Oh, California. Sunshine. Palm trees. Surfers. Wine country. And medicinal marijuana.

When you live in Los Angeles — as I do — you get used to carting around visiting friends and family, zigzagging across the vast city to tick off every desire on their bucket lists: hiking up to the Hollywood sign, spotting a celebrity, re-enacting the "Pretty Woman" scene on Rodeo Drive. But when my cousin and his wife came to visit last month, they had one new addition to the bucket list: getting a medicinal marijuana license.

If you live in LA, you know someone with a medical marijuana license. They are as ubiquitous as the smog.

I picked up my guests on a Monday morning at LAX. As I navigated through traffic, they rapidly talked about sitting near Flavor Flav on the plane and about how they took pictures with him and about the girl Flav was hitting on. And then, just as quickly as the traffic can change on the LA freeways, the conversation flipped.

"So, I spoke to some girl on the plane, and she said that we should go to Venice to get a medical marijuana license."

Good ol' Venice, an oasis to the hippies and the degenerates. Having never sought out a license myself, I had no idea how to get one. But Venice was the obvious place to start our adventure.

"I have a doctor's note from my neurologist," my cousin's wife said. "Will that help?"

The difference between her and everyone I know who has a medical marijuana license is that she isn't claiming to have headaches or anxiety just to get pot. She has multiple sclerosis, and the license was her doctor's idea. But because she doesn't live in a state where marijuana is legal, she thought she might as well take advantage of her stay in California.

I parked off the boardwalk in Venice Beach. The moment we got out of the car, we were bombarded by men and women with bloodshot eyes, asking us to come inside their "clinics." They all wore green scrubs, because, you know, only real doctors own scrubs. Certainly made me feel more secure.

The clinic we entered was stark white except for the posters of pot leaves, I-guess-you-could-call-it-artwork and colorful people.

We waited for the doctor to see us. The wait may have been the most surreal part. We talked about friends we had lost over the years to drug use, mentally drawing a line in the sand between us and them.

When the doctor was ready, we entered a messy room that resembled a home office. The doctor was in his early 60s, bald and stoned out of his mind. "Do you know the difference between the indica and sativa?" he asked.

"No."

"Sativa makes you have anxiety. If you already have anxiety, it will make you crazy. If you're already crazy, it will make you insane."

Uh, OK? Good to know. The doctor prescribed her a license, which was really just a green piece of paper that he stamped. She paid the $50, and that was it.

We were told that because my cousin's wife had an out-of-state driver's license, there was only one place we could go to get the "goods." And if we thought that our experience so far had been weird, we were adorably naive.

We drove to the total sketch part of Venice. It was dark when we parked in one of those neighborhoods where you're afraid to leave your car because you doubt it still will be there when you return. There was a homeless man standing guard outside the pot shop. Because, you know, nothing makes you feel safer than a homeless man on drugs.

Inside we found Willy Wonka's factory of weed. Huge bins of marijuana in different colors, flavors and hybrids, all with deliciously bizarre names. And then there was the baked-goods section — candy, cakes, cookies. My cousin's wife bought a brownie, sticks of honey, a couple of vials of oil and Goldfish-like snacks. If you think regular Goldfish are the snack that smiles back, just imagine what the pot-induced goldfish can do.

We hurried past the homeless security guard, got back into my car — which thankfully was still there — and got the heck out of dodge. As we got back onto the highway, with its safety and normalcy, my cousin yelled out, "Bucket list!"

Bucket list, indeed.

To find out more about Katiedid Langrock and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.