Shaun and Sarah's American Adventure

Good morning all, on this Monday morning here in Australia. I'm sitting in front of my desktop computer at my home in Avondale Heights, a suburb of Melbourne, freezing as I try to re-adjust to the Aussie winter, and feeling normal again after my body has re-adjusted to its timezone!! It's taken me a couple of days to get the chance to sit down and write this, as we've been busy with seeing relatives on both sides of our family and just re-adjusting back to normal conditions, but I thought I'd better give this a sense of closure, not to mention wrap up our last day in America.

Thursday 25th June 2009 is a day that will be remembered by a lot of people for a very long time. It started innocently enough for us - we awoke at the Wilshire Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles and had breakfast, before I took my final drive in the Nissan Altima, taking it down to 7th and Western in Los Angeles to fill the car with petrol before returning it, then dropping the car back at the Budget Rent-A-Car office at 3600 Wilshire Boulevard, pulling into the car park and remembering the difficulties I had driving out of that same car park almost four weeks earlier!! After returning the car, then walking to the office section and returning the GPS, I walked back to the hotel, marvelling at how the walk seemed so much shorter than it did back on May 31st. Total figures for the trip - 7913 miles drive, with a total of just over $730 spent on petrol.

Sarah made sure that our bags were packed and ready to go whilst I was returning to the car, so on my return to the Wilshire Plaza Hotel, we went downstairs and checked out of the hotel, leaving our luggage with the hotel and booking a service to LAX to leave the Wilshire Plaza at 6:30pm that night. With that done, and the time just after 10am, we headed for the Wilshire/Normandie subway station across the road, and headed for Hollywood.

Our plan was to go on a double-decker Hollywood tour, but this time we didn't book anything, thinking that it would be relatively easy to find a tour bus once in Hollywood. We had to travel one stop towards downtown LA on the subway, and then link up with the Metro Red Line, Los Angeles's train line leading to Hollywood. We hopped off the train at Hollywood/Vine station, thinking that if there's anywhere to be in the thick of things, it would be at the two roads where the Hollywood Walk of Fame intersected. Upon arising to street level, we saw a double-decker tour bus parked across the road, and quickly crossed over to check it out. The bus was sitting in front of the Hollywood Sightseeing office, and in talking to the proprietor, he sold us on the tour that was set to leave at 12:15pm that day, and also threw in a free tour to the Hollywood sign - enough to have me quickly reaching into the wallet to obtain currency!! We had about twenty minutes until the tour to the Hollywood sign left, so we spent a few minutes walking down Hollywood Boulevard and checking out some of the stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame before climbing into the back of what was an elongated ute with twelve other sightseers in open air seating, and headed out to the famous Hollywood sign.

It had started as a bit of a sombre day in Hollywood, with the passing of Farrah Fawcett that morning after a long battle with cancer, and there was more delays as a whole section of Hollywood Boulevard was closed to traffic, as they were setting up for the premiere of the new Sasha Baron Cohen (think Ali G or Borat) movie Bruno in front of Grumman's Chinese Theatre, with bleachers and a red (actually, it was black) carpet set up. Whilst on the way to the Hollywood Sign, we passed by Farrah Fawcett's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and saw a lot of people in the area paying their last respects. The ute then wound it's way up the Hollywood Hills and into the Hollywoodland housing area - the housing area set up in the mid-20's that spawned the now-famous Hollywood sign - it initially read "Hollywoodland" and was an advertisement for the housing estate, but long after houses had stopped being sold by the Hollywoodland company, the "land" part of the sign was removed and the "Hollywood" part left to become the iconic figure it is today.

We didn't actually go to the sign itself - people aren't allowed to get near the sign any more without special permits and the like, but we were transported to a look-out area in the Hollywood Hills that was billed as the best spot to take photos of, and with, the sign (we got a pretty good photo of both Sarah and I with the Hollywood sign, but I haven't been able to load it onto the computer to show you, as my repairman hasn't had a chance to look at the laptop yet!!). When we arrived, we saw a very expensive-looking white Maserati parked in the area, with cameramen taking a photo of a model who was waving her arms around in various poses on the best vantage point to take photos of people with the Hollywood sign. It turns out that they were shooting a feature for a British travel magazine called Tridente - which got better when they saw us in a sort-of tour bus, pulled the Mercedes next to the bus, and snapped off a host of shots of the twelve of us looking down at the Maserati - with the promise that the photos will be published in the July edition of the magazine (when I volunteered my address to send the royalty cheque to, the photographer laughed and said something about him not receiving any royalties, which I knew was a load of hogswollop!!). So the next month may be spent scouring the Tridente website for evidence of some new-found stardom!!

