California Father/Son Trip

In March, Nate came with me on a business trip I had to California.  Nate was pretty excited to take my first class seat all the way out to Los Angeles, and I was equally thrilled to sit in coach for the long flight.  National was kind enough to give me a Camero as a rental car (which Nate never actually drove, for the record).  First class and a sports car.  Beat that.

We found all sorts of fun stuff to do after hours, including a go-cart track with 50mph electric go-carts, sushi in Laguna beach and Universal Studios.  As Nate put it, "It was like having a guys night (aka, his sisters and mom are out of the house) for 3 days straight."  We were going non-stop and had a blast exploring California together.

Universal Studios was different than we expected.  We both were thinking more like Florida's Universal Studios, with lots of roller coasters and rides.  Universal Studios in California is much more about shows and the movie lot experience.  The movie lot tour was fun, but most of the stuff they showed was more old-school stuff like Jaws and Psycho, but had some cool stuff from War of the Worlds and The Grinch.

The best part of Universal was The Simpsons ride, complete with an actual Kwik-E-Mart.



Nate and I are both huge Simpsons fans, so we were loving ever part of it.


We stayed that night in Santa Monica, and had a chance to walk down onto the infamous pier that you see, and Nate got to see his first Hare Krishna's dancing and singing.  A real rite of passage.

We hit Venice Beach as well to people watch and grab lunch.  Nate got a piece of deep fried Pepperoni Pizza, which was good for the first 3 bites, and then got a little nasty.

We happened to stumble across the taping of American Ninja Warrior, which is a show on G4 that Nate and I have both watched.  We talked to the security guy and finagled our way into the studio audience.  You can't beat 75 degrees in March, on Venice Beach, watching the taping outside of a show you like.

We finished up the trip heading up to Griffith Park.  You've seen it in the movie Terminator or Rebel without a cause, or read about it in the Divinci Code Books.  It has a beautiful view of Los Angeles's smog, and of the Hollywood sign.


Our flight was at 11:30pm that night (2:30am EST), so we crashed hard on the red eye flight home after a busy few days.  I'd waited a long time for Nate to be old enough to do a trip like this with him, and it was everything I'd hoped.  I'm so grateful to have a son like Nate that I love spending time with, with lots of  in common to enjoy together.