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Published: March 28th 2006
Yosemite National Grimness
The closest you'll get to isolation in California...Hi, I thought it's about time I finished up with our Californian Adventure and manage to move on to some other more interesting parts of the US but this journal entry will just be short to cap off a few things we did before we made the journey east towards Utah and Colorado which is where we're at now... Colorado until Friday actually and then a weekend in Vegas which im sure will be beyond interesting (non sarcasm!) ... it'll be a blast.
Last Journal ended up with us being at the Hostel for our 2nd visit there, the reason we went was for a bit of social activity with people our age and also because we wanted to go on a camping trip to Yosemite national park, however we realised when we got there that the camping trips only occured when it was in the warmer months, not in winter so we decided that we would do the day trip instead. We signed up and paid a deposit and the next morning we had to be ready out the front of the hostel by about 630am, which is really bad because we had to get up at 530am which
Majestic Skyline
My Sloppy camera skills at work ... it was windy though! this shows how "muddled" the streets and stuff are from Alcatraz. really sucked. The bus arrived and we cruised around to other hotels and picked up some more people and then slowly moved through the city and over the bay bridge. Luckily after I worked out how to close the small gap in the window which was blowing ice winds on my face, I managed to doze off for a little while. Only problem with this trip was that we were getting a guided tour of the wild area's of north eastern california so the the tour guide was speak into a microphone so loud it would make it impossible to sleep She spoke at 30 min intervals so my sleep (and then music listening) got disrupted constantly. The tour guide was nice, though, very friendly and she seemt to know what she was talking about and we did learn some facts along the way, which I wont bore you with right now but im sure they'll come into conversation sometime someplace in the future.
After 2 hours we stopped for bagels at some shopping complex outside of Oakland and then traveled 2 more to another stop where we actually got to see some snow! woohoo.. living in Adelaide means
Corroded Watertank!
This pic just oozes cool ;) one of my many pointless shots taken on The Rock. you never get to see snow unless you go into our crappy indoor snow and ice arena (mount thebarton) but it's not really very good. The small mound of snow was mixed with mud and other stuff, so it was grey in colour, similar to Lithuanian snow from what i've been told. It was fun to throw at stuff though, like trees and things... simple minds are entertained by simple things but hey snow was a novelty for us. Anyways we continued on towards Yosemite and about 90 mins later we arrived at our destination (5.5 hours travel time) and what we saw was pretty amazing, scenes that we didn't know existed in this country let alone california.. very impressive. I took a ton of pics of things through out the day we spent there but half of them got screwed up because of misty camera lenses (damn waterfalls!) and because I don't have 6X optical zoom like Horse, Ive stuck by my 3X zoom and 6 megapixels for more beautiful closeups of stuff like trees and wild animals from the forest like deer. We stopped at a couple of scenic spots to get pics and gaze in awe at wonders that stood before us... vast valleys with streams cutting through them with snow and ice along the edges, the kind of scenes that we don't get to see back at home so it was pretty awesome. As I said, I have a heap of pics and I can email them if you're interested, just ask because while im with family I can make use of full pc funktions not just intraweb access. After the tourist stops we ended up at the cafe thing and ate some stuff and then we were let loose on the park, we had about 3 hours to explore the tracks and stuff by ourselves, so I waved goodbye to my fellow traveler and set off on my own journey.
I know it's not Norway but this is closest i've felt to being isolated in a vast forest breathing pure air and not having to deal with filthy humans for a while. Even though I was on american soil it felt like I was somewhere in Norway so that made me feel a bit more grim. Plenty of time to crank some tunes... I'll list them here:
- Paysage D'Hiver - Krystal & Isa (black metal, something I dont listen to much these days but this album is my favourite and easily the most cold and grim album I have, perfect for the occasion!)
- Diabolical Masquerade - Nightwork (another one of my favourite albums, blackheim is one of the gods of metal and DM is one of the coolest projects ever, made me feel warm inside)
- Swallow the Sun - Ghosts of Loss (Sometimes the only way to embrace nature is with doom-metal, kind of expresses alot of emotion with intense brutality and these guys have matured alot since their debut.. I really dig this album)
The rest of the time I spent actually deciding which album to put on ...
