AUTHOR: linda TITLE: Almosts, near-misses and no-shows DATE: 8:01:00 AM ----- BODY:

Rex and me decided to hit up ElDorado in el-LA-ay as the last leg of the journey, and lucky that he answered his phone Thursday morning as we were leaving our Applebee adventure (another story) -- so we went south, rather than north or west from Cedar City.

Our rendezvous point was to be the Red Lion Tavern in Silver Lake for a goodbye get-together for visiting celebrity Jill Gillessen and to eat a light dinner at Gingergrass across the street first. After nearly nine hours in the car thank goodness the restaurant was an entertaining nexus of fabulously-dressed hipster-types since we couldn't be seated unless the entire party is present and so our hungry traveling souls were on wait for over an hour... After all, nobody walks in LA. Fortunately however, the situation was soon remedied with good company and a light-hearted server who swapped recent Burning Man stories with us.

Meeting up with the Belgium Underwear Model was to be a similar tale of waiting but with good company, and so we continued to entertain ourselves with stories of characters and of adventures and of the open road. Jill soon magically appeared and with similarly good company, so handshakes, light conversation and smiles were exchanged all around. I can never say no to a good German pub, and as tasty as the dunkel Spaten was, and as compelling as the Kenny-Rodgers lookalike synthesizer sounded, it was soon time to end fun times for that evening.

The next-night's meet-up proved to be equally exciting. I made contact with Los Angeles-based flute-and-dancingwing-maker and tribal friend Durian to meet him at a social gathering somewheres about town, but alas ~ that too proved to fall through, as had his lovely companion in Salt Lake on this very same journey... Instead, we settled with light fare at an overly-cheery Crocodile Cafe on Brand Ave.

I'm disappointed. Sheryl Crow said it best in her drunk years: "All I wanna do is have some fun/until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard." Maybe it's from the 20 years of living here and the terrible mass of humanity one is constantly beset by... and maybe that there are no striking vistas or incredible canyons to distract me from the oppressive states of excess and non-committal whimsy... and maybe it's that Maps to the Stars and ocean sunsets are marginally interesting here... and maybe because the crazies here are not quite so crazy... or maybe it's because I'm tired and it's time to go home.

Yee-haw, on the road again!

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