More. Turns out they were probably waiting for the fog to clear but on this particular day it never did. We would never go near the beach unless the weather was great. Hardcore.

Zero visibility swimming

Notice no-one in the water. I had to take my shoes off and try the water just because I was at a beach. It was FREEZING. And there was a vicious undertow as well. I sat back and had to try to comprehend going to the beach in the fog.

The beach was like 'pretty full'!! I swear the visibility was about 200m along the beach and less than 100m out to sea. And people were sitting on the beach in their bathers and sun umbrellas and stuff like it was sunny. The temperature was about as low as comfortable for me in shorts and tshirt. This was really one of those 'I can't believe this is happening' type moments. I had to go down and get a closer look.

Ya gotta see this

The beach was less than a mile from the main street but as soon as I started to get near, I found the fog hanging over the coast. Huge change from beautiful and sunny to cool and foggy in such a short distance! So I went down to the beach car park and found a spot. There were lots of cars but things just didn't twig for me. Seeing as I'd come this far I'd thought I'd just see the beach for myself and take some photos. As I got to the edge of the dune cliffs I was in for a big surprise.

Half Moon Bay

On Sunday I decided to head for Half Moon Bay to see the beach which had been recomended to me. I took my beach gear which turned out to be a bit laughable.
The 92 down to HMB was a total traffic jam all the way from the 280. Plenty of people were turning back on the road but I figured they were probably sensible locals. Foolhardiness is for tourists like me so I stuck with it. HMB town was quaint but a nice little beach town. The weather was fantastic like usual so after walking up and down the main street I headed towards the beach.

From fire to water

Busted fire hydrant on the Real, Friday arvo. The people in the open-top jeep in front of me had fun.

American TV #3

I find myself morbidly fascinated with watching the Fox News channel. It's terrifying that they get away with calling it news. The total hardcore right-wing bias of it programs is barely masked. Its kinda like watching someone turn their eyelid inside out - absolutely horrible but you can't look away.

?

On the way home there was car on fire beside the highway. Because my camera wouldn't focus I kept missing it when the shutter activated.

Home

We had lunch at some restaurant at the end of the pier. There was also a 'wine and art' festival on at the pier which was nice. Before we caught the train home we went on the bumper cars. I got sunburnt (if I didn't mention this already).

Another one.

The beach and the boardwalk. There was LOADs of people playing vollyball and stuff on the beach.

All hail the big pole of vomit

This thing was about 40 metres high. I am not ashamed to say I chickened out from riding it.

Log Ride

The log ride was really stereotypical. Its just a rollercoaster on water with a big drop at the end that gets you wet. At least if you are sitting in the front like me.

Da Boardwalk

This place was pretty cool - California's only sea-side amusement park. http://www.beachboardwalk.com/
I got a free daily pass for any ride from another resident who purchased a season ticket. So I got free all day rides. Ooo Yeah. The first one we went on was the 80 year old giant dipper ride. I recommend watching it at http://www.beachboardwalk.com/03_giant_dipper_ride.html. It started with a huge vertical plunge through a pitch black tunnel and proceeded to slap G's on you like crazy. The first plunge isn't shown on the video however.
Thank god it only went for about 5 minutes. Later on I realised that it was the best thing there. I almost wish I had gone again.
The ride cost about $3.60 (if you were paying). The photos you could purchase of yourself at the end taken mid-scream raped my wallet for 12 bucks.

Door to door service

Then the train came directly across the road in Santa Cruz right up next to the boardwalk. Awesome. It was unusually foggy even though it was 11 am but it wasn't cold. Within the hour the fog had lifted and it was just as nice a day as any other. After walking the BW the whole day I ended up with some facial sunburn :(

Rush hour

As the train came out of the forests it went through some quaint town by actually travelling directly down a residential street like a tram!! It was really wierd but cool.

Training through the forests

What exactly is the verb for travelling by train?

About to leave RC.

All aboard! You bastards.

The train at roaring camp. Plus geriatric driver. He wasn't posing for the photo - he was actually really pissed at us off coz our group arrived late and were holding up the train.

Santa Cruz Trip part one.

Our apartment building organised another trip on sunday, this time to Santa Cruz via the train. We caught another Bus/Limo down to the "Roaring Camp Railroads".
http://www.roaringcamp.com/
This place was very nice, a bit of an historical park with working old railroad that was a logging railine. A bit like Puffing Billy except this one was diesel. The train was open air carriages and travelled through the local redwood forests right into Santa Cruz.

