Wednesday, May 13, 2009

How to do a Layover




So... I scheduled a nine-hour layover in L.A. when flying down to Ecuador, for reasons that I no longer remember. I gave my friend-from-New-Zealand Andy a holler, who is a production assistant there in LaLa land, to see if he'd pick me up to grab dinner or something during the layover. I'd let him know I'd be through a long time back, so I gave him holler on Saturday night to see if we were still on for Sunday.

Andy's response on Saturday: OH, shit... you're in LA now? Tomorrow? Sorry man, I'm hammered. Oh.... this girl gave me tickets to the Shins concert at the Paladium tomorrow when you're here. Ummmm... you want to go to a Shins concert tomorrow?

So, long story short, my nine-hour layover was quite excellent, from a trip to Tito's Tacos, then beer with the always delightful and diminutive Carmen Bognanno, and then off to Hollywood for a Shins concert. Carmen tagged along, because she is awesome and I don't visit L.A. often and because she wanted to fill my ears with thoughts to bring down to her former roommate Andrea in Ecuador. So, hung out at the Paladium for my layover, dece good concert, and the layover comes in as my second best after the 12-day layover in Fiji many years ago.

And now I'm in Quito! Reunion with Andrea and her other Peace Corps friends has gone amazingly well, and we're currently on a short pitstop at the PC office before embarking to Latacunga, which is the base camp for our coming hike up Cotapaxi. Cotopaxi is the volcano pictured above -- and if the weather holds out fog-wise, I'll have some similar photos of my own to upload for you guys. Andrea and Jason (who took over for her at the Tabuga dry tropical forest reserve) are making sounds of terror as I uploaded that photo, but it looks a lot like Alma to me so I'm not too worried. Can't wait to tell you how it went down! Only 20,000ft elevation... not too bad. Looking forward to the crampon-and-ice-axe training. And I'm off!

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