July 12th: Walking around San Francisco a bit

 [ all pictures from this day: https://picasaweb.google.com/110144623598348247797/20110712?authkey=Gv1sRgCM_gn9OZ7P6yLw ]

I had a bit of a sleep in. However, again because of the time zone change, I got an extra few hours of sleep for free! So I think I actually got out of bed at a fairly respectable hour.

I stumbled upstairs to the kitchen area and asked one of the guys there if he knew where there is a supermarket. Then I headed over there. I was very hungry.

I got to the supermarket (SafeWay) and I think I bought cashew nuts, flat bread, hommus, water, strawberries, and maybe something else...

This building is about two blocks away from my hostel I think. My first impressions are that this is a really cool city. I like the feel of it.

I ate my foods at the end of this jetty. It was very nice!

Looking across the bay.

Then I decided to wander up the big street that sort of curves up along the side of the peninsula. I think I was heading for the place where the tours to Alcatraz island depart. I got there and unfortunately they were booked up for the next two weeks! So I was a bit disappointed, but there's not much I can do about that. I'll just have to come back someday!

Checked out some boats...

Had a look at pier 49. It's a bit touristy.

I had a look inside some stores. It wasn't really my kind of thing. I think I took this photo because I thought it was ridiculous how many different types of things they can stick some mildly funny phrase onto in order to fill up a store.

First glimpse of the golden gate bridge.

Alcatraz island.

The seals! ... They've all gone away for the summer to somewhere a bit cooler. There are just a few seals that decided to stay. They are the ones who are "out of the game". They just do their own thing now.

I decided to walk up to the top of this "tower hill" thing. This is a thing where there is a tower on top of a hill.

I found this city to be a bit strange because there have been about 5 computer games that I've played that have been set in this city: San Francisco Rush 1 and 2, GTA San Andreas, Project Gotham Racing, and maybe some others... so everywhere I decide to go is probably partially known to me through one of these video games. In GTA I've committed some atrocities in this city...

The streets are often fairly steep!

I found a path up here so I checked it out..

Everyone had been going on about this "planking" thing, so I decided to give it another go, in addition to the one I did at my Aunty and Uncle's house on the 11th.

This was a very strange sight to me after all this time away from Australia. I didn't really want to go back to Australia to see more of these.

This is the tower at the top of tower hill. I think it was going to cost about $10 to go up to the top of that so I decided not to. It probably would have taken a long time with lots of people in narrow corridors, too.

I like the vibe of the city. It's very similar to Sydney.

I had just been trying to find a place to hire a bike because my Auntie was telling me that it's a very good thing to do in San Francisco. Then I found a place that does it! Hooray. I took a pamphlet so that I could come back another day, because I wanted to have enough time to spend a long time riding.

I think this is Lombardo Street... the windy one...

I bought a sandwich earlier. Now was time to eat it. I'd been searching for a place to sit for a long time. The sandwich had tomato, avocado, cheese, and a bunch of other stuff in it. It was made by the guy right in front of me. But not like at Subway. I like how they do this in the US.

...I enjoyed eating it...

fog. I decided to just wander around for a while at this point.

This is an octagonal house. I went in and there were some old ladies sitting in there who were fairly excited to tell me about the place. However it was a bit weird because they sort of wanted to guide me around, whereas sometimes I just stand and stare at one thing for a long time and I think that makes some people awkward. But they were also nice people.

Here's an ad for a house. It's been reduced to $649,000. I think that was a typical price.

I wandered around and had fun looking at these houses. I expected to see houses like this in San Francisco because it's famous for this style. But for some reason I wasn't really prepared to find that every single house was like this. It was pretty cool.

This plant has been through a lot.

I decided to wander around and see if I could find that line of houses that is in the opening sequence to Full House. I don't know why I decided I should do that. But I didn't find it.

It's made of concrete...

I went home and I think I probably cooked some food for myself. I had a good day. It's a great city.