Awww shucks

Wow. Another blogger posted a comment about my blog.

http://fuctincalifornia.blogspot.com/

Even though I was never writing for people I don't know I've had a few people wander past the site. Re: my blog mission statement, actually caring about this makes me sound like a complete hypocrite but at least I'm a proud hypocrite.

http://houseofmash.blogspot.com/ i about pissed myself reading this aussie's take on american bs.

American Banking #2

You can't transfer money via internet banking to another bank account. You can't transfer money via internet banking to another bank account. You can't transfer money via internet banking to another bank account.
I thought you might want it repeated. I had to ask for this to be repeated to me when I recently found out just to make sure I heard correctly. The only way to give someone else money is to give them cash or a 'cheque'/'check'.
Sometimes I am surprised they don't walk around in animal skins dragging their women by the hair.

In-N-Out Burger

Because I am sacrificing my life and sanity for my company by working hellishly long and hard, I am often required by necessity to get "take-out" on my way home.
In what must be a surprise for some people, MacDonalds is extremely rare here in California. I know of only two, one being in San Francisco city. The most popular 'burger joint' seems to be In-n-Out Burger which I believe is exclusive to California.
This place aint half bad. They have a super brief menu with just three burgers, drinks and fries available. The buns are 100% meat that has never been frozen, the vegetables are fresh, the buns are baked with sponge dough. And the 'fries' are made by dicing real potatoes in store - you can see them doing it in the window. You can almost convince yourself it is healthy.
There is also a not-so-secret secret menu where you can ask for special items. Amusingly you can ask for the protein burger in which the meat comes wrapped in a piece of lettuce instead of a bun.

Blurred, but one of the better bursts. 

Fourth of July

Monday night Hammer, Chris and I decided to head into San Jose to witness whatever fireworks displays were on for the fourth of July. We had dinner at the Gordon Beirsch Brewery, a chain of brewreys that make their own beer on site. This place is one of the most reliable for food and beer.

About 9:30 we followed everyone else on the streets into the central park. This was the same place as I had been to opposite the IMAX theatre last time I was in SJ. The park was packed and everyone was faced towards the low-rise side of the city. To my surprise the fireworks were way over behind the Hilton hotel. Why all these people weren't over there I have no idea.

The fireworks were spectacularly disappointing. They fired only about one or two salvos at a time without much variation apart from the colours. I couldn't find anywhere to set up a tripod so I had to take my chances with ordinary point and shoot. To be honest I'd seen better fireworks at the Monash municipal candles-by-candelight two years ago. They dribbled on for about 15 minutes and then everyone just turned around and went home. Traffic was chaos getting out of SJ.

Who hoo

Whoo hoo, who hoo hoo. Whoo hoo, whoo hoo hoo. Whoo hoo, whoo hoo hoo. Whoo hoo, whoo hoo hoo. Whoo hoo Whoo hoo.......

iFollow

My iPOD arrived today. I took almost three weeks due to the fucked up US banking system and the moron who sold it to me. Very appropriately it is a perfect sheep-white colour. I just wanted to put files on it but in order to make it work I had to put one song on it. So I am listening to Whoo-Hoo by the 5,6,7,8s on continuous repeat. PERFECT soundtrack for putting the TV on mute and watching MXC or Worlds Wildest Police Videos or any American reality TV program in fact.
I have never been so happy to be one of the herd :).

The best TV show ever

MXC or Most Extreme Elimination
Read about it here http://slate.msn.com/id/2103427/
A japanese gameshow hillariously over-voiced "bargearse" style where the contestants participate in "Its a Knockout" type games designed almost purely to end in pain, humiliation or both.
In one game called "Board to Death" they tie a guy to a plank, push him face first into mud, pull him up via a rope and repeat. When you "fail" a task you get blasted with talcum powder, dunked under water or just plain beaten with a cane. Gold.

