I can't drive 55...

Well, the flight to L.A. was decent, took off on time, landed early. I hopped a shuttle bus and grabbed a room at a nearby Motel for the night. In the morning, the plan was initially to go to the airport, find a locker and store my bags, then head out on the town for the day.
Got to the airport at 11:30, and started to look for a locker. After searching for a bit, I went to the information booth and found out that since 9/11, there are no lockers in the airport, and for some reason, no mailboxes either.
Thinking about my options for a bit, I went and struck up a conversation with one of the airport police there, and exchanged flashes with him. I asked if he had anywhere he could store my bags, but he said there was no real place to keep it at the airport. He offered to put it in the trunk of his car for the remainder of his shift, but he was off in an hour, so that made no sense anyway. He suggested I go rent a car and drive around.
I had thought about this earlier, and decided what the heck, why not. Can't be too bad to drive in L.A., so I headed out and caught a shuttle to Hertz.
At Hertz, I got a car and headed outside, looking for my Hyundai Sonata they had given me. They had several cars on display, Nissan convertibles, Mitsubishi convertibles, and oh, what is this? Convertible Corvettes, brand new. I stopped and looked at it for a while. The sun was shining. There was a light breeze. I was in L.A. for one day. Who knew when I was coming back?

Why not?

So, I went back inside and switched it around. 15 minutes later I was cruising around in a new Corvette, top down, having a REALLY good time. Those cars really have a lot of oomph.
I headed over to Venice beach and hung around there for a bit, and eventually found a mall where I needed to pick some things up.
Lastly, I wanted to take it out on the freeway and try and wind it up, so I took an exit, came flying around the corner................................and right into gridlock. Luckily, I came in from the right, which also exited right, and I headed off that way. Driving around a bit more, I found a nice wide open industrial area, where there was nobody around at all. Let's just say I got my money's worth.

After that, it was back to the airport for the long flight to Fiji.