JFK-BUR: California Dreaming

Thursday morning (3-19) my wife and I boarded JetBlue Flight 353 to Burbank, California. It was great to leave the coldness of the NE
and even more so when we landed at Burbank. You depart the plane onto the tarmac and the warmth of the Cali sun immediately hits your face. 75 and sunny!!! We picked up our luggage, then the rental car and after a few errands arrived at our friends house in Encino.
Our friends werent home yet from work so my wife gave me the look to "go do your thing". Grabbed my essentials and headed out to
VNY only 15 or so minutes to the north. Well I arrived and found it very very quiet. Mmmmm, I thought, what gives though I did have an
idea. Cruised the perimeter and the scanner still very quiet. Then I found this very cool public viewing location on the eastern side of the airport off of Woodley Avenue. It had benches, picnic tables and a play area for kids. The only problem for the photogs is that it faces the sun during peak hours. Well back to why it was so quiet. Pres Obama was in town and at this time was at the Burbank studio
to the east for Jay Leno so a TFR had effectively shutdown the airports until 6:30PST. Damn all this way and foiled. I chatted a few
minutes with a guy in the parking lot and headed home.
Crashed early that night as the time change caught up with me and by the next morning was fresh and ready to go. My wife was out with her friend shopping and I had the day until 4PM. This time I headed to Griffith Park to check out the Griffith Park Observatory. Arrived at 11AM and the fog had burned off but still hazy yet what a great place. Located at the top of a hill it has spectacular views of the LA basin and points in between including the famous Hollywood sign. And lots of helicopter traffic passing by. LAPD buzzed the area a number of times along with private copters flying north to south and LAFD Fire 4 (Bell 412) roared past us enroute to the LA Med Center a few miles away where the landed and shutdown. It was so quiet up there you could hear the copter landing and shutting down its engines. When the observatory opened at 12 (free) I went inside and spent over an hour checking out the exhibits. Yes we are very insignificant in the whole of the universe!! :) Outside I went back to grab my binocs from the car then back to have some lunch and check out the area a little more closely. Now I know why LAPD is always buzzing the hills since there are lots of people hiking the area, some up some steep areas.
After almost 3 hours there I took off back to VNY. Unfortunately I only had about 30 minutes as we had a dinner engagement in Sherman Oaks at 5PM with the friends whose son was having his Bar Mitzvah on Sat (not the ones we were staying with). And wouldnt you know it VNY was ROCKIN!!!! Private jets, Private copters, ENG copters, weekend warriors, LAFD copters you name it was in and out. Oh man!!! Oh well LOL!!!
That night after the dinner I was sitting in the backyard in Encino with my scanner and a few brews and I have to tell you LAPD is very busy. In the 45 minutes or so I was out there I heard Police 9, 3, 10 and 16 all airborne at one time or at the same time. Not to be outdone Sheriff 2-9 was also up. They seem to be very proactive with airborne patrol.
Saturday was the Bar Mitzvah and after the service we headed down to Hollywood for the party at The Highland Club and there was a war protest shaping up outside. We got inside fine as LAPD circled overhead at 1000 or so but when we left at 4PM the protest was just over and now LAPD is circling like 500 feet in downtown Hollywood!!! That was very cool. Saturday night we went back to the Bar Mitzvah family house for BBQ, pizza, beers and margaritas and a great garage jam session of classic rock. Our hosts have their garage filled with musical equipment and their oldest son (14) is very talented and he played guitar and other friends and family filled out the band and we had a blast. NOt sure how long it went on but we left they were still going on.
Sunday morning a storm system was moving in (yes contrary to the song IT DOES rain in Southern California) but we were able to drive to Burbank and board flight 353 JetBlue with no problem though the skies did open up as we taxied to depart. It was over Nevada where we had the problem. We started to hit some nasty turbulence and you know its bad when the pilot asks the cabin crew to buckle up. They kept us informed and dropped the plane from 35,000 to 31,000 to try and alleviate the bumpiness then down to 29 but it still was rockin. He infomed up that we had to go another 100 miles (15 minutes or so) before we would get clear and he was correct but it wasnt very pleasant. Images of "Lost" kept popping up in my head. :)
By 4:50 we were touching down at JFK on 31 right and our fantastic weekend in Caifornia was over but certainly not forgotten.