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My last night in the States was spent in Sonoma County north of San Francisco visiting some friends. Friends who make wine. Lots of wine. :) I had a great time up there. I had rented a car and driven up there, it only took a couple of hours to get there from San Francisco and it was completely different. Northern California is really beautiful and green.

In the morning i struck the rush "hour" and it took me a little over 3 hours to get back to San Francisco. There was no real time pressure anyway, except that i had to check out of my hotel. My flight didn't depart til evening. So i just sat there in the very slow moving traffic trying to enjoy my last few hours in the US.








On the way back into the city I got to drive across the golden gate bridge - a lifelong dream! Parking in San Francisco cost me $2.50 every 15 minutes, so i only parked for a short time while i was checking out of the hotel. Then i hit the roads, cruising the streets, flanked by cable cars and such. I went down to South San Francisco and sat on a beach with the airport flight path in front of me knowing that soon i would be on one of those planes.

I went to the airport far to early, thinking i could check my bags in and do some shopping, but the airline checkin desk wsan't open yet and i got really bored at the airport. When it was time to check in i quickly and quietly checked my bags and disappeared into the terminal shopping areas. Air New Zealand gate lounges quickly make you feel like you're already home. Not that it wasn't nice to be home, i just wanted to spend my last few hours in America. The plane was one of the brand new 777s which was exciting for about 10 minutes until the pilot announced a one hour delay due to someone spilling hydraulic fluid on the taxiway.

I know I did the right thing coming home, it just wasn't working out the way i had planned employment-wise and i wanted to go travel around too much. I'm really looking forward to all the possibilities here now too, i just need to find a job! Since turning my trip into more of a tour i had an amazing time and was able to see so many sights and do so much. Still, at the end i'm not sure if traveling really satisfied me or if it just left me hungry for more.

I have gotten better at not leaving my camera behind, but even after three months I still have to kick myself sometimes. Tonight was one of those times. I thought I would just stroll down the street and have dinner so i left my camera at the hotel. Of course after dinner i felt fat and thought i should go for a bit of a walk. Of course on my walk i decided to hop on a cable car. Of course the cable car went up and down the hills, the peaks of which presented fantastic vistas across the city. And of course the sun was setting behind the golden gate bridge as my cable car approached the top of Hyde Street. And of course, my camera was back at the hotel. Take my word for it: it was magnificant!

I ended up at Fisherman's Wharf again. My guidebook vomits some less than admiring words about Fisherman's Wharf but i really like the place. Particularly at night. Tonight I came across these artists on the sidewalk. A crowd had assembled around them as one of them painted using spraypaint, scrapers and fire! He would cover the painting in spraypaint and then scrape out his art on them, if he wanted a slightly different texture or color he would set the paint on fire on the canvas and then put it out just at the right time. The result was quite stunning. They were selling the paintings really cheap. I'm not an arty farty person and i'm fairly sure these will never be collectors items, but i know what i like. I ended up with three brilliant paintings of San Francisco.

I'm gonna go down and ride a different cable car line now!

Some observations from San Francisco

I'll start this post with some observations of the obscurities of San Francisco and conclude with some recently captured images.

The cable cars here are pretty cool. I think there are only 2 or 3 lines remaining out of dozens that once cut through the streets, but the tracks that do remain are protected by the city and are here for a long time to come. They run differently to Wellington's cable car, which has two cars attatched to each other by cable running through a motor at the top. In San Francisco the cables lie beneath the roadway and are constantly in motion. To move the cable car reaches down and grips the cable and releases it to brake and stop.

The cars are invariably busy with commuters and tourists alike, some standing on the outside ledge. As they roll past, the conductors ring a bell to alert oncoming traffic. I have seen some conductors get a pretty funky rythm going with that bell. Some play real beats with the bell, ding ding ding, ding ding ding ding ding... I'm told that in July each year they actually have a big tournament in Union Square where conductors compete with each other for the citywide title of best cable car bell ringer.

Observation 2: The fire engines in San Francisco are so long they have two drivers. One sits at the front where you would expect and the other sits at the back and steers the back wheels, ensuring that the trucks can navigate the tight city streets. I should know this because their whaling sirens and airhorns keep me up all night.

Observation 3: The homeless folks in San Francisco are much more in-your-face than elsewhere. There also seems to be many more of them. Word has it in the 1990s the city shutdown a mental hospital and released the inhabitants on to the streets. Nice. But the other thing about the homeless here is that they are much cooler than in other cities. If someone is just sitting there shaking their cup around and asking for money, i won't ever give money to them. I think of it as feeding the rodents. But if they're being entertaining i'm slightly more likely to. This morning i walked past as a guy sang a song he'd made up "Just a nickle and a smile'll last a little while". I thought that was quite cool, so i gave him a smile.

