A bit of Oz to finish off.

View north up the coast from the 101 complete with overhanging gum tree branch. Ahh California...

Pfeiffer Falls (Big Sur)

These are the falls the brats were climbing. I got this with a long exposure after learning from El Guapo.

Final Night in the United States

Only in America would you be able to steal a Foster's coaster. Last night for me in America with El Guapo together = 4 x pint Old Tire Beer, 4 x tequila sunrise, 2 x cowboy shots, 2x dranbuie shot, 2x tequila and orange juice. We named tequila and orange juice "can't go wrong".
I spent the night hiccupping. Matt spent the night puking up in my toilet. "Driving the porcelain bus Matt?". "Yeah".
To take a leak I had to go to his apartment next door.

Big Sur Trip

Imagine this sign. Enter American mom, dad, two brats. Two brats start climbing cliff immediately. Parents say nothing. Dad watches. Mom does nothing but take photos with overly expensive camera she obviously doesn't know how to use.
Brats climb right past sign and out of sight. Brat one throws rock down. Almost kills other tourist below as it bounces off the bottom of the cliff. Dad says 'watch out'. Mom says nothing but takes photos of brats.
On the way down, brat two dislodges LOOSE ROCK, rock hits brat one on head. Brat one starts to cry loudly and annoyingly. Dad comments about brats pants getting dirty. Mom says nothing but takes photos of brats.
Brat one reaches bottom. Dad tells crying brat one that he was 'terrific up there'. Nothing about learning a valuable lesson about signs that are obviously there for public safety. Mom says nothing except take photos of brats.
Brat two reaches bottom. Mom tells brat two to stand still for a photos. Mom and brat scream at each other. When we leave Mom screams at us for wobbling the boardwalk as we leave.
Bloody hell.

I lied.

One more... some cheeleader action (please read that the right way). Did I mention 10x zoom?

one,two,three SMACK

Like watching rows of armoured cars colliding at an intersection. Last football pic I promise.

Game was fun. Here are some of the three teams they bring with them. An offensive team, a defensive team and another team for something else. It was the same with ice hockey - endurance and all-round skills are not their strong-point. Trust the yanks to specialise the hell out of every sport.
We saw some good plays and a relatively exciting finish but we almost froze to death on the aluminium bench seating that just sucked all the warmth out of your body through your arse-cheeks. Bring on the new stadium.

Football GAME (not footy match)

I kept referring to our upcoming American football game as a footy match and got told off for it. On Saturday afternoon we went to Stanford Stadium down the road to watch the Stanford Cardinals vs Notre Dame. Note that "Notre Dame" is pronounced in American speak as "noter daime". They really can't pronounce any French words i've learned (watch them try "Grand Prix").
Turns out this game was the final game ever at a stadium that dates back decades. Straight after the game they were to start pulling down the stadium to replace it with a smaller but better one.

SF City @ night

A little overexposed but it shows how bright it was.

GGB @ night

Deck

Last one. Promise.

Forward torpedo room.

Nice. It was incredible cramped inside. Definitely NOT made for people my height.

USS Pampantino

A submarine in SF harbour. We took a trip with Matt on friday into SF as an introductory tour for him and a chance to do all the little things I hadn't done yet. Put a tick in the box for:
*the submarine,
*clam chowder one last time,
*riding the cable cars by hanging on the outside,
*going into the huge Victoria's Secret store at Union Square (Sashi was shopping so we had an excuse).
All things above: very enjoyable ;)

Crazy times

Matt arrived wednesday (my replacement). The bastard stepped right into a thanksgiving four day weekend. So much for work. We expected him crash with jet lag but so far he has been killing us. The first night we stayed up till 3am. Every night he has been here has involved the consumption of at least a bottle of wine or tequila - and we just restocked this afternoon. We've been going out to dinner every night as well. At least we're going out with a bang.

Starting home

The nice men from the moving company came today and picked up my stuff. Actually it was one man from the moving company plus mexican helpers. They stuffed everything into inadequate cardboard boxes and sealed them in kilometres of packing tape. The worst part is I'm without my awesome doona for until I get home at christmas (assuming its arrived when I get back).
I don't hold much hope for most of my stuff making it home intact. But I intend to cripple them with inflated claims when it happens.
BTW - the weather is still mid-high twenties. Unbelievable for mid November.

