I now live in Vancouver

Tonight is the first night in my new apartment. It feels kinda weird. Really doesn't feel like my place at all. Apartments are pretty foreign to me having grown up in flats and houses. I have also stayed in a few during my travels and this actually feels like I am crashing at someone elses for a while. I keep expecting someone to come home! I'm sure that will change when I start work.

It has very basic furnishings, but everything I need at the moment. The only thing I am really missing is a music device of some sort. I don't know if I will be able to wait for my first pay check to purchase some sounds. I also really wish I had a guitar as I could be filling my spare time with getting back into that but I kinda want a nice one of those too so it might have to wait. We'll see. I'm really happy I went for a furnished place though. It would be bloody horrible moving into a place with nothing.

Tomorrow I am going to go exploring and I have just booked a ticket to go and see the Hobbit at a 3D imax theatre. It is a ridiculous mission to get there so I hope its worth it. I am really missing having a car. (Holy crap, listen to all this stuff I'm gonna be spending heaps of money on. Setting up a life is expensive!) It is also gonna suck going to the movies by myself but I figure I am qualified for that by now. Its really weird not knowing anyone at all in this city I have just moved to. Out of the 2 million people here there has got to be a fair few cool people that would want to go to the Hobbit with me tomorrow but no way to contact them!

Well I'm off nise now. First sleep in Vancouver. Very strange.

Merry White Christmas!

First Christmas in the northern hemisphere and its a white one, couldn't do much better than that! This is the view into Pams back yard.

We're not really up to much today as the kids are gone. Will probably go somewhere for dinner and fill our bellies again.

Merry Christmas!

White lead up to Christmas

Right, so it has been a while since I've written anything on here but very little has happened. Pam and her family have been fantastic to me and I don't know what I would have done without them. I have been staying here for about 4 weeks now or something!

Its a really nice spot out in the countryside so I have been doing a bit of running. I found a track that runs along beside a river that goes on forever and is part of a Trans-Canada trail or something. Could take a while to get to the other end. Pam has also been very generous and let me drive her truck around which has been great. I really miss driving and can't wait to get a car. I have successfully opened a bank account and obtained a social insurance number.

I have also secured a job with Klohn Crippen Berger which I start on the 3rd. I sent a bunch of emails to a bunch of places and heard back from KCB the next day. I went in for an interview and spent quite a while with them and at the end of the interview I basically got offered a job on the spot. I move into an apartment in Vancouver on the 28th of December. It is a furnished 1 bedroom place for 6 months at $1100 a month (including expenses) to start with so that I can save some money for furniture, car ect.

As much as I prefer real people over children they seem to attract a lot of Christmas spirit which is cool. It has been years since I have seen so many presents under a Christmas tree! Last night we had a pre-Christmas dinner with Pams niece, her partner and her two kids last night and there was a sneaky pre-Christmas present opening.

Other assorted information: I have been introduced to a drink called "a ceasar" which is basically a bloody mary but has some crazy clam juice stuff in it as well as tabasco, wircestershire sauce, pickled asparagus, pickled beans, olives etc. Pretty yum. It has been snowing a bit here which is cool. In between the snow days it mostly melts though so I don't know if we will get a white Christmas.

Shopping

Sunday 2/12/12

Today we got out of the house to get some supplies. I luckily had a look to check that I brought a pair black pants with me and found I hadn't. I had also been reduced to only one pair of pants when my blues jeans started to self destruct. So I was on the hunt for a pair of jeans, dress pants and probably some shoes since squelching around in my leaky loafers didn't sound fun. Kinda dumb that I carried them all around the world only to find out they were leaky and chuck them out before I ever got to use them. I managed to find a pretty cheap pair of shoes, a pair of Calvin Klein pants (lah di dah) for only $31 bucks and a pair of jeans as well.

Back at home the spa repair had proven to be successful so I went for a run before going to soak in that. Reminds me of Ma and Pas house!

Winter

Sunday 2/12/12

The last couple of days I have not been up to much. I have had some amazing dinners cooked by Pam and last night we went to friends of Pams and Terrys, Martin and Marianne for a tasty curry dinner. Really good people and they are thinking about going to New Zealand so I told them I know some good people in an excellent wine growing region that they can probably stay with!

I have also been looking around in Vancouver at apartment prices and vehicle prices. Really need to figure out if a) I'm gonna get a job in Vancouver and b) how much money I'm gonna get paid to decide what I can afford. Hard not to get ahead of yourself with things like that though.

Yesterday I helped Terry a bit with the "fix the spa" project. He kinda decided that the problem was probably the element so went about removing it. It had corroded in place though so we had to take it to get the nut ground off. After a new element the spa now works again so I guess we can deduce that the element was the problem. I also finished putting the rest of the Christmas lights up on the house.

It is another very winterey day here. The whole country is cooling off with most places getting snow at the moment. Abbotsford is still pretty coastal though so doesn't snow very often. When it does it usually doesn't settle.

Abbotsford

Past couple of days I have spent a lot of time online figuring out what mobile carrier to go with and which bank to sign up to here. Mobile plans seem pretty expensive here with some carriers preventing you from tethering a tablet to them for internet which is dumb. Why the hell do they care? The banks also seem to want to charge pretty high monthly fees which is also dumb.

I also got an email back from a guy at Klohn Crippen Berger who wants to have a yarn next week which is cool. Now I just have to figure out how to get there.

I did get out of the house at one stage to put up some Christmas lights. Stuff is getting pretty Christmasey here, bring on the snow!

