Today I watched football and went to Griffith Observatory (Day 4)

Saturday, 11 October 2014 

Where are we? USA, California, Pasadena - Rosebowl

“It's not the will to win, but the will to prepare to win that makes the difference." -  Bear Bryant -  University of Alabama

Another early morning up breakfasted and off to navigate our way to the Rosebowl to watch UCLA vs Oregon.  Raven however was not bright-eyed and bushy tailed and wanted to stay home and sleep.  We didn't have much time to argue so we left her "home" with a phone and the rest of us went to catch the subway. Shane had researched various public transport routes to get to the Rosebowl, but when we arrived at the station there was a TV monitor advising football fans to catch the gold line to Pasadena, where free shuttles would then transport fans to the game.  We did have to change trains, but it was very easy thanks to all the signs.

On the train, Shane made friends with some Oregon fans, who assumed Shane was from New York because he was wearing a Bills' shirt. When explaining that we were from Australia they wanted to know "So how did this happen?" (with a gesture at the shirt)... a question that Shane has been asked a few times now.  America is similar to Melbourne I guess, a community of sports fans who are instantly bonded by love of the game, and as soon as they know your team, then there's instant conversation topics.

I didn't have anything to add to the footy conversations, and instead enjoyed people watching and listening.  I watched as a lady with a son about 5 or 6 got on the train, angry and stressed out with her boy "Get on the train now!". An African-American lady, joked with her saying she got scared, the mum commented that she wished her son got scared.  During the trip the kid got whacked across the head with his mother's bag a few times, (it was sort of funny, and a little shocking, not something I usually witness). When it was time to go, the mother got her son to hold the back of her dress as they departed the train.  The African-American lady yelled encouragingly after them "You just hold on baby, you hold on to your Mama".

We got off the train at Pasadena, our plan being that we were going to follow the Oregon fans, but they stopped off at Subway. Fortunately, it wasn't much of a walk till we heard the crowds and joined a huge line of people waiting to catch a shuttle to the Rosebowl. There were a couple of people wandering the lines asking if anyone had spare tickets, we should have sold Raven's ticket but our line to the bus was moving forward and they were going in the opposite direction.  The shuttle bus seemed quite new, very clean, and had excellent aircons and we were transported very quickly to the Rosebowl. 

The atmosphere was exciting, people dressed in team colours, chattering happily. We wandered through the car parks where cars were set up with bbqs, beer, food, tables and chairs. Shane explained that these were tail gate parties, a college football tradition.  At the gates there were religious people parading around with signs, and handing out get out of hell free cards.  I took one... just in case. ;-)  

Heaven wasn't on our side however as we were stopped at the gate and banned entry as Darius had spiderman and venom toys that could be used as a weapon.  If we wanted in, we'd have to get rid of the toys... which Darius was becoming very distressed about.  We decided to be naughty, buried the toys at the bottom of my bag and tried a different entry point. Fortunately they were too busy to do a thorough search and we made it in, secret spiderman friends in tow.
We made our way to our general admission seats past lots of interesting American food.  As we entered to sit we were told to freeze, no movement allowed while the American anthem was sung, hats off, hand on heart, and cheers towards the end of the song. 

The atmosphere was electric, marching bands making music and clever formations on the field, cheer leaders making tricky pyramids, men holding them up with one hand, then throwing them into the air. .  The college boys in the crowd had their shirts off , and the girls were wearing skimpy tops and short denim shorts. Does it make me sound old, when I say I was concerned for the skin cancer in their futures?  UCLA handed out free towels, which were put over heads to keep the sun off.  The crowd were very into the game with chants..."U..C...L..A..fight! fight! fight! (combined with fist pumping) and "Ooooooooooooh" with hands coming into the sign of an O. It was so American, big and enthusastic.

