OMG! Brendan, Anette and myself did a US race in one week, with two days in New York City, one day in Phoenix/Grand Canyon and four days in Los Angeles. We met with more than 35 people in more than 20 meetings covering anything from business to Scientology, HP calculators, art and music. We had a blast!
A picture tells more than a thousand words. And this time I will let the pictures do the reporting:
New York City
Times Square – New York City is like the real Bladerunner
Anette & Geir kissing as part of the “making out in front of churches”-series
Beautiful Central Park
Two squirrels in the park
Brendan and Geir trying hard to follow the rules of the Soup Nazi
Had a late coffee with Tony Ortega. Intriguing talk with a highly intelligent man. And way too interesting to remember taking any pictures… so here’s his official FB pic.
Zana – we had an interesting chat 🙂
Meeting Victoria and her wonderful and loving family.
Meeting Dave in Little Italy talking about Life, the universe, everything.
Martin the genius DJ
A taste of Martin’s music (he’s half of the duo CLMD):
Phoenix & the Grand Canyon
Visiting Chris (our resident blogger) and his gorgeous family. Love’em to bits.
Chris took us to Grand Canyon… OMG!
Got real close to an elk up there.
Saw the outside of Hubbard’s home in Phoenix (he lived there for about a year back in the early 50’s). No one answered when we rung the bell.
The almost staff-less but huge and beautiful Church of Scientology in Phoenix.
Los Angeles
Making out in front of Celebrity Centre International (Scientology’s VIP church).
Meeting Jeff and Karen – what a wonderful, energetic and creative couple. The planning of some counter-OSA-ops was fun.
I did a series of videos at Karen’s detailing my various experiences in Scientology – from my work with OSA Int to my meeting with David Miscavige. I will do a blog post for each of these videos as the are produced and released on Karen’s channel. Karen has done lots of videos, like this one:
Attending a show on Scientology at the Silent Theater (Cine Family). Got invited by Karen and Spanky. Winged it… got on the panel and did a demo session. Awesome fun!
Here’s Tory and Mark’s video on what went down that night:
Doing a demo session with the organizer of the event, Hadrian. He was a good sport and as funny as they come. He even said he had some gain out of the two auditing questions he was asked.
JD Shapiro talking about his script writing for the movie Battlefield Earth. Some interesting insight right there.
Meeting the lovable Tory Magoo 🙂
Spanky and me in the garden behind the theater. You just gotta love that energy and compassion.
The happiest place on Earth 🙂
Doing the “Star Tour” at Disneyland.
Boat trip down at the wonderful Newport Beach with Mike and Betsy. Great couple. Very interesting talk.
I’d take it if someone had begged me to live there.
…especially with this pelican outside the door.
Jason the Writer and Video Producer with Brendan looking over Newport Beach.
Tom and Anette on Venice Beach. Tom’s a cool chap.
Meeting Garth and Joe at our “mini HHC” (the yearly HP Handheld Club is in the autumn). Great to meet with some fellow geeks and talk HP calculators. Yeay!
Talking Incas and her upcoming book and TV series with Theresa. Fascinating stories!
At Aida and Dave’s. The powerhouse Mexican served authentic food from her home country – all made from scratch. Oh yummy.
The view from Aida’s is not bad… not bad at all…
Jason the Writer invited us to the Magic Castle with a really fun show 🙂
Spent hours with Jason – but with him and us being so much into the conversations, we forgot all about taking pictures together with him and his family…
…but Anette did take a picture of me kissing one of Jason’s bunnies…
…and his duck. After which Angie took us on a Black Widow safari around their house. That woman’s got balls of steel.
Flying home
There are so many pictures we didn’t take in all our awe and rush. It was a week we will never forget. And with people we will have many years ahead with great friendship and lots of fun. Next time we’ll go to…
Geir Isene - uncut 
All those wonderful people and amazing places! Love to all! ❤
@Anette Very true! Amazing places are fun when sharing with amazing people.
Great post Geir! Very cool trip!
I live here and I’ve never had that much fun!
Alanzo
Just wait till we arrive at your doorstep. Then there will be plenty of fun to be had 😉
So glad you got to Orange County and out of LA for a few hours!
hehe
Newport Beach was awesome 🙂
And; Welcome leafdiehard!
Wonderful blog post. Great photos! I laughed out loud at the two squirrels and you and Brendan waiting in the Soup Nazi line. 😀
One of the all-time funniest series:
Cute! Gotta love Seinfeld. And that soup is SO good. It’s not just a gimmick. We tasted 3 different ones. All delicious.
What kinds did you try?
@Marildi For me there was no doubt what I had to try first 🙂
I used to be a Seinfeld addict, I have all the DVDs, special edition VHS, several books, and used to hang out on the Seinfeld channel on irc. I don’t think there has been a better TV series since 🙂
In NY, not only did we visit the Soup Man but I also had a burger at Tom’s restaurant which was fantastic.
VHS! he he…good old times…:)
OMG, you really were a Seinfeld addict! Goes to show you have a great sense of humor. Brilliant comedy! Here in the U.S, the reruns still play at least a couple times a day. And we still tune in sometimes to watch favorite shows we’ve seen so many times – to the point where we know every line. And it’s still funny! I agree – no better series since.
Just as a wild guess, I’d say it was the Irish Mulligatawny you tried. 🙂
@Marildi Correct, I had to order the Mulligatawny first and it was the best soup I have ever tasted.