After all of the photos were taken, we loaded back into the ute and headed back for the Hollywood Sightseeing office to link up with the double-decker tour bus - we were a touch worried when we were still at the Hollywood sign at 12:05pm with the double-decker tour supposed to leave at 12:15pm, but our worries were for naught - the driver of the double-decker tour was on the ute with us!! We wound our way through the Hollywood Hills, looking at all of the expensive multi-storey homes in the area, before arriving back at the Hollywood Sightseeing office just after 12:30pm, to which we transferred straight onto the double-decker bus to commence our main tour of Hollywood.

We started by once again passing by Farrah Fawcett's star on the Walk of Fame, where the official bereavement wreath from the Academy (or Screen Actors Guild - I can't quite remember which one) was being laid at the moment that we passed by very slowly on the bus. The TV cameras soon spotted us, and they stuck a camera directly at me whilst I gave them my very best two-fingered "peace" salute, which would have featured in the LA news that night - at the time, we thought it would have been the lead story. The bus took us around all of Hollywood's major sites, pointing out the places "where the stars eat", which seemed like every restaurant that we passed - some pointed out because some obscure TV star may have eaten their once some ten years ago (the little cafe that we had lunch in later in the day trumpeted the fact that part of the movie "Million Dollar Baby" starring Hilary Swank was filmed there, and the cafe was nothing to write home about, I can assure you). As we passed the Capitol Records building, the intersection of Hollywood and Vine, and ducked around to avoid the road closure for the Bruno premiere, we saw what looked to be fire trucks, but were in fact red ambulances, speeding away from us with their lights flashing - which got a "oooh, something must be happening somewhere" from our tour guide. The tour was pretty good, although I got sick of the number of places "where the stars ate", taking in some of Hollywood's most famous sites - I had to restrain Sarah from jumping out of the bus with the credit card in tow as we travelled into Beverley Hills and down Rodeo Drive, the most expensive shopping area in the USA (right up there above New York's Fifth Avenue). As we travelled past the La Brea Tar Pits, where dinosaurs perished millions of years ago and where a fossil of a wooly mammoth was discovered only recently when a car park was being built at the back of the property adjacent to the Tar Pits, one of the members of our touring party received a call from his girlfriend, and he realyed the news to us minutes later that some internet sites were reporting that Michael Jackson had just passed away due to a cardiac arrest. The news was met with disbelief amongst the touring party, especially seeing as the news was only just getting out, and mixed reports were being given - the tour guide received a phone call to say that Jackson had been transferred to the UCLA Medical Centre in nearby Westwood for a liver transplant, and when we crossed by the CNN studios, where flagship American talk show Larry King Live is filmed, moments after, the TV screens outside the complex said that Jackson had been hospitalised, but was apparently unconscious when the same red ambulances that we saw speeding by us had picked him up at his rented home in LA. The rest of the tour, as we weaved our way through Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, the Miracle Mile shops on Wilshire Boulevard and Melrose Avenue (which spawned the 90's TV series Melrose Place), went in a bit of a blur (and Sarah's camera had run out of battery just before we entered Beverley Hills) as we were trying to comprehend the Michael Jackson situation. We drove by Jackson's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Vine Avenue not long before the tour ended, which had really no-one around it, and just as the bus pulled over back at the Hollywood Sightseeing office, our tour guide received a phone call with the official word that Michael Jackson had died at the age of 50 from a cardiac arrest. As soon as we hopped off the bus, we walked the short distance back to Jackson's Walk of Fame star on Vine, where the TV news trucks had started to gather, and a small crowd had built, with a circle of about five guys in their early 20's sitting around the star. We stayed for a few minutes as the word started to get around and the news sunk in, and just as the first candles were being placed on the star, we took our leave, and headed back up to Hollywood Boulevard, where we walked around for about an hour looking at the stars on the Walk of Fame as Jackson's music played out of almost every shop, and after having a quick, and late, lunch, we made our way back to Hollywood/Vine station to head back to the Wilshire Plaza Hotel to pick up our luggage and await our transfer to the LA Airport.

