Where's Harry Potter When You Need Him?

First stop on our vacation was Universal Studios. 

     My family and I hadn't been there since two decades before The Great Toilet Paper Shortage, so I wasn't prepared for how it had changed. 

     To get there we had to drive through the area where L.A. had been rioting just the week before. Remember, kids, rioting is hard work, so don't forget to stop and smell the teargas. 

     Myself, I was hoping to liberate a big screen TV that was being unlawfully detained by the government, but apparently California cleans up nicely after a riot. When President Trump sent in the National Guard to settle things down, Gavin Newsom must have given them all brooms and told them to sweep up the place. 

     The last time we went to Universal Studios in the early George Bush 2000s we stayed at the Holiday Inn owned by the lovely actress Beverly Garland. I remember her most for playing the mother of Laura Holt (Stephanie Zimbalist) on the TV series Remington Steele starring the pre-James Bond Pierce Bronson. A bus took us from there to the amusement park and back again.

     Now they have hotels directly across the street from the theme park, and getting to them is what this story is really about. You see, between lack of proper direction from Google Maps and lack of proper signage from Universal Studios, I just could not find the hotel we were staying at. 

     I took the exit just like I was supposed to, turned where I was directed to turn, and ended up in a parking lot that came to a dead end. Fortunately, there was no traffic behind me, so I backed up and tried again. I ended up in another parking lot, but it wasn't the parking lot I was looking for, so I exited and tried again. This time I ended up at a stop sign that, if I were to turn right as was my only option, I would have had to merge onto a freeway. 

     Did I say it was my only option?

     Well, it was my only legal option. 

     I made a u-turn and started over again. 

     My wife sighed. 

     My son pretended to look at his watch. 

     "Do you know where you're going?" my granddaughter wanted to know.

     "No," I admitted.

     "Then why are you still going there?" she said.

     You know, she had a point.

     

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