Today we went for a drive to a Canadian Tire (thats not how you spell bloody tyre) which is a hardware shop that sells everything. On the way we got hot chocolate and doughnuts from Tim Hortons.

Pam and her family have been great at making me feel at home and I am really enjoying not having to think about travelling at the moment.

Holiday Over

And that is it for my holiday. Doesn't feel very different really and I guess it won't until I find a job. It has been about 4 months now which has has lots of ups and downs but overall it has been pretty sweet. At times it has seemed long and other times it has seemed short. I can remember getting off the plane at Heathrow to meet Gaz and travelling down to Cornwell like it was yesterday but it seems like years ago since I left NZ (in reality only days apart). Weird. Hopefully I have learned some stuff while I've been travelling but I don't know what that is yet. It seems like I should write something profound here but it is 1am in the morning after a long day on a bus so I guess thats not going to happen. Maybe I will come back and write something here sometime

I seem to have got into a very good habit of keeping a diary so hopefully it sticks for a while but I don't anticipate I will keep up with the one post a day rate. We'll see how we go.

Planning and Travelling to Canada

Yesterday I spent the day in the hotel business center organising stuff for my trip north. Shit was getting pretty stressful as I still had not heard back from Pam, who I was going to stay with in Abbotsford. I resorted to facebook messaging people I could find on her facebook. Luckily her sister got a message and told Pam to check her account and all has hopefully worked out fine.

I also did some job searching and sent a few emails to engineeringey places. Its all pretty daunting and I'm really not looking forward to it to be honest. I think I am just going with the scattergun approach by emailing as many places as possible to hopefully set up some meetings to see if anything is available. After doing some work on it I feel a bit better but I think its gonna be pretty difficult.

That is it for Portland then. Thanks so much to my host Jesse for all of the sweet trips and all of the driving to get to them. I'd say we covered nearly 1000km in the long weekend! Portland is a pretty cool place, awful weather but I guess you get that from all of the hills around it. Plus that is probably why it is such a forested area. Cheers again Jesse!

So I am now sitting on the Bus to Canada. Got about 10 hours of travelling ahead of me today and I'm hoping my tablet battery will last for most of it.

One more travelling problem: At the border there was only one guy on so it took a while for everyone to get processed. My visa, of course, took the longest which held us up. The driver seemed pretty pissed off and could see it wasn't my fault but wasn't sure if I would be able to catch the 8:30pm bus to Abbotsford from Vancouver. I could see this going pants pretty quick because I only had a land line number for Pam and a night in Vancouver would be a bit shit. Luckily we made it with about 5min to spare and then at the bus they told me I needed a baggage ticket. That meant lugging my pack into the building and getting a baggage ticket but driver had already taken my bus ticket (I had asked him if I needed it to get a bag ticket and he said it would be fine). The people inside then were also pissed off that I didn't have my ticket but begrudgingly gave me a bag ticket and told me to be here earlier next time. Just shit I didn't need but everything seemed to work out all right.

And for the final instalment in my travel to Canada fiasco: I nearly missed getting off my bus at Abbotsford because I was engrossed in an episode of Breaking Bad. Then I waited at the bus station for a while. I was expecting Pam to pick me up so I was kinda worried about what was going on. It didn't look like I was near anything and I think it was a bit cold to sleep outside. I couldn't find Wifi and I only had a landline number for Pam which would have been expensive to call on my cell. I decided to try using a good old fashioned pay phone (which accepted my credit card). Technology eh? Turns out there was a mis-understanding and Pam thought I was getting in at 10:30pm instead of 9:30. Now I am typing this in Pams lounge it all seems OK but its funny what runs through your head when you are standing in the middle of a foreign place with very limited ways of contacting people.

Mt Hood Lookout Mountain

Today we got up and the weather looked a bit crap but we committed to the mission up Lookout Mountain for a view of Mt Hood. We set off from Portland and 40min into the journey we realised we were going a different way to what we thought, but Siri didn't seem to think there was much time difference in it. We were also running a bit behind schedule so were kinda running out of daylight hours fast. Lookout Mountain is apparently the second tallest mountain in Mt Hood National park (just shy of 2000m) so were pretty amped to get up it. As we drove towards the park the cloud cover kinda went away in what seemed like a matter of minutes and we got some amazing views of Mt Hood looming over everything. It stands at 3429m and sits alone (as opposed to in a mountain range) so it is pretty imposing.

Along the way somewhere we realised that we didn't have a national park parking pass. So when we found a sign saying that the ranger station sold passes we backtracked to a nearby one, only to find that they were closed on Sundays. We went next door to a outdoor supplies store and they guy told us we would probably be fine to park on the side of the road. Time was getting away on us a bit so we were getting a bit concerned about darkness falling on us again. Siri also failed us as it seemed that she had plotted the location of the start of the trail at the top of the mountain. Jesses trail book also seemed to give us some sketchy instructions (as did the guy in the outdoors store) and we wasted about 30min looking for the start of the trail. We finally found it (by combining all of the sketchy instructions we had) and it turned out that the trail start sign was missing. We left at about 1:30 which only gave us about 3 hours until the sun went down. The trail book suggested it was a 5 hour hike so we were concious of having to come down in the dark. The first bit of the trail was a pretty good track (for coming down in the dark) but was damn steep. My calves were all like "what the hell do you think you're doing?" and I was all like "stop whinging and sort it out". It was really crap. It was bloody steep too, we climbed about 800m in 4km or something. Towards the top of the first bit it got pretty snowy:

