PLACE YOUR BETS LADIES AND GENTS. We're in vegas on saturday with lu and chris for a few days, so i'm taking bets by email between now and saturday. Let me know your game, bet and stake and i'll post the results on here... Good luck!

Back to the blog:

26th September - very very late...

"Do you know the way to San Jose?" sung Dionne Warwick in 1968 or Burt Bacharach in 1967. The answer is "yes, i do know the way to San Jose", since that's exactly where i'm writing from! To be fair, it's just south of san francisco, so you'd have to be a bit of a tool not to know the way...

You may have noticed that I have recovered my position at the top of the blog. Don't worry, it was a peaceful coup that overthrew the previous regime, and normal service will now resume. I'm not saying that jo was any kind of blog dictator (blogtator?), but the public uprising was overwhelming...

So, we left salt lake city yesterday and after 550 miles or so, we arrived in Reno. Despite it being a dull dull drive (no disrepect to duane-lee, she's a pleasure to be in the car with - I can't believe we've been together 24hrs a day for over a month and not had one argument) it went pretty quickly and we got to reno by 6ish...

Reno is best described as "Americana". It's incredibly tacky, full of casinos and tourist tat. In case you didn't know, gambling is only legal in Nevada, Atlantic City and various indian reservations. As such, Nevada only has sizeable towns near the borders - Reno on the road to San Fran and Vegas on the road to LA - other than that there is nothing in Nevada...

So, since we were only in Reno for one night there was only one thing to do... Check out the casinos... Let's just say they were dated! They were clean and tidy, not worn, but were a little 80's. Joey and I hit the blackjack tables in the El Dorado and were a little taken aback when we momentarily thought we'd arrived in silicon valley a little early. We soon realised that it was only one of the "cocktail waitresses" with their excessive silicon wares... Despite this setback we soon turned $40 in to $80. Much whooping and high fives all round... Bring on Vegas baby! I was sat next to a couple of hulking great russians who were blind drunk and losing a few bob. Very amusing.

Today we left Reno and went to lake tahoe. An extremely pleasant and tranquil place. Apparently it's one of the highest, coldest, deepest, largest lakes in the world. The wife & I opted for a little paddle and were quick to discover that it's also heavily populated with baby lobsters. They're nippy little things which fortunately don't bite!

After lunch at Lake Tahoe, we started the relatively short (200 miles) drive to San Jose. I say relatively short since we've now chalked up 4,500 miles, and had done over 500 miles on the previous day. Yet, this was the most boring drive we've done so far. I don't know why it is, or what was so wrong, maybe we've just done too much driving, but it was an unbearable journey.

It may have been that it was our induction to california traffic. The roads on this side of the country are solid... The only upside is that they have "car pool" lanes, for any cars with two or more pasengers. The frightening thing is that nobody uses them. At times, there were four or five lanes of solid stationery traffic, with only us using the car pool lane, so we flew along! That reminds me, there was an article in one of the local rags slating Germany for not meeting their kyoto agreement targets. Ironic since they themselves refused to sign up for it!


1st October

First of all HAPPY 30TH BIRTHDAY SIMMO & KINGS. Hope you both have good days!

Secondly, HAPPY 27TH BIRTHDAY RIK for Friday... You've only three years left to take the mickey out of me for being over 30, so you'd better make the most of it...

The fact that i'm bloggin' again can only mean that we're back on the road. A short drive from san jose to monterey, but enough time for me to update y'all on what's been goin' down on the grimy streets of north cali'.

27th - drove into san fran. I think that SF is the kind of place we could live in. It's incredibly busy, like all california appears to be, but it certainly has character. We walked through downtown, chinatown and fishermans wharf, then got one of the famed cablecar/trams back. Chinatown was absoloute madness, whilst fishermans wharf was a bit tacky. Pier 41 is however home to about 100 sea lions! They moved in after the '89 quake and just sit around basking in the sun barking all day. A lifestyle that I think I could cope with... We also saw a jimi hendrix tribute busker who got 10/10 for looking like him but 0/10 for sounding like him. 11/10 for sounding like the cookie monster though...

28th - we cruised down to santa cruz for the day. Apparently santa cruz is so cool that neil young decided to make it his home. We didn't see him. It was however so cool that we could neither sunbathe nor swim. We did however check out the resident sea lions and even spot a rare wild sea otter. The little critter was hilarious. They swim down to collect shell fish, then swim back up and float on their backs while they crack open the shells with their fangs. After a while the sun came out. So did the bronzed beach volleyballers. They were running round like a scene from baywatch in their bikinis and trunks hurling themselves round in the golden sand. If you can't beat them... We bought a volleyball and decided to have a go. After five minutes joey was complaining that her hands hurt, and I was too frightened of getting sand in my eyes so we moved on to sand gymnastics, quickly followed by sand injuries...