Stripy men on skates

I have no idea what you call it when the Referee drops the puck in between the two players but thats what this is.

I should be a paparazzi

The match was really fun and exciting but the fights were even better. That's what 10x zoom is for.
Before the game we had dinner in the stadium. The "terriaki chicken" we tried consisted of.
1. Put three pieces of chicken on some rice
2. Squirt "sauce" on top from a sauce bottle. Yuk.
BTW - the Canadians kicked the Yanks arse's both in the fight and in the game.

Sharks vs Canucks

Wednesday night we hit the HP Pavilion to see the San Jose Sharks vs the Vancouver Canucks.
Contain yourself Brush.
The whole of central San Jose almost shut down with cops directing traffic to cope with the huge numbers of people driving to the game. And they do this like three times a week!
We actually left directly from work in San Jose so we got there about an hour early. Turned out to be perfect timing what with parking, and having to walk to the other side to pick up tickets. The stadium looked huge but wasn't much bigger than Melbourne's Tennis Centre inside.

Bakers Dozen

13 Work Days to go !!(minus Thanksgiving day holidays). Then home via London.

THE view from Glacier Point

There you go Z, you're in my blog.

Vernal Falls

Thats me standing under Vernal Falls. The hike up there killed me. God I'm unfit.

Animuls

Yosemite

Our accom under the cliffs. A major rockfall happened while we were there not far from the camp. The place was nice with all the fallen leaves and stuff.
In true American style you could have everything you wanted in the valley. Despite the fact it is a national park you could take pets, get a fresh cooked pizza, eat at a fancy restaurant that required a suit for entry, and ride around on buses rather than walk.

Lots of big stuff

El Capitan. Yosemite Valley.

Whinge

I took a week off friday-to-friday on the week of my birthday. My first week off in longer than I can remember!
My tequila-drinking buddy Zoya came over from London on thursday to visit me for the week including four days in Yosemite. Being able to spend pounds and in need of clothes, I endulged her in a day of shopping. Big Mistake. We took in Valley Fair (owned by Aussie co Westfield) in Santa Clara AND the Great Mall in Milpitas in a 6 hour marathon/ordeal. My legs were killing me in the end but I suppose it was good practice for Yosemite. She spent a ridiculously small amount of pounds for a huge amount of loot. More bags than we could carry in fact.
I bought a jacket. Ahhhhh shopping with women....

Drool

Jag Fever. I didn't get any more before they drove away in it. Bastards.

The chapel.

More attempts at being arty-farty.

Macros from the Garden

Too easy.

Vertigo?

Seen Vertigo anyone? This is the mission where a lot of the movie was filmed although the clocktower was pulled down afterwards.

San Juan Batista

That's Saint John the Baptist to you. About an hour from home, this town has one of the most famous original missions still intact. The town was pretty cute too. There was a classic car show on in town as well. I took *lots* of photos but will restrain myself here.
After seeing the mission and the car rally what better to do in an American town with Spanish influences than have lunch at a German restaurant. In the corner there was a table of old Germans who were very drunk and spent the whole time singing German songs and talking about Hitler. Some stereo-types never die.

Carmel

This is Carmel. A rich sea-side town just down the coast from Montery. Nice streets, lots of coffee shops and art galleries, a beach. A nice day trip.

Obsessed with having breakfast even though it was 11:30 in the morning, we waited 45 minutes in a huge outside queue to have brunch at a cafe that claimed it did the best breakfast in town. And geez it was good. They almost served a proper bowl latte too.

Thanks

Thanks everyone for all the birthday messages. I was pretty overwhelmed with how many people hadn't forgotten me yet ;)

Yeah..

I'm so lame at posting lately I'm reduced to mentioning things that haven't happened yet.
Things that will be blogged:
1. Stanford Cardinals US football game.
2. Vegas
3. San Jose Sharks ice hockey game.
4. Vegas
5. Possibly the Grand Canyon
6. Vegas

Things that won't be blogged.
1. My failed attempt to park in San Francisco and see the air race on the weekend. MAN, parking sucks in that city.
2. My trip to the dentist (I can hear the sighs of relief).

