First Time in LA

Monday afternoon I arrived in Los Angeles for a business trip. I've flown through LAX before, but have never had Los Angeles as the final destination.

My first glimpse of the city from the air was pretty unimpressive. I mean, it is impressive to see all the houses and built up land, but it just looked like urban sprawl. I got on my van shuttle from the airport and we were immediately stuck in traffic. The 35 mile trip from the airport to Pacific Palms Resort took over an hour.

Pacific Palms is located in La Puente east of LA. You will see from the [embedded] map below that I am in the middle of the big green golf course.

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No restaurants are nearby, though I understand a shopping center is beyond the Pomona Freeway overpass. Being that I do not have a car, I'm effectively a prisoner of the resort. At least there are a couple of restaurants on-site to choose from.

The view out my hotel room window is very pretty. You can see the mountains in the distance, as well as the urban expanse. I took some photos Wednesday morning in "stitch assist" mode. They came out looking like this (photo pile created using Picasa 3).

I wanted to create a cool panorama. A quick search on Lifehacker revealed AutoStitch as the user favorite -- free -- tool. AutoStitch took the photos above and automatically stitched them into this:

A quick crop using Gimp and voila:

So, now I bring a small part of the Los Angeles suburbs to you!!! Wish I could tell you more, but as Porky Pig says, "That's All Folks!"

Have a happy day!