I chatted with the girl from the hostel and told her how I found a place to hire a bike. I was excited because the price seemed fairly reasonable. She asked how much it was, and I told her (maybe $32 for the day. Something like that). She was horrified and said that was way too expensive. I was a bit confused because I thought that was reasonable, and I think I saw others that were more expensive. I asked her to tell me where the cheaper one was and she did. (In a couple of days I think I paid $17 or $18 for the day for a bike)

I met a girl in my room who was pretty cool. She is from Puerto Rico but is studying in Melbourne to be a vet. She says that she has been to Adelaide while she was on the way to Kangaroo Island. I had to ask her what that place is like because I've never been there. She says it's her favourite place that she has been to so far in Australia because there were lots of animals there and she is into that kind of thing.

I walked quite far on this day. All the hills are a bit exhausting.

July 11th: going to San Francisco!

The next day I had to sort my stuff out because I was going to catch a plane to San Francisco. I had a bit of a headache at the end because I somehow picked up an extra kilogram in my luggage somewhere and I was struggling to get rid of it. I didn't really want to throw out the shampoo and conditioner I had, because I've found it very puzzling to find places in cities which sell those things.

It was a bit of a rush in the end. I think the plane was going to leave at 11am or something like that. I felt bad because I thought it was Jill's birthday this day and that I'd made her have to take someone to the airport on her birthday! But actually I think it wasn't... I was dealing with a few weeks worth of less sleep than I would have liked, and I know someone has a birthday on this day so I guessed it was Jill's...

We got to the airport alright. I said goodbye. It was cool staying with them.

I took my stuff to the check-in desk. Since my luggage was overweight, I had a feeling that the lady would tell me that my luggage was overweight. The lady told me that my luggage was overweight. I unzipped the front and threw my shampoo and conditioner into the bin. It was weighed again and I noticed it was a few hundred grams (or fractions of strange American units of weight) overweight. But she was nice and let it go through. However she said that I had to pay something like $15! She said it wasn't for the luggage or anything. It was some kind of amount that just has to be paid. I was a bit confused, but you can't really do anything about it at that point in time.

I made it in, and I got on my plane at some point.

The plane has two seats, then the aisle, then one seat. The smallest passenger plane I've been on so far! I'm getting a nice variety of planes.

That's Memphis down there I think. I could see the pyramids!

We had complimentary refreshments on this plane. The lady serving was really nice. She saw that I finished my glass of orange juice very quickly, so she offered me another one! By that point I'd noticed from the other passengers that while my orange juice was filled straight into the cup, meaning that I got exactly one cup worth, if you ask for coke you are given the whole can which fills something like 2.5 cups. So I asked for coke when she offered me a second one. I was very thirsty so I greatly appreciated this. The passenger who had the coke the first time looked at me a bit jealously, since he was still going with his coke and therefore wasn't offered a second refreshment. I got a good deal here.

At Dallas airport. Texas.

A monorail connects the different terminals together. This seems to be fairly common at airports in the US. I think you can also walk the distance if you want. But sometimes the distances can be quite long.

I got to the terminal and then I think I had a scheduled 3 hour wait until I'd get onto the second plane to take me to San Francisco. I got a sandwich from Subway. I have discovered that even if the food at airports is expensive, you can't go the whole day without eating something decent. I think Subway is an okay choice at airports.

I hung around for a while. I was really missing my mp3 player. I left it at the hostel in Washington DC. At times like these, where I have to wait in a fairly boring place, some music would be really good. I considered buying an mp3 player from somewhere. They have vending machines here which sell electronic items like that. You can pay with your bank card. I decided not to since I prefer to investigate the specifications for a few weeks before buying electronic stuff.

It turned out that the plane was delayed. Then it kept getting further delayed. I think it was 3 hours delayed in the end. This was kind of worrying for me, since originally I was going to arrive into San Francisco at something like 7 or 8pm, so there wasn't much room for further delay before it would start to become a serious point of night time when I would arrive. However, this type of thing seems to happen fairly often, so I was getting better at not being too bothered.

Eventually we got up into the air.

