America 2013: Day One - November 22 | LAX Knott's Berry Farm Honda Center NHL

It’s a high school prom, it’s a Springsteen song, it’s a ride in a Chevrolet. It’s a man on the moon and fireflies in June, and kids sellin’ lemonade. It’s cities and farms, it’s open arms, one nation under god. It’s America.

- Rodney Atkins

America!

It feels like forever since January 2012, when I flew home from Los Angeles, and it’s good to be back. Southern California is at it’s typical sunny best. It wasn’t long after sunrise that we landed at LAX, which is about the second-busiest airport in America and in the top five busiest in the world, a place where you often have to take a 15-minute bus ride from one terminal to the next. If this is your first time to Los Angeles, and the airport is your first glimpse of the City of Angels, it pretty well sums up the sprawling metropolis in which you’ve just landed: it’s pretty much civilisation gone mad.

Los Angeles, famous for it’s insane urban congestion, the crazy mass of highways – stacked three and four high in some places – that crisscross the city and it’s surrounds and the smudgy layer of pollution that seems to hang permanently over the city, framed by the spectacular San Gabriel Mountains, is a strange place to visit. There isn’t a major attraction downtown, and parts of it are very seedy and dangerous, but there’s a feverish energy here, which I’ve only seen matched by New York City, and it’s addictive. Everyone’s going somewhere quickly, usually in an SUV. There must be more of those here, per capita, than anywhere else in the world. 

We had some interesting things happen at the airport before we even left Australia. There was an accident at the top of the escalator as we came into Sydney airport. Luggage, luggage trolleys, cups of coffee and ten-gallon hats (they were Texans!) went everywhere. Then, at the food court inside the terminal, we witnessed a guy looking at what were basically pornographic images. The problem was that we could all see them, too. Majorly uncomfortable.

Somehow we got checked in and under way, and after all the craziness in the terminal, it was a relief to get on the plane. I got four hours of sleep, the most of any of us.

We landed early on the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. Being one of the first flights to land - we were on the ground just after six thirty - is, I think, the key to avoiding really obscene queues at Customs. We've been stuck in some bad ones over the years. Once we were welcomed into the country by the blue-shirted TSA folk, we picked up the hire car, checked into our hotel, the Travelodge LAX, and had an unhealthy breakfast at Dennys (which is connected to the hotel) and headed out to Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, California, about 45 minutes east of LAX.

Knott's is the oldest theme park in California, and the first one I ever went to, back in January of 2006. It opened in 1920 and was more famous in those days for Cordelia Knott's fried chicken dinners (which they still cook to this day, and are as amazingly tasty as they are rampantly unhealthy). The boysenberry has it's origins at Knott's, too. Walter Knott, a berry expert, was the first to cultivate and sell the berries in 1932. When people asked what they were called, Knott said, "Boysenberries," after their originator, Rudolph Boysen.As the berry's popularity grew, Cordelia Knott began making preserves, which ultimately made Knott's Berry Farm famous.

These days, Knott's is better known for it's white-knuckle rides - the Xcelerator, Silver Bullet, Montezooma's Revenge, Ghost Rider - and they are as good as you'll find anywhere in the world. Silver Bullet, (nearly a kilometer long, with a towering  vertical loop, cobra roll, zero-g roll, and two corkscrews) is my favourite ride in the park, closely followed by the Xcelerator, (which takes you up and over a giant upside-down U, reaching 132km/h in 2.3 seconds from a standing start.

The Southern California wether didn't help us out much today. It rained for most of the afternoon, so we left the park early and went back to our hotel to check in and get a bit of rest before we battled insane LA traffic en route to nearby Honda Centre in Anaheim, for some hockey! Anyone who knows me knows how much I love my hockey. It was so awesome to arrive in America, go to a great theme park and then to a hockey game all on our first day! Tonight, the hometown Anaheim Ducks against the Tampa Bay Lightning, from Florida.

Watching live NHL hockey for the first time in nearly two years is a rediscovery of everything that I love about the game. A big, passionate crowd, the best athletes in the game, a rousing rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, the sound of stick-to-stick passing, of skates across the ice, of a player being checked against the boards, the thunderous roar of the goal horn and all the other sights and sounds of being in an NHL arena, which separate this league from other hockey competitions around the world. 

It was the first NHL game for Lauryn and Trevor tonight, and they saw a pretty good game, too. Until an overtime loss to New Jersey on Wednesday, the Ducks hadn't been beaten at home this year - the best record in the NHL - and they ensured their home losing streak stayed at one. The game was tight, 0-0 until 5.2 seconds left in the 5-minute overtime period, when Ryan Getzlaf snuck the puck past Tampa Bay goalie Ben Bishop to spark off wild celebrations inside Honda Centre. Some great saves made by both Bishop and Ducks goalie Jonas Hiller.

Needless to say, we were all incredibly glad to get back to our hotel after a long day - two days, actually - but a hugely enjoyable one and get some sleep. Universal Studios Hollywood and more hockey tomorrow.

Great to be back, America!