We arrived back at the Hotel just before 6pm, collected our luggage from the hotel's concierge, and waited in the foyer for our ride - which was a black town car run by a service preferred by the Wilshire Plaza Hotel, and carrying a $55 flat rate - about the same as a taxi. It sounds dear, and a much more cost-effective way would have been to simply take the subway out to LAX (the LAX Fly-Away buses had ceased operation for the day), but it would have involved lugging our luggage, which had grown by an extra bag as mentioned on our previous blog post, on the subway through three or four interchanges, and we couldn't be stuffed with that!! The car arrived just before 6:30pm - our flight wasn't scheduled to leave until 11:45pm, but we wanted to get there early to make sure that we had plenty of time to locate the right terminal, check in, make sure we were in the right spot and then update the blog - and had us at LAX just before 7:30pm. We were able to check-in for our flight straight away at a pretty deserted Terminal 4, and our boarding passes were issued for both the LA/Auckland and the Auckland/Melbourne legs of our flight. Our luggage was weighed and tagged - whilst our suitcases had both added about six kilograms each, and the extra bag was another ten kilograms, we were still way under our baggage allowance of two bags each at 32kg (70 lbs) per piece!! What was different though, was the the check-in desk didn't take care of our luggage - they booked it directly through to Melbourne for us, meaning that we wouldn't have to worry about it at Auckland - but we had to take it ourselves up to the TSA screening point further along the terminal, where it was then loaded onto a conveyor and disappeared into the depths of the airport, to be seen again when we arrived in Melbourne.

It was then time to pass through the Customs screening point, where not only did we have to pass our carry-on luggage, which included the laptop having to be taken out of its bag, through the X-ray machine, but I also had to remove my hooded jacket and shoes and pass them through as well!!!! All was good though - nothing beeped at me either when I walked through the scanner or when the bags passed through the machine, and it was onto the departure lounge, where we discovered that there was very little in the way of services aside from three shops selling LA souvenirs - there was a book shop/newsagent, a Burger King, a Chili's and a Starbucks coffee, and that was it. There wasn't even any internet-enabled computers, pay or not, anywhere to be located - the reason that our promised post at the airport didn't eventuate. The wait for boarding didn't seem like it was anywhere near the actual time that it took, and we boarded the plane just before 11:15pm, thinking that we might actually get a delay-free service.

I thought wrong. The plane didn't end up taking off until just before 1:00am Friday morning, a good hour after the scheduled departure time, as some bright-spark engineer over-filled the main fuel tank, throwing the balance of the plane out of whack. The excess fuel had to be transferred to another fuel tank, and the cargo then re-arranged to distribute the weight of the plane evenly, and whilst it was the sensible thing to do, it was annoying to have to wait late at night, with our eyes hanging out of our heads, because a trained and qualified engineer couldn't do his job properly.

We eventually got airborne though, and the Qantas staff wasted no time in bringing out supper - with Sarah again being served first, a good 25 minutes before I did - so that we could wolf it down and get some shut-eye. Sleeping on the plane was much easier this time around, likely because the excitement factor of the trip up wasn't there, and also because we had done it before, and we got a good six or so hours sleep, waking to look at the destination map and see only six hours remaining in our journey. I then watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button on the in-flight entertainment system, which took about two-and-a-half hours, before looking again at the destination map when the movie had finished and saw that we had only an hour-and-a-half before we reached our destination. I wondered if my calculations were out or if I had fallen asleep again when I saw that the highlighted city on the map wasn't Auckland, but the Fijian city of Nadi. Eventually, other people started to look at the destination map and think that something was up as well, and the captain soon came over the public address system to tell us that there would be another delay - early-morning fog had set in pretty thickly over the New Zealand cities of Auckland and Christchurch, so we would have to land at Nadi, re-fuel and wait until the fog had lifted. We were at Nadi for right on an hour, and we weren't able to leave the plane during the stop-over, so by the time we took off again for the two-hour trip to Auckland, we were pretty keen to get the flight over with!!

