Bonus Weekend!

My last day in Cali, Rishi helped my pack up my bike, drop the rest of my crap at Goodwill, and then spent the rest of the afternoon eating Mexican and playing Carcassonne. It was a lovely Rishi afternoon. Mary picked up me and my stuff then, and we went to Caro & Thad`s for dinner. One last home-made pasta dinner with lovely people and the menagerie. Then Mary & I went up to the City one last time for a night-time view from Coit Tower, and then to the airport.

I have Silver Status with Aeroplan, which generally means that I get 3 free checked bags. I had 3 bags + my bike, and I did expect to pay for the bike, which is fine. Unfortunately I was flying United instead of Air Canada, and United doesn`t honour any of its partner airline`s perks. So my luggage was going to cost $700 to get back to Canada. $700! I`d only paid $300 for the ticket. So after some walking around between the Air Canada desk and United desks (which were in different terminals - pain!), I just cancelled my ticket with United, they gave me a voucher, and I went back to Mary`s.

After some interneting, it turned out I could book on Air Canada with points. So for $62, I got my one-way flight back to Canada on the Monday night, now direct instead of with a stop-over, and free luggage checking, including my bike. Man, United sucks so much! So gave Rishi a call, Mary took me home to my old flat, and Rishi & Amy & I hung out playing Carcassonne until about 1am. It was lovely.

I missed Oscar night with the Alexandra Ave neighbourhood ladies, but got a bonus dinner with Rishi and Amy on Sunday night, and bonus Cultural Exchange dinner with Nimali and Sarah Trosin and Helen on Monday, so that was nice too.

When I left Australia, I knew that I would be back, and the friends I made there would last forever. We were all going to scatter all over the globe - we all knew that - but the community at UNSW was such that even if you never studied together, its like you`re part of this PV club, and you`re all just one or two degrees of separation from each other, and you`ll all be friends, no matter what. Leaving California felt different. I didn`t think it would be as hard to leave as it was. Nimali came over one night, and gave me a gift and we had a bit of a cry. A lot of us had been through some very tough times over the past two years - difficult break-ups, deaths of immediate family members, the big life stuff - and we`d been there for each other through it all. It`s tough, when these things hit you and you`re far from you family and friends back home. So we`d become a bit of a California family, and it`s sad to leave that.

But, if there`s anything I`ve learned over the past 10 years, it`s that I love travel too much not to see all these lovely folks in the future. And I`m still friends with my high school friends, and uni friends, and Australia friends, and the Cali friends will be no different. Some may stick better than others, but they are definitely keepers, and we`ll be sure to have many more adventures together.

San Fran Art Warhouse Awesomeness with Leroy

My supposed last night in Cali, Mary and Mai and I went down to the City to visit Leroy. We went out for some excellent Vietnamese for dinner, then he took us over to the warehouse he`s working at to help create some 50` tall steel trees with programmable LED leaves. Here`s a shot of the model.

It was most excellent. Everything you dream of San Francisco being - crazy warehouse art projects and such. We got a tour, saw all sorts of old art projects, and the one in progress. And we all got a shot at driving the forklift too!

These trees will be at Coachella this April. After that, they`re looking for a home. They may go on a festival tour in Europe, but if you want to be the proud owner of a 50`tall tree with programmable LED lights, that can likely be controlled by music, they are now accepting offers.

Final weekend of my life in Cali

My last weekend in Cali featured karaoke at Sodini's, followed by a bbq on Sunday. The Friday night karaoke was great - Rishi and I did a pretty good rendition of "Under Pressure" with him being David Bowie and me being Freddie Mercury. Also did some Waterloo-themed songs, total eclipse of the heart, and that Men at Work song with the Aussie contingent. We were all drinking the Sodini bars own brew, and were all completely wrecked on Saturday.

Sunday was the bbq. It was a gorgeous sunny day, and we sat out chatting in the sun for hours. Played about an hour of road hockey, until it got too dark and the last goal won. The neighbours came by, the Aussies, work friends, Stanford friends - just another one of those perfect Cali days with good times and good food and good people. One of the features of the day was a pie contest. They were all amazing, so we didn't actually get a winner. Check them out!

The flaming pie is the one I made - the "Pregnant, miserable, self-pitying loser pie" from the movie "Waitress". Emma made an amazing chocolate silk pie that disappeared quickly, Mary made a delicious cottage pie (the only savoury one), there were a couple lemon and apple pies, an apfelkuchen, and Sarah E made a teal lemon meringue that "just wanted to be blue, so it was". She won best pie idea - instead of the meringue, she wanted to make a four-and-twenty blackbirds pie, complete with actual live birds, but didn't quite have the time to pull it off. Next time!

So it was a very good send-off. But was it the last weekend?!???!?!? Stay tuned!

Cross-America Road Trip

My sister Mary is also moving back to Ontario from Vancouver. And so, road trip! Mary & Aunt Elaine drove from Vancouver down to SF, and we had a lovely weekend playing around in the California sun, checking out Alcatraz, going to a winery and doing some glass blowing.

Aunt Elaine flew off to Hawaii on the Monday, and Mary and I left for our cross-continent adventure. First stop: Vegas!

We made good time, and went to see a Cirque du Soleil show that night, which was most excellent. No photos from this bit of the trip, unfortunately. Next stop was my little detour request to Arches National Park. Here's Mary at sunset:

The whole drive there was amazing as well.

Next stop was Santa Fe, where Lolita got an oil change, and we ate the best sandwiches we'd ever had in our entire lives. They were amazing. We stayed in kind of the dodgy outskirts of town, so weren't too impressed with the city in general (Newsies lied!), but in the morning went to check out the old central square. Turns out, it's amazing! The square is surrounded by old adobe buildings, the real stuff not the fake California copied architecture stuff. One building is the 2nd oldest governor building in America, and is now a museum. The museum was closed, but we got in anyways 'cause they'd left the door open, so we got to see some old school printing presses (Newsies!).

Next stop: Oklahoma City. This place really was a bit of a hole, and the food we found wasn't good. Let's skip on.

To Kentucky! I really enjoyed this driving day. We drove up through Missouri, crossed the Mississippi and Ohio rivers at Cairo, and stayed the night in Bowling Green. The drive was lovely. It was clear there had been an ice storm about 2 days before we arrived, and all the trees were coated in ice and sparkling in the sun. So beautiful! We drove through the Ozarks, and found an awesome restaurant for lunch where I was able to get a catfish sandwich. The bridges over the Mississippi and Ohio are insanely narrow and carry transport trucks. And then in Bowling Green we had another amazing meal, then met up with Thad for drinks later:

Last day, we tried going to Mammoth Caves but it was closed. Tried to get in anyways:

It was still beautiful.

Went to Tim Horton`s in Ohio. Tried taking pics of 8 Mile Road in Detroit as we drove through. Stayed at Nana`s place in London that night and had a good visit with her and Aunt Betty.

All in all, a most excellent trip across the country again. More photos are here.