Before driving off to Napa Valley (inspired by the little filmette Sideways), we went to have some high-octane fun at an aerial display of the US Navy Blue Angels. Shit those planes are LOUD - I´m sure it´s the pilots who took the silencers off like the boy racers of Essex in their Ford Fiestas. There we were, just moseying along after our quiet tour of the SF Museum of Modern Art, when KA-BOOOM....ROOOAARRRR!!! comes screaming overhead. Never heard anything quite like it, and that second (these days whilst visiting a major American city) goes like this: "WTF was that....oh no not 9/11 again.... whilst ducking in reaction, look up tentatively see 3 small silhouetted shapes darting across the skyscraper rooftops ....fook, it's the air force.....what're they bleedin' doing scaring the crap out of people..... .... ... read more

After some time hanging out at Sofie´s pad (which she´s just managed to rent out) in Copenhagen, tearful farewell to her parents at Kastrup airport and my promising to take good care of her. ---- 8 hours of so of boring (as in a drill boring through your skull) flight-life slips by No cool personal screens, only monitors that drop down somewhere overhead that only 20% of people have a good view of; our monitor exhibited an interesting monochrome/blue characteristic. i.e. Continental SUCK. Awfully small seats, and no limitless free booze. Everything I´d promised my girl - yet to experience intercontinental travel - now dashed. I shouldnt have built up her expectations with my tales of flying with decent enterprises like Virgin Atlantic (I don't wish to advertise for R. Branson, I just posited them in ... read more

So, since it's only a few miles north of Seattle, Loren and I decided to head up to B.C. I'd planned to go anyway, via Victoria which I thought was an island of its own accord but now I think it's just the bottom tip of Vancouver Island. Anyway, it's supposed to be very British with a promenade that would remind me of home, and ferries ran up there at 7am and I think mid-afternoon from Seattle. Thing is, my head was in no state for any seafaring on the due day of departure, and Loren said he'd drive the next day, so I plumped for that option. This of course meant another night out with the man in Seattle, where I managed to screw things up by not taking any ID out with me so ... read more

So Seattle is unique in America, in that the only way to get around is by boat or boat-plane. Here's the proof: img=http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p112/julespenk/Jules%20and%20Sofie%20in%20the%20Americas/1%20-%20USA/0%20-%20Seattle%20and%20Vancouver%20BC/2%20-%20Seattle%20city/IMG_5480.jpg img=http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p112/julespenk/Pre-trip%20stuff/My%2036th%20Copenhagen/misc3014.jpg Weird huh. All the people have to live on water, in fact, some don't even want to admit they do, going so far as to modify boats so much that they look like normal houses that you and me would live in: img=http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p112/julespenk/Jules%20and%20Sofie%20in%20the%20Americas/1%20-%20USA/0%20-%20Seattle%20and%20Vancouver%20BC/1%20-%20Loren-on-sea/IMG_5438.jpg img=http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p112/julespenk/Jules%20and%20Sofie%20in%20the%2... read more

Background Thinking back, this is essentially where this travel blog begins, at least for me. The blog's original focus was to be on the nine months or so of floating about the US, the Caribbean, and for the most part, Latin America - but the real picture would then be incomplete. I had earlier in the year (of 2006) finished a secondment from a British company to develop software for a Danish company (the customer being a well-known Korean mobile phone company - business trips and Kareoke included). But that job was only temporary and used to pay for a Big Trip to Somewhere after having completed, in 2005, a thing called an EngD via University College London; that took me six years whilst holding down a full-time job or two, so I was burning for ... read more