Grand Prize winnings

San Diego: Stayed there 2 days at the gas lamp quarters. It's right next to the new baseball stadium and within walking distance to alot of resturants and bars. Really nice area, kinda reminded me of Austin 6th street without all the people.

pros: nice clean hotel (Hilton). area is nice and seems safe at night. location is pretty good (close to balboa park and downtown). the weather is quite nippy in feb but very nice during the day.

cons: both conciege said the food here is so much different than TX and like the mexican food is different. well, all i can say if they think they have good food in the gas lamp area, they are sorely mistaken We went to De' Medici and there had frequent big wigs eating there. nice atmosphere but the food was not up to macaroni grill standards. the penne arribiata pales in comparison to Romeo's in Austin. and it wasn't all to cheap either. Baja rocking lobster was the seafood joint we went to and they are famous for their buckets. well it had okay lobster and shrimp but the carne asada beef and what they call chicken was down right chewy and nasty.

world famous san diego zoo:
it was okay. panda bear wait was like 45min and the bear was sleeping. whooop a de do! Jessica overall hated the zoo. complained that the enclosures were too small. she didn't like how the polar bears didn't have like ice or air conditioning. she really didn't like how small the gorilla, tiger, giraffe and elephants were. my favorite was the hippos. they are so cute and when the swim they are like dancing in slow motion.

wild life park:
way better. the enclosure are much bigger. they have this gigantic area call east africa. it really was like that. they had like more than 15 rinos, 5 giraffes and a ton of other animals. the photo cravan tour lets you on a 4x4 and you go out to the reserve. general admission you don't get that close because the reserve is so large. the giraffe feeding you get close but if they aren't hungry you can't feed them. the photo cravan we fed like 4 rinos and 2 giraffes. the rinos mouth looks like a hippos mouth but without the teeth. kinda like an old person with gigantic lips and tongue. we fed them apples and they seem very tame. that was the only animal you could pet. the giraffes you could only feed because they weren't raised with human interaction as much and if you pet them they might swing their 350lb neck at you. the giraffe tounge is freaking long and slimy.

We both agree that if we were to come back we would skip the zoo and go straight to the wild life park.


LA - Game Time!
the story begins when we check into the W hotel. our room wasn't ready yet so we just hung around the lobby and waited to see if we would run into anyone famous. well, here comes glen rice at the check in counter. I went to get a picture with him and he is way taller in person. I realized I didn't have my patented rocket jersey on so I quickly put that on after the picture. Like right after that Keith Jones (Assistant Coach-the one wearing the oakely glasses all the time) aproached us and asked us if we wanted to ride with them to the stadium. He was very cool and he got hooked up. Jessica and I got in a little argument that she said I was a sissy and didn't like go up to moochie norris, steve francis, calvin cato, yao ming, terrence morris for pictures. I was like "they are heading straight for the elevator, I don't think they want to be bothered. glenn rice was different because he was hanging out at the checkin counter. but normally I don't think its cool to stalk someone to get picture especially since the elevator area was like pitch black. unless i had some kind of flood light we will not get a good shot". Jessica tried to get a picture with Kevin Spacey but he was like "no pictures, I don't do that". I was like "see, most people don't want to be stalked when waiting in their hotel.

Well I must say, the W hotel is pimped out. bell hops wear suits and the room had like 2 seperate rooms like a suite and used cordless phones and 2 mitusbishi tvs. we walked around the W hotel which is next to ucla. the best resturant we ate at was a place called hollywood fires. best fries i've ever eaten.

Back to the story. while waiting for the elevator down to meet up with the bus, we were waiting with this white guy that looked familiar but it was freaking dark in the W hotel hallway. the white guy turned out to be the announcer Bill Warel. we went down to get on the bus and when we got on we thought since there were 2 buses we would get like stuck with all the chumps. before we boarded I got a picture with Calvin Murphy. His suits are like crazy. Well

Yao Ming comes on the bus and sits right across from us. he's freaking huge man. Jessica starts talking to him in chinese and i'm straining really hard to understand them. Yao ming's voice is so low and my chinese is so bad is was hard to make out what he is saying. jessica asked him stuff like how he likes to travel and if he gets 2 beds in the hotel. pretty nice guy if you ask me.

Steve Francis comes aboard and he walks up and shakes my hand. Dude that was pretty cool. Maurice Taylor come aboard and also Juaquin Hawkins, and a bunch of assitants and personal trainers came aboard.

TNT baby!
while exiting the bus we were behind yao ming and yao gets swarmed by cameras from TNT. well it so happens that my brother calls me up later and says "dude I just saw you on tv behind yao ming. sweet I was on tv. They only got a piece of jessica in the shot. Also, I got to say to Maurice Taylor "Your going to have a good game right?" and he said "Of course I am". well he did have a good game that night. Maybe he will remember me as a good luch charm and ask me to be a rocket rodeo or something.

after getting some media passes to get access to the court before game time, we were walking around the court taking pictures of the players in shoot around. I was trying to get some good shots of yao and steve when....

Steve: hey you want a picture with us?
Me: uhhh, yeah, can we?
Steve: sure you can you came with us on the bus. you won the prize. you should get some pictures.

i would have been fine with just having picutures with steve but...

steve:hey yao, come over here and take a picture with us

SWEEET

so he invites jess and I onto the court like around the 3pt arch and the assistant coach snaps off like 2 shots of jess, me, steve, and yao. freaking sweet dude. picture with them on the actual court.

side note: we walked down to the other side to get some robert horry shots and man it stank so bad on the laker side. they only had like 4-6 guys shooting around and you could smell the sweet from the guys. like stale socks or something. the rocket side didn't smell like that.

all in all a oppertunity of a life time. after this experience, jess wants to get season tickets because she feels like one of the rockets and we should support them for being so nice and generous. I definatly am a die hard rocket fan now. My favorite player is steve francis because he was soooo nice. he didn't have to greet me and ask if we wanted pictures. yao ming is a close second place favorite. jessica is still getting on me for not talking to yao ming about video games. at the hotel someone had a package for them. it was a ps2 madden 2003 and we think it was for yao. man if it was for him i would have talked to him about games but i can only speculate now. didn't want to come of nerdy with yao.