Journey Past and Present 2005

Journey to the Stars

Hollywood, CA

January 20-23, 2005

Saturday, January 22: City of the Angels

I got up way too early on Saturday, considering that I hadn’t crawled into bed till after 1:30 and probably didn’t get to sleep for another hour or so.  But I think I was still on East Coast time, so by 7:30 AM there, I knew I wasn’t going to get any more sleep.  So I got up, watched TV for a while, called home and eventually got dressed.  Cathy called to tell me that Tracey and Glenda had just left, so if I wanted, I could bring my things down to her room then.  I was going to room in with her for Saturday night.  That, at least, helped  a little with the expense.  So I dragged my stuff down one floor, and then we went to the hotel desk so I could check out of mine.  A small hassle there, because when I checked in and said my roommate wasn’t going to be able to make it, the girl asked if I wanted to change to a single bed room.  I said I would, if I could still get the JPP rate.  She said yes, no problem.  But on Saturday, they wanted to charge me more, saying there had been a room change.  I told them what I had been told, and they fixed the rate.  No big deal.

Cathy and I went down to the Rennaissance complex and decided to have breakfast at Johnny Rockets.  While we were there, Val called me.  They were at McDonald’s- also having breakfast!  A popular item on everyone’s morning agenda, I guess.

People who had to fly back to the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, especially, were starting to get a bit worried about the snowstorm that was heading in on Saturday.  Several people knew already by mid-morning on Saturday that they were not going to be able to get home as planned.  My flight did not get back in to NH till late Sunday night, and most of the storm was supposed to be over by then, so I decided to wait till  Sunday morning to call about it, since I was pretty sure they wouldn’t be able to tell me anything yet.

We walked down to the where Journey’s star was in front of the Musician’s Institute.  We took some pictures, of the star alone and of us sitting by it.  Cathy and I wanted to go to the bowling party, but that wasn’t until later in the afternoon, so we were looking for something to do for the rest of the morning.  We thought we might try one of the tours that are hawked everywhere on the street, and we decided to do a one hour trolley tour of Hollywood.  Other people were going to continue after that on a tour of the stars’ homes.  It was an interesting tour.  Our driver was pretty typical of these type of tours: lots of jokes and comments, but informative, too.  We went up into the Hollywood Bowl- that is one impressive place!  I have seen it in pictures, but standing there, it is really a beautiful setting.  I can just imagine how wonderful it must be on a warm summer night, listening to the LA Philharmonic in that setting.   He drove us up into a residential neighborhood, and stopped where we could get some really good shots of the Hollywood sign.  We saw several of the movie and TV studios, and a number of other “places of interest.”  We ended up back at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre (where we had started).  That is a pretty cool building, too.  And has all the hand and footprints of the stars out front. 

Someone said that the Augeris were spotted down the street, so we headed off in that direction.  We ran into them outside a souvenir shop.  We spoke to Lydia for a bit, and she was concerned also about getting home in the storm that was coming.  They were waiting for the rest of their group to arrive- there were so many of them, the van had to make two trips!  They had something like 32 in their group- Steve had joked at the reception that now Brooklyn was empty!  Lydia was gracious enough to take a picture with us, and I snapped a couple of Steve, and then we let them get on with their day.  We started talking to Kimberly, who had come to the JPP event with a friend, who hadn’t wanted to walk along the Walk of Fame on Saturday with Kimberly.  She asked if we would mind if she came along with us, so she wouldn’t have to hang out alone.  We said, sure, and that we were heading to the Schon Girls bowling party.  We got to the lanes early, but we sat and talked till everyone showed up.

We had a lot of fun bowling.  There were a lot of people there and I have to give those Schon Girls credit- they know how to throw a party!  They had magnetic calendars with (duh!) Neal on them, and chocolates with custom NealSchonRocks.com wrappers.  I bowled pretty badly, and I could say it was because I didn’t have my own ball and shoes, but honestly, that doesn’t seem to make a difference here at home!  We had fun, anyway, and that’s the important part.  Dr. Val was there, and she had made the cutest bracelets with letter beads spelling JOURNEY and little star charms that she was giving out to anyone who wanted one.  I picked one with a green star- my favorite color!  Thanks so much- it’s darling, and I wear it all the time!

After bowling, we decided to go get something to eat.  We went to the California Pizza Kitchen, and while we were waiting for our food, we saw Carol, and she joined us for dinner.  I had the Thai chicken pizza and it was delicious!  Just the right amount of spicy in the peanut sauce.  After dinner, we walked around for a while, did some souvenir shopping and ran into Chrissy and Rhonda, who were just back from Rodeo Drive, where they had spent the afternoon.  Yes, they did buy- they each got a really cute (and expensive!) purse.  We chatted for a bit, took a few last minute pictures and worried about the snowstorm a bit more.  Chrissy was flying back to CT, so she had the same problem I did.

Cathy wanted to go back to the Rennaissance to see about the group that was going to the City Walk, as that is where the Hard Rock Café is, and she collects the guitar pins from Hard Rocks.  She decided to just give the money to someone who was going and pick up her pin the next morning.  So we went back to the hotel, got packed up and settled in.  I called home and there was no change in the forecast.  Watched a bit of “Jack,” the Robin Williams movie, but I fell asleep pretty quickly.