We're going flying!

Boy are you going to be jealous when you read what we did!

We actually flew airplanes. Yes, real airplanes and we flew them ourselves.

This is the plane Hina flew. We had pilots with us to do the take offs and landings, but we fly the whole time we were in the air.

And we took off at the same time, so we could take pictures of each other in the air. The ones I tool of Hina are still in the disposable.

These are the pictures Hina took of me in my plane, a restored World War II Warbird. This plane actually flew in the war. In the picture on the right, you can actually see me looking towards the camera. Look for my yellow shirt.

I opted for the more adventurous flight. Once we got off the coast, we took it up to 200 mph and started doing aerial aerobatics!

I flew the plane and did rolls, loops, turns, and some other stuff of which I don't remember the name.

A roll, is where the plane stays straight but revolves 360 degrees. Imagine sticking a stick through the plane from the front to the tail, and spinning the wings.

A loop is when you pull back on the stick and make the plane do a full loop in the air. We hit 3G's while doing this maneuver and I could only do it 3 times, before I started feeling sick. The rolls were much easier on the stomach :)

More of L.A.

I haven't been too much updating lately.

But here are some more pictures.

You can barely see it, but that is the Hollywood sign on the hill in the background

The sign actually has a real estate connection. The sign used to say HollywoodLand, and was a marketing gimmick for a real estate development that was being built at the time.

The sign worked, and after the development was sold out, the city kept the sign, and now it is world famous.

These two beautiful pictures are from fabulous Laguna Beach. Great views, cliffs, flowers, and secluded beaches. What else could you ask for?

No trip to L.A. can be complete without a tour of one of the many studios. We decided to take a tour of the WB studios. Here we are sitting on the famous couch from the show Friends. This is the actual set that they used in the show. They are keeping it here until the make room for it at the Smithsonian museum which is going to be its permanent home for all time.

The main reason we took the tour was to see some movie stars and maybe even a movie being shot.

Well, that didn't happen. They don't let tourists around when they are filming. But we did get lucky. Before we started the tour we saw the woman who played Janice (Chandler's annoying girlfriend) on Friends. At first I didn't recognize her. She acted normal and was with her two kids getting ice cream. But I kept staring at her, and when she smiled and I heard her laugh I knew it was her. (Yes she really does sound like that when she laughs. but not as loud).

Too bad I didn't ask her to take a picture with us.

An Oscar Marketing Lesson

There's me and the Oscar I won for Marketing genius of the year!

Too bad it was stuck to the podium with metal rope so I couldn't take it home. :)

I thought this way a great marketing ploy. For the Oscars they set up a small shop will 50 real Oscar statues in cases that people could look at. And they had this one, where people could pick up and take pictures with.

I have never watched the Oscars before this year, but because I held that trophy I wanted to watch. They got me involved in the product. Any time you can let the customer test the product without taking the risk and buying it, you are going to sell a lot more of that product.

It's called the puppy dog close. A little girl sees a puppy in the pet shop window. The owner offers to let the girl and father take the dog home for a night. If the father says yes, he just bought himself a puppy. Because that little girl is never going to give it up, especially after she falls in love with it.