The one positive that the delays gave us was that it cut down our waiting time in Auckland - instead of a five-hour lay-over, we were looking at only about ninety minutes instead. We landed in Auckland, cleared the screening point at the International Transfers station, and then waited for about an hour before we could descend to the departure gate. In that time, I took $50 out of an ATM to find that New Zealand money is of the same plastic-y consistency of Australian cash, and bought a drink and a sausage roll that tasted like it had been sitting in the bain marie for a week, and gained $40-odd dollars change. I kept a $20 note and Sarah took the rest as souvenirs to say that we had been in New Zealand, and it also meant that I had three different countries' $20 notes in my wallet, an Aussie one (which had been there all trip), a Kiwi one and a US one!!

Our flight was supposed to leave New Zealand at 1:00pm local time - it was now Saturday 27th June - and arrive in Melbourne just after 3:00pm local time, with Melbourne time being two hours behind Auckland time, meaning four hours of flying time. The plane, which was a lot smaller than our LA/Auckland plane - it was the size of a domestic Australian plane - actually left closer to 1:30pm - we boarded late, and then had to wait on the tarmac for other planes to take off at their scheduled times before we could up and leave. We got going just after 1:30pm as it was, and they again wasted no time in bringing the food out - Qantas must think that if they feed people quickly after a delay, they'll forget all about the delay!! They were pretty good with it - the food cart came around, then the drinks (Bundy Rum and Coke - you beauty!!), and then the ice-creams, which took up a good two hours of flying time. By the time I caught a bit of shut-eye, read a book and knocked off a few puzzles from the That's Life Crack A Code book that you'll remember from one of the very first posts, that was bought with the $15 allowance that Qantas gave us as compensation for our initial flight being late, we were ready to descend into Melbourne, and back home.

In arriving at Melbourne, it took almost no time at all to clear Customs, thanks to the SmartGate passport control process that Australian airports have introduced. Instead of having to line up to speak with a Customs officer, instead you put your passport (if you have an e-Passport) into a little machine face-down on the picture page, it asks you a few questions, then spits out a ticket. You take the ticket to the second SmartGate gate, insert it into the machine, stare at a camera where it verifies that your face matches the digital image recorded on the passport, and you are away. Took me three minutes - it took Sarah a little longer though, as the machine didn't recognise her face, so she had to go through the manual gate. The main delay was waiting for our luggage to come off the plane. Sarah's suitcase and the brown duffle bag were on the first lot of luggage unloaded, and my suitcase was one of the first bags down the chute on the second unload, so we gathered them, headed for the baggage screening point (where we were seperated, as Sarah had to declare a packet of Milk Duds that she had brought back to Oz for her friend Natalie), had my luggage screened and passed, and walked out into the Arrivals terminal, where both Sarah's Mum, Trish, and her cousin Ingrid were waiting for us - Sarah emerging a minute or so after me.

And so, Shaun and Sarah's American Adventure has ended. Thank you so much to everyone for keeping track of our little holiday - it astounded us to check the site stats every so often and see how many people were reading this. Unfortunately, after a couple of days of getting our bearings, it's back to the real world tomorrow - work starts again on Tuesday, and I'm commentating the EJ Whitten Legend's Game - a charity Australian Rules Football match - tomorrow night at Etihad Stadium for Melbourne radio station 3WBC (check it out on-line from 8:30pm Melbourne time on Tuesday June 30th - would make it 10:30am US Eastern Time on Wednesday July 1). Thanks in particular to the Red Sox crew who kept checking out the blog and adding their comments along the way - plans are already in place for a return next season at around the same time, but with my brother for a baseball holiday!! And so ends this little blog - it's been a pleasure writing it for you, and I hope that it gave you a good insight into our travels, and provided any future US travellers (or Americans coming to Oz) with a few tips and hints for their trip. I'm going to end this blog in what some will consider a very familiar fashion - with the same ending that I used to use for a weekly column that I wrote on the Eastern Football League website. So, for the final time on our holiday, you can stick a fork in me, as I am done.

