October 25, 2008

  • My cousin is visiting from New York, and she decided to join me for the "Iced Earth" concert I was going to. Since she's here, I may as well take advantage of the day, and do other things before the concert.

    First thing we did was go to Santa Monica, where I taught her how to roller blade. I was wondering if I could still do it myself actually, because it's been about a decade since I've used roller blades. After finding a rental store, it turned out that it's still in me to roller blade after all. My cousin had some experience ice skating, so I told her that it was pretty much kinda the same. It took her maybe one or two tries, to find her balance to stand, which is already impressive since a lot of beginners tend to have a hard time with that. Her speed skating was a little slow and she did not know how to brake properly, but she was a quick learner. At one point however, she considered going back to rent a bike instead, but she braved through and stuck with the roller blades. I'm glad she did, because by about 2 1/2 hours, she was confident enough to say that she knows how to roller blade. She only fell once, and that was partly my fault, because I was pushing her forward, and she lost balance.

    Besides the Santa Monica Pier, we did go to Venice beach, on those roller blades. My cousin got herself a henna tatoo of a dragon over there, and we even saw a film crew shooting a scene for an AXE body spray commercial. We also did end up going to a bar in one of the restaurants at the pier, and ordered some drinks. Afterwards, we decided to take the scenic route to Hollywood, by taking Pacific Coast Highway and then all the way on Sunset Blvd. I've never done that kind of drive before, and besides the traffic, I was rather enjoying myself driving through those hilly and curvy roads, surrounded by a lot of trees and expensive looking houses. At Hollywood, we walked around a bit at Sunset/Vine & Hollywood/Vine a bit, where my cousin was surprised to find out that the city has a subway system. Not only that, but we were bought surprised at how fancy and clean the subway station looked. We were just about two hours from the concert, so we ended up eating some sushi, sashimi, and rolls at this Japanese Restaurant on Vine.

    The Iced Earth concert at The Wiltern was the last thing to do for the night, and it was pretty awesome. We stood at the back of the room, which turned out to be the wisest decision, because there weren't a lot of people standing with us there. I took advantage of that extra space, and ended up headbanging and thrash around to my heart's content. I wouldn't have been able to do that closer to the stage, because of the no-mosh piting policy of the venue. At the beginning of their set, I was complaining about how loud the drums were over the guitars and vocals, that I was a little bit disappointed. After the third song, the sound was finally adjusted properly which allowed me to enjoy the songs a lot more. While there, I even got to see an old friend of mine whom I haven't seen for a long time now, so that was pretty cool. Iced Earth's set ended after about 1hr40mins.

    We went to get some In and Out burgers, and called it a night. I think until now, my ankles are really feeling a bit tired from roller blading. It was a fun day though. Fun day.

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