We got up to the Gumjawac Saddle and looked around for the trail on the other side of a 4WD track. We found a sign and set off into a very snowy valley. It was getting pretty hard to find the track at this point as there didn't seem to be any trail markers and there was about 600mm of snow around. It was pretty easy to confirm we were on the trail when we came to creek crossings as there was stepping stones but when I went ahead while Jesse took a photo and he couldn't find my tracks to follow me. We decided that trying to find our way back in the dark would be a bit treacherous. Instead we climbed back up to the saddle and followed the 4WD track for a bit where we got a pretty sweet view of Hood:

Another random photo to show what a cracker day it was and note how low the sun was getting when we were up on the saddle:

So it was unfortunately an unsuccessful attempt at climbing lookout mountain but at least we achieved our primary goal of getting a good look at Hood. We were a bit frustrated that there was no trail markers and wondered if they were removed on purpose to stop using the trail. Either way it seemed pretty dumb. The trip down was pretty quick down the steep trail back to the car and home again. All up I think it was about 11km

For dinns we went to hunt some pizza and drank beer while we watched terrible TV.

Clackamas River Run

Today we decided that Sunday looked the best for a mission to Mt Hood national park so we decided to hunt out a new run that Jesse hadn't done before. Jesse bought a book called "60 trails within 60 miles of Portland" which was an excellent find. It was broken into all sort of sections including running. So we looked up a run we could do. We found one up the Clackamas river which looked pretty good. One of the criteria was that it was not too hilly to give my legs a break. We got there with no problems and set out. For some reason we decided not to take bags today which was a bit foolish. It turned out that it was a bit more hilly than we anticipated so my calves were up to their old tricks but we pushed on. I'm pretty sure they are just fatigued so I don't think I'm doing any real damage. Just gotta man up. It was a really nice place except that you could often spot the highway on the other side of the Clackamas river. We ran on and came across a tree that spanned the river (pretty amazing that it got wedged there):

It looked pretty crossable so Jesse gave it a go:

Just kidding, we decided that the river looked pretty hungry and death would probably be compulsory in an attempt. Afterwards there was a bit of a river crossing (which was funny because at the start of the run we were being little baby girls about crossing a boggy puddle):

We were enjoying ourselves so much that the kms just slipped away until we were just shy of 10km where we found some cool misty waterfalls:

Then a guy that had passed us while we were taking photos came running back. We stopped for a yarn and he reminded us that we only had a bit over an hour of daylight left. This was the only day we hadn't taken bags running (which would have had headlamps in them) and this was the largest run we had undertaken to date! There was only one thing to be done: huss back! So huss we did. The hills were absolutely excruciating and frustrating, I was totally fine on the flat and down hill so made up a lot of time there by sprinting. I think we made it back in pretty close to half the time it had taken us to get out. Good times.

Back at the hotel we wondered why it was so cold until we realised that the cleaners had left the balcony door open. This was hilarious because the probably thought it smelt bad. Which it did because we had 4 day old running clothes in there (the Hotel doesn't have a laundry). Later in the evening we did some investigation for our impending hood mission.

Silver Falls Run

23/11/12

This morning we set out for a run at Silver Falls. We had been batteling with Siri (the iPhone AI helper) over the past few days but she was doing pretty well. Up until today... We told her we wanted to go to Silver Falls and she took us down this tiny wee gravel road to the middle of no where. To be fair "Silver Falls Forest" was printed on the gates but we definitely weren't at the tourist carpark. We carried on through the road as it got narrower and narrower until we finally hit another tarmac road. We made an educated guess about which way to go and were lucky to find the falls car park. We did a pretty cool loop which took us past 10 water falls. It was pissing down with rain and Jesse liked the fact that we did caves in the dark and were now doing waterfalls in the rain. A couple of the falls were pretty amazing and you could walk behind some of them too, Photos ahoy (I was stoked to figure out the "shutter priority" setting on the camera):

All up it was about a 13km run and my legs were super grumpy with me. I discovered that my calves had pretty much given up being any good whatsoever up hills. On the flat and going down hill I was fine but as soon as there was a slight incline they seized up and tried to claw their way out of my legs. I resorted to walking up most of the hills which was a bit lame.

For dinner we went to another McMinamins. This one had a Church that had been converted to a concert venue but the main restaurant/bar was in a separate building. We had some time to kill afterwards and decided to ask Siri to escort us to a Frys electronics (kinda like a massive Dick Smith). She failed badly and sent us to some dudes house in suburbia! She was having a pretty bad day so we resorted to grid search and actually managed to find one! It was a pretty insane place, made even more insane by the fact that it was "Black Friday" which is some big ole shopping day thing here. Deals, deals, deals. People, people, people. All at about 9pm! All we really wanted was an HDMI cable which we thought would be simple. We found one and then wandered around a bit and then found more cables in another section, then another, then another. All up I think we found 5 different departments that sold HDMI cables with a wide variety of qualities from $180 to $5.

Back at the hotel we watched some of the Sherlock Holmes series and drank some beer before bedtime.