Good evening folks, from an internet cafe across the road from the Wilshire Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, California. I'm in the internet cafe adjacent to a Carl's Jr. hamburger restaurant, looking at the Wilshire Plaza Hotel, our resting place for this evening, out the window. Our road trip has come to an end, folks, as we have come full circle in our journey, and are back in Los Angeles for our final sleep before departing the United States of America.

But first, a recap. We left you last night reasonably early, with the birthday girl's maiden blog entry rounding out the night for you. Not so for us though. After Sarah had finished her part of the blog and I posted it, she quickly went onto Google to search for session times for the movie "The Proposal", a chick flick featuring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. Not my first movie preference, I would like to add, but given that yesterday was Sarah's day, I begrudingly accepted her request!! As luck would have it, the AMC movie theatre was only a block down the road from our hotel in San Francisco, so we took the nice walk, hoping to catch the 9:00pm session so that we could have dinner (at a Denny's that we passed on the way) beforehand. Unfortunately (or was it fortunately??) the 9:00pm showing had already sold out, so we settled on the 8:00pm showing - given that we arrived at the theatre at about 7:25pm, it put dinner on the back-burner.

Going to the movies in America is very similar to doing the same in Australia - the only real difference is that Americans can, and do, bring hot food into the theatre, with the concession stand (or snack bar, Aussies) selling hot dogs, pizza, pretzels and all sorts of other no-good-for-you treats. We skipped the food part of it and settled in to watch the movie - a typical chick flick that I actually somewhat enjoyed, until the final credits started rolling and there was the now-obligatory after-movie action - although I didn't see it thanks to a young lady who started to leave when the credits started rolling, but stopped to watch the after-movie stuff - WHILST STANDING UP. A few people motioned to her to sit down, but she was having none of it, and stood all the way through the final action, ruining the experience for me a little bit. This was exacerbated when we walked out of the theatre and crossed the road at the traffic lights, with the "walk" indicator smiling brightly at us when we stepped off the sidewalk. It soon changed to a flashing red hand, with a countdown in seconds of how long you have to finish your crossing. We were about half-way through, with ten seconds left to cross, so we picked up the pace a little, only to have a bus start tooting at the car at the intersection waiting for us to cross, and gesticulating at us as if we were doing the wrong thing. This is what annoys me about this country - the United States is a wonderful place to visit, and the people in the majority are courteous and accommodating, but there's an element of the American society that are rude, pushy and downright ignorant. I suppose it's the same anywhere in the world, but it seems here as if it is almost done on purpose, as if the person in question feels it's their right to do whatever they want, whenever they want, and it can grate on the nerves, I tell you.

In the end, we gave dinner a miss last night, as neither of us were really hungry - the Eating Machine had blown a gasket for the night, and instead we returned to the Pickwick Hotel and went to bed, knowing that our final big driving day was ahead of us.

The alarm went off at 6:00am this morning, and anyone who knows Sarah knows of her abhorrence at waking before 9:00am on days when she doesn't have to work, so the alarm on my phone, playing "This Ain't A Scene" by Fallout Boy, was met with various moans and groans, and when I was still trying to wake her twenty minutes later, a fearful version of "The Look" was unleashed that had me scurrying to the shower!! I eventually raised Sarah - although she wasn't anywhere near fully awake, and her eating of eggs and bacon at breakfast looked very much like it was done on auto-pilot. We were finished with breakfast, packed up and checked out of the Pickwick Hotel just after 7:00am, with the GPS set to take us to Los Angeles via Highway 1 and the famed coastal route - a predicted nine hour journey, as opposed to a five-hour trip down I-5!!

But the drive was worth it - from five minutes after leaving downtown San Francisco when we turned onto Highway 1, until just after 2:00pm when Highway 1 merged with US Highway 101 and morphed into a freeway, I was completely at home on the road, with the Pacific Ocean as my companion. Having grown up with the ocean literally a stone's throw away, it makes me feel at ease when I can see the water, and we ran right alongside the Pacific today - in some stages feeling that a slight steering adjustment to the right would send us careering into the greenish-blue waters. On the other side, for the most part, were mountains - windy, bendy, challenging stretches of road not dissimilar to our trek through the Yosemite National Park and Sierra Nevada mountain range when driving to San Francisco on Monday, and the reason that the trip took longer than the run down the interstate. Sarah was snapping away happily with her camera for the journey down, and although I haven't seen the actual photos yet, if the scenery she was photographing was any indication, we should have another set of outstanding photos to show everyone on our return to Australia on the weekend.