It was an insanely hot day (my iphone stopped working, with a message that it was too hot - never seen that message before). Darius did not like the sun, and our $6 bottle of water went very quickly, and he hated the very lemony lemonade.  So he snuggled his face into me and went to sleep.  The sun was brutal, I still look like a lobster 3 days later typing this.  Fortunately Darius was protected by me, and didn't burn. Kaine's burn just turned to tan. The sun and the burning took away a lot of the enjoyment for me, I didn't understand what was going on in the game, nor did I really care.  I begged Shane to leave early, fortunately the game was a flogging, Oregon completely dominated UCLA, so Shane and Kaine agreed to leave neat the end of the 3rd quarter.  We got on to a shuttle bus, with blissful aircon, and at the end of our journey we were able to purchase water for $1, and Shane got a UCLA shirt for $1.

We stopped of at Subway where we chatted to a UCLA fan who apologised for his team's performance, and told us about an ex who lives in Sydney.  We talked about holiday, and he told us we'd love San Diego as it's much more laid back, and Aussie style. :-)

Then we went back to the hotel to collect Raven and to navigate our way to Griffith Observatory.  We were a bit slow getting ready to depart and missed our connecting bus, and therefore we watched sunset from the bus stop rather than the observatory (which was our original plan). We also missed getting pics of the Hollywood sign from her during the daylight which is rumoured to be a great spot. I am glad we caught public transport though, I would have been scared driving the windy hill, and the traffic was chockas. The bus fare was $2 for all of us.

Griffith Observatory
http://www.griffithobs.org/

The Griffith Observatory looked vaguely familiar, probably because it has featured in so many movies, tv shows and more.  (pics still to come)

Movies include:  The Terminator (that's where Arnie materialises at the beginning of the movie overlooking LA), Charlie's Angels: Full throttle, Transformers, Yes Man, and the old classic Rebel without a Cause, and many more.
TV shows include: 90210, Melrose Place, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Keeping up with the Kardashian's and many more. Paula Abdul's Rush Rush film clip with Keanu Reeves was also filmed there.  (Can you tell I am a child of the 80's?)

We definitely saw some Hollywood Stars here, stars in the sky viewed from Hollywood that is. ;-)  The Griffith Observatory is a planetarium / space museum, filled inside and out with telescopes and interactive educational space stuff.  They had huge to scale models of the planets which is an awesome way to get perspective of how tiny the Earth is compared to the Gas Giants, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus (which American's seem to pronounce as urine-us). Darius has been learning about planets at pre-school I was so glad he could see this display. The observatory also had a cool walk along time line from the Big Bang to human life (while it wasn't quite to scale... or I guess we'd still be walking) it was still able to demonstrate that our / human's time here is so minute in the big picture.  I got to hold a very old meteorite which was estimated to have hit earth 50 million years ago and to be over 400 million years old. Someone asked how do we know how old it is, and the guy replied "because scientists dated it"... I had to giggle. It was a little rock, but very heavy.

Raven, Kaine and I watched a show on time in the planetarium.  We have been to one before in Melbourne, if I ever win lotto, I will build one in Darwin for us.  We got to see  a show about the beginning and the end of the world, and about how human's continually inaccurately predict the end of the world. The end of the world will come, probably when the sun explodes and absorbs the earth, but that wont be anytime soon. The presenter discussed the recent Mayan calendar myths, the planets were never in alignment, there was no planet or metorite heading towards us, and even the Mayan's didn't predict the end world.  

We also were shown constellations and when they can be seen (in the Northern  hemisphere). We were shown the phases and position of the moon and planets in our sky.  We were told the nature story of beginning, end and re-birth, the constant cycle, which is told from the perspective of many cultures and evidenced in scientific theory too.  She also spoke about distance, time and space. How time moves slower around heavy objects in space, and how we are seeing the ancient past when we look into the sky. It takes millions of light years for light to travel through space and get to earth, so we are seeing surrounding galaxies etc in their infancy. She also mentioned that the universe is expanding so in the future it will take even longer for light to get to us from distant galaxies. I really enjoyed it.

Then we enjoyed the spectacular night time views over Hollywood, caught the bus back down the hill, and then train home. Waved to super heroes and faux movie stars during our walk to the hotel, and home to bed by about 11:00 pm.  Ready for Disneyland in the morning.

Photos and editing of this post still to come.

Thanks for reading, much love

Debbie and family. x