Multnomah Falls and Ape Caves

Thanksgiving day! This morning we pissed around quite a lot while we tried to figure out what we were going to do. The weather was pretty crap but we weren't gonna let that stop us. We settled on going to Mt St Helens to check out some Ape caves. When we had been on the for a bit Jesse decided the day was looking a bit light so we would head to the Multnomah falls first. This actually meant about a 1.5 hour detour but it was pretty sweet:

There was a lot of old people around that were heading up the track to the top of the falls and Jesse said it wasn't that far so I left my jeans on and didn't really eat anything before setting out. The walk up was pretty steep and Jesse was moving at a hell of a pace. My calves started to hurt like 40 bastards and jeans seemed pretty innappropriate. After we had been walking for about 30min and the people had kinda thined out we decided we must have taken a wrong turn somewhere but it was a pretty cool track with stuff like this on it:

A few minutes later we came across a couple of guys going in the opposite direction that told us we were on a loop track that goes back out to the highway after another 4 miles or so and then you can walk back to the carpark we started at. It was a really cool walk but I wish I hadn't worn my jeans! On the way down we found another waterfall:

All up I think we were about 2 hours or so and it was getting dark. A perfect time to go and explore some caves we thought. The drive to the caves was about a 2 hours so we started out. We ate a couple of muesli (not bloody granola) bars on the way. Not the massive turkey feast that most people in the U.S. would have been eating around the same time. The Ape caves was actually just one long lava tube. It was an awesome place. The lower cave was really easy to walk through and was about 3m high along most of it. There was lots of interesting stuff to check out like this ball thing:

The theory is that it was a rock that was floating along on the surface of a lava flow and got wedged and fused in place. There was lots of layers on the wall and lots of different looking rocks including this stuff:

Which looked like it was from a meteaor or something. Air pockets inside the rock I guess. The whole time we felt like we needed some geo dude telling us about all this wacky shit we could see. We walked to the end of the lower cave which just got shorter and shorter. We speculated that it might just be because it was full of sediment that had been washed down there. We retraced our steps back to the entry point and started up the upper cave. This one was a bit rougher going with lots of places where the ceiling had fallen down that you had to climb over. Lots more wacky stuff here like this:

Which was on the ceiling and looked like the rock had got so hot it was dripping at one stage, then cooled in place. There was also this:

Which was about a 2m drop that we had to climb up. It was great fun. At the top end of the upper cave it just ended in a pretty much flat wall. We were pretty confused at to what had happened but thought that this might be the point where the lava came up vertically into a soft rock layer that it then created the tube out of. Again, a geologist expert would have been handy. Thats Simon Bloomberg now right? We exited the upper cave out another hole in the ceiling and had about a 2km walk back to the car park. in the snow!

By the time we got back to town we were pretty hungry but it was 10pm and lots of places were closed. We decided to go to a supermarket for food. Unfortunately the deli was closed so there was no hot food available. There was not even a microwave in the hotel room so we couldn't even heat anything up. In the end we had some beers and a pretty pathetic dinner that consisted of a couple of processed turkey sandwiches on stale bread.

Apartments, Leif Erickson and McMenamins

This morning I was still pretty full from dinner but we needed to pick Jess up while she had her tyres replaced so we went in hunt of pancakes and we were successful and I was forced to be even more full.

Most of the rest of the day was taken up by organising apartments to go look at and then actually going to look at them. We looked at a couple of places, one downtown and one out in the burbs a bit. I am not really looking forward to that project but should be more fun than looking for a job. It was pretty funny as I think the people showing us around thought we were a gay couple.

In the evening we went for a run up the Leif Erickson trail. I discovered that my calves were pretty damn grumpy with my previous up hill running so we went out at a fairly slow pace. On the way back I discovered that I still had most of my fitness and blitzed it down the hill and pulled out mostly 4 min ks in the back 8km. Any slight rise in the hill kinda made my calves seize up though so it was a bit of a crazy yo-yo speed. All up about 16km.

For dinner we went to McMenamins Kennedy School which is an awesome place. It is an old school that has been converted to a complex of bars, restaurants, hotel rooms, a venue and a theatre. You can drink in the boiler room and have functions in the Gym. There is also a Cigar room in the old detention office and the school hall shows movies with sweet old couches you can sit in while you drink and eat during the movie. Its pretty cool just to wander about an old school at night let alone have a few drinks there.

We vaguely made some plans for Thursday to check out Mt Hood but it was pretty late so we mostly just went to bed.

Wet Feet and a Doughnut

Today I decided to get out and have a look around Portland. The rain had mostly cleared and it was starting to shape up like an OK day. I ventured out with one main goal: to get a doughnut from Voodoo Doughnuts. Unfortunately I left the hotel and went in the opposite direction to where I was meant to go but that was OK as it was a pretty nice day for a walk.

Unfortunately when I was halfway across the bridge I saw a nasty cloud coming over the hills. I was kinda committed as I was a fairly long way from the hotel room and I had my soft shell on so I decided to carry on. Bad move. It was the most horrendous weather I've ever been struck by. The rain was so thick and hard that it drenched me in about 3 seconds. The rain came through my zip and drenched me from the inside out. The rain also somehow got inside my shoes and saturated my feet too (I always thought my brown leather shoes were pretty waterproof). Then it started hailing. Holy crap it was ridiculous. It was all over in about 4 minutes. I thought about going back to the hotel but I was nearly at Voodoo by now so I just squelched on.

It was totally worth it, I got this guy:

That is a pretzel sticking out of his heart. He was damn tasty. From there I just carried on and wandered down by the river. The day actually came out nice again:

When I got back to the hotel Jesse and I went for a quick run over some bridges and along the river for about 30 min. The pace was pretty quick and I was reminded again how un-fit I am. Lame.

For dinner we met Jess at a place called "Ringside". It cost about a million dollars but I think it was worth it. The service was amazing and the food was delicious. I had something called a silk chocolate cake or something and after my 10 oz steak it almost killed me. After dinner we went in search of a bar to have couple of drinks and it was raining again. Somehow my black leather shoes are not water proof either and so I got a second set of wet feet for the day. This does not bode well for Canadia...

