Well where do I start, it seems time passes by so fast. I had my best friends Josh and Raffi who were going to Jamaica for a family reunion via the united states. It was about the same time that I wanted to go so I quickly jumped online and found the flight that they were on and booked myself a ticket. A few days later there we were all checking in together at Brisbane airport the first time I have ever been overseas with these guys. I knew that this was only the begining of the trip and it was only going to get more interesting as it unfolded. We said our good byes and entered the immagration area only to be held up by my gps that I had as carry on. They had to call the airlines to make sure I was allowed to bring it on board and after several minutes they came to a conclusion that I could take it but I had to remove the batteries and put them into my computer bag. These guys all have a different solution to the problem as I always take my instruments with me on board the flight. So we boarded our flight to New Zealand where we had a stop over on the way to the states. It felt as if I was the baby sitter as these guys have only been overseas once before and were not so familar with the processes we had to go through. It was quite a short flight to New Zealand unless you were sitting next to the drunk brothers who were dying to have a cigarette. I calmed them down by telling them that NZ airport has a smoking section and they would just have to wait untill we arrived. We landed at Auckland and walked into the airport but something was different we now had to go through xrays again which you never had to do before in this airport to stay in the connecting lounge. Sure enough my bag goes through the xray and I see all their eyes light up the grab the bag and xray it once more. "Sir do you have a radio in this bag" of course I do so I pulled out my radio and they checked it out and disconnected the battery and placed it in another compartment in my bag. I was just shaking my head so anyway we finally enter the airport connection termainal and everything is different. I was starting to wonder if we were at the right airport but we were and they had just renovated the whole place and not one thing was familar. The bad news is that they had gotten rid of the smoking section so these boys were ready to smoke but were unable to, so what next the bar. We sat down and had a couple of drinks well they did I was just watching. A couple hours went passed and we were soon boarding the plane again for the 13 hr flight to LAX. The plane was fully equipped with personal entertainment units which made the trip go a little faster. We celebrated on the plane by having a couple of vodka's and boy for not much of drinker at altitude it does not take that many drinks before your feeling drunk. We watched a couple of movies and then fell asleep for a while and before we knew it we were landing at LAX. We managed to get through customs ok then had to wait awhile for the bags to come through and then out we went into the big country. Chris smith picked us all up from the airport and took us down to venice beach and we enjoyed a nice mexican lunch on the boardwalk. Here are the boys with Chris at Venice beach! There were a lot of very interesting people to look at and things to see. After lunch we checked the boys into a hotel as they were only there for one night before flying to Jamaica today. I wish that I was able to tell you more about their night as I am sure it was very interesting but I was not game enough to stay with them just in case I got locked up or something crazy like that.. Anyway it is 3 am here and I have just returned home from hollywood after having dinner and a bit of sight seeing. I will post some photos tomorrow for you all to look at..