Rafting pics

MY pics are still be scanned by a colleague but here are some of the official Tunnel Chute ones.

Grand Final Party

I did some research and found an AFL Grand Final party organised by the Australian-American Chamber of Commerce. It made for a great Friday night, the game went from 9:30 - 12 am. The location was a restaurant-bar right on the water in the industrial area near San Fran city.

They were selling a very limited Aussie menu. A Coopers Red and meat pie set me back US$15. It was almost worth it. They offered Coopers and Tooheys something. I was pretty shocked to see loads of people drinking the Tooheys. Then I noticed a correlation with Tooheys drinkers and wearers of knit striped shirts so I guess that identified all the Sydneysiders.

It was great to be in room with 500 Aussies all swearing at the TV and each other. The game was forgettable until the last quarter which was fantastic. Barry Hall is a blight on the game but I was gunning for Sydney while Sashi was going for West Coast. Hah I won.

Stanford

I saw some students walking around and it was kinda shocking how young they were. When you see American college students in crappy dramas they are always played by 35 year old actors.
They must be rich little s*** too. I hear Stanford fees are some of the most expensive in the country.

Chapel

Stanford at Night

A couple of weeks ago I decided to practice my night photography and make use of my new ultra light tripod. So I went to Stanford University down the road one full-moon night.
Played with apeture and shutter speeds. Despite the LCD making a lot of the pics look good, a lot of them were out of focus when I viewed them on the pc. I got better results with a smaller apeture and longer shutter time (which is not surprising). Any Tips Matt?
Here are some better ones.

Peanut Butter Dilemma

These are my attempts to find peanut butter in the US. I get cravings for it from time to time and while the Americans love their peanut butter I am unable yet to find something suitable.

1. Got given a tub of 'skippy' PB. I quite liked it but after the taste hit your tongue, so did the bucket of sugar that was squeezed into each spoonful. Went in the bin before I'd finished it.
2. I bought a jar of a 'home-style' PB from safeways. Can't remember the name. I kid you not there was at LEAST 5 cm of oil sitting on top in a layer. Again, this PB was fairly nice (a bit rich) but every time I looked at it I could feel my arteries hardening. I threw it out when I realised I was consuming vast amounts of the oil even though I was trying to dig the paste out by itsself.
3. Passing through Trader Joe's I picked up a jar or macadamia nut butter. Seeing as macadamia nuts rock I couldn't see how one could go wrong with this. Utterly horrible. In the bin.
4. I subsequently noticed a jar of something called 'Better than Peanut Butter'. Geez I'm a fool. Claimed it was 85% less fat and 40% less calories. Sounded like my kind of thing. Imagine cheap chocolate mousse and then imagine it being peanut flavoured. Straight in the bin.

I think I could feed a small third-world country with all the peanut butter I have thrown away.

The Chocolate Festival

The deal was you bought tickets (15 for $20) and you got to trade each ticket for a sample from the stalls present. It was so crowded you couldn't pick the 100m queues from the crowd and you could hardly move. We had chocolate dipped strawberries, tira misu, chocolate liqueur (Sashi had to show her ID - hehe), gellato, chocolate truffles, and hot fudge sundaes.
I don't really like sweet things which is a huge problem when trying to eat anything in America. So I got really thirsty and a little sick but I suppose it was worth it for $10 and 1.5 hours of queing. Then I went into the shop and spent like $38US on chocolate that's not really that good.
Their 'normal' chocolate is pretty much like anything you can buy at home. Their expensively wrapped caramel-filled chocolate was almost exactly the same as a supermarket-bought bag of caramello koalas. Very unspectacular. I do feel sorry for them. Unfortunately products like Hersheys set the bar extremely low. Peter A says when he smells Hershey chocolate it smells like vomit and makes him want to do the same.

San Fran + Chocolate Festival

Yes I know this is a boat and not a chocolate festival. That is coming. Sashi and I went into San Fran mostly for me to buy presents of some sort to send home for various peoples birthdays. This old sailing ship that sits on the Hyde street pier used to travel between SF and Adelaide. Called the Balclutha, it was open for free (you normally have to pay). It got me some good photos of SF from the ship and besides everything is more enjoyable when it is free.
People kept recommending to me Ghiredelli chocalate so I thought I'd get some to send home. I'll save my opinion of it for the next post. We walked into the Ghiradelli Square to find that there was a chocolate festival in progress. Ooh yeah.