I can't remember much of this flight. At one point I looked out to my left and noticed a big stretch of lights from suburbs. It was a fairly major city. I was trying to figure out if maybe it was Los Angeles. However I don't think it would make sense for us to fly over that city, and I thought we would probably be fairly far to the north east of there. But I'm also not sure how far the line of sight would go, given our height. Maybe it was Los Angeles.

We came down toward San Francisco. It was quite dark at that point. It was fairly cloudy, too.

We did a whole lot of maneuvers which let me see different highways of carlights and bridges. I was trying to orient my position. Then we started to descend. Descending went on for a fair while. I was in the zone where I hold onto my seat and hope we don't end up in a fiery crash site. Then the engines increased power significantly. The really loud increase in volume of the engine was a bit disconcerting because surely we were moments away from landing. I was trying to justify it. I thought maybe we had undershot the runway quite badly and needed more power to avoid hitting into something. Then I looked around the inside of the plane and realised that we were pointing upwards. We were no longer descending. I exchanged some confused looks with the people near me. The pilot came through the speakers and told us that he had taken it upon himself to abort the landing. He had received too many confused messages from the flight control at the airport and he didn't feel safe with the situation! He said that this time of day was a particularly busy time for San Francisco airport, so things were really crazy in the air at that time.

We were up again at a hovering altitude. We maneuvered around a bit more and then went in for the second landing attempt. This time we made it down. But then we were told that there was currently no gate for the plane to pull into! We had to wait for some other plane to exit out of its gate before we could have somewhere. It took about 10 minutes and then we got in.

I made my way through the airport and found my suitcase. Jill had told me there is a train from the airport into the city. I had some maps about which stop I should get off at to get to the hostel.

I was slightly outside to get the train. It was misty and a bit chilly! This was a big change compared to the past few weeks. The past few weeks had been all hot and humid!

I took the train into the city. It went underground at some point. I got off and stumbled a few blocks over to the hostel. It is pretty much right in the centre of China town. I was hoping they would still be open. I think it was about 11:30pm or maybe even later than midnight. Thankfully they had stayed awake waiting for me...

I dragged my 20kg suitcase and 12kg backpack up 4 flights of stairs, got checked in, then found a bed and slept.

July 9th: kayaking, July 10th: party

We went kayaking again on this day.

This time we went to a place where the river snakes around and then gets back to a point only a short distance from where you started. This means you can park the car somewhere and not need to travel too far to pick it up again after paddling downstream for quite a while.

This was a really cool day in the kayaks again. We drank some beer as we were floating along with the current, and I think that is a really cool way to spend some time.

At one point we made a little stop on the side of the river. I noticed a wriggly stick in the water and then we realised that it was a 'copper head' snake! Apparently they are poisonous. It was only a few metres upstream from us. I moved out to the side for a bit and kept a wary eye on it.

It was a really cool time floating down the river. I'd like to spend more days like that!

While driving to our cars, a few of us road in the back of the "truck". Apparently that's legal here! It was an interesting novelty.

I survived.

July 10th:

Jill and Age hosted a party this day for Jill's birthday which was going to be in a couple days time. I was also leaving the following day. I think that in the morning I spent a little while trying to figure out some technicalities for the next day so that I would find the hostel alright and to see if my bags would be under weight. Then we got some things ready for the party.

I played a game with some people called "corn holing". Basically, I there is a wooden board with a hole in it. You have a few bean bags and you take turns trying to thrown them into the hole. You win points in a few different ways. I turned out to be pretty amazing at this game and I won most rounds I was in, I think, except for a few games where I played against a guy from South America somewhere who had an even more extreme talent for throwing bean bags into a hole than my own. It was a fun game.

I talked to one guy about communism. I talked to some people. They were all nice people. Lots of southern accents around here. I think that once I thought this accent was annoying but now I think it's kind of interesting and "nice" in some kind of way. Later some people played guitar for a while, playing some songs they had written. Later on I did some planking with another guy.

Some people demonstrating the action of cornholing

planking.