Technology in the Colonies...

Most impressed - sitting here on a bus, cruising down the line to my folks place & I have my laptop hooked up to the Internet, via a connection established on my mobile phone. It's pretty slow, but, all things considered, its pretty amazing. Here's a picture of the view...
Chat soon...

Picture cancelled - firewall problem or something and this ain't the place to sort it out...

*** so, 5 days later and I've finally got this blog posted... few troubles with the natives i.e. firewalls & the local Vodafone system (forced to use Internet Explorer for some reason).

from Conan to Dawkins

What a jolly hoot travelling can be...!

I've made some real rookie travelling mistakes in the last few days (lost MUNI passes being just one of them), but, then again, I'm cool with the fact that I'm somewhat rusty in the 'mobile warrior stakes.' Nonetheless, I've had a whale of a time and, as it stands, I wish I never had to leave San Francisco.

On a tangental note, I've noticed a 'trying' trend in my recent escapades around planet Earth, whereupon I arrive in a place 'out of season', enjoy a day or two of good weather, haphazardly wombling around the local tourist sites... and then the weather turns!

It happened to me earlier this year in Hamburg and, now, it's done it again in San Fran. I was out at Alcatraz yesterday (I hope to write some notes from that wee adventure shortly) and, then, when I got back to town, the weather turned and holy crap, did it chuck it down.

Anyway, today, being a Saturday, I was up early this morning, heading down to local ice skating rinks to try and buy some ice hockey skates for my nephew. I caught the bus down the road and then as I came onto the main drag, I was passing the 'Four Seasons Hotel' at 765 Market St.

Now the streets were pretty empty, but as I passed the hotel I looked left and noticed a tall chap, with red hair & angular features, who was standing on the curb outside the front of the hotel, talking on his mobile. I immediately clocked who it was, looking somewhat rougher in real life and, I suspect, hungover, but there he was, larger than life, I knew that for that moment in time I was sharing the same bit of the Universe as Conan O'Brien.

Being a sad git and with very little self-pride, I immediately came to a halt, rummaged in my bag, got out my cellphone and made a very poor impression of someone not taking a photo... while taking a photo....

In the heat of the moment, I didn't get much of a chance to take the picture and, as you can see it is a pretty poor picture (you'd be fair in saying that could be any chatshow host, or tall red-haired male for that matter) - but, belive me, it was Conan O'Brien.

...

Many, many shopping hours later (like, 6 at night) and I still have not got the ice skates for my nephew. It turns out that downtown San Fran is not the place buy hockey skates. Eventually, I get a lead on a place that sold ice skating stuff, but it was located in Oakland which, especially with the inclement weather in mind, was located somewhat of a haul from downtown.

Ages later and I'd made it the 26 miles to this shop and bought the skates, but being in the middle of nowhere the taxi I'd called could not find the place to pick me up and had given up on the journey. Kindly, the chap who was in charge of the shop gave me a lift back up the road to the train station in his rather cool Chevrolet car.

Yeah-har, with a tonne of shopping missions under my belt (I have also, virtually, bought a complete new wardrobe in the last few days) I finally made it back to the Hotel at about 9.30 tonight. Happily looking through the goodies that I had bought today, I start flicking through the many channels of crap on the TV.

To my absolute joy there was Richard Dawkins discussing his new book, "The God Delusion" to a University Crowd in Virginia (hah- the Bible Belt). What a laugh, the immediate memorable quote that springs to mind was during 'question time' when someone asked whether people joining absurd religions were helping or hindering the Atheist cause - to which, after a degree of analysis and indepth discussion about the use of Atheists banding together to show their depth of numbers, Prof Dawkins quipped that "trying to get a rally of Atheists together, is like trying to herd cats...".

So, what a great day, admidst the trials & tribulations of dealing with Xmas shoppers, rain, public transport and my own cock-ups, I met some really nice people and, notably, a few folk who really helped me out when they didn't need to.

Now, with a program on Ali on TV, quoting some of his best raps, I need to go to sleep - for tomorrow is, what I hope, will be the highlight of my few days here (or the wettest as the case may be) - as I head out to Monster Park (terrible name - it used to be Soldier Field) for an American Football Game to see the 49'ers playing the Green Bay Packers.

*** please excuse typo & spelling errors - this has just come out as a stream of consciousness, as I wanted to fire this online immedaitely, since I know there are a few folk out there following this, so I'm trying my best to be a good little blogee!

the 27 dollar photo

Not surprisingly I didn't have much trouble getting to sleep last night - well that was until 1.15 in the morning, when I found myself quite awake. With bugger all else to do, I did some work and finally got back to sleep at 4 am.

With a grand scheme in mind I'd set my alarm for 6.15 am, whereupon I planned to get this trip off to a flying start with an early morning run. I knew the sun was due to rise at 7.04 am and my plan was to get out to the Golden Gate bridge to go for a run across it, and back, as the sun rose over the city.

Amazingly, I did actually get up as planned and staggered out of my hotel ready to catch the first of 2 buses. It all seemed pretty easy in the planning stages - if I was lucky I'd catch one bus that would take me all the way there or, alternatively, catch a bus down Van Ness Ave and catch another one along Lombard Street and out to Golden Gate park.

