Let's start at the very beginning. Hereafter known as "before the pimp showed up".

I was sitting in my seat on the airplane and realized that my nose kind of hurt. Right where the piercing was.

Weird.

So I got up and walked to the bathroom and stood there staring at my nose in horror. The side of my nose that was pierced had swollen, and the stud had disappeared somewhere inside the cartiledge. I performed something akin to minor outpatient surgery in that airplane bathroom, and managed to extricate the stud and then returned to my seat, nauseous and feeling sort of faint from the pain and the blood and the swelling that was actually limiting my air supply if I breathed through my nose. And so commenced the mouth breathing.

I don't know about you, but I don't find anything more attractive than a nostril with a gigantic bloody infected hole in it.

I could already tell: this trip was going to be AWESOME.

We landed in LA in the middle of the afternoon and headed off to pick up rental cars. We jumped on side by side escalators. Their escalator actually went down to baggage claim and car rentals. Mine went to ticketing. So I had to go back up, and then turn around and get on the correct escalator, in order to actually leave the building and catch my shuttle. 45 minutes later, I was finally in a rental car, and horribly lost in my attempt to go find the rest of the girls at a different rental counter.

As I drove down a one way, dead end street, heading the wrong direction, I was close to tears and my GPS kept saying "turn right" but there WAS no right at which to turn. And right about then I remembered that I hated driving in LA. There was much texting and confusion, and finally it was determined that I would make my way back to the motel, alone, as night was quickly advancing and I was petrified, feezing cold, and starving. I typed the motel's address into my GPS, put the car in drive and got on the highway with my hazard lights on.

Because I thought everyone else on the road deserved the warning.

I drove through some areas that made me extremely uncomfortable, which precluded my getting gas even though my gas light was on, which added to my sense of impending doom. Why my car rental company only had cars with empty gas tanks is a mystery I have yet to solve. But I can tell you this - their employees should stop making big signs that say "Customer Service is our Number One Priority" and start filling the gas tanks of their cars. Because that is a really important customer service.

I finally pulled into the motel, almost 3 hours after landing, and did a happy dance in the parking lot - then I stuck my bag in the room, jumped in the car, and went to find some antibiotic cream, some hydrogen peroxide, and dinner. I hit a goldmine on Third, where I came across a Whole Foods, a CVS, and a shopping mall called the Grove. I stocked up on antibacterials and organics, and went back to the hotel to eat, then headed off to The Doll Factory to register for the event that was the impetus for this ridiculous trip:
March Radness

Once we were all signed in and wearing our snazzy wristbands that would get us into the facility for the next 4 days, we headed back to the hotel, and I dropped off mypaperwork and camp t-shirt. Then I focused on my to-do list.

Item Number One: In-n-Out

I turned on the GPS, typed in "in-n-out" and hit GO. In 10 minutes I was cruising down Hollywood Blvd headed towards animal-style madness and a chocolate shake. There was actually a line out to the street, which indicated that I was in the right place. I drove back to the motel with my burger on the seat next to me, afraid to eat it while I was driving on the freeway. When I got back to my room, the rest of the girls had arrived. We cracked a bottle of champagne, opened a few PBRs, picked bedmates and settled in.

The Rollergirls were officially on vacation.

Tune in tomorrow where I begin wearing stretchpants like it's my job, and every morning begins with donuts.