By 3:00pm, we had finished with our coastal run, and were making our way towards the metropolis of Los Angeles, with the fact that we still had shopping bags full of stuff in the boot of our car with no big bag to bring them back to Australia. I had the bright idea of, rather than trawling around Los Angeles - where trends had indicated that the downtown shopping areas of large cities tend to be more of a department store scene - for instance, Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy's and Bloomingdale's as the majors (think Myer and David Jones, Aussies), whereas the suburban areas tended to feature Wal-Mart's and Target's - cheaper department stores - to stop at one of these suburban shopping malls to pick up a cheap suitcase to bring everything home in. My prayers were answered as we entered the city limits of Cammarillo, about 50 miles out of Los Angeles, and we passed a mall with a Target, right next to a freeway exit. We nicked into Target and picked out a duffle bag - there were suitcases in our price range, but they were sets of three, and I didn't want a family of suitcases invading our trip - and went and emptied out the car, packing everything as close as possible into the bags they will be travelling back to Australia in. It was a tight squeeze, even with the extra bag, and whilst there's still a little shuffling that has to be done, most everything is packed, and the car is clean (anyone who has seen my car back in Australia knows that it tends to maintain a "lived-in" look almost year-round, and the Nissan Altima wasn't all that different!!). We then drove the 50 miles into Los Angeles without too much complaint, although we entered after 5pm, therefore copping peak-hour traffic, but the pilot was much more confident in driving through Los Angeles this time around, and we made it to the Wilshire Plaza Hotel perfectly safe and sound.

The Wilshire Plaza Hotel is at 3515 Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles - remarkably, almost the identical address at which we emerged from the LA Metro system, having come from Los Angeles Airport on the FlyAway bus, back on Sunday May 31st in our first hours on American soil - the entrance to the subway station is right over the road from the hotel (in fact, it's right next to the internet cafe I am writing this from), and the Budget Rent-A-Car office that the Nissan Altima calls home is just two blocks away. All I have to do is find a petrol station, which I saw not far away as we drove in, and fill 'er up, and drop it at Budget in the morning. The road trip is officially over folks - our round-trip journey to LA has seen us cross almost 8000 miles of American roads, and has given us a lifetime of happy memories that we have enjoyed sharing with you on the way. It's almost ironic that the hotel we will stay in for our last sleep in America is right opposite the point where we first started to experience our American Dream - I'm normally not into symbolism, but I feel that this is still a pretty powerful symbol of our trip coming to an end.

But, it hasn't quite ended yet. We still have tomorrow, Thursday 25th June, in which to explore Los Angeles before boarding one of Qantas's finest for the trip back to Melbourne, with a five-and-a-half hour stop-over in Auckland, New Zealand. The plane doesn't leave LA tomorrow night until 11:45pm, which had the potential to leave us with a dilemma - check-out at the Wilshire Plaza is at 12:00pm, and we didn't fancy either being at LAX eleven hours before our flight, or dragging our suitcases with us as we checked out Hollywood. Luckily, the Wilshire Plaza offers a baggage storage facility, where we can leave our bags at the hotel after check-out, to be picked up later in the day. Which will be perfect - we plan on leaving our luggage at the hotel, checking out Hollywood for the day, returning to the hotel at around 6:00pm and making our way to LAX, most likely by taxi (costly, but more convenient than lugging our luggage through the LA nightly commute).

I'll try and post a quick something from LAX tomorrow night to let everyone know that we are at the airport awaiting our flight, which is scheduled to land at Melbourne Airport at 3:30pm on Saturday, June 27th (yep, after the 38 hour day for our first day in America, we skip completely over Friday June 26th on the way home).

