NinjaDoll and Owlchick Go to Dodger Stadium

In the grand tradition of a road trip slash quest movie, Barb and I, together with our coworker Archonix, headed north on I-5 to see the Police concert at Dodger Stadium.

As I commented to Archonix towards the end of the concert, it's a good thing he's not my boyfriend as he would have surely dumped my ass. :D

I was probably having a challenging day to start as I had to face my mother for the first time since moving her to California and disposing of her worldly goods. She seemed glad to see me, but announced her imminent departure. So did I: "It's time to goooooo!" I hollered at Barb, and so off we went to get Archonix.

We hooked up Gidget, Barb's talking GPS. Gidget is somewhat slow. She's the kind of girl who tells you several feet too late that you've reached the intersection at which you want to turn. But she can be useful when going somewhere that you're only vaguely familiar with.

After a late lunch in Tustin, we continued northward. Traffic flowed smoothly until we got into downtown, where it crawled to a stop as other concert-goers clogged the lane into which we needed to merge. An odd smell wafted into the car; we thought it was the truck ahead of us. But no, as the billows of smoke proved once Barb's car staggered into the Dodger Stadium parking lot, it was the car in which we rode.

"You go on ahead," said Barb, reaching for her miraculous OnStar, which is as handy a gadget as Gidget. We were already an hour and a half late, what with lunch and traffic. As Archonix (who had been regretting not using the facilities available after we finished our lunch...for the past twenty miles or so) and I crossed the parking lot on foot, Barb ordered a tow truck come to whisk her car to a repair shop. A diva in her own element, it seemed!

Dodger Stadium is very large. One cannot guess which entrance to use from the outside. Archonix and I chose poorly twice and finally got to the correct entrance which was handily close to the restrooms. We availed ourselves, found a short concession line and as we were heading on our way (of course, to the opposite side of the stadium where our seats were actually located), the Police came onstage and the main event began.

It was a pretty good show. Even though they did mess with the familiar tempo of some of the songs, everything was recognizable. When they finished the third encore, Archonix and I tried to find an exit that, as texts from Barb indicated, would lead us toward downtown LA and the Bonaventure, where she had decided to wait out the concert once her car was towed away. Um, and when she realized she couldn't rent a car without a credit card...which none of us had brought up, since we didn't envision car trouble.

"I'm a mile away, you can walk here," Barb had texted me. Dutifully, I stopped a security person to ask which stadium exit we should use to do so.

"You don't want to do that," she replied, recoiling in horror, "Those neighborhoods aren't safe. Head upstairs and you can catch a cab out that way."

But the escalators were blocked by other security folks, as were the stairs. Archonix and I tried instead to exit the way we had entered, but were told that there would be no taxis that way. The guard there pointed us back the way we came.

Would we ever find a way to leave Dodger Stadium and reach my sister? ...