I was recently visiting family in southern california and every FBO wanted a minimum 2 hour checkout, and a minimum 1 hour of ground school covering the LAX/SNA airspace. There was an additional checkout process to visit Catalina Island, and the FBOs "strongly discouraged" flying with pax and instructor before the checkout process had been completed. All to fly a C172. Crazy amount of friction. I'm grateful OA tried to solve this problem even though they weren't in my home area.