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Published: October 12th 2009
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The family that plays together, stays together !!Hello again,
Sunday we were up early, made our lunch and off into San Francisco. On the way over the hills to the east of San Fran is this amazing windfarm. We drove through a little piece of it last time but I didn't see all these ones. There had to be over a thousand windmills scattered over the hills and the flats in nice tidy rows of them. Like NZ, they have small ones and huge ones. Alot looked really old and in disrepair, they were on either side of the freeway. Once we went over the Oakland Bay bridge , we hit the traffic jam going to the game. We found a park in a small lot not far from the park. It was 10.30 in the morning , the game didn't start until 1.15pm and there were thousands of people everywhere. There were hundreds of people in our carpark alone enjoying their "tail gate parties" as they call them. Very well organised too. Bbq's out, some people had their table and chairs, tableclothes, beer and wine, tents, you name it they had it. So like a bunch of foreigners we sat and watched them for awhile before
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Tailgate parties before the game. eating our sandwichs and walking off to the game. Talk about being patriotic !! The San Francisco 49er's colours are red/maroon. It was just a see of red walking to the game. At the bag check we found out you can't bring in backpacks, so all my stuff got transfered over to a clear plastic bag and I had to come back and pick up my backpack after the game for security reasons. Fair enough, some people had bought clear backpacks for that exact reason, what a good idea!! Joined the sea of chanting and yelling fans around the stadium past the many merchandise places, beer stalls and food stalls to our seats. Problem with the weather at the moment is , if we were in the sun it was going to be hot, if we were in the shade it was going to be cold. Purchasing the cheapest seats I could find on ticketmaster got us the highest seats in the place against the back wall, much to the kids amusement!! " Could you get us any higher Dad" and yes there was a short roof over us and we sat about 3 seats back from the sun. Bugger
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Claridges tailgate party. !!
We got talking to this retired guy John sitting in front of us, luckily as he was very helpful on filling us in, on what was what. The stadium holds about 70,000 people , we reckon there would have been about 65,000. There weren't many spare seats, the seats are red and everyone sitting in them was wearing Red. They had the cheerleaders out there, The University of California band, there had to be a hundred of them running around, the fireworks and the announcing of their star players as they came out. Felt sorry for their teamates who obviously aren't good enough to get their names called out yet !! The crowd really booooed the St Louis team when they came out, they got right stuck into them and anyone in the stands wearing Rams gear got shit all afternoon. I fight broke out and the guys got dragged off by the cops. A bunch of drunken guys in front of us wouldn't sit down during the game and that fired a few people up, the ushers seem to calm them down a bit. I found out each team has 11 players on the field at any one
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A near full Candlestick Park stadium all wearing Red. time, they just change offense to defense when they want.The whole team has about 50 players. Both teams did a lot of the running the ball up into a pile of players in front of them and getting like 2 yards advantage , maybe 4 yards and they all thought that was good. It wasn't until the 2nd quarter that they actually started going wide and throwing the ball up field. Thats the bit I like. A couple of good touchdowns and a intercept sealed it for the Niner's, from there they just got better and better 35-0 was the final score. Each quarter is 15 minutes and it took 3 hours to play 4 quarters !! After the game alot of the fans light up the bbq again and have a few more beers as they are only going to get stuck intraffic anyway. John said they normally leave about 7pm. Thats a huge day aye !!
