Los Angeles

Status:

Days on the Road: 63
Travelled Km: 12943
Location: Los Angeles USA
Pictures: LA and California coast
Pictures: San Francisco

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Now in Los Angeles. But things have changed a little bit. I wanted to hitchhike down along the coast of California on Highway 1, while everybody recommended me not doing it. But to get out of the City of San Francisco I had to look for some kind of a ride share since this place was to big to walk somewhere. While I was searching as well on Craigslist I found somebody who wanted his Car delivered to Houston Texas. There would be only costs for Gas but not for rental. Since Houston is pretty much the direction I wanted to go anyway, to cross the Mexican border on the east side of the country. I kind of signd on to this. The Owner of the car was fine with my Idea of taking the Car for a 3 week road trip with a detour to Las Vegas. So to cut a long story short, I am now riding a Car. It is a beautiful International Scout 2 from 1976, although my conscious would forbid me to ever posses a car like this but for these couple of weeks I will be fine :)
It is a very relaxed car which only makes about 90 Km/h (60mph). So I left San Francisco very comfortable. When I reached Santa Cruz, suddenly the power steering failed. I stopped the Car to find that there was Oil dripping below the Car and that the power steering Oil we just filled up was all gone. Now i was in the City I did not know and had a major problem. It was already closing in on 5pm and chances I would find a shop that would fix this in times where slim. I drove through the City sweating blood trying to bring that Car around the corners. After 40 min and 2 Closed shops and 1 Gas station and the loss of 1 Liter of sweat I found this very small Garage. I guess my Luck was that they where kind of amazed by this old Car. So that one Mechanic was all over the Car immediately and figured that problem out right away. There was something broken which caused a lot of friction to a hose which then finally cracked and spilled all the Oil out. He was able to fix it within one hour and I was ready to go. I then bought my self some food knowing that I wont make it to LA that day. I made my Way out of Santa Cruz and found a Parking Place right at the Ocean. I watched a beautiful sunset and went to sleep in the somewhat comfy Car. Around 11:30 in the night I got woken up by two Police officers knocking at my Window. At first it seemed like a bad dream but it turned out to be true. They of course wanted to see all the papers and as it turned out it was not all clear that I had the permission by the Owner to drive this Car. So they suspected me to be a Car thief and at one point I was surrounded by three Police cars. It took them about 45 min and a lot of Phone calls and even more confusion until they figured somehow that I am not a criminal. It was not to much fun facing some time in Jail until they would have figured it all out, but I was lucky again. They handed me back everything and told me I had to leave the Place. I drove another 5 min. until I found a Walmart parking area where i settled for the rest of the night. The next morning was just beautiful and I made my way along the coast line of California which was very scenic.
It was finally a very nice feeling to stop at all the nice places and take some pictures and just enjoy the scenery. After a long but refreshing day of driving I reached the LA area around Sunset and I actually planed on not doing this, since it is not fun to drive in a City you don´t know at night. Thanks to the Owner of the Car who gave me along a GPS I made it on my first attempt to my place, although it was really crazy traffic in the City. Within 20 min I witnessed about 100 violations mostly overtaking on the right side, which with German Laws applied, would have cost some people their license. Now I am off for some sightseeing.