to wake me up at seven instead of nine. A bad ending to a great week in Southern California.