Monday, May 26, 2003
"Journey to Mars, CA"
Hullo, and welcome to part one of my "brief" pictorial pre-during-and-post-E3 road trip recount wrap-up journal...thingy. This might take a while. Not that I'm going to write a lot about the trip - it's just that it'll take a good while for me to wade through the whole darn trip. We're talking weeks here, so let's get started already.
Day One - May 11th
Bedtime: 2:30 AM.
Rise-and-shine: 4 AM.
This is not a pleasant night. I brush my teeth in a near coma. I'm willing to commit heinous murder for another sixteen minutes of sleep. Cue last minute panicky packing of still-drying clothes. Time is slowly running out. Sleepiness and murderous thoughts soon vanish when I start dragging all my luggage - including the damn PC containing all my presentations and videos, and the NBT demo for the E3 show - down the street towards the station. It doesn't take long for me to abandon any hope of reaching the station on foot (it's usually ten minutes away; now we're looking at twice that - I obviously didn't think this through) so I hail a cab. That turns out to be a Very Good Idea, since I actually make my plane.
We'll skip the next, like, twenty hours: First to London with a brief stop-over, and then the always comfy and never boring eleven hour, stuffed-into-a-seat- made-for-a-very-small-child, movie-choices-featuring-movies- I've-either-seen-and-hated-or-movies- I'd-never-ever-want-to-see trip to L.A. Phew. We emerge finally into the dry and pleasant heat of the Californian summer feeling not so very fresh, though, fortunately, things look up as soon as we get to our nice and quite luxurious hotel - right on the beach in Santa Monica - and thus ends day one of our First E3 Then Big Road Trip trip. Lacking in the pictorial aspect, perhaps, but things are about to pick up a bit. Yes, wait for it - it's:
Day Two - May 12th
I've been to L.A. a hundred times (well, okay, maybe not a hundred times - more like a dozen times...or less), but I've yet to see the Griffith Observatory overlooking the city. So after dropping by the convention centre to check on our booth (still under construction, looking very much like a big square with flimsy walls around it - though it's always a joy to see the big, huge Sony and Nintendo stands emerging from nothingness into imposing fortresses), we head up into the Hollywood hills. Only to find that the observatory is closed. Until 2005. Not until next Monday, or July, or next summer. No: Two thousand and five. So instead - having driven all the way up here - we take a brief walk up the path to get a better look at the Hollywood sign and the city below.
This is as close as I've ever been to the sign, so I can't resist the opportunity to shoot two pictures. I'm just wild and crazy.
And here's how L.A. (or at least part of it) looks from high above, through thick, unhealthy, pea-soupy smog. Neat-O.
Of course, no trip to the Griffith Observatory (closed until 2005, dammit!) is complete without a pull-my-finger picture. From left to right: Ulf (which means 'wolf' in Norwegian - cool name), our beloved chief (and rocket scientist) Trond, and my pal Nico:
Mission accomplished (or not so much, no), we head back down into the smog, get plastered and play pool - really, really badly. Wheee! Cue Day Three - but not until tomorrow. (Told you this would take time.)
Hullo, and welcome to part one of my "brief" pictorial pre-during-and-post-E3 road trip recount wrap-up journal...thingy. This might take a while. Not that I'm going to write a lot about the trip - it's just that it'll take a good while for me to wade through the whole darn trip. We're talking weeks here, so let's get started already.
Day One - May 11th
Bedtime: 2:30 AM.
Rise-and-shine: 4 AM.
This is not a pleasant night. I brush my teeth in a near coma. I'm willing to commit heinous murder for another sixteen minutes of sleep. Cue last minute panicky packing of still-drying clothes. Time is slowly running out. Sleepiness and murderous thoughts soon vanish when I start dragging all my luggage - including the damn PC containing all my presentations and videos, and the NBT demo for the E3 show - down the street towards the station. It doesn't take long for me to abandon any hope of reaching the station on foot (it's usually ten minutes away; now we're looking at twice that - I obviously didn't think this through) so I hail a cab. That turns out to be a Very Good Idea, since I actually make my plane.
We'll skip the next, like, twenty hours: First to London with a brief stop-over, and then the always comfy and never boring eleven hour, stuffed-into-a-seat- made-for-a-very-small-child, movie-choices-featuring-movies- I've-either-seen-and-hated-or-movies- I'd-never-ever-want-to-see trip to L.A. Phew. We emerge finally into the dry and pleasant heat of the Californian summer feeling not so very fresh, though, fortunately, things look up as soon as we get to our nice and quite luxurious hotel - right on the beach in Santa Monica - and thus ends day one of our First E3 Then Big Road Trip trip. Lacking in the pictorial aspect, perhaps, but things are about to pick up a bit. Yes, wait for it - it's:
Day Two - May 12th
I've been to L.A. a hundred times (well, okay, maybe not a hundred times - more like a dozen times...or less), but I've yet to see the Griffith Observatory overlooking the city. So after dropping by the convention centre to check on our booth (still under construction, looking very much like a big square with flimsy walls around it - though it's always a joy to see the big, huge Sony and Nintendo stands emerging from nothingness into imposing fortresses), we head up into the Hollywood hills. Only to find that the observatory is closed. Until 2005. Not until next Monday, or July, or next summer. No: Two thousand and five. So instead - having driven all the way up here - we take a brief walk up the path to get a better look at the Hollywood sign and the city below.
This is as close as I've ever been to the sign, so I can't resist the opportunity to shoot two pictures. I'm just wild and crazy.
And here's how L.A. (or at least part of it) looks from high above, through thick, unhealthy, pea-soupy smog. Neat-O.
Of course, no trip to the Griffith Observatory (closed until 2005, dammit!) is complete without a pull-my-finger picture. From left to right: Ulf (which means 'wolf' in Norwegian - cool name), our beloved chief (and rocket scientist) Trond, and my pal Nico:
Mission accomplished (or not so much, no), we head back down into the smog, get plastered and play pool - really, really badly. Wheee! Cue Day Three - but not until tomorrow. (Told you this would take time.)
