Those of you who grew up in the valley........

Those of you that grew up here in the San Fernando Valley at some point during high school hung out at "The Tower" on old dirt Mulholland up in the Santa Monica Mountains. You either went there to get high, drink, stare at the stars, enjoy the amazing view of the city at night, and/or just went up there purely for the adventure of the drive up on the old dirt road. I personally liked the drive up there, especially after it had rained. Aaaaahhh, the joy of driving my 1982 CJ 5 on that slippery muddy huge road blocking lake sized puddled highway! The tower was a great place to venture to with friends. I recall getting a ticket and having to go to court for something I did up there involving driving my jeep off Mulholland highway to go 4wheeln' on apparently ground I was not supposed to be on. Yeah, it had rained that night too and my friends and I were forced to sit in the mud next to the Jeep while being interrogated. It was worth it though. We had fun. Well, the point of this story is that today after flying over a couple of typical news stories the assignment desk sent us to go look for a replica of the "Great Wall of China" movie set being built in the Santa Monica Mountains. Sure enough, the wall is right behind that tower! We shot some video, flew low and had a great time checking it out. All the while I remembered the days back at the tower. If only I knew then that some day I would be flying a helicopter around that tower! Amazing! Anyway, you can hike up to the great wall set. There is security there but we saw people walking by it. It's on a fire road/hiking trail behind the tower off Mulholland. Check it out if you have time and are curious.

Later that night we flew on a wild pursuit that ripped through the streets of East Los Angeles. When the pursuit came to an end atop a parking structure, the suspect bailed on foot and without any hesitation ran towards the end of the structure and jumped over the short wall and off the two story structure into a parking lot below! With minor injuries, which appeared to be his ankle, he continued to try and run from police. Ground units rolled in and got him in the end as they always do.

It was a wild and exciting chase for us news helicopters overhead and the 2 lapd birds below us. As Stu(the cameraman) and I were making our way back to Whiteman, he said can you believe we get paid to do this? It's a joke! We have fun and this is not work. Work is something hard, something you don't look forward to but have to do. What we do is fun and exciting. We laughed about it all the way back to Whiteman.