Day 1 in Portland

I didn't really do anything today. I spent a while figuring out my onward travel and other bits and pieces I needed to get into Canada. I also had a bit of a look on Craigslist for jobs in Vancouver and sent a couple of emails. I'm really not looking forward job hunting thing again. It was really crap weather outside and I think it even snowed at one point so an inside day was fine with me.

For dinner we met up with Jesses girlfriend Jessica (I just realised that they are another Jess and Jesse, what the hell?) and went to a really good Vietnamese restaurant except for the queueing system which involves a line in a space much too small for a line so people have to wait outside in the cold and the rain. After dins Jesse and I went to Deschutes brew pub for a couple of nice craft beers.

Pikes and a Mountain

18/11/12

This morning we got up and went to check out the Pikes Farmers Market. There was a few good things available for purchase but I still didn't really want to add to the weight I was already carrying. Good Christmas presents there though as Jesse proved by buying a couple.

We then set sail for Portland. It was pretty crappy weather but we had our sights set on a mountain climb up Mt Si. It was pretty rainy and cold when we got to the carpark but we did some manning up and started the ascent. We were just in running shoes, shorts and long sleeve tops and it was pretty funny passing people coming down who looked like they were set up for an Antarctic winter. The higher we got the colder it got so the faster we had to run. I was pretty disappointed when my hill climbing effort, it was pretty brutal and unrelenting though. Near the tree line we stopped to have have a yarn to some people, they said they hit snow and wind just above the trees and turned around. They were a bit sceptical about our attire. 

We pushed on and passed another guy who looked to be wearing full mountaineering gear just before we got above the tree. We took a couple of pictures:

While we were taking the pictures the mountaineering guy caught up and turned around! We carried on for another 15min or so and got to a very sketchy looking scramble up some loose rock covered in loose snow  (The track goes right up the middle of the photo):

By now it was kinda snowing up there so we decided that death might ensue if we attempted the final ascent so we headed back down. All in all it was about 12km with 1000m of climb in it and we did it in 2 hours 20min.

We headed to Portland via a Chipotle for dinner. On the way we encountered some pretty horrendous heavy rain weather with poor visibility and lots of standing water to aquaplane over on the freeway but the Mustang seemed to handle the conditions ok and we made it to the destination with no problems. Jesse still doesn't have a home so we checked into our plush presidential suite hotel room and crashed into bed.

Off to Seattle

This morning Blair and Kylie dropped me off at the airport. Door to door (or is it train to plane?) service! Thanks so much guys for inviting me along on your Redwood forest trip. They really are 1st class people:

On the plane now to Seattle where I think it is gonna be cold...

I landed in Seattle and Jesse came to pick me up in his sweet ride:

We went straight out to Cougar Mountain Park to go for a run. It was raining but it always does that in Seattle so if you wanna go for a run you just man up and get used running in the rain and cold. We left at about 4:30pm so it was already getting dark which meant I couldn't really see the scenery but I think it was pretty cool. It was very rain-forestey and kinda reminded me of the West Coast. At one point we came across a massive open mine shaft with a rebar grate over it. It looked like something out of Silent Hill and we speculated about the monsters that must live down the shaft. We ran for about 12km but it had about 350m of climb in it so took us just under 2 hours.

For dinner we went to Five Guys which was a pretty tasty fast food place where there were big bags of peanuts you could eat from. It also had a ludicrous number of options on the soft drink machine. So many it had a nested menu system on a touch screen. After that we went to a place called The Seattle Bouldering Project which was a massive bouldering place (duh). I have never really enjoyed bouldering too much but it was pretty fun having so much variety and problems to climb. We then headed back to a condo that Jesse had borrowed off a work mate for the night where we ate Pumpkin Pie and drank tasty Obsidian Stout from the Deschutes Brewery in Portland.

Avenue of the Giants and Humbolt Park

Today we pretty much just needed to get back within striking distance of San Fran airport so we had a bit of time to kill. We took the scenic drive through Humbolt National Park called "The Avenue of the Giants" which was an amazing road that wound through some massive trees. Half way along we also went to another walk. It was kinda rainy but that made the forest look pretty cool:

The main attraction of this place was a tree called "Giant Tree". I think they got a bit lazy with their names. Me and Blair had a go at climbing him but despite our best efforts couldn't reach the first branch:

We still had a fair way to drive and Blair did a sterling job in the rain. We unfortunately missed the rest area outside San Fran and didn't really realise until we were cruising over the Golden Gate Bridge, I can tick that off the non-existent list. We found another rest stop that was pretty close to the airport and stopped for the night. Blair was pretty knackered from all the driving so we watched some "Extras" while me and Kylie polished off the rest of the rum.

Redwood National Park

Today we went for a walk through the redwoods. We picked out the Rohodendron trail that links up to the Cathedral trail and we figured it would take 2 or 3 hours. It was a really cool walk through some massive trees:

There were quite a lot that were burned but it didn't really look like a fire had been through, it was also weird because they look like they were burned from the inside out. (Later on, when we got to camp we were talking to the camp host and she said the burns were made from lightning striking the tree and the guts of it can catch on fire). Some trees were burned away so much inside that you can walk inside and sometimes through them, yet they still seemed to be alive. Crazy shit:

For lunch we made salami, cheese and bacon mustard sandwiches. They were extremely tasty. On the way home we found a few more interesting bits of trees:

When we were close to getting back to camp we found "Big Tree":

Of course it was pointless trying to take a photo of it, bit it was quite big. On the way back into the camp I spotted some elk first (this got me out of washing up duty):

They were a lot bigger than I thought.

For dinner we cooked a Pasta and salami dinner. We all decided our respective mums would be proud of us for cooking a relatively nutritious meal. We could have just eaten doritos and twinkies for dinner! We did have brownie for pudding though. Yum.

