Introduction

We were supposed to visit our friend Kasia in Mammoth Lakes, California, for a mini road trip and spend a day in LA as well. Kasia ended up getting sick, so we decided not to go to Mammoth as it seemed too risky with Lizy being pregnant. I had already booked time off work, and we started the week with a staycation in Mountain View. I was trying to get work done on the game I was working on, but Lizy said it didn’t feel like a vacation if we were at home, so we decided to just do the LA part of the trip.

The drive down south was easy. We took the mega highway. We were a little light on snacks, so we ended up stopping near LA for a big lunch.

Arriving in LA

My cousin Nick Flanagan lives in Toronto but knows a lot of people in LA since he lived there for a while. He worked in the entertainment world out there—comedy and TV writing—and most of the people he knows are Canadian expats from that milieu. He was currently staying in LA for a month, dog-sitting for a friend. The house was in Glendale, a suburb of LA. The house was in a canyon—maybe all of Glendale is—and Lizy commented as we were driving into the neighborhood that it must be chaos if people need to evacuate during an emergency, since there was only one road in and out.

In the front yard of their house was a big tree. One of its limbs extended over the driveway and was precariously being held up by a piece of wood. We parked right underneath the branch. I was putting a lot of faith in that piece of wood.

It was a beautiful, big house. Going through the front door, you walk into a big living room with comfy couches, a record player, and shelves of records. The record collection contained a mix of old and new, and it seemed as if it had been handed down through the generations of their family. But it’s possible they had just curated the collection that way.

There were bookshelves filled with books, but they had so many that most ended up stacked in piles—kind of like the stacks of books at the Greylock office where I work, with the obvious difference that Greylock’s stacks are all business books, while these LA writers had literature. I saw a lot of classic novels. They had a copy of Dharma Bums, the Jack Kerouac novel where he describes hiking the Matterhorn in northern Yosemite. When I read that book, I really wanted to climb that mountain. I still do. They had the new Zadie Smith novel. The books definitely gave the house a cool artistic vibe.

The upstairs of the house only had the master suite. All the other bedrooms were on the main floor. Nick gave us the suite while we were visiting. It was nice to have a private space. Nick was sleeping in the garage, which he had also converted into a makeshift office.

Nick was happy to see us when we walked in. The dog was happy to see us too, though it stood in front of me as I was walking in and I tripped over it. I wasn’t hurt, but it was a little embarrassing.

Evening

We grabbed a bite to eat at a Mexican restaurant down the road. Before we left, I asked if we could walk, but apparently no one walks anywhere in LA, so we drove. The food was good.

When we got back to the house, the three of us, plus the dog, sat in the living room and talked for a while. Nick put a Neil Young album on the record player and brainstormed sights we could see tomorrow. He recommended the Getty Villa Museum, which reminded him of a story about the museum’s benefactor, J. Paul Getty. Getty was the richest man in America, but when his grandson was kidnapped, he refused to pay the ransom. Eventually, when the kidnappers sent him an ear, he started negotiating. The kidnappers ended up accepting far less than they originally asked for. When the grandson was returned, Getty made him pay back the money.