OK, trip report time.

The travel Both flights, Boston to Cincy to LA, were pretty much unremarkable. Taking of from Boston, though, I did get to fly near the city and pretty much right over the Babson campus. So the visuals were pretty cool.

On the way back (LA to Cincy) the movie was How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, not a bad movie if you watch it as I did:

1. No sound.
2. The assumption that Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson's characters (and their character's friends) all suffer from some sort of behavioral problem.
3. You don't watch more than two minutes at a time.

I did like the way the director made sure to show that the film was fiction by having the Knicks not only beat the Sacramento Kings, but score more than 90 points doing it. It's like something out of science fiction!

I also ate a lot of pretzels on the plane. Many, many pretzels.

My first LA moment came in seeing the LAX tower with its distinctive canopy. Like some of the other stuff I saw over the weekend, I thought it would be bigger.

The training This went about as expected, some fairly new stuff related to promoting College Bowl and how they work with ACUI and some repetitive stuff regarding how to run a tournament.

It was during this that I think I hit upon the significant difference between College Bowl and the other formats/tournaments that make up quiz bowl in general. College Bowl presents itself as a lower-cost campus program (as compared to a band or a movie or something) that will offer something different to the campus community at the time or times of most use to the campus (over a weekend or even as games played over the course of the semester, like intramural sports).

Given that most of the rest of quizbowl is aimed at existing teams and at student groups that may not have as much money as, say, a campus programming board, you can see where some unease may develop. And while there is room for improvement in College Bowl, it's also important to realize that pretty much everyone who's running your regional tournament is a volunteer. Take it easy on them if something goes amiss; it's not like you never made a mistake while moderating or keeping score.

It would be helpful if regions took better advantage of their player alumni, many of whom maintain an interest after their playing days are over. I hope to take very strong advantage of this (a not-so-subtle warning for those of you who are in the area).

Probably the best thing about training was getting to meet the other new coordinators, some of the ACUI people, and the College Bowl staff. It's always nice to put names with faces and build some relationships.

I would also note that the College Bowl staff knows how to cook. We had a great social on Saturday night, highlighted by a marinated salmon cooked on grilled cedar planks.

Sightseeing Didn't get a chance to do as much of this as I'd hoped, but we did out a little Sunday evening.

First stop was Rodeo Drive, which (like the LAX control tower) was smaller and less impressive than originally thought. The line-up of high-end boutiques was impressive, but for atmosphere Newbury Street in Boston is nicer (I think it's the trees). Some parts of Rodeo are also really fake looking. There's a walking section called North Rodeo Drive that we determined was the EPCOT mock-up of Beverly Hills. There was also a rustic Italian-looking shopping area which was really out of place.

We then went down to Hollywood Boulevard to see the Kodak Theater, Grauman's Chinese Theater, and just walk around. We got to see part of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which was pretty cool for being laid out in no particular order. Some pairings were kept together (George Burns and Gracie Allen, for example), while others were broken up (Bud Abbott and Lou Costello are about a block apart). My favorite juxtaposition? Marilyn Monroe being next to Arsenio Hall.

The other odd thing is that some people have more than one star. Eva Marie Saint, for example, gets two. Apparently, one is for TV and the other for film. Seems like overkill.

Grauman's was pretty cool, but it's an odd mix of prints. How does Whoopi Goldberg rate immortalizaion?

We couldn't get into the Kodak, so we walked around it and the mall that's attached to it. That seems like a very southern California thing: a mall attached to the home of the Oscars.

We drove by some other sites, like the La Brea tar pits and the Capitol Records building, and drove around Melrose before stopping at Tommy Tang's for dinner. Tang is a well-known Thai chef (I'd not heard of him, but enough others had to make it clear I was the uninformed one) with a couple of LA-area eateries (he's also had a PBS show and sells sauces retail).

While I was a little worried about getting shellfish on the sly, I have to say this was an excellent call. I played it safe with some fried rice, but got to taste some other entrees that were phenomenal. The best one I tried was halibut in a chili sauce that was incredible - great use of the chilis for flavor and moderate heat.

Otherwise, I didn't have that much time to see other things. I'd hoped to get out to a Dodgers game, but they played in the afternoon (and lost to the White Sox 10-3, so I didn't get to see the crowd leave early, either).

So it was a pretty good trip. I'm just glad I don't have to go anywhere for a while.