After dinner we roasted some marshmellows which are a bit different over here. They have a weird texture and kinda taste crap on their own. They are pretty damn delicious when they have been roasted though. I tried to take some photos of the stars but I kinda failed and my camera dropped off the bonnet of the van. It was about a 1.5m drop so it made quite a dent but all seems well.

On the Road

We woke up with this for a view which was nice:

We hit the road at about 9:30 and went in search for some tucker. We found a little deli place and had a pretty hearty breakfast before heading on north. The drive was pretty scenic but it took us a hell of a lot longer than we anticipated. This was not helped by the stupid roadworks. It seemed that they would close a 5km section of the road to do works in about 10m of it. We had to wait for a pilot vehicle to escort us through the danger zone. We honestly couldn't see anything wrong with the rest of the road, weird.

Along the way we found some tree that you could supposedly drive through so we decided to give it a whirl with the giant van. It was pretty funny that the person at the gate was like "Its 7ft by 6 1/2" so I dunno if you'll fit. Give it a try though!". We drove up to it and it became apparent that the van was gonna be way too tall, and probably a bit fat too:

It was pretty close though and there was a few people that were hoping we would give it a go, thats what insurance is for right? I suggested maybe getting a bit of a run up but Blair and Kylie didn't think that was going to end well. We took a few photos and carried on our merry way.

At about 6pm we found a supermarket and went to get supplies. The supermarket layout was a bit crazy and we didn't have a list or any idea what we were going to eat so we think we did pretty well and got 2 dinners, 2 lunches and 3 breakfasts worth of food. Plus a gallon of rum and a box of beer for good measure. We optimised for non-perishable food so that we could fit the beer in the fridge, priorities! Only cost $110 all up. We had about another hour of driving to get to the Elk Prairie Campground in the Redwoods National Park. Along the way we saw a couple of deer just chilling out on the road, thinking about whether they should run into the lights that were barrelling up the road. Stupid deer.

For dinner we had snags and a big ole vat of potato salad. We were pretty stoked with ourselves for crearting food. We also bought a sneaky slab of brownie for pudding and had a few beers while we talked a lot of shit before we hit the hay.

Cock Up

13/11/11

Last night I had thought everything through pretty well and figured out when I needed to get up and pack so that I would be at the train station at 12:45. I also wanted to do some washing so I allowed time for that too. I got up early and said goodbye to Tristan and Brooke but then went back to sleep. I woke up to my alarm at 10:00 and got up to put my washing on. I really don't know where the 30 mins went while I was waiting for my washing but oh well, I still had about 2 hours before the train. I put the washing in the dryer and started packing. I also made a couple of sandwiches for the journey. Packing seemed to take a lot longer than I anticipated and I went down to get my dry washing at 11:50. I was aiming to leave at about 12:10. I was already starting to get a little stressed about the time at this point. Then, Drama! I locked myself out of the front door of the house due to a number of smaller cockups: 1) the front door usually doesn't close properly and lock, 2) I didn't take my keys because I had just taken the apartment key off the keyring and left the front door key on the table, 3) I'm a muppet (so that's on Mum and Dad for not raising me properly). It was such a horrible feeling standing outside the house with my bag of washing and knowing I only had about 15min to finish packing and leave, less any time it took me to get in the house, if I could at all. I had my cell phone but I hadn't bothered to put Brooke or Tristans number in it and didn't have my computer on me (obviously). Luckily I knew that all of the apartments in the building could get to the front door even though they had external access so I went knocking, no avail. Luckily I heard music from an upstairs window and started yelling like a madman. A girl came to the window and was extremely dubious of my situation but reluctantly came to the front door to let me in. I think the accent might have pushed me across the line! I quickly packed and left at 12:15. Google reckoned it was a 26min walk but I was still worried I might get lost. It was a pretty awful run/walk with my 27kg on my back in the 25 deg C heat but luckily I made it to the station in time and I am now successfully on the train. Phew.

When I got into Oakland Blair and Kylie picked me up and we hit the road to get a few miles towards the redwoods tonight. We drove for a couple of hours on a tiny wee road that was State Highway 1. Apparently the 1 is the senic route and changes dramatically from 6 lanes wide to barely a lane wide. We also had a bit of a chuckle at the signs thats said "Narrow bridge" and all that happened is there was only about a foot from the edge of the road to the lane instead of the normal 3. We considered how Americans would describe a single lane bridge with a railway line down the middle of it. We found a good place to stop at about 11 and stopped for the night.

Bugger all

So I have had an extremely lazy past couple of days. On Saturday I was gonna go check out some more bands and stuff but instead I just watched some walking dead episodes. I figured that I would only go and spend exorbitant amounts of money on booze and I can always go to gigs when I get to Vancouver. Part of me also liked the opportunity to develop my inner introvert. I am ever concious of the fact that doing anything other than going for a run costs money and I have run or walked most of Santa Barbara!

On Sunday I went for a run cos I really needed to get out of the house. Luckily Tristan and Brooke got back from LA and saved me from myself by taking me to the Brew house for trivia. I had a tasty popper (chilli pepper stuffed with cheese and covered in bread crumbs and deep fried) and a Hot dog. The trivia was again hilarious, really a local thing. Lots of in jokes and ridiculousness. So ridiculous that at some stage we did Jager bombs. Me yelling "Jager Bombs!" whenever anybody says they are flagging must be a bad influence on people. Today I also had some issues with my accom in San Fran as I can only stay 2 nights of the 4 with the people. I spent some time looking into other last-minute arrangements.

