Blogs from California, United States, North America - page 1160

Tuesday and after switching locales to the Green Tortoise we were ready to embark on the mission of the day. This was to meet two friends flying up from Texas. A rendez vous had been pre-arranged some months earlier at a bar called the Achilles Heel in Haight Ashbury. We had some time to kill in the interim so we sauntered through the commercial district before catching a bus to the West Beach to check out the scene. Geographically San Francisco hadn't seemed that big but catching the bus to the West side put its actual size into perspective. In fact it is very big and the bus running parallel alongside San Franciso's biggest park hits this vey much home. This uniform conurbation seems to go on for ever and by the time you reach west ... read more

Cool night breeze on still streets. Welcome to San Francisco with the archetypal man hole covers ejecting... steam I guess? Book into Hotel at the bottom of Chinatown called the Astoria and take a moment to reflect on the madness of some hours earlier. Flying direct is expensive these days so we had to change airplane at Charlotte. And boy, did we change at Charlotte. The Nazi who dealt with us in customs didn't like that fact that me and my colleague hadn't booked anywhere to stay on our arrival in San Francisco. Consequently we had to hang around some purgatorial waiting room until somebody could be bothered to help us ("Not my problem sir, I work for the airline, this is a customs issue"). Only had an hour to complete the transfer, and with just ... read more

It's a nippy but sunny day. With nothing really planned for the day, Lam, Frances, and I decided to have a picnic.... hmm..... how about Monterey? The sun should be nice to warm us up. We got to Monterey by late morning, and decided to set up "shop" in a little park by the water. We took out our cheese, fruit, bread, olives, smoke salmon, and little red wine and had a real good lunch. We also brought a portable gas stove and bottled water, so we had a hot cup of tea to warm us up. We then rented a "quadracycle", a four-wheel vehicle powered by pedal power. The vehicle seats three, and perfect for our little ride. We rode along the shoreline and enjoyed the scenery. After pedal-power, we went back into our ... read more

A short 4 day stop on the way to New Zealand. Myke travelled all the way to LA to do the All Tomorrow's Parties festival with me in Long Beach! Best festival ever!!!! Lots of really great bands were there like Modest Mouse, Built to Spill, Danielson Famile (a christian band), Sonic Youth and Iggy Pop! The festival is still in its growing stages so there weren't millions of people there and you could easily see the stage for all the shows without fighting to get to the front or fearing for your life if a mosh pit started up. After the festival we made our way (via a very long bus ride and a very expensive cab ride) to Hollywood where we checked out the walk... read more

Yosemite... read more