Eugene, San Francisco, LA, Hollywood, Las Vegas, Area 51, The Hoover Dam, Grand Canyon, Meteor Crater, VLA and now heading for Texas.....

Well well Mr Epic Post Demon.... we meet again......

This blogging malarkey has a habit of catching up on you eh? That post title is pretty daunting to think about as I sit here with a blank page :( Might as well get on with it then!

The drive from Salem to Eugene was pretty uneventful and we managed to find a decent motel near the centre of the town. Although it was a college town the students didn't go back for another 2 weeks so the place was pretty quiet. We decided after a quick shower and go for a beer and a few games of pool and before we knew it found ourselves in "Jamiesons". After some beer and pool we got talking to some folks and just enjoyed the night.

After a hazy breakfast we hit the road...

Again the drive was pretty standard.. actually wait, I just remembered we got pulled by the cops on that night! Basically stu was doing 73 in a 55 :) The guy was nice enough to let us off though :)

Scottish Accent 2 - American Cops 0

So anyway, we got into San Francisco close to midnight and actually made our entrance heading south across the Golden Gate bridge, quite an entrance! We quickly found a street packed full of hotels and motels, all of which were full… We eventually found a dodgy little motel and got settled for the night. The next morning, by way of unanimous decision, we decided to head a little out of town and try and find a nicer hotel for the same price. Our magical GPS told us there was an Econo Lodge somewhere in Belmont (Around 20 miles south of the San Fran CBD). Our GPS however was telling porkies, not an Econo Lodge* in sight.

*Econo Lodge - Cheap, clean, comfortable, home away from home style hotel that has been our accommodation mainstay since getting the car.

Back to San Francisco…

We ended up staying at a motel in Belmont for a few days and spent our time round about the main bay area taking in the signs and trying to get a feel for the city. On the first day we parked the car next to one of the peers and took a wander around.

We desperately wanted to get to Alcatraz so we set about getting tickets for that. As expected they were sold out that day but we managed to get tickets for a ferry across the following day!

With the rest of our day we went back to where we’d parked the car and went on a WWII submarine that was docked for display. Pretty cramped conditions down there!

Not a Submarine

A submarine

We decided that night to go out and have a few well deserved pints seeing as we’d been on the road for the last 3 or 4 days solid. After a bit of driving around we found some free parking near a busy Irish bar and started there. After a few beers we got talking to a lady known only to us as Wanda and then the fun began…. She was in “The Business” and lived in LA however was in San Francisco visiting friends. She’d had a few herself and took great pleasure in telling us how cruel life really was down in LA and how lucky we were that we were all young and beautiful… After maybe an hour she insisted we go to the Balboa Café as it was “the hottest bar in Cisco”. Having being in the city barely a day we had no idea where this was so she wanted to share a cab down. This wasn’t really an option as we had the car and stu was the designated driver so she insisted she come along and show us the way.

First night in San Francisco and we’re driving around with a strange women in the front seat who proceeds to blast the radio when “Heroes” by David Bowie comes on. Not only does she turn it up full blast, she opens all the windows and starts belting it out full force…At this point I cant help but hear that parental voice full of wisdom chiming away “Don’t talk to strangers!”.

Mum, Dad…. I get it now.

We got to the bar and to be fair it was actually pretty fun. Reminded me a lot of the bars in the West End of Glasgow. We spent a while in there and as usual the accent attracted some questions. After an hour or so we decided to move further down the street to another place to play some pool. And so beers were drunk, pool was played and hot dogs were eaten as the night became day.

The next day was Alcatraz! Woohoo! After another hazy breakfast we headed down to pier 33 and got on the ferry for the 7 minute ride out to the island.

Theres a lot of History behind Alcatraz from its inception as a military fort to its later use as a federal prison however I’ll leave that for the people who are interested to discover on their own.

We wandered around the various installations on the island for maybe an hour or so and then headed to the main cell block where we took the audio tour. It was narrated by ex guards and cons and gave a really eerie experience of what it would have been like to live/work in there. The graphic descriptions of the various breakout attempts were fantastic also.

The Power Station

The recreational yard

The Isolation Cells

These marks are from grenade explosions. The grenades were dropped from the roof during a siege in which 6 prison officials were killed.

The Kitchen

Freedom!

Inside the recreation yard

I also managed to spill some blood in the island!

After another wander around we headed back to the dock and got the ferry back to the city.

Sea Lions!

We grabbed some dinner and headed to the Golden Gate Bridge. It was pretty windy but we decided to walk across it and managed to time it perfectly to see a massive cargo tanker pass beneath us. We took the car across it later and up to the Marin headlands where we got some okish pictures thanks to the clouds.

Make the call.....