On Monday I had a pretty low key day again. I did go for a bike ride at one stage to get some more beer but that was about it. The beer was a "Double Bastard" so an imperial version of the IPA I liked. It kinda reminded me a bit of the Tactical Nuclear Penguin from Brew Dog I had in Scotland. It is getting more into a fortified wine than a beer. That is probably blasphemy and maybe I'm completely wrong. I hope I have developed a better palate for beer tasting by the next time I read this. For dins we cooked amazing gormet nachos with all sorts of shit going on.

So tomo is pretty much just a travel day so I will just say goodbye to my amazing hosts in Santa Barbara now. Thank you so much Brooke and Tristan for letting me crash for so long at your place. You really helped me out of a tight spot with dwindling finances and allowed me to kill some time so that I can hang out with Jesse for Thanksgiving. 11 days is a hell of a long time to let someone invade your lounge for and I owe you both a lot. I had a great time with you though and hopefully you guys did too. Cheers very much.

Off to go bludge off Kylie and Blair in their sweet van again! Blair got in touch with me on Monday and I decided that instead of go to San Fran I will go with them up to the Redwoods which I am pretty amped about. I didn't think I would get to see any national parks on this trip and this also sorts out my accommodation issues as well. Its gonna be cosy in the Van! (Which is just as well as I hear there is snow about up north!)

Exploring and a Kick Ass Gig

Today I went for a run / walk to the Santa Barbara Mission:

Which is an old church thing. I couldn't really be bothered with more museum so I didn't pay to go inside. Instead I kept running on up the road hoping to find a mountain trail or something. Instead all I found was a rabbit warren of roads on the side of the hill with no footpaths. I was in dire danger or getting lost so I decided to head back towards where I thought town was. On the way I did find this:

Where the tarmac is literally melting down the hill. Holy crap it gets hot here! When I waited around for a bit before seeing if I could go up the Mesa (the small hills to the west of downtown Santa Barbara) to get a picture of the sunset. Unfortunately where I headed turned out to be a radio repeater site so I could not get in. All the rest of the streets I went down had houses obscuring the horizon so that was a massive fail. Second run / walk for the day so I guess that was a plus. On the way back I did cross over the free way and decided to take this cliche shot:

I really need to get more original with my photos. 

Brooke and Tristan went to LA for the weekend to baby sit Brookes sisters 18 month old baby so I decided to head into town and check out the music. Apparently there is some "New Noise Festival" on in Santa Barbara this weekend. I went to the James Joyce again and started talking to some UCSB students that were going to a gig at the Velvet Jones bar down the road. It was part of the New Noise festival so had a $10 cover charge to get in but holy shit it was worth it. The headline act wasn't that crash hot (some old dude that was a somebody back in the day with his band) but the warm up acts were pretty good. The stand out being "Larry and his Flask" which I had difficulty picking a genre for. Check it out for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=903oVzMObak (I wonder if that link will still be alive in 30 years? I'm guessing it will be a "hah hah, I remember youtube" moment). I guessed that they were "Blue metal" or "Folk grass rock". I see that they have also been described "Rockabilly". Either way the performance was incredibly. So much energy and I dunno how they didn't take each other out they were jumping around so much. I also don't know how the drummer played the whole set standing up. I had a yarn to one of them after the show and he said they tour Canada sometimes so I'll definitely keep an eye out. Cheers to Elizabeth, Yan, Josh and Angela for giving me the heads up!

Live Music and Not Much Else

Today I did very little. In fact I am not sure what I did all day. Hopefully I made the most of not having any commitments, work, assignments or anything else on and just enjoyed doing nothing.

When Brooke and Tristan got home from work we cracked open the Bourbon aged Nightsail dark ale I bought from Island brewery:

The beer won silver at some big beer awards recently. It was one of the more interesting beers I have drunk. The black ale is actually quite like an IPA with a lot of malty tones but there was a somewhat hilarious bourbon kick to it. The after taste was pretty much the same as if you had just done a shot of Jim Beam. I don't how it was only 7.2% alc! All in all it was pretty good. By the way, I have actually drunk some rubbish beers but obviously I don't write about them.

For dinner we had fish tacos and some other mexican food from a place called Wahoo and then went next door to the "James Joyce Bar", an irish pub where you eat peanuts and chuck the husks on the ground. So yes: there are peanut husks all over the floor. Very strange, I'm not sure if that's common or not. The band that was playing was pretty damn awesome for a free pub gig. They mostly played originals which was cool.

Cruising in the Country

7/11/12

Today Brooke offered her car to me to take cruising in the country side. Unfortunately this meant that I had to drop her off at work at 6:45am. Small price to pay to be in the drivers seat again!

Last night we had worked out a bit of a route so I headed off north on the 101. I was a bit surprised that I relaxed into driving on the other side of the road so quickly. I have to admit I was a bit apprehensive but I don't really know why. Brookes car is even a manual and I think changing gear with my right hand was the weirdest part. A couple of times my left hand even hit the door when I needed to change gears (spaz) but other than that no worries at all. I turned off the 101 to go to a wee town called Los Olivos and from there I took Figueroa Mountain road which was a small one lane tarmac road up into the mountains. It was a fantastic day for it:

I was absolutely loving driving again. Near the top of the mountain I came across a ranger station thing so I decided to get out and have a look for some critters. I found a kitty!:

And I also found some kitty food:

And I found some ex kitty food:

It was so nice up in the mountains I didn't really want to come home but I don't think Brooke would have been to happy if I didn't come back with her car. I finished the rest of the mountain track which led me to the 154 which pretty much went all the way home. The 154 highway was a pretty nice drive as well but cracked me up that the speed limit was only 55mph (about 80) because I guess it wasn't a full "freeway", but it was still 4 lanes wide in most places! It did have some corners in there (45mph recommended) the could have seemed a bit tricky if I hadn't been brought up on the 25km/h on state highway 1 in NZ!

