2022-02-28 33 -118

Location

In a car park for residential flats at Venice Beach, Los Angeles, California, USA.

Participants

Felix Dance

Expedition

My girlfriend and I had just arrived in Los Angeles from Melbourne, Australia the day before. I only checked the hash locations here in the afternoon which meant our day was already full. Not the night though, so after getting back from dinner I walked to the bus stop near our hotel to catch a hash-bus.

But just as I was getting to the stop a bus pulled up and started taking off. I ran after it for 1.5 stop lengths but gave up. But then a car pulled up and a kindly old lady shouted, "Trying to catch that bus? Get in!" So after a quick assessment I did.

It turned out to be very difficult to get ahead of the bus owing to the Los Angeles traffic. The woman, Lydia, told me about her gripes with the city, asked where I was from, noted approvingly at our 'socialised medicine' and then made a series of complaints about other nationalities. But she was incredibly helpful and very interesting to talk to.

One problem was that the got a bit obsessed about catching the bus, even when we passed where I needed to have gotten off. Eventually she got there so I mimed getting onto the bus and waved Lydia off with thanks. I then didn't get on the bus (it wasn't actually a stop anyway so that was pretty easy) and instead went around the corner for the next bus I had to take. It was actually a significant backtrack by that stage.

Luckily, the timing was good and I was soon on my way to Venice Beach.

When I got off I walked the short walk to the hash. It was in a car park underneath some residential balconies. These seemed to affect the GPS signal as I had trouble getting my phone to show that I'd made it despite obviously having done so. I got a screenshot at 4m and went to the beach.

After checking out the dark Pacific Ocean and getting my shoes sandy I return to the hash for a second attempt. This time it worked much better and I got a 1.8m distanf. Good enough!

I returned using the same series of buses, less eventfully this time.