And that’s pretty much what we did in San Francisco! Upon leaving we went up to the Marin headlands again to get some better pictures as the weather was better but from there we headed south to LA for some more Misadventures…..

The Pacific

An unfinished cannon housing they built during the cold war

LA then? In a nutshell - Utter mince.

We stayed in Hollywood itself and took a drive around Beverly Hills and to be honest that’s all we felt like doing. The place felt kinda cheap and tacky as we’d expected but still it was nice to have seen it. On the day we left we headed round to Malibu to check out the beach and while it was a nice beach and a nice area we were still glad to be leaving.

Next was Las Vegas! Im pretty tired though so Im going to finish that story another day. Right now we're in eastern New Mexico having visited the VLA today which was great. Heading to Texas 2moro so hopefully tomorrow night (If I can be bothered) i'll get the rest of our trip so far typed and posted.

Epic post #2

Ok so since that vancouver post I've actually written a reasonably lenghty blog about Vancouver and I think seattle however since writing it maybe a week ago I haven't had a chance to upload it or to write about any of the other strange happenings.... untill now....

So bear with me as I take another 2 hours to tell the tale from Vancouver to Seattle to San Francisco (Via a west coast college town called Eugene courtesy of the first assisstant to the Govener of Oregan) to LA and all in between..

Here we go....

Vacouver Pictures/ Mogwai story

So we spent the first day driving up to Whistler which was pretty nice. Heres some pictures from the drive up, Whistler Village and some of the surrounding scenery.

Derek, the server of beer and giver of knowledge...

Death on the road...

After getting into the city we pretty much crashed for the night. The next afternoon we managed to get out of bed and take a walk around. Stopped in China town for a coffee then accidentally walked through Gastown which was a bit dodgy with folk taking drugs in the streets and a general feel of depravation around. Once back into the city proper we decided we were going to head towards the comedy club we'd thought about going to the night before but it wouldn't be open for a little while so we decided to stop in at a bar on the way.

We stopped in at an Irish bar and sat down for a nice cold Guiness. Iain got chatting to the guy on his left who looked at little familiar. He was out visiting his brother and his band were playing in a club down the street and after asking the band name I felt slightly embarressed :D

Turns out it was Dominic Aitchison, the Bassist and founding member from Mogwai! Gutted.

Legend

Anyway we sat and talked about the usual nonsense you do with strangers which we like to believe was a welcome break from adoring fans and the like ;) He was nice enough to put us on the guest list and so after grabbing a bite to eat in a restaurant that just happened to be showing UFC 88 we headed to the commodore to catch the gig!


Unfortunately we could only stay for about half the gig as the car was parked in a dodgy carpark about a mile away and we could only leave it there till 11:45 but it was still a good show. Iain and Stu had never heard them before so it a good introduction. A band I'll definately pick up when I go home.

The next day we went up to the Capilano Suspension Bridge (built buy a Scot no less!) just outside Vancouver.

**Ok, so the story now picks up in a dodgy little motel about 50 miles north of LA. Basically since that I last wrote that stuff We've seen the following (I'd normally take time to add some pictures and try and give you an idea of how things went and how we felt but right now Im knackered and when I go to bed im going to sleep till 10:55am and leave this place at 11 so Im afraid it migth be a little more brief than expected...)...

Seattle:

Ok, Seattle was actually really nice for a city. Right on the coast so the temperature was much more like home again! As I cast my mind back through the haze thats been the past week I seem to remember we took an underground tour around a few blocks of the city and got a general idea as to how the city came to be and where it actually made its money (please note this will be a crudely brief description and for those who have been before or know the history I do aplogise.. I'd throughly reccommend reading up on its actual history however as we found it pretty entertaining.)

Basically as people were going north into Canada in the search for gold they needed a place not far from there to assemble their parties and set up equipment and thus the city expanded.... They were all about making money and not spending it so they did really clever things like reclaiming land from the sea with sawdust and then building ontop of this slushy mixture, smart guys eh? The place was also full of conmen trying to make some money of those crazy people stopping on their way to Canada to find gold and alot of them succedded! Around 87% of the cities actual revenue came from ladies of the night who they government aloud to operate in a few parlour houses under the pretense they were seamstresses, good way to make some tasty tax dollars eh?

So yeah, Seattle was a really nice city made and ran by conmen and prostitues but I kid you not when I say it did have a really nice feel to it. I didn't take my camera out those days as I was pretty sick of picture taking however I had masterminded a scheme to take several pictures form the TV series "Frasier" and photoshop our heads into the background. Had I not taken so long get round to doing it I'd have had pictures ready to add in and In my mind it would have been rather humerous! It is however a dream gone wrong..... I'll see if any of the boys have good pictures and maybe stick them up at some point.


