Showing the out-of-towners around.

I had an interesting situation a couple weeks ago, as by chance I ended up playing the role of last-minute tour guide to two visitors: a friend visiting from the Midwest on business and a soccer coach from England who was staying in the house for the week and had just been reassigned to the Pacific Northwest, leaving the following day.

This mini-adventure started with me picking up my first friend from a hotel adjacent to LAX, taking her the longer way on Pacific Coast Highway into Torrance and to one of my favorite places to eat, Kula Sushi. I haven't done a food review of this place (I'm too busy nomming the sushi to care), but I hope to get the chance to do that, just as I try to drag a friend to this place any opportunity I get. It was easy for her to scarf down on the sushi - living in a land-locked state like Missouri can make it difficult to acquire (and trust) the "fresh" fish that's served there. So I don't blame her for having her fill.

It wasn't the first time that I've played the role of tour guide; in fact I look forward to it every chance I get. However, it had been years since I had acted as one out here in Southern California. My time in Ohio relegated me to a passive (and occasionally torturous) role of online adviser and e-mail buddy to those visiting my home and looking for things to do. Now, one thing I do take pride in is my knowledge of the random facts and details about my part of town. Maybe I could make this a gig! You know, throw a tip jar in the back of the car, serve drinks, and a wear a boom mike to be all official like that.

After dinner, I picked up the soccer coach and started with a cruise in the car onto Palos Verdes Drive East, stopping at one of the vista points overlooking the Pacific Ocean. A few minutes of photo ops, and then it was a jaunt through San Pedro and across the Vincent Thomas Bridge. Lucky for us, the World's Largest Rubber Duck was docked in the Port of Los Angeles for the 2014 Tall Ships Festival so my guests had a chance to see it as well as I cruised along toward the 710 freeway.

I dropped my Missouri friend off at her hotel by LAX and headed (on request) with the soccer coach to Hollywood to see "what the place is all about." So about an hour later I was walking around the touristy portion of Hollywood Blvd. with a Brit on one side and a coffee in my hand (it was a long evening as I had substitute taught a filmmaking class earlier that day). We spent the next hour and a half admiring the cement prints left by stars of the past and present in the TCL Chinese Theater, walking into souvenir shops full of chotskies, and taking pictures for out-of-towners with their phones and cameras. Occasionally, I would simply look down and admire the ground. I was on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, after all.

Here was the reason for the request to go to Hollywood, a chance to pay tribute to the great Robin Williams.

After a little sightseeing, we stopped at the Hard Rock Cafe on Hollywood Blvd. for a couple drinks and conversation. It had been a while since I was able to sit down for a break and just be social again. No deadlines. No rush. Sometimes, all it takes is an opportunity to revisit a familiar place to bring a new magic to something that has been long-standing. As a Southern California native, I had often thought of Hollywood as "the place to avoid." It's probably the traffic and the annoyance of trying to drive a car through there. Anytime of the night on any part of the week, when I'm on my motorcycle courier shift, the area is filled with people looking up at the lights or looking down to try to find an actor, singer, or famous somebody immortalized on the ground below them.

People watching from the top of the bar...the ginger ales seem to taste better from up here.

On the way back home, a request for a small bite to eat meant a stop at Pink's Hot Dogs (I'd be a lame tour guide if I didn't do that). Somewhere in between bites of my chili dog, I was watching my visitor smiling and taking photos of the various autographs and details of the hole-in-the-wall store that's been a fixture here in LA for the last 75 years. Looks like my mission was a success.

What a night. I gotta meet more people from out-of-town and do this more often!

Day 5-6: Minot! Why not? Fuzzies and Scandinavians included.

**This series of posts recap my two-week trip to Billings, MT and back from July 1-16, 2013. For the entire list of my featured rides, click here.**

I slept in on Day 5 of this trip, which translates to waking up somewhere between 9-9:30AM to the sparring of Mollie and Ammo, my friend's two dogs who have the run of the place. I'll talk more about them later. But first, it was off to breakfast at a nearby Perkins restaurant to catch up on our life travels (it's been a few years since we had seen each other face-to-face). On the way inside, we found these two cuties hanging out in the back of another restaurant patron's truck.

Hello, human. We be chillin' in our ride.

Days 1 and 2: Getting off my tuchus and getting it to Peoria...

**This series of posts recap my two-week trip to Billings, MT and back from July 1-16, 2013. For the entire list of my featured rides, click here.**

When I said that I had to (get to packing) to leave for this trip in the previous post, I wasn't joking; I hadn't even started until I hit the "publish" button and stepped away from the computer. Since it's one of those typical long-distance trips that I make every so often, prep falls into a very organized system that has me up and out in about an hour or less. Additionally, Eleanor was serviced/repaired about two weeks ago so she was ready to go...I had to catch up with her.

Of course, that one hour window is pretty accurate, unless I'm completely lazy and just taking my sweet damn time, which I did, since the ride to Peoria to see my best buddy, Susy, has become more or less a routine, 450-500 mile ride that I've made many times before. It's the other place I hang my hat when I can make it westward, and for this year's cross-country trip, it's the first stop of a chain of friends I get to see along the way. Speaking of friends, Mr. Doppler Radar helped me avoid a downpour across I-80 because of the deliberate delay.

I left Eastlake, OH at 5PM and took I-80 across most of the way. This was the first time I've ridden to Peoria from there (I usually left from Columbus, OH via I-70 and I-65 out of Indianapolis). I'm glad I took cash with me because of the turnpike tolls, but other than that, it was an uneventful ride through the night that had me there and in bed by 3AM Central Time. Yep, I'm a slacker.

South Bend, IN...I think I'm the only person wearing any Cardinal and Gold in here. This is quite awkward.

Quick Stops: West Side Market (Cleveland, OH)

A couple weeks ago I went with a group to visit the West Side Market in Downtown Cleveland. This was a place, like Eggshelland in Lyndhurst, that I had only read about in travel articles and tourist guides. After walking through this place, I learned quickly why this melting pot of foods, opened in 1912, is one of the most treasured assets of the city.

Before you read any further, this blog post is filled with gratuitous amounts of food porn. You have been warned. But if you like that kind of stuff, please click to continue. Trust me, it's safe (and very tasty) for work...depending on how you read it.