WHY, WHY, WHY!!

The Americans haven't even adopted the metric system yet and they have already corrupted it. I saw on the side of a truck the engine size quoted as "6.5 Liter". And yes they always spell it that way. Dear god why??
Everything they touch........

Mazatlan at night

This is the first time I used my new 650 gram ultra light $70US tripod I bought the week before. It is also the last of my Mex-selection I'll publish. The steps on the left leading up from the beach were to our favourite restaurant "El Capitano". This place was awesome - gigantic cocktails for about $3US, huge meals that were fantastic and two bands that played every night - a Mariachi band and an electric band that did hillarious Mexican-accented versions of 80s songs. They were fairly good though.
We didn't really have much cash with us when we left the US and we never found an ATM but a handful of credit card uses and $160US easily did two of us for four days including all meals activities and shopping! Flight and three night accom only cost $650US per person.

Mazatlan

Some of the city was very pretty. Some was pretty dirty. Loved walking down the boulevard on the shoreline.

Downtown

We went for a walk around the old town on Saturday. This old cathedral was pretty nice. Had all the catholic stereo-typical bells and whistles you could think of.

Mexico

Friday before Labor Day, Sashi and I made a four weekend out of it and went to Mazatlan, Mexico. We flew Alaska Airlines which seems a bit like taking Air Tahiti to Moscow.

The difference between here and the US was more startling than I expected. Mazatlan was VERY hot, humid, poor and VERY quiet. Must have been the off season probably coz of the heat. The number of people trying to sell you stuff on the beach outnumbered the tourists. This got a bit tiring after a while, I prefer exotic or third world locations for holidays but you rarely get such a tourist driven culture as in Mexico. I should have guessed that would happen in a place frequented mostly by Americans.

There really wasn't very much to do apart from sleep, eat, shop for tourist crap and go to the beach. The water was so warm it was almost hot but sometimes the hotel pool was better as it was cooler and you didn't have to put up with a million people hassling you to buy stuff.

The building in the background turned out to be a nightclub/restaurant complex. Sashi thought is was a church.

Rafting prologue

I dont have any of my own photos back yet. But I decided to pre-empt my description of Sunday's whitewater rafting trip on the American river with this yet-to-be-purchased pic of our boat doing the Tunnel Chute. This is a class four rapid (class six is 'risking serious consequences or death') - And your's truly is going in first at the front of the boat (lower right).

This is what is said about it.
Tunnel Chute rapid is like no other whitewater rapid in the world. It is actually a man made chute that was blasted by miners to divert the river to allow better access to the previously natural river channel. The river narrows to a width just wider than the raft is long, the wall becomes vertical on both sides of the river and water pours in from the left side, and then the river drops as you see in these photos. The river then flows through a tunnel below the rapid. What a rush!

Look Dear

Deer on the summit moving between the observatory buildings. Just to add to my snake, bear encounters.

Some views from Mt Hamilton

In the last one you can see the bottom of the bay. On a really clear day with a zoom lense you can see San Francisco apparently.

Observatory Buildings

Observatory buildings. The first ones were constructed in 1888.

Lick Observatory @ Mt Hamilton

Saturday arvo we drove up Mount Hamilton to see the Lick Observatory and get some views of the valley. This was one of the longest, continously, tight narrow and windy road I have ever been on. A real thrill ride that left me with a real headache and tired arms.

Summit was beautiful. The Observatory was cool and the views were great.

You can get round-the-clock web cam shots from the roof at http://mthamilton.ucolick.org/hamcam/

USS Hornet #4

Tomcat on the hanger deck and the view down the hanger deck from the cockpit.

USS Hornet #3

Superstructure and the catapult on the flight deck. I froze a little in my shorts and t-shirt as it was a bit cloudy and windy on this morning. The sun came out as I was leaving :(

USS Hornet #2

Skyhawk, Avenger and Corsair fighters on display in the hanger bay.

