1:The Beginning.
California, Los Angeles, Griffith Observatory.
06th September 2019.
Day One.
The Beginning.
3:30 AM. Martha doesn’t fly well. This sounds like it could be problematic, but to be honest apart from her intense death grip as the plane takes off it’s surprisingly easy. This is because when we arrive at the airport Martha spends most of her time in the toilet, and this time was no exception.
So, Heathrow consisted of me sitting outside various airport toilets reading David Attenborough: Journeys to the Other Side of the World.
However, Martha suffers from a problem far greater than a fear of flying. Martha is very… Martha. This is a term used by anyone who has known Marfs for more than 5 minutes. The closest description of this term would be a blend of the stereotypical saying blonde, mixed with a dash of clumsy and hint of lovely.
Had I known that today Martha was going to pull out every ‘That’s so Martha’ move in the book, I may have looked into finding us separate flights.
3:45AM.
TIRED.
That’s a bit of an exaggeration but wait for it. After our final toilet trip, we find ourselves in the waiting area before getting on the plane. We send our final texts to our families to say we are boarding and then get called forward.
The seats seem to be a little snug for a 13-hour trip to Los Angeles, but what can you do? We sit down when we hear an announcement to the passengers about a phone being left in the waiting area. I’m sat in my seat, laughing to myself, thinking “imagine being that person. Lost their phone before they have even got on the plane”.
I then turn to Martha to make this comment and the look on her face says it all.
Martha gets up and walks to the front of the plane to find her phone. In the back of my mind, I can’t help but think how screwed we would have been if we lost it.
As I’ve said before, my phone is more of a hand warmer or a cooker. Conveniently small and portable, it’s perfect for traveling and camping.
My phone; however, can not be used for navigation, pictures, the internet, calling people, or anything else a phone should be able to do. So we need her phone.
Come to think of it, I'm not sure if my phone should have been allowed on the plane.
Luckily, Marfs comes back a few minutes later with her phone. Not to worry, we’ve got it and I can relax. Kinda. The idea that in a few hours I’ll be in a strange country, driving on the wrong side of the road, in a 25ft RV, does have me a little more on edge than usual.
The woman sat to my right was a lovely 25-year-old twin. That's not to be confused with a woman who has 25-year-old twins. This was a very awkward yet hilarious misunderstanding, made by Martha, which led to the two of them looking blankly at each other and then not speaking again for the next 13 hours.
The conversation went something like this:
“I’m on holiday with my twin” - 25-year-old twin.
“Awww, How old are they?” - Martha.
“25…” - 25-year-old twin.
Martha, showing visible signs of confusion as she frowns. The puzzled look on her face was fantastic.
The twin shows more confusion as she looks back at Martha.
And I'm sat in-between them, trying not to laugh.
I did later have to explain what had happened to Martha, who was still confused, even when the lady’s ‘doppelgänger' appeared halfway through the flight.
“I did think she looked a little young to have 25-year-old twins”
Other than that, it was an easy journey.
So, hopped off the plane at LAX with a dream and a lost VISA. Didn’t see that coming did you?
Martha had the papers in her hand and then somehow we found them 10 minutes later on the floor in the middle of the arrival point. I feel that so far this blog has been me roasting Martha. I’d like to point out that she is lovely, but on this day she was on another level.
So, Hopped off the plane at LAX with a dream and no phone, because Marth’s left it in the Taxi.
Twice. She’s lost her phone twice.
We haven’t even seen the RV yet. Anyway, in real time this was an absolute ball-ache. We went into the Cruise America building to pick up the RV. There were a load of other people waiting for their RVs. The process didn’t seem particularly snappy.
The Taxi service was very difficult with wanting to drop Martha’s phone back to us. Luckily we met an absolute legend, called Brian, who understood the L.A taxi game and kept calling them for us and wouldn’t take no for an answer. We chilled in his office for a bit while he helped us out. Genuinely, I hope he knows how awesome he was because I was not best pleased at this point in time. Oh, I also forgot to mention that Martha also left her suitcase at the reception of Cruise America. She only realised she didn't have it when I asked her where it was. Oops.
Cruise America made us watch some videos about the vehicle and safety. They also mentioned that we needed more insurance.
Thank you, STA.
That’s another hidden cost to add to the others. £500 this time. Cool.
Luckily the RV was made available just as Martha's phone arrived. It cost us $40, it would have been more, but Brian wasn’t having any of it. Thank God for that dude.
It did take a good 3 hours for the RV to be ready, which normally I’d complain about, but we had to wait for the phone anyway, so it didn’t matter. That could be a downside for other people though.
After a very long and painful wait, we got shown inside our new home for the next 6 weeks. They showed Martha and me how it all worked. How you check the propane levels and generator levels and so on.
Then we were left to it.
So, I’m sat in the driver's seat of this RV. It’s huge. It’s automatic. It has no hand brake... stick... thing. (I'm not a car guy).
I have no idea how anything works. At this point, you kind of have to take a leap of faith and hope for the best. The hand brake turned out to be a little lever in the position of where the clutch would be, but slightly higher up. To push this handbrake pedal down I had to lift my foot so high I felt like a frickin velociraptor.
I took it off and the vehicle rolled forwards, as in, drove forwards. I didn’t know that automatics when in drive, drive forward even without your foot in the accelerator. Now I know.
So we jumped forwards a bit, oops, as I tried to get a feel for the vehicle. Martha probably s****** herself.
I only had about 10 metres of driveway before getting on to a busy road in Los Angeles. Very much a run before you can walk scenario for myself, but we aren't going to cross America by sitting in a car park.
Throughout the 3 hours at the Cruise America collection point, I’d been studying the traffic lights to get over the road, and for some reason, they didn’t make sense. My anxiety had gone to a whole new level. I just stared at these lights for hours.
Luckily, when you’re actually sat in the vehicle and your steering wheel is on the correct side to the road layout, it does make sense. It’s easy and not scary.
What is scary, is L.A traffic.
Now on course for our first campsite, we were stuck in a massive traffic jam with no end. Despite having an absolute mare today, Martha was amazing at helping me feel confident on the road for the first time. The movies don’t lie either, Americans love to use a horn.
I got beeped at a red light, as in the states you can turn right at red lights. Luckily I kinda knew that was a thing from watching YouTube videos and understood what was happening.
We finally arrive at our campsite at 7 PM. We hook up the electrics and the water. We then walk to the small store on-site, which is due to shut soon and buy some pasta. When we get back to the RV we both realised that during our eventful day, we hadn’t retained any information regarding how the propane worked. Propane is the gas used for the stove...
Tired and hungry, we walk back to the shop, buy some cereal, and crashed out at 9 PM (5 AM UK time).
Stay tuned if you want to find out why you don’t take a 25ft RV into the centre of L.A.