The City of Angels!

This is part II of the trip.
We finally made it to Pasadena, where we and the team stayed! I kept singing the Beach Boys song "Little Old Lady from Pasadena" and kept looking for a little old lady driving a " red super stock Dodge" on Colorado Blvd, which is where our hotel was and which is also the Historic Route 66!! Anywho, after we checked into our hotel we met up with some friends that Adam's cousin Kellye met last year at the UT vs. Berkley game -Vol fans of course, who were from Tennessee, but currently live in Vegas, and who were also staying in Pasadena (that's a mouthful!). Let me preface this part of the story with a comment I made while driving to Nashville to catch our fight to Vegas: I told Adam that we would inevitably see someone from Kingston or Roane County while on our trip. Well, we met Alice and Kenny. We followed them to the beach house of a friend of theirs (also a fellow Tennessean from Clinton) at Hermosa Beach. It was so quaint and cute! It had such a small town feel even though the beach houses were packed in there like sardines! We met a few friends of the friends of the friends and headed for the beach - the Pacific Coast! I've seen it once before from an airplane but have never touched it on this side of the equator! It was freezing and the LA smog was still looming over our heads, but we were on the beach and that's all that mattered!
So back to Alice and Kenny. Kenny was talking to Adam and me about the fact that he grew up in Clinton, TN. He asked Adam where we were from and Adam said Kingston. Kenny said that Alice was from Kingston and Adam said "No not Kingsport...Kingston." Kenny responded with "Yeah, Kingston!" My eyes bugled out of my head! I knew we would find a fellow Kingstonian. As one person put it, "Kingston has long tentacles!" Most Kingston people seem to stay relatively close to the area but a few made it all the way to the West Coast and never looked back! Anyway, Alice is crazy - a fun crazy, but crazy nonetheless! She entertained us the entire evening. We finally headed back to Pasadena, driving through LA traffic again, to have dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen - how original! It was fantastic!
The next day we decided to brave LA traffic again and go see Sunset Blvd and Hollywood Blvd. Sunset Blvd was a bit of a dump. I was so surprised. It was quite educational though. We saw our very first crazy person/crack addict. Seriously, this guy had problems. He was running with no shirt, short shorts and a backpack on with his arms flailing in the air and screaming. We quickly made a few turns to get to Hollywood Blvd as quickly as possible - we had seen enough of the Sunset strip! Hollywood Blvd was so much nicer. We didn't see any celebs except for the impersonaters on the street. We had drinks in this cute little bar called UWink - a Texas based bar. The bartender thought we were University of Texas fans, and Adam quickly pointed out that we were not wearing 'burnt orange.' As we were walking back to the car after sightseeing, we saw the crazy crack addict again, but he had his shirt on this time. I think that was a sign from Above to wrap it up and move on!
From there we went to the UT vs. UCLA game at the Rose Bowl. We parked on a golf course that surrounds the Rose Bowl and walked about 5 miles to where Alice and Kenny had set up a fabulous tailgate, packed with UT fans! We had a nice southern style tailgate with fried chicken and potato salad - southern style potato salad is VERY hard to come by on the West Coast. It was hotter than blue blazes, but we stuck it out until the game. Some of the other UT fans were LA transplants from TN so they told us to pack up most of our tailgate but that it would be fine if we left the canopy up and the coolers and chairs out because no one would mess with it.
We headed to the game. Most of the TN section was to enter at gate 13. There were so many UT fans trying to get into the tunnel at entrance 13 that the Fire Marshall had to come to keep us from entering until the tunnel had cleared. They were not used to so many people piling in at once! We finally got in, walked up to the nose bleed section and packed in with the rest of the sweaty UT fans! The attendance was 69,000, which is nothing compared to Neyland's 106,000!
The game was great until we started losing! We did tie and go into overtime but ended up losing in OT. The UCLA team rushed the field like they won a championship game, their coach gave a heartfelt speech and then the fireworks show started. At that point, Adam and I just wanted to get back to the canopy and finish tailgating. The UCLA fans were SOOO rude as we were leaving - telling us to go back to "TINASEE" - you know the accent, and yelling that we sucked, etc. I couldn't believe how rude they were! I know my brother told me, in slightly different words, that LA was the city of fake breasts and real A-holes (I can't think of a less vulgar word that gets the point across, so sorry for my lack of creativity!). He was right! Well that was only the beginning of the rudeness. As Adam and I were approaching our tailgating canopy, we noticed that we were the first ones back, and I also noticed that a UCLA guy walked under our canopy and picked up a container of food. Adam was too busy texting his cousin to see where everyone was, but I took off sprinting after the UCLA guy yelling at him for taking our food - brownies, the only comfort food we had left! The guy gave back the brownies and walked off saying that I was just mad because we lost. Wow! Typically I don't run down an opposing team's fan for losing, but brownies are a whole different story!
As Adam and I were inspecting the tailgate when we realize that almost everything was gone! It was like the Grinch came to our canopy and took everything including the Whoo Hash! The fried chicken, potato salad, veggie tray, cheese tray, hamburgers, steaks, booze, cokes, sprite, UT canvas chairs and coolers were ALL gone. All that was left was 1 can of Sprite, a container of animal crackers, the brownies, which I retrieved, and the trash! We packed up what little was left and made our 5 mile trek back to the car. I told Adam that LA is not the City of Angels but the City of A-holes!
I was tremendously disappointed with LA. It was dirty and smoggy. The people were rude unless they were transplants. The traffic is INSANE and you never see a police officer or highway patrolman. If we ever go back again I will bypass LA and go to Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive or Malibu.
Next year we host UCLA in Knoxville. Maybe we can show them some Southern Hospitality and some manners!
I will post pictures soon!