After a day of exploring the national park, we headed back to San Francisco, the view of twilight falling upon the snow peaks was pretty awesome, so we stopped and took some more pics and experienced a large joy, this small asian boy with his dad.. the kid through a massive snowball at his dad and almost knocked him over, it was so cute because the dad was so thin and wirey and the kid like 3ft tall, the kid then let loose this massive laugh that I will cherish for a lifetime, it was so evil! I'll glady do this laugh for the next person who reads my journals whom I meet on my travels. I understand how unfunny this event sounds, so dont feel bad about not laughing 😉 On the journey back I remember waking up and staring out the window at the stream of traffic heading back into the country areas from SF and Oakland, I swear we were 3 hours out of suburbia and the flow of traffic at about 7pm was intense, it just went on and on... I couldn't help but wonder who these people were and where their destinations would be... so many lives on just one highway in one state of this huge country. Puts you in perspective seeing as though you're just a single unit traveling on a bus. Of course the romanticsm of the moment ended after we reached a traffic jam on the bay bridge. Got back to the hostel at 10pm VERY tired and we missed the pub crawl ... the social event we wanted to attend to meet some drunken travelers. The sleep turned out to be good at least. The bad part about hostels is that the check-out time is usually on average 10am so on your last morning you can't really sleep in. Before Sleep, however I decided to flick through one of the local papers and to my excitement I discovered that one of my favourite bands was playing on Friday night (the next night) together with 2 other bands that I would enjoy aswell. So that was something that would make my trip to SF so much more awesome.
We retreated back to the Monk's house for Fri, Sat and Sun nights because it seemed like he missed our company, I dont blame him because we're pretty cool guys 😉 Horse went back to the Monk's place a bit earlier and I made my way down to Fisherman's Wharf (huge tourist attraction down by the wharfs) so that I could purchase tickets in advance to goto Alcatraz (the prison from the movie "The Rock") ... This walk took like 45 mins because if you remember the pic from my last entry (I took it on this walk) you can see how hilly this road is. To my disapointment, all the tickets were sold out until Sunday afternoon and the night tour wasn't available til monday night, so I booked for the 1415pm departure and held onto my precious tickets with much anticipation. After my trek accross SF I too headed back to the Monk's abode. Horse and the Monk decided to head to the gym for a workout, which was awesome because it gave me a whole afternoon to myself, so I headed off to the the Golden gate park and wanted to explore everything else it had to offer and i wandered through it for about 3 hours listening to some music and enjoying the fresh air, I found a huge windmill and a paddock which housed many bison, kinda weird having outback creaturs in an urban park but anyway, it was a nice walk. I made it all the way to the beach, so 35 blocks down and discovered how crusty the Beach was, Im guessing because it's on the Pacific ocean so all sorts of dodgy chemicals and wood and broken bits and pieces land ashore. Black Sand is gross, made me realise how lucky I am to be in Adelaide with pure golden beaches. After the walk I met up with the other 2 in downtown for lunch at an Irish pub and it was great.
The night came and Horse and I traveled into downtown again to see the bands, I had no idea what he would think of the show, i was hoping he would enjoy it at least because I have had a bad experience before dragging some friends to a post-hardcore gig and rendering them speachless because they had no idea (as most people dont) that such sound/noise compositions actually exist.. you know the types "hey, I listen to just about everything ... there's
nothing I wouldnt listen to ... how wrong those people are. The bus trip was pretty dandy, we were approached by some girls who were heading into town to party, they were pretty hot I have to admit but as we started talking, it was easy to realise how stupid and annoying they were. It seems asif Californian girls have this image to uphold that they are superior and not shallow but irony would see to it that they were (in our eyes) walking cliche's of themselves. An example of this is their ignorance after we told them we had been in San Fran for 10 days was "oh my god, it's so boring here what did you do here for soo long?" and obviously they weren't interested in our response and continued then to talk about themselves "you should goto Socal, like Orange Country because that's where
we're from" etc. and it just continued until we got off the bus ... interesting, I kinda wished that it wasn't true but they were just so bad. The gig ended up being really cool, the 2 other bands that played were "The Mass" and "Floating Goat" ... Floating Goat played first and they did some magic stuff. Horse compared them to Tool which is what he compares most of my music too. I would say they were alot like Taint and alot like High on Fire, a very metal stoner vibe, close to Doom-metal, I guess.. well thats what I would label them. Pretty classy, id love to hear their stuff on mp3 sometime. The reason I came though was to see SubArachnoid Space and they came on next. Before the show I was looking at some girl with shortish dark hair for some reason and then I turned to Horse and started preaching to him what he was about to see, I gave him the ins and outs of Subarachnoid Space's sound and evolution and I turned back to the girl and she was staring at me listening to what I had to say. It was pretty cool, I guess. Anyways after the first band, SaS headed toward the stage... very tiny tight venue but better accoustics than any of Adelaide's hell holes ... and to my horror, I realised that the girl that was looking at me and listening was actually Melynda from the band, so the "main man" the one that writes most of the stuff and plays mean tripped out guitar riffs better than any band ive heard ever. I was almost in shock. She looks nothing like her pics on their site where she has long blonde hair, but I think those pics are old now as they hardly update their site. The show was pretty good, they only played 30 mins (3 tracks) as to make way for the "main" band The Mass. The 3 tracks were pretty good. 2 songs from their last album and one new one maybe, but im not sure because I cannot remember every song because they have 8-9 albums now but it was kick ass anyway. Needless to say I had no time for the last band, they were boring.
