Day 1 - world's longest

Today's been quite impressive in chronological terms. The 2 girls in the Berocca advert have gut nuthin. "we crossed 3 timezones and got the most out of our day'.......Meh!

Left home at midday Friday. Stuck to my intentions and used public transport to get to the airport (there's a lot of trips to a lot of airports in the next few weeks, so I'm $50 ahead already). Travelled for 18 or 19 hours, and checked in to the hotel at - yep - midday Friday.

Checkin was horrible, strange that people don't realise that if their suitcase is the size of most people's garages, chances are it'll be too heavy. Amusing to watch them throw clothes all over the airport trying to redistribute the weight between the bags. Especially when, if you have 4 bags and they're all too heavy, it doesn't matter 1 jot how you move things around. Helped pass the time and calm the frustration anyhow.

Checkin also proved that whilst the tickets have been altered to be in my name only, the computer still begged the question 'are you sure you're travelling alone?'..........first of many I guess.

Real tragedy was that it meant I was late getting to the gate, so had to check in without a book. I've never been on a plane without a book before and was accordingly very anxious.

Flight......food, wine, bit of chat to the guy next to me who was a pleasant chap......then tucked in to the new sleeping pills. The pharmacist was a naturopath - I hope I got that right - and convinced me that natural was better than narcotic. I was happy enough to experiment until I opened the packet. They smell exactly like sheep droppings, and look exactly like sheep droppings. So i expected them to have all the sleeping powers of......sheep droppings. But they combined with the wine and did the job, we'd passed over Honululu before I woke up.

As the Californian coast appeared before us, my concerns about San Francisco's weather subsided as the whole place was bathed in sunshine.....and no fog. Coming in to land gave an awesome view over the whole city and was pretty special.

Immigration was as expected. The locals breezed through, the foreigners got shepherded into a huge zigzag line awaiting photo and fingerprint taking. I was a little concerned about a moment of indescretion in my very distant past, but they let me in nonetheless.

Checked in to the Queen Anne hotel (in the name of Robertson....so that's number 2 - 'you're travelling alone?) - which on first impression is somewhere I'd recommend to anyone - and thought I'd just sit down on the bed for a minute. 4 hours later I woke up.

Wandered towards the city centre........not perhaps as squeeky clean or picturesque as I'd expected. Guys smoking weed on corners, lots of unfortunates looking for handouts.......the hotel's wonderful but not too far from the 'Tenderloin' area which is the City's sh!thole.

Normally when travelling I'd rather hack of my own arms with a spoon that eat at Macdonalds, but in the USA it seemed appropriate and - this is scarey - it was really good. A Crispy chicken club sandwich was really seriously tasty.

Then it was the usual tourist fumbling with the train system's ticket machines, and I was off across the Bay to Oakland for the basketball game. Golden State Warriors versus Chicago Bulls (apologies for my previous entry, it won't let me edit it and correct it....).

Joe and I managed to find each other, and our seats, and it was a great game. The lead changed hands often, lots of dunks and blocks and slick play. Low point was missing the entire 2nd quarter whilst waiting in line for beers, as underage kids tried a variety of fake ID to persuade the servers that they were legit. Very annoying, dissapointing - I thought the US would be slicker than that, made Telstra Stadium look like a well oiled machine, and everyone loved well-oiled punters but it wasn't worth the hassle at Oracle Stadium.

Verizon were one of the major sponsors, nice to be reminded of work often. The name is everywhere here, shops, billboards....... no escape.

Tomorrow, I'm going to walk north till I hit the bay then rent a bike and ride west along the coast, and over the golden gate bridge, which should be pretty spectacular.

Anyhow, the jetlag's the only reason I'm writing this now, I ought to be damned tired and Friday's finally over.......so I'll leave you all to it. Wireless internet in the hotel means I stand a chance of writing this regularly, at least until I move to Texas on Wednesday. I'll try to add a photo or 2 next time.

This has technically been by far the longest day of my life, about 40 hours of Friday I think. But all good so far.

Pete

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