From there we drove down through Oregan towards San Francisco. This was a rather bizarre epidose of the trip for quite a few reasons. As we were driving down I had a look at the map and seen that between Seattle and our halfway point to San Francisco lay the town of Salem. In my delerium from our many hours of travelling I put it to the guys that this was perhaps the place of the infamous "Salem witch trials". Now for all of you who know anything about the Salem witch trials, what can I say? I was really tired... For those of you who dont i'll get around to why its funny later on. So we stopped in at Salem and had a look around, driving around the streets and taking in the nice smalltown feel. After a while I spotted a really grand looking building with a golden statue ontop so we decided to go and check it out.



Once at the front door it was clear that it was a Goverment building of some sort so we headed inside to check it out. After standing in this grand entrance hall comeplete with fresco's a gentlemen approached us and asked us where we were from. After telling him we were visiting from Scotland and without so much as a by your leave he insisted we follow him around on a personal tour of the place. Turns out it was the State Capital building of Oregan (Basically their equivilent of our Scottish parliment). We were shown the two main chambers where their lords and commons would sit and then the Governers office, which had recently suffered incredible fire damage. After some time touring these grand rooms and getting to sit in the Main Speakers chair and bang his gavel (crazy i know...) we were shown to the new wing where a few people were actually working. We got talking to a women there who eventually asked with a puzzled look "So what brings you guys to Salem?"

Me and stu, who'd been waxing lyrical about the Witch trials, looked to Iain to voice our thougths who in true Iain style called it like he saw it.

"We hear you burn witches here!"

Im not sure if it was the puzzled look on our hosts faces or if perhaps the crushing weight of our stupidity that gave me that sinking feeling however that moment of realisation will stay with me to my grave...

"Witches? Your thinking of Salem Massachusetts.......*awkward silence*"

So Yes... we're idiots.....

Im pretty tired now so Im going to update the San francisco stuff (pictures and all) hopefully tomorrow night.

Until then folks.

Vancouver

Its incredible.

We've been here a few days now and in that time we've made a trip up to the Whistler/Blackcomb mountains, took a walk round the city accidentally including Gastown which is like the gorbals/shettleston/easterhouse/tollcross all mixed into one, Met Dominic from Mogwai (who kindly put us on the guest list for their gig last night) in an irish bar in the centre of town, had dinner in a fancy restaurant that was showing UFC 88 in which Chuck Liddel got knocked into next week, caught the Mogwai gig and today we're going to check out Stanley park which has a tree thats 30m in circumference and generally just chill in the park!

I've pictures from whistler and all the other places but we're heading out shortly so I'll need to upload them later.

Travelling is the bee's knee's

Ford Mustang Vs BMW M3

We've been in the states now for roughly 7 weeks and in that time theres been some pretty heated exchanges, none however so furiously debated as last night over dinner...

Since coming to America I've started to appreciate muscle cars, in particular the Ford Mustang.


Now for those of you who dont know, this car is about as technologically advanced as a hula hoop. Basically the rear suspension is pretty stoneage and thus while the car looks and sounds incredible it'll handle like a garden shed when it comes to corners.

However.... it looks at sounds like a beast... which is why I want one.

Iain however has his heart set on a BMW M3 which is a superior car speed and handling wise but for me it just doesn't do it. After some lenghty debate in which I as accused of wanting a mustang to impress girls and iain was accused of wanting an M3 to impress boys (which he admitted :O) we decided to put it to the ultimate test.....

THE ASKING QUESTIONS TO RANDOM PEOPLE TEST

DUN DUN DUN....

Currently its Mustang -1 M3 - 0

Another day another ly in.

Thats us now in Canada. We crossed border control about 10pm last night and after some strange looks when we said we were staying in Vancouver for a few days then driving down the west coast of the states, then east through Texas, dropping the car in Kansas then somehow getting to NYC.

We're currently in a roadside econo lodge style place in Chilliwack, 50 miles or so east of Vancouver. The plan today (If Iain ever surfaces) is to get a hostel right in the centre of Vancouver for the next few nights and spend a few days taking in the sights. From there drive back south to seattle and a few other places down the coast before taking a jaunt east to Las Vegas where we'll pass the Grand Canyon and Meteor Crator amongs other things.

So far its been a great success! No real hiccups to speak of. I did take some pictures of the journey from Boise to here but there on my camera in the car and Its cold enough outside that I dont want to go unless I have to, which for anyone who knows me is a rare occurance :)

My farmers tan is coming along nicely. My face, neck and forearms are a nice brown colour however my legs and shoulders are still fairly translucent.

Thats Iain starting to stir now so we should be away within a few hours...

I'll write more once we get to Vancouver, If we get there that is :)