Observation 4: While i was riding the train out to Ocean Beach today, i witnessed a hippy bitchin' session. A group of guitar-toting long haired hippy types boarded the train and began a heated discussion on the politics of being a hippy in San Francisco. "Some of dem kids these days, you know they think you're not a hippy because you don't have your hair in dreadlocks. Those dreadlocked types are some of the phoniest hippies out there, man. " Humans are funny. We invent a word for a movement and a group of people, then decades after that movement has died and gone to heaven in an LSD hallucination people are still striving to meet the definition of that word. But those who try too hard to meet the definition are 'phonies'... I don't know i just found it funny and couldn't help but think the world would be a nicer place if everyone found the freedom to just be themselves.

Heres a mall i went to. it was eight stories high!


















Here's me, sampling the local brew (an important part of any travel) in my hotel room.












This is Ocean Beach in San Francisco. I began a 5 mile hike to the Golden Gate Bridge from here.












along which i captured this photo, finally the golden gate bridge without the fog! The hike was cool and i collected lots of fire ant lavae on my shoes that i will introduce to New Zealand on Thursday.

Chinatown, then Alcatraz

Last night the bomb squad taped off the area around my hotel and blew up a suspicious package across the street. It made a really loud bang, but i think it turned out to be nothing, and i was finally allowed out of the building to go get some dinner.

This morning i rode a ferry out to Alcatraz to have a look. It was really cool and it actually wasn't as pricey as i thought - only $11! The history of the place is kind of creepy, which i like!

Its actually really close to fishermans wharf, the ferry only took 10 minutes. I could have swam it if they locked me up there.

From the jail the prisoners were able to see the golden gate bridge and back into the city and financial district. Several of them tried to escape but it is unlikely that any were successful. A couple of them were never seen again, but the assumption is that they got washed away in the strong currents that surround the island. During the worst escape attempt 11 guards were held hostage and several killed, and it all happened in this one building i walked around. Thats why it was kind of creepy.

The Coit Tower, built in commemoration of San Francisco's firefighters.

Chinatown.

This afternoon i'm off to the Haight, where many consider the hippy movement to have been born.

***LATEST***

'da na na na na na, na na na na na, cruising down the 101, California here we come, right back where we started from, Cal-if-ornia, Cal-if-orniaaaaaaaaa'

I'm sure you guys can all imagine me singing that song beautifully. Today has been pretty cool!! This morning i rode a subway out to Berkeley, walked the streets there and then walked around the campus of UC Berkely. I could totally imagine how it was during the 60s. Its changed a bit, but hippy-types still walk the campus and beetniks sleep on the streets.









MmmmK so then I went to the Golden Gate Bridge. It took me a while to find, but it was well worth the journey! Somewhat unfortunately it was extremely foggy and for much of the time you could see neither the end of the bridge or the tops of the bridge towers. Well i figured if i couldn't see them from the shore, i should get up close and personal, so i walked across the bridge.






OooooOooo look, theres me.














Each of the towers that hold the bridge in suspension are the equivelent height of a 65 storey building.










Well the walk across the bridge was really long and i got really tired on the way back. This was never meant to be a return journey, but after a little chat with these guys, i decided to push on.










This is Union Square, just a few blocks from my hotel. The monument in the middle is in celebration of victory in the Philippine war. I haven't looked into it much, but will... i think they were fighting the portugese? I don't know.

Right now i'm back at my hotel sampling the local brew, currently i'm enjoying a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and I rate it 4 stars (out of 5 on the beggs scale)

More photos!

Goodafternoon homies. I have been out on the streets again, and have captured the following images.

A very goodmorning to you all. Just a quick update before i get back out there on the streets.

There was to be picture of the Golden Gate bridge gracing my blog this morning, but i haven't found it yet. This is the Bay Bridge which is closer to my hotel. The Bay Bridge is actually busier than the Golden Gate, with more than 100 million vehicles crossing it annually. The bridge has two levels, as do many freeways in this squashed city. Actually the Golden Gate was originally doomed to be painted this dull gray too, but the orange colored undercoat was liked so much it was kept.

These fellas wish to say hello. Actually just after i put my camera back in my bag (always happens) a seal snorted up from under the water, rolled over a couple of time before diving back under when he saw my camera coming out again. Pretty cool!

This is Alcatraz. I'm not sure if i'll take the tour or not, its pricey.... but might be worth it.

In 1969 native Americans occupied the island after the closure of the jail, citing a treaty with the federal government that any unused federal land would automatically fall back into their ownership. In 1971 they were evicted, with the government claiming that the operational lighthouse (visible in this photo) meant the island was not unused.

Here's me looking like a goober aboard a cable car! It is raining quite profusely here this morning, i had to come back to the hotel and change because i was soaked. It feels really nice on my skin after Denver's tinder-dry weather, but it would be nice to have better visibility. Lucky i have all week!