Being dark and me somewhat groggy, having caught the first bus I missed the junction that I needed to get off to catch the connecting bus. Happily just 'rolling with the punches', I walked back up the hill laughing at my oversight and turned right onto Lombard St where I figured I'd just get to the first bus stop and head out ot the bridge from there. On the way down Van Ness the bus had stopped every 2 blocks (getting into the American vernacular), so I figured it would do the same down Lombard - oh hardy, har-har!

I ended up walking 15 blocks (1 1/2 miles) before I, eventually, came to a firkin' bus stop. I found out why from some lady at the bus stop, but I won't bore you with 'why' here.

So, onto the bus and some 1/2 hour later than planned, I finally made it out to the park. I had a quick stretch and took this photo looking eastwards back at the city...

Now, of course, I was only in my running gear and it was somewhat chilly out there on the exposed headland. So after fluffing around for a minute getting my kit sorted out I set out, heading across the bridge. Actually it is a lovely run and the view looking back over the city at that time of the morning is stunning.

As mentioned, it is somewhat windy out there, but considering that there is a busy highway right beside you it all works out rather well. Running on the city side footpath (there is one on either side), the wind blows directly across you and diverts the fumes from the traffic over the other side of the bridge - so you don't end up getting suffocated by carbon monoxide.

Meanwhile, there are tonnes of cyclists coming into town on the same footpath and they go bombing past you on their hi-speed racing bikes. I stopped a number of times to get some photos of various scenes with my camera-phone and an additionaly video of my bipedal madness.

After a 30-minute plod I had made it back to my starting point and was ready to catch the bus back into town, feeling quite pleased that I had done one of the things that had been on my list to do so early in the game.

It was at this point that I started ferreting through my pockets to find my MUNI pass. A MUNI pass can be bought in 1, 3 or 7 day blocks and covers all of your main transportation in the city i.e. buses, trains and cable cars.

I had bought my 7-day pass the day before at the airport, for $27 USD, and now, some 17 hours later I began to realise that I had just lost the bloody thing somewhere on Golden Gate Bridge whilst getting out my phone or some other idiotic manoeuver. Brillant, just brillant - it is 8am, I'm standing there in sweaty running clothes with no wallet, 5 miles from where I'm staying and I've lost my bus pass.

Luckily, I had taken a $20 bill with me in case of emergencies (and a note with my name, address, blood type and a note to say "I DO have medical insurance" - hoping they'd begin to patch me up if I'd been splatted by some over-sized American tank etc). But, when the first bus did finally turn up, I realised, as I'd suspected, they could not take bills that large. Luckily the bus driver, after hearing my odd story, let me on anyway and, so, off we set.

Relived to have finally got on a bus, being so keen to get back in town and having now explained my saga to the bus driver (who looked a wee bit sceptical that I'd even been running and whether I even had a MUNI pass in the first place), I just wanted to get back to town, shower up and get to the Hotel breakfast before it closed.

As I had known, there are 2 buses that stop at that tourist spot and, as became abundantly clear, I was on the wrong one. I didn't think it would be that bad because, surely, it was just heading back into the heart of town. And yes it was heading back into town but only after first going to Vancouver, Denver & Tijuana! So, off we set to do a complete loop around the whole firkin' Peninsula.

Realising what was going on, and now half way into his route, I decided to get off the bus and onto the road that ran directly back into town and straighy past my hotel. I still had no bus pass and the untouched $20 bill, but figured it was, all things considered, a better way to get back into town.

I was on 30th street and figured I had to get back to 1st and that would be that. Well, yes, I did have to get back to 1st, but then I discovered there were at least another 15+ 'named' blocks after that. By the time I got to 20th street & I eventually found an open shop (not much open in San Fran suburbs at that time of the day), changed some money and was finally able to hobble onto a bus back into town (I must have walked / run 10 miles at least by now).

The bus was a bendy-bus and standing there in my sweaty running clothes, I soon became very aware that we were in rush-hour traffic, with rush-hour passengers. Oh my God, I couldn't believe it, as we got closer to town more & more people kept on getting on the bus until, finally, it was just absolutely sardines.

Finally, oh so finally, we made it to my hotel stop. So a mere 3 hours after I set off, I had made it back to the hotel where I could now have a shower, get some fluids and draw a close on this mad-capped scheme... (after brekky I decided to go back to bed, have a snooze and try starting the day again)

So, ladies & gentlemen - I present to you the 27 dollar photo. Please click on it, say "Oh-arr, isn't it pretty" and send all monetary donations to 'captain fargon'.

The Eagle has...

...packed, shifted, cleaned, gotten stung by excess baggage, taken off, landed, hobbled around London, taken off again, landed in San Fran and 'BART'ed into the city - but now sits happily perched in a hotel room, with a disturbingly cheap JD's & coke in his hand / paw / claw, accompanied by 74 channels of crap to watch on the TV...!

Yes, indeedy, it has been somewhat of an epic, as these missions are - bruised arms & black eyes atest to that (from shifting & tiredness respectively, vice bare-knuckle boxing). But, now, with my body feeling it is 4am in the morning, and the local clock showing 8pm, I thought I would drop a quick line to say I'm on the road and here is the photo of the day.

Taken with my camera phone, it has come out surprisingly well. Couldn't tell you exactly where it is, but am reasonably sure it is somewhere in Idaho (click on it for the full version).

Chat soon with some travelling tales...

*** Oh, after hitting the 'post' button, I realised it is my first anniversary of blogging (or not blogging as the case may be). Happy blog birthday to me!