Urban Onramps

We’ve got a friend named Arne visiting Harambee right now. He leads a mission agency in Denmark called Impact. Impact has sent us a number of wonderful volunteers over the past six years. He’s passing through LA on his way from Chicago to Tegucigalpa. We saw some sights and places yesterday, and today was really wide open. Other Harambee volunteers agreed to take Arne around town. So I was left to pick some spots for him to see on his first-ever visit to the City of Angels. What do you pick? I went for “memorable,” particularly sights that he would be useful for him in the context of leading a missionary-sending agency. Here’s the path I chose for him:

– visit Skid Row in LA: he’ll see the worst in our city, and can reflect on how bad things can get when human misery combines with the unexpectedly negative consequences of well-intentioned social engineering
– drive on Sunset Boulevard from the 101 Freeway to the 405 Freeway: they’ll see a wide range of what LA has to offer as they drive from Hollywood (which goes from fairly seedy to ultra hipster) into Beverly Hills and then into Bel Air
– go from Sunset to Santa Monica Beach & Pier, with a short drive up the Pacific Coast Highway: they’ll see landscape they’ve seen in numerous movies, TV shows and commercials; plus the pier is a place to see people from all walks of life
– drive home from the pier to Pasadena: wherein they will hit Olympic-level traffic and wonder how traffic on a Saturday evening can be as bad as business day rush hour

Me? I’m trying to stay awake and stay available for my family. Kafi is off scrap-booking. Grandma is here and about to take the kids to the big Pasadena Public Library. I’m going to drop them off and then go find boxes for shipping some stuff to our friends in Valpo, Indiana.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 19th, 2008 at 1:15 pm.