Before I went to bed I decided to book the train from Santa Barbara to San Francisco on Tuesday and I was guted that it seemed to want to charge me $63 for the trip now instead of the $50 from the night before. I then went back the the other browser I had originally looked up the ticket on and it was still on the checkout page with the $50 fare on it. I clicked continue to payment and it only charged me the $50. Gotta have some luck I guess. Now the only bit of my trip I need to figure out is how to get from Seattle to Vancouver.

Oh, and I forgot: Obama won.

Bike Ride to a Brewery

This morning I started looking into when I was gonna go from San Fran to Seattle and found that the train was gonna be more expensive than a flight and it was gonna be like 22 hours instead of 2. Damn! I quickly emailed Jesse in Seattle to find out when the best time for me to fly in would be. Man I am sick of organising travel! The U.S. is not really very good if you don't have a car either. I really hope I can jack up a road trip at some stage.

I then embarked on what turned out to be an epic mission to go to a place called Island Brewery a couple of towns South from Santa Barbara. I knew it was gonna take a while but I guess I underestimated the tediousness of biking down a road for an hour. When I got to the brewery it was totally worth it. I tried a Avocado Honey ale (I didn't know avocado honey was a thing), a nitro porter (called Blackbird) and a beer called Night Sail, a black ale that tasted like an IPA. All very yum. I got a bottle of the Blackbird and a special bourbon-cask-aged version of the Night Sail. The ride home was aided somewhat by a bit of beer in my belly.

For dinner Tristan and I rungled together some steak tacos while we watched some Frisky Dingo. Afterwards I went to book my flight to Seattle. I was extremely gutted to find that they had gone up in price by $80. Dumb. Man I wish I had a car. There was not much else to do about it so I booked them anyway and went to bed hoping I didn't feel so shit about wasting money the next day.

Not Much On

Today I didn't really have a plan so I decided to take Brooke up on her offer of taking her bike out for a spin. It was another pretty nice day so I went down to the bike path along beside the beach and went to the edge of the city and back. Took this photo:

No doubt you are getting bored of pictures taken facing the sun by now. It just makes the photo look cool so you'll just have to put up with it.

After I got back it was only early afternoon so I decided to go out in search of a cable to connect my tablet to a TV. It turns out that the main street in Santa Barbara is 90% restaurants and 9% clothing shops. All ridiculously expensive too. I found a place called radioshack that had the right cable but it was too expensive at $30.

When Brooke and Tristan had got home from work we went for a walk to see the courthouse lit up at night. We took a couple of roadies too.

From the Courthouse we could hear an engine revving on what sounded like a sweet car so we decided to go check it out. We were disappointed / amused to find it was actually a dude in a pickup truck. I dunno what the hell he was up to though, he was just revving the engine and driving backwards and forwards about 10m. Tristan and Brooke tried to convince me that that is not normal behaiviour for Californians but I'm not so sure. Some lady called the police and apparently it is illegal to drink in public in Santa Barbara so we went home to watch a kinda hilarious movie called "Tommy Boy". I love that I am getting introduced to all the American classic comedies. I really need to show a few people footrot flats!

All Sorts of Stuff

For breakfast we walked down to a deli place that operates out of the back of a dairy.  I got a breakfast burrito (which was very good value at $5 by Santa Barbaras standards) and we wandered to the sunken gardens in front of the courthouse which is a cool looking old building:

It was another cracker day so we thought we deserved a cheeky beer too. We also walked up the clock tower which gave us a great view out over Santa Barbara. There are a lot of building restrictions in place here and one of them is that you are not allowed to build over 3 stories high. This means that you can get a great view from the clock tower:

After our breakfast picnic we headed to the beach for some volley ball. I was fairly apprehensive about my skills and the court and as it turned out my apprehension was realised as a disappointing display of my dismal ball skills. I did manage to get one serve (the first I tried, beginners luck) over the net and I returned 3 or 4 balls but I think I would pick a retarded T-Rex as a volleyball team mate rather than myself. I wasn't too worried sitting most of the games out though as it was a great day to be sitting on a beach / swimming. Which doesn't make any bloody sense because it is basically the start of winter here. Putting on all the sunscreen reminded me of going out in Akaroa at new years, but I think it was even hotter here, around 30C. You crazy California!

In the afternoon we went to meet a bunch of Brooke and Tristans friends at a place for wine tasting called Oreana which wasn't really my bag either but I enjoyed having a yarn to a few people. Then we went to the Brewhouse again where they were running a quiz. It was a pretty good setup: They just asked questions and you yelled out the answer. If you got the answer right (and they heard you) you got a ticket with a number. Then at the end of the round they drew numbers out of a hat and if one of your tickets was called you got a prize. I didn't get any answers right but one a prize with the complimentary ticket they give you when you walk in! Lucky! I won a set of car sun shades for Brooke.

After the quiz we went to the neighbourhood to play beer pong. I was surprised to find permanent beer pong tables set up in the pub! I played a game with a guy named Will against Brooke and her friend Lindsay and I did a great deal better than my volley ball achievements earlier in the day. We got down to one cup each but Brooke and Lindsay won. After that I think I drank way to many rum and ginger ales but it was a good night (especially for a Sunday!)