Segway!

Fun day yesterday.  My friend Thom and I took my niece down to Long Beach to do a Segway tour with Segway of Long Beach (http://www.segway.la/).   I hadn’t told her exactly what we were going to do, but she did guess.  The one snag was the train ride on the LA Metro.  For a service that keeps pushing people to get out of their cars and “Go Metro”, they really didn’t sell me on the idea yesterday.  They took us halfway there, dumped as at a station and took the train out of service, saying the “next train” would take us to Long Beach.  10-15 minutes later, the next train was also out of service, and we waited over 30 minutes for a train to get the building crowd – no explanations, no apologies, no information.  Thom called Metro to find out what was going on, but even they didn’t know, or were unwilling to admit they screwed up.  Not good Metro – get your act together if you really want the public to use public transit.

We finally got down to Long Beach, 15 minutes past our time to be there for the tour (I had called while we were stuck to let them know what was going on).  Thankfully, the other people who were going to be in our tour group never showed up, so they didn’t leave without us.  We also had Living Social deals, as well as some expired Groupons that we could apply to the tour so we didn’t have to pay anything extra for Catherine (hey - I like to get a deal!).  The added bonus was that we had our favorite guide, Anita, all to ourselves. 

Catherine at first was a little afraid when she first got on to her Segway, but Anita walked her through it, and Thom and I kept encouraging her.  She adapted fairly quickly.  By the end of the tour, she had pretty well mastered it and was doing great! 

Thom and I have been on the tour several times, so it wasn’t new to us, but it was for Catherine.  Anita took us over the bridge to the Queen Mary and gave us some of the history of the exhibits there.  While crossing the bridge, we stopped so we could get a picture of the three of us.  We then headed over to the marina area and down to the beach.  All along, Catherine handled herself very well on the Segway and really got into it.

It didn’t seem like two hours had passed, but it went by quickly.  After returning to the shop and talking with Anita for a while, we headed out to lunch.  Unfortunately, there wasn’t much in the way of unique eats, and Catherine had a craving for pasta, so we wound up dining at California Pizza Kitchen.  It’s a fine place to eat – just not terribly exciting.

After filling up with some lunch, we headed back to the Metro station since we were all fairly exhausted.  The train ride back was much faster, but I learned that traveling mid-afternoon on a weekend is probably not ideal – the trains were crowded.

After Thom dropped us back at my place, Catherine and I lounged around a little bit, then I showed her how to make my tomato soup (the recipe is on an earlier blog).  I had her get in there and do some of it so she could go home and try to make it herself.  Every time she comes to visit, I try to teach her something new in the way of cooking.

After a long day, we just sat around and watched some TV, ate the soup we made and crashed early.  It was a good day over all.  Today, we’re heading out to do a little sight-seeing.