Monday we packed up and' hit the road Jack' again, For some funny reason I think the kids are a bit sick of me singing "We're on the road again, I can't wait to get back on the road again" LOL From
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The start of the game. San Fran down I -5 we just drove through very dusty farmland. Fruit trees much like Florida everywhere, We did pass some huge Dairy farms. I was dying to stop and take a photo but when your'e on a busy freeway thats a no no. Because of the fine weather here. they have these huge long no sided sheds. Had to be about 500m long, some farms would have had 6 or 7 of these. Cows lined up on the high side of the dirt yard eating hay thru the rails under the shade of the roof. Not a blade of green grass in site. The yard would be lucky to be 10 m across, I assume they stand on these pads all day . As water is scarce in California, I doubt they hose down the yards at all, by the look of it. It would have been really interesting to go thru a farm and see how they run it. Up and over the hills north of Los Angeles and we saw a couple of small fires burning in the distance. Nothing like what I thought we would see as on the weather channel they show videos of
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Tori on the flowrider. the different areas being burnt to the ground from the "Fires burning in Los Angeles". You would have thought it was everywhere, I don't know , we didn't see it. Mum reckons the morning rush hour traffic finishs at noon and the afternoon rush hour traffic starts at 1pm. She wasn't far wrong. That is one of the busiest stretchs of road I've had to drive through with the trailer on. Not a lot of fun. As L.A is sooooo spread out we just went for hours on these really congested freeways. We got up to about 7 lanes wide at one point and we're not the fastest boat on the ocean. We finally got to San Diego about 5pm, not that we could tell where L.A finished and San Diego started. Our campground is right on th beach, one side has beach view , the other harbour view. We set up and went for a walk around after tea to watch the sun setting on the fisherman , fishing at the end of our campground.
Tuesday , we drove into town to Balboa park. Its a very old part of the city. Parts of the park were built for
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Josh on the flowrider. the 1915 World Expo held here, some of the buildings still remain. It has like 15 different museums in the park. We caught a free shuttle bus around and stopped and walked around a bit. Went thru the botanical gardens, found some fern from NZ. Watched some of the street entertainment , Kylie enjoyed walking thru the 'Art and Jewellery' area . It was all for sale and quite nice to. Came home and had a late lunch, planned our days of what to see and do.Then we drove downtown to a shopping area we had seen, Its a whole bunch of little shops connected together by walkways and ponds. With the ocean right there, we walked along the narrow paths. After walking around for awhile, Mrs C and I bought a beer and sat on a table and just watched everyone walking by and the harbour in front of us. It was nice to sit and relax for a change. The kids are happy as the whole campground is ashphelt. So the rip-sticks have come out again and are getting good use. I had to laugh when I looked out the window the other day as Josh and Tori
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The view of the huge flight deck with San Diego downtown in the background. were sitting on the bbq table with the can of WD40 and a rag, they were freeing up the wheels on their Rip-sticks as I've shown him how to do before. Good on them !!
Wednesday , we had a slow start to the day. Caught up on the washing, Kids books, cleaning etc. You need to have a quiet morning every now and then. At lunchtime we drove down past Sea World to Mission bay. Theres a restaurant and entertainment area called ' The Wavehouse' .They have two artificial waves going. One for learners and one for more advanced. Josh, Tori and I signed up, watched the safety video and off we went. There were 8 of us in our 1 hour session. They recomended to start off on the boogey board to get used to it and then try the wave board. As usual Tori fell over once then stood up on the board to much clapping, Josh and I found it a lot harder, with plenty of wipe outs !! LOL The hour seems to go pretty quick. Kylie met up with her long lost relative, Patti. We had planned to meet her there for lunch. So
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Josh in the back seat of the flight simulator. they caught up while we played then we all sat down and had a very nice lunch along with a couple of drinks from the bar. Our pool was a flat wave that just went up and over , on the main pool its a pipeline wave. We sat at the bar and watched these really good people doing jumps and flips on the waves. It was a really cool place to go to. So anyway about 6pm we thought we should really go home. We had talked and talked to Patti all afternoon, she's a lot like Rhonda as she is very easy to talk to.
Thursday, we went to the world famous San Diego Zoo. Josh and Tori both got in for free as 11 year olds and under. We walked around the reptile center where they told us about their prize procession, A 'Tuatara from New Zealand' . Its so rare its not out in the public, its kept in its on little cage somewhere in where only the keepers can get to it. Its about 3 years old. Then we went to the Sea Lion show, which was excellent. Kelly from New Zealand got to go
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Navy helicopter on the USS Midway. up and be the helper and got a kiss from the Sea Lion. UUmmm nice !! We walked around the Monkeys and Gorilla's etc. Then past the Elephants and Rhino's before going to the exotic bird show. Some incredible looking birds there. They had a 'Kea' pick up some rubbish ( tin can ) and put it in the bin. Once again Kelly from New Zealand got to go up and be their helper. She was having a busy day. We managed to get through the shops on the way out without spending too much.