USS Hornet #1

On Sunday I drove across the San Mateo bridge to Oakland. This place is an ugly industrial city. I guess thats why San Francisco is so nice - they managed to kick all the industry over to poor Oakland where it is hidden from the world. But I didn't go to see the architecture, I went to see the USS Hornet, a retired aircraft carrier that is open as a museum on the docks of the Alameda, an island in the port. This was seriously one of the most awesome things I have ever done over here. The flight deck, superstructure, hanger deck and deck 2 were all open to the public. They ran tours down into the engine rooms and of the superstructure. I spent about 3.5 hours wandering around- oh and taking 104 photos.

And the Grand Champion is....

Mashy Mashy Mashy Oi Oi Oi!
EASY win. And here was my booty. The Grand Champion on the label wasn't referring to the wine, it was referring to ME.
Before I started the first stomp the MC asked me where I was from. Some annoying woman down the front kept calling out "Is he really from Australia?" "I wanna see a drivers license" in some attempt to be funny. Don't know exactly what sort of scam she thought I was pulling by pretending to be Aussie but later in I did show her my drivers license and she turned out to have relatives in Brisbane.
For the next two hours I had to endure every stranger I passed saying "Great Stomp", "Well done" and "Are you really from Australia". Got very annoying but at least I had my fifteen minutes.
I've got loads of wine. Its American and I've gone off red wine but it looks good. I may give it away.

Stomp 1.

There were three half wine barrels on the back of a flatbed truck with a handrail. We got one minute to get as much juice as possible into a jar held under the barrel. It wasn't as messy as I thought, it didn't splash much and you didn't end up with red feet, rather just sticky feet from the sugar in the grapes. It really wasn't rocket science, try hit the grapes that were still whole and try and push the slop towards the hole in the front of the barrel.

Who easily won their round (against two old farts?) Why Mashy of course? I had to wait another round before the three winners were called back up onto the truck.

There was me, another middle-aged guy and a woman who obviously knew the owners/staff. For some reason they obviously wanted her to win, it may have been her birthday or some pathetic excuse like that. When we climbed up onto the truck, they specifically directed her to barrel no 1 but had no preference for what barrel the other two of us got. I could see easily that they had put more grapes in her barrel in an obvious attempt to cheat. Now anyone who knows me knows that was probably the worst thing they could have done. Seeing this was like a red rag to a bull and I just went at it harder than ever.

Grape Harvest Festival

On Saturday we went to the Guglielmo winery in Morgan Hill for their Harvest Festival. We went with people from our apartment complex in a limo bus. The winery was small but very nice. There was a huge tent on the lawn and about 3-400 people present. They had games to win salamis (it was an italian winery) and of course wine drinking, tasting. On arrival you were able to elect to take part in grape-stomping competition. There was room for only 9 stompers so they drew our entries from a jar. Who got the last entry? Why me of course!
The catered dinner was fantastic. Afterwards we headed over to the stomping area.

Mashy the Terrorist #2

I put the car in reverse to pull out and as I looked in my rear vision mirror a non-descript car pulls up behind me blocking me in. I'm slightly annoyed until I realise that this is deliberate and the guy is getting out of his car and coming towards me.
'So' he says. 'You were taking pictures over there I notice..'
'Umm yeah' I say.
Turns out this guy is from millitary security. As he tells me, they have cameras all around and they saw me taking photos. It was pretty impressive to have intercepted me within 1 minutes of taking the pics.
So the guy asks to see my pics. I have no problem showing him I am only interested in the sunset behind them and he obviously believes me. To his credit he was fairly nice. After making a phone call he say 'ok, I'll be happy if you delete half of them' Due to my nervousness I accidentally delete 5 out of the 6 I had so this shot is the only one I have left. Exactly what protection deleting HALF the photos provides them I don't know but I was happy to be out of there.

If I had someone to drive, I could easily get some great shots of the other dishes from the freeways around and no-one would ever know. And the articles in the local paper telling all about them really means this place is hardly a secret. Somehow I think Osama would be interested in oh-about 1 MILLION more potential targets.

So in short, Americans can sleep safely at night knowing their disused soon-to-be demolished educational antennas are being watched well but guarded completely ineffectively. And now the rest of us can laugh at their ridiculous paranoia.