I left work about 3pm and met Wendy and Logan to say goodbye. By 5pm I was winging my way to Seattle to meet up with Sue Yarkosky and from there on to Los Angeles. We landed at the Burbank airport just after 9pm, picked up our car and, after a few false starts, managed to find the correct route out of the airport area and to the Radisson across the street from USC.
We checked in a little after 10pm, agreed to meet for breakfast at 7 the next morning and went to our rooms. The rooms were comfortable, but our first lesson in L.A. life was that if a major street, like South Figueroa, needs to be repaired they do it at night. As near as I could tell, there were trucks beeping as they backed up and heavy machinery digging straight through until 6 am when they reopened the street.
Thursday, December 14:
Sue and I met for a quick breakfast before crossing the street and walking about four blocks to the Leventhal School of Accounting on the south edge of the USC campus to meet Barbara Gabel for a tour. The campus itself is very attractive and reminds me a lot of WWU in Bellingham - all brick with the buildings close together and winding paths between trees. The most noticeable difference, besides the size, the sun and warm temperature, are the trees and flowers. I've never seen a palm tree or poinsettia growing outside in Bellingham - especially in December.
Sue in front of the USC bookstore. When she's not enjoying the California sun, she manages the Federal Way TOP Foods.
Barbara called a little after 8 to let us know she was running late so we stopped by the bookstore and I picked up a little USC shirt for Logan. When she arrived we took a walking tour of the campus for about two hours. Barbara pointed out all the best places to eat on campus, noting that students, like armies, travel on their stomachs.
We saw the trophy gallery (pictured below) where the Heisman trophies of such notables as O.J. Simpson and Marcus Allen are displayed. A bit of recently discovered Trojan trivia - John Wayne played football at USC in college under his birth name, Marion Michael Morrison. We also saw the new film school classroom building being built by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Lucas went to film school at USC and Spielberg applied, but wasn't accepted and so went to California State College.
USC's trophy room - many famous athletes got their start as Trojans.
After the tour we had lunch at the University Club where the chef's clearly take great pride in thier dishes. The food was excellent as was the service.
The courtyard outside the University Club. Hard to believe it was December. I felt like I should be wearing shorts. The natives were wearing hats, scarves and mittens.
We then dashed back to the hotel, picked up the car and headed for Marina del Rey to see where we'd be living. Or at least that's where we thought we were headed. It turns out our directions from Map Quest were totally wrong. We were halfway to Long Beach before we realized this just wasn't right. Fortunately Sue had a map and knew how to use it, but after turning around we hit some heavy traffic for a bit and by the time we made it to Oakwood we only had about twenty minutes for a tour before we had to scramble to make it back to the airport and catch our flight. Oakwood is really nice and looks very comfortable. I expect I'll spend a fair bit of my free time in the outdoor pool - in winter no less!
Pictured above are the pool area at Oakwood (complete with cabanas) and the living room of one of the apartments. Looks pretty comfortable.
We made it back to the Burbank airport with about a half hour to spare, boarded our flight and winged our way back to Seattle by about 8:30 pm. Sue headed for home from there and I waited for a couple hours for the Horizon flight back to Bellingham. We landed at 11:55 pm and I was home just before 1 am. A whirlwind tour indeed, but we both felt more comfortable about what to expect when we get to USC.
