Back in May I got an email about the Adobe Max conference.  At work we use all of Adobe’s software on a daily basis.  I mostly use Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign & Flash.  The email said they have sessions and labs where you can learn new tricks and processes for all of their software.  I was excited!  I forwarded the email to my boss and at the same time she was emailing me the same email telling me to go!  I couldn’t believe it I have been asking to go to any conference for the 10 years I’ve worked there so I was super excited.  I booked everything immediately and I remember thinking it was such a long way away but before I knew it it was October and I was leaving.

As the date was approaching I was beginning to get a bit nervous.  I have never traveled by myself before.  I have flown by myself but always met someone on the other side to continue with.  I had planned to go to Los Angeles a day early and site see.  The conference started on a Monday at 8 am so I’d have to leave on Sunday anyway but I left really early Sunday to have the day to site see.

I arrived in Los Angeles at 7:15 am.  I took a shuttle to the rental car lot to get a car.  The day before I had finally broke down and gone and got Greg and I new phones.  I am so glad I did because I used the heck out of that thing.  I was able to get around all of Los Angeles with the gps on my new phone.  I decided I wanted to go to the Santa Monica Pier.  I headed straight there and got there about 8:30.  It was still pretty early so there wasn’t a lot of people and a lot of the stores weren’t open yet.  Luckily Bubba Gump Shrimp was open and they served breakfast so I went in and had eggs benedict.

After breakfast I walked around the pier and took pictures.  I had planned to walk to Venice Beach from the pier.  I had google mapped it and saw it was only a couple of miles.  I talked to a hostess at Bubba Gump that was super friendly and she told me it was a nice easy walk.  I headed out along the boardwalk.  It was really neat to see the ocean along my walk and all the interesting people.  I saw a lot of people on bikes and rollar blades.  I eventually made it to the Venice beach boardwalk.  Just as I got there fog rolled in covering everything on the boardwalk with a light mist and cooling everything down.

Venice beach was an interesting place.  Not one that I would go back to but glad I got to see it. When I thought of Venice I thought of the ocean, the street artists and performers and muscle beach.  All of that is there it’s just different.  I walked along the board walk and there some really cool colorful buildings that I got pictures of.  There were a lot of things I couldn’t get pictures of though because there are handmade signs posted everywhere not to take pictures.  A lot of the artists didn’t want pictures of their stuff taken or you could make a donation to them and take pictures.  Also a lot of the art was different, there were a lot of homeless there with art made from stuff they found – some of it was really awesome and inspiring to see what they could do, others not so much.  There weren’t a lot of performers either.  I only saw what appeared to be a homeless man about to sit on a pile of glass.

I have to same the amount of homeless people really made the area dare I say creepy.  I don’t know that I would of felt that way if I was with a group but being by myself I felt a little uneasy.  I saw people doing drugs, people fighting and was asked many times for money.  I had one guy ask for money so he could buy something cold to drink and a sandwich.  I told him I didn’t have cash but I had just purchased a bottle of water he was welcome to have.  He said oh no I just want the money I already have water in my back pack!

I ventured far enough into Venice to get to Muscle Beach where I saw a lot of equipment but not a single person there.  At that point I had enough and turned around to walk back to Santa Monica Pier.   On my way back I bought a small art piece from one of the artists.  I thought it was interesting.   I also saw a photographer that had some beautiful ocean images.  I saw a picture of a lifeguard stand that had an amazing sunset.  I talked to him for a bit and he told me that the life guard stand was the first one on the beach a ways up.  He then pointed to another picture and pointed to the lifeguard stand in the distance right behind him and said it was a picture of that one.  He told me that this life guard stands name was Thornton.  I told him that was my last name and he showed be a bunch of other pictures he had taken of that spot.  I ended up buying one of his images and walked the distance to the lifeguard stand to get my own pictures.   As I walked up to get my picture a homeless man decided it was time for his nap underneath it in the shade.  I just went and sat at the beach for a while hoping he would move in a bit and I could get my picture.  I sat there for about an hour and he finally moved on.  I got my picture and then walked back to the Santa Monica Pier from the ocean.  It was so nice.  It was much cooler by the ocean and I didn’t have to walk pass all the homeless asking for money.

I thought I would spend more time at the Santa Monica Pier and Venice beach then I did.  I had only planned to go to those 2 places on my free day but when I got back to the pier it was only 1ish.  So even though I had been to Hollywood Blvd before 15 years ago I decided to head over there.

I wanted to go to the Chinese Theater but when I parked and walked over there everything was blocked off, there was red carpet and security.  I found out that they were premiering American Horror Story: Freak Show that night.  I was tired from walking and didn’t really want to drive anywhere else to site see so I went into the Hard Rock Cafe and had lunch.

After lunch I walked around a bit more looking at the stars names on the side walks.  I thought about staying there to watch all the celebrities walk the red carpet for the premiere but at that point I was so tired I decided to head back to the airport and drop my car off.  I took a shuttle from the car rental place back to the airport so I could catch an airport shuttle to my hotel.  All of this took a lot longer than I expected and I didn’t end up getting back to my hotel until late.  While I was in the shuttle I was with a bunch of other people and 2 of the happened to be going to the same conference as me.  It was nice getting to talk to them while we drove to our hotels.

When I checked in I didn’t do much because I was so tired so I just called Greg and the kids and went to bed.