After the show I saw Melynda outside and I was drunk enough to approach someone cool and kinda half famous (to me anyway) and I started babbling something like "we came all the way from australia just to see you guys play" and she and I both knew I was full of shit and laughed. I bought her and some other guys at the bar a beer and the bartender screwed up and I ended up paying $3us for 6 beers, an awesome event. We talked for a bit and I asked some questions and then she left with the rest of the band but I left pretty satisfied. My Highlight of the Holiday so far and reason enough to suggest San Fransico is my choice of city in the US 😊
Horse said he had a good time and was smiling a bit and being talkative which is a sign that he isn't not enjoying himself which is relief enough for me. We waited 40 mins or so for the Bus which sucked hard but eventually made it home. Just realised how boring this entry is so Ill finish it off real soon. Didn't do much the next day, infact I think we just went to Haight Street and looked around and I may have done my last journal on that day but at night we went to see "V for Vendetta" which was great, I really enjoyed the movie even though it kinda blurred my moral stance on a number of issues but at least it covered enough for me to want to discuss it on a later date.
Had to be up at about 6am on Sunday as we had to attend church
again. Going to church was the only price we had to pay to stay at the monk's house but this isn't ordinary church this is extreme oldschool church from the dark ages, not an englsh word spoken throughout the whole cerimony. One of the worst experiences in my entire life. Second only to the previous week's 6 hour service, luckily this one was only just under 3 hours. After church we slowly made our way to Fisherman's Wharf via Haight Street to board our ferry to Alcatraz. Alcatraz was pretty cool apart from it sprawling with Hundreds of tourists, i was actually in shock as to how many people were actually here. The Prison itself was just what I expected, so nothing revoulutionary just interesting. I did a similar tour with audio and stuff back in San Diego on an old Aircraft Carrier.. can't remember if I mentioned it or not. The real highlight of The Rock was the ferry to and from the Island and the Panoramic views from the Island itself... I bet the prisoners here loved the view, too 😉 On the way back Horse and I remembered our previous 11 days in San Francisco and decided we would deff come back again sometime ...
6am Monday morning the alarm blasted my ears to shreads "not chruch again!" I proclaimed silently within but I realised we were about to head off to catch the bus/train to see my Aunty in Salt Lake City. We JUST made the bus connection at the Ferry Building downtown SF because of stupid anti-war riots in the city, I love it how hippies love to create chaos without realising that other people have lives to live which are being interrupted by their stupid arguments. I felt alot of hatred as I was running the last 5 blocks to catch the bus. The bus sped off and luckily stopped at some traffic lights so we were able to hop aboard with our huge backpacks. The driver, another asian dude, much friendlier than the old bastard from 12 days ago was glad to less us on. So we traveled 30 mins on the bus til we got to Emeryville Train Station where our 17 hour train Journey would begin at 915am. We traveled for about 3 hours before Horse and I uttered a word, I think when I get so angry at "just" making the train it's wise for me not to speak to anyone for awhile. Have to remember that trains between cities rarely go more than once per day here (unlike once an hour in europe ... ) so if you miss it, you're back to doing nothing for 24 hours or being entertained by a monk (which would have been our case) ... The scenery was bland most of the way, raining hardcore and just boring, I wasn't even in the mood for music so I just stared blankly out the window looking mad ... but this was a long journey, im sure my mood would change at some stage ...
Eventually we crossed the Border into Nevada, as we were told by the train PA system and it was finnaly clear that we were about to embark on the 2nd leg of our tour "real usa" the fairy tale of California was now behind us. Looking back, we had some great times and as you have read, some interesting times that I'll always remember ... the trip was crusing along nicely, I was getting out of America what I had wanted, Horse, though ... hmm well.. you'll have to ask him what he's getting out of it so far because he seems disapointed but then has no solutions to his own problems, I can't help him, only he can help himself. I just hope when we leave this continent that it'll make a bit more sense to him ...
I'll leave you now and continue next week with the 2nd half of the train trip which was kinda cool until it got dark and then we'll discuss The Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter day Saints (the mormons!) as I have now become learned in their religion because of Lodging in their mecca Salt Lake City. Im not sure if I'll add this current road trip Im on now, depends how long the journal goes for but still, I'll get around to it.
Hope my REAL friends are reading this and are doing well and all the others well I hope you're doing okay, too.
bye until next time 😊
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Sulphuric Work Slave
non-member comment
awesome
Hey dude, good to see you're still having a good time. I took half an hour out of work to read this! But then I hate work :D Some funny stuff there, but once again with you, not too much surprises me :)