Friday, Josh and I dropped the girls off at the Seaview shopping village again while we went to see the USS Midway. Its the longest serving aircraft carrier in the Navy. It was built in 1945 and retired in 1992. It had 225,000 men serve their time on her during her years, their average age was 20 years old. It has 4 acres of flight deck. We did a self guided tour around the decks and down in the engine room. Its incredible how much room is in there. They showed pictures of when it was full of planes and it wasn't so roomy then.
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View of the bridge and harbour , San Diego. Josh and i went on a simulator ride in the cockpit of a retired jet fighter plane that used to be on the Midway. We got to shoot down enemy planes and then try our hand at landing. 1st at an airfield then on the aircraft carrier. Josh nailed a night landing on the ship and the instructor reckoned there wasn't too many people that got that one. We spent 4 hours looking around and watching different videos along the way and could have spent even more time there but we had to go and pick up the girls as we were off to go Surfin. Yes we had booked Surfing lessons for 3pm. Got our full length wetsuits on, grabbed a board and heading on down the alley to the beach. After practrising our standing up techniques, on the sand we were ready to head into the sea. It was a bit cold getting in but wasn't too bad after awhile. 3 guess's who got up 1st. Yes Tori !! Dave the instructor reckons she could stand anywhere on the board and she could surf. We all got up in the end. Look out Harris's , you might see
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Josh up and going. us in Brisbane on our surfing holidays now !!!LOL It was awesome, Timing was my issue, either getting up too early or missing the bloody wave all together. But when you get it right it was really cool and I told everybody that could here me about it too. !!! Hey we're in San Diego , I don't know anyone. We got 1 1/2 hrs with the instructor and then he left us to it for another hour. Its actually quite hard work jumping up and assuming the position. It was nice to come home and jump in a warm shower thats for sure. IHOP for tea as Kylie was too sore to cook !!
Saturday, what a bunch of broken arses around here. You should have heard the moaning about sore bodies. I cooked them waffles for breakfast before we headed out to go shopping and get some groceries. Went for a bike ride along the shore at Mission bay. Very touristy here, people from all over the world by the sound of their voices anyway. We have very high security at our campground. There is always a gaurd on the gate 24/7. You have to have a pink
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Kylie balancing perfectly. slip on our mirror to get them to open up the gate to the campground. We have a heap of trailer homes down the same driveway as us. Across the road is this beautiful bay with large parks beside it. Just about everyday there is someone either playing volleyball , or groups doing fitness exercises after work. People running and cycling everywhere. Theres a few homeless guys that make it their home, theres a bit of that around here too. As we dont have a TV, when i bought the kids their Dukes of Hazzard dvd. I bought myself the 2nd season of Veronica Mars, Its a program I used to watch at home. Well it has 22 episodes on the 6 discs. We have been engrosed in them, I would catch up to the kids at night when they were asleep. Then when we do a long drive they get to watch about 3 or 4 episodes in a day. So the other night we sat down and watched the final 3 episodes. Today when we wer're out shopping Kylie bought a season of CSI to watch. Josh bought the movie Fast'n'furious, Tori bought Twilight as shes been reading
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Me buried in the wave. the books . Kylie reckons it would have been cheaper for me to buy them a TV.
Sunday was baking day. Tori made us all a batch of pancakes/pikelets for breakfast. Then I made some biscuits and a cake. All gluten free of course. After lunch we headed back to Balboa Park and walked around the international houses , they have open on sundays. Just small one room buildings, each with people from different countries. Some had food from their country others just talked about theirs. Ireland had some lady dancing. They didn't have cadbury chocolate in England thou. Then at 2pm we went over and listened to the huge pipe organ being played. It also was built for 1915 world expo.
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Raewyn
non-member comment
Hi
Paully you should have been a a short story writer- very impressed with your travel stories, keep havin fun Claridges