29th - back to san fran. The main purpose of this visit was threefold: 1) get out to alcatraz 2) get out to the golden gate bridge 3) see the windy road that's always on TV (lombard street). First up, alcatraz. We arrived at the terminal only to find that the ferries were fully booked up for the following 36 hours. Oh. Not a good start 0/1. Next up, the golden gate bridge. Almost as challenging as alcatraz. $28 for the tourist bus but you only get ten minutes there. No thanks. Public bus $1.50. Wham bam thankyou mam, job done. Quite impressive though absoloutely bloody freezing... 1/2. Finally, windey lombard street. Easier said than done as our bus had dropped us back to the town centre. So a brisk walk ensued, but we arrived there and weren't dissapointed. It's probably the windiest (as in windey turns not windy gusts) residential street in the world... Photo to follow as i'm neither discribing it well nor entertaining you. Anyway, job done and 2/3 goals met. Alright, yeah, woo...

30th - a bit of a doss day. We decided to go to cupertino for the day. It's a san jose suburb in the silicone valley. First of all, it has a "whole foods market" (like an all organic waitrose with awesome sandwiches). Then we went to the local moon festival. The bay area has an enormous chinese population and the moon fesrival is a big deal. It was like a cross between a fayre and a fete. Food, drink, stalls, entertainment etc. Good fun. Finally we went to visit the britannia arms pub. Sounds dodgy right? The reason that we went there is that our good friends Andy pipkin and gaby met there some ten years ago. Andy used to drink in there all the time when he lived here, and so we went in there and met a couple of his old mates! They told us stories that unfortunately we can't repeat here...

So that pretty much brings us up to date.

Later that day...

Well, we are now in monterey. This afternoon we browsed "cannery row" (named after the steinbeck book as opposed to vice versa) and spent a couple of hours at the awesome aquarium... They have a baby great white there. They had previously had an adult one but it had to be removed as it kept eating the other exhibits!!! Dinner was proper mexican (proper cheap too). Muy bien, muy bien...

Matt's Ramblings.

#1
TV - there are two types of tv here. Trash tv and non trash tv. Trash tv is phenomenonal. Jerry springer and a million other chat shows that make the british equivalents seem as rubbish as they actually are. There was one lady the other day who wanted to confront her childhood tormentors who had named her "poop-mouth"!!! Perhaps the funniest thing i've ever ever seen. Then, thanks to "Airport" docu-soap-drama-tat, joey and I have learnt some new language - C.O.S. Any guesses? It means "customer of size" and is used to describe a customer who requires two seats due to their girth. They had one guy who'd just had his car stolen and then his flight delayed, only to be told he had to buy a second ticket. They interviewed him after whilst he was getting a 'snack' - the equivalent of four mcdonalds meals and a gallon of coke. He couldn't understand why they were persecuting him. It was tough to refrain from leakages. Sadly joey wasn't so lucky...

As for non-trash tv, if it's not sport (which 50% is) it's some pro-bush 'news' crap. Back to jerry springer...

#2
Next up is another new word "boodydo". We were taught this by the guy we met from louisiana. It's suitable for males and females like C.O.S. In his drawl he described it as "when tha gut sticks out more than tha boody do"...

#3
We went to a krispy kreme donut factory attached to a shop. Wow! If you arrive when they're baking you get a free hot one right off the rack. I tried to keep leaving the shop and coming back in to get more, but mrs H put a stop to that saying i'd become a C.O.S. in no time...

#4
Whilst in san fran I challenged joey to see how long she could last without talking (i think she was moaning about the cold at the time). The result? 40 seconds... Very poor. Anyway it reminded me of the challenge that lou nichols and I discussed. A well known one where you take one imodium and one laxative tablet and see which one wins... Whilst i'm not yet willing to waste a day on that just yet, I am open to other challenges. Preferably ones with a financial incentive. Ideas to the usual address and i'll see what I can do...

That's all from me from now. I'll let the boss muse a while...

Joey's musings....
Well, we are now in Steinbeck country.....the home of John Steinbeck it certainly is a nice part of the world, if a bit touristy! Matt, the literary genious that he is, claims to have read several of the novels and as I have read none, I can't really argue when he tells me that Crispy Crème Donuts was where "Of Mice and Men" was set so he really needs to go in for atmospheric purposes! Love to you all - jo xx
P.S Gaby - Cupertino was a lovely town indeed, nice park too....
P.P.S off to back bay now, near San Louis Obispo
P.P.S photos to follow - bit tricky at the moment as we need to find a P.C with a memory card compatible part !