Things that suck about America #5

Money.
1. 1c coins. They are so hard to get rid of. In fact coins in general are hard to get rid of. It takes a long time to make up 49 cents when there is a line at the store. Yes, 25+10+10+1+1+1+1. And the 5c coin is bigger than the 10c coin.
Most people only seem to use notes when paying with cash. I don't know what the secret is. There is even a machine in Walmart for changing coins BACK INTO notes (for a fee of course).
To top it off, most vending machines take $1 notes ONLY so you still can't get rid of them.
2. $1 notes. If you're like me, you walk into a restaurant knowing you have a pile of notes in your wallet. When it comes time to pay you find out you have 15 $1 notes and you dont have enough cash. How embarrasement. You have to keep the ones separate in your wallet in order to have any idea how much money you have.
3. Sales tax at the register. Need I say more.
4. While we are at it - tipping taxi drivers and hairdressers??????? Why the F*** don't they just add 15% onto their prices???

The Klamath bridge. The bear bridge. We drove out via more trees and scenery. It took us 6 hours just to get to Eureka but thanks to some Fangio like drving we got home at 11pm. 

The other boat. 

We ran into a black bear halfway into the tour and were able to drift in about 30m away from it. Another time 10x zoom came in handy. I have a shitload of photos but the bear didn't move a whole lot before it ran off so they are mostly the same.
Apparently it was quite rare to see a bear and even rarer in the middle of the day when they normally rest.

Boating at 40 mph 

Klamath main street. The dog came on the Jet boat tour as well. The boat tour was a little more scenic than the one in Queenstown NZ but a little less extreme. They still did the spins and stuff. Saw lots of Osprey's a turtle, a wild horse and a bear. Bear is coming up. 

On Sunday while waiting for our Jet Boat tour we did a bit of driving and walking around. This was Secret Beach north of Eureka. Notice the fog? It hung permanently off the coast on the first hills. When the temperatures rise in Reno inland, it draws the fog up the river and this waters the redwoods.
Did I mention this was bear and mountain lion country? Signs everywhere telling you what to do if you encounter them on the path. And all the rubbish bins were bear-proof too.

Pacific Sunset 

Mouth of the Klamath river. The other side is mostly Indian Reservations. This lookout was just up the road from the B&B. We stayed here to watch the sunset. 

The Requa Inn, Requa. Right on the Klamath river. Fantastic old building - we were shocked when we entered to see cricket gear hanging in the entrance hall - turns out the owner had lived in the UK. 

Got some beautiful lense flare through the canopy on this one. 

Big Tree

This one is the biggest redwood in the US and one of the largest trees in the world. It was called "The Giant Tree". Imaginative. In case you can't read the sign: 363 feet high 53.2 feet circumference.
postscript: Ok turns out the old tree in Gippsland was bigger than that big tree we saw. But unlike the Americans, we cut the tree down and did something useful with it (I think it was converted to shingles and planks). The big Redwood was 363 feet tall standing

* The Thorpdale tree in South Gippsland. This was measured twice by a surveyor, once when it was standing by a theodolite (a surveying instrument) and again when it was cut down - in 1880. Its cut down height was 114m (374 feet). This tree was actually listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the tallest tree in the world as there was actual documents available to verify this. Today a plaque denotes it resting place and the site can still be visited - although with nothing present there isn't much point except to remember man's folly.

Eureka

Strange town, a mixture of cute coastal-style old buildings and disgusting 60's buildings. All the north-south streets were labelled in the usual American style from 1->x but all the east-west streets were labelled a-z. As Chris said, navigating around felt a bit like playing battleships. Found this "Irish" shop somewhere near H and 3rd. Iceland??

Again

Moi at the tree.

The drive-thru tree

The area was populated with numerous tourist traps with names like "Confusion Hill" and "The Trees of Mystery" we avoided them all except the drive-through tree. Cost bloody $5 (the same as crossing the Golden Gate Bridge). It was fun to watch some fools attempt to get small 4 wheel drives through and almost scraping their cars. We avoided the gift shop and kept on going.


Forgot to lock the WB again....

Klamath, Redwoods Tour

Hammer's cousin Chris came down from Detroit for the July 4th weekend and we planned a trip up to Cal north to see the Redwood forests. This involved a 360 mile drive up through Santa Rosa, Ukia, and Eureka on the 101.

Can I just say that I have never taken so many pictures of trees in my life. Here is one to ease you into it.

Country was very pretty up north. We had lunch in Eureka, a strange old coastal town and ended up in Klamath, the site of our B&B accomodation. Drive was about 7 hours including stops.

Road Trip - part four

View over Morgan Hill from a nearby dam (panorama). After this we went to the Coyotee Creek golf course and had dinner outside on the course. Course was very nice but didn't get any memorble photos. End of trip.