We tasted the infamous Mulligatawny, then Chicken Chili and the delicious Lobster Bisque. So yummy! And only $4-6 per cup. I would love to have a local Soup Nazi outpost here in Oslo! Maybe as a canteen for “Å”! 🙂
You can find the soup facts here: http://originalsoupman.com/menus/soup-facts
To be honest, I’m already hungry after reading the entire soup menu 🙂 Gulash is Hungarian of origin, very tasty but sometimes in Hungary they put too much paprika. I don’t see there the Russian borsch, it’s also fantastic when it’s correct cooked.
Agreed. I’m getting hungry now, too. 😉
That’s a great idea!
Great photos and looking forward to the blog posts about your conversations!
Wow you guys. What a fantastic and beautiful trip you lined up for yourselves.
Thank you so much for sharing. Enjoyed every photo and comment you wrote! Loved your make-out series. Too cute for words. Too bad you didn’t travel a little farther north. Next time I hope…Penny, one hour north of San Francisco!
Wonderful teaser! . . . left my family and me wanting more!
Chris, what a wonderful home and family you have. Who knew? (Just kidding! I knew. ;))
Thanks Marildi! I’ve been thinking this US Tour idea could kick off more of us visiting one another as we go along? We live all over the world — what a great individual network-visiting opportunity?!
Isn’t the Internet great stuff! The Internet is here to stay…ha ha (a fact the church has a hard time grasping). 😀
Yup. Really great!
All pictures are nice, but I find really interesting that one with Hubbard’s house in the desert. It’s like a small ranch without picket fences.
Damn, and I thought I did a lot when I traveled. I am a complete slacker, apathetic chump compared to you guys. That is a lot to do in one week. That looks like my old friend Tom Price on Venice Beach. What a wonderful guy. Too bad you didn’t have time to go on one of his mural hunts around LA.
Yeah, it was pretty intense. Tom was a great guy! Cool and chilled. We actually did hunt a couple of murals with him. We did other sightseeings as well on this tour, but we were afraid this post would drown in photos so we included the main events only. 🙂
I will go into details on each event with lots of more photos over the next days to fill in the blanks. I fell in love with your country big time! ❤
You guys have to come back! It was fun! 🙂
My husband and I did a similar tour to Europe a few years ago and we got to meet a lot of people and have fun!
It was great to meet with you! I want to come visiting you again 🙂
Wow! Great pics!
I have to say that my favorites are the Making Out in Front of Churches pics and I am looking forward to a whole slew of those. They warm my heart and soul – so good to see you both so close and so happy.
I also confess that I love the photo of Chris and his family. They look like an exuberant bunch.
Next time you come to North America, you must come to beautiful British Columbia, take Elizabeth up on her offer to stay and we’ll all visit gorgeous English Bay in the sunshine. You will love it, I promise!
That would be great 🙂
Next time…
Thanks Maria. The visit was so short I didn’t want to fixate on taking photos, so Shelley snapped a few but then she wasn’t in them… oh well. We have a lot of fun around my house. The Viking visit was a good example. You should plan a winter trip to Phoenix when the weather will provide a natural reason! In fact, Geir’s tour should just kick off a bunch of visits criss-crossing the world for us to maybe see one another? Mass reunions may be difficult but single visits back and forth might be easier to execute?
p.s. Geir — I mispelled my email address so it wants you to moderate my last post!
Ah, ah,
We come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.
The hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands,
To fight the horde, singing and crying: Valhalla, I am coming!
On we sweep with threshing oar, Our only goal will be the western shore.
Ah, ah,
We come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.
How soft your fields so green, can whisper tales of gore,
Of how we calmed the tides of war. We are your overlords.
On we sweep with threshing oar, Our only goal will be the western shore.
So now you’d better stop and rebuild all your ruins,
For peace and trust can win the day despite of all your losing.
Nice one Chris! The PERFECT song for the great white north.
Thanks Maria! The experience of meeting these Vikings was as ethereal as this song.
Geir or Anette, can you please give us more detail about the Black Widow Safari? Even around a house, doesn’t matter, I’m sure it was quite an experience. 2 or 3 photos more will be welcomed 🙂
We saw three Black Widows there. There were plenty but it was early morning so they slept. I have photos of one of them which I took 10 cm from the small beast. Incredible that a small thing like that can be so lethal to us. The photos came out pretty blurry. I didn’t want to hold my hand there for long in order to focus better… I kept my eyes on the beast, not on the camera. I’ll provide a blog post on that and share the unfocused photo of a Black Widow and other cool pics.
Please do it! I can understand the feeling to see so close a creature which is usually seen at Animal Planet. I remember myself seeing all my life raindeers at Discovery or National Geographic, and after that touching them in a Beitostolen farm. But still, it’s a huge difference between a peaceful raindeer and a Black Widow 🙂
Ha ha! And thank God we have the reindeer and no lethal spiders.
Supah photo’s. What a nice and exciting trip to share here. Will love when you show and tell more.
That was , a really fun time in Newport Beach! Loved meeting you all!
Loved meeting you, too 🙂
Thanks for sharing these photos and your adventures here in America. That’s quite an eclectic and fun collection of friends to meet up with! Glad to see you and Anette together enjoying yourselves like this.
We completely enjoyed it. There will be more trips like that one.