And the question that you are undoubtedly asking yourself - why is he in an internet cafe instead of the hotel?? Simple, really, it comes down to economics!! The Wilshire Plaza wanted 49 cents a minute for internet access (which makes San Francisco's five bucks for twenty minutes look like a bargain), whereas I got a three-hour access card here at the internet cafe for ten bucks - the equivalent of twenty minutes of hotel time!! Whilst I won't get through three hours (although over an hour has gone already - we checked out some stuff here before dinner, including seeing the Red Sox win again, this time 6-4 over the Washington Nationals, with Big Papi hitting another home run. He had one on the season when I arrived in America - I go home with Papi having gone deep seven times in the last month - if he goes into another slump, then the Red Sox fans that read this blog need to get the organisation to fly me back over here - I'm Ortiz's lucky charm!!!), it still makes for a cost-effective session.

And so ends what will be our last on-the-road blog of the trip - as mentioned, I'll try and post from the airport tomorrow night, and will wrap things up when we are back on Australian soil (and for the non-Aussies, I'll post some of the pictures from the last couple of days so you don't miss out). It's time for me to cross the road and get some shut-eye - methinks sleep could come at a premium following tomorrow!!! Good night all, and to all a good night!!

Good evening all - yes, despite the clock just turning over to 6:00pm (which means 11:00am Wednesday in Melbourne, and 9:00pm Tuesday in the eastern USA) and the sun still shining brightly in the San Francisco sky, I'm going with good evening, as a lot has been packed into today, Sarah's birthday!! The unwritten rule of "never reveal a lady's age" prevents me from saying how old she turns today - that, and she's sitting next to me watching me write!! Perhaps she may tell you herself later in this blog - yes, Tuesday June 23rd. with only about 53 hours to go in our American Adventure, is the time that one Sarah Jane Lynn is going to make her blog debut!!!!

But before we do (and I revert to the normal teaser rule of saving what everybody wants to see until later in the blog), let's go over a quick (remember - five bucks for twenty minutes, although I brought a prepaid card today which gives me sixty minutes for twelve bucks - bargain!!) recap of the day's activities. Breakfast was on the house today - it was part of our accommodation package here at the Pickwick Hotel, so we ventured into Little Joe's Restaurant in the hotel foyer, and picked any item off the menu. The Ham and Egg Sandwich, with hash browns (not the square hash browns that Aussies think of - this is more like a potato put through a cheese grater then fried, and is quite tasty), was the single greatest breakfast I've eaten in America, and almost put thoughts of white Up bread toasted with Vegemite into the back of my mind!! (I've got a new craving - Aussie sausages, in bread, cooked on the barbie - it must be this summer weather!!). After that, and Sarah's fried eggs, bacon and hash browns were consumerd (well, devoured, the Eating Machine is back with a vengenance having aged another year), we stepped out into San Francisco, headed for a short stroll to where a double-decker bus was waiting to pick us up to give a guided tour of San Francisco.

I'm sure you've all seen the open-air tourist double-decker buses (if you've been to New York or Sydney, you could hardly miss them), which offer the ability to either stay on the bus as it gives you a narrated tour around your specified city, or you can hop off at any number of designated stops?? That's what we took today throughout San Francisco - and it was good. To me, there's not many things to top travelling in an open-air fashion, be it bus, ferry or otherwise, and especially when you get a sunny day that's not too hot (I don't think it would have gotten above 70 degrees today - which is about 22 degress Celsius, as San Francisco never really heats up). It showed us all of the major San Francisco downtown landmarks, but the real highlight of the bus was when it passed through the downtown city boundary, and headed for a red-coloured bridge that looked strikingly familiar!!! Yep, the bus took us to a look-out point where we could see the Golden Gate Bridge, then took us on a ride over the bridge, then back over towards San Francisco. It was pretty awesome to go over it, but this was the one disadvantage of the open-air bus arrangement, as it was bloody windy and cold going over the bridge - so much so that I had to take off my beloved Red Sox baseball cap to stop it being a resident of San Francisco Bay!! The views from the bridge weren't as breathtaking as they could have been, as it was still reasonably early in the morning and the morning fog hadn't yet cleared over the bay, meaning that both downtown San Francisco and Alcatraz weren't at their picturesque best. We disembarked off the bus in San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf district - an area with heaps of shops and eateries, and headed for Pier 39, where we were to meet a connecting shuttle to the next, and major, of our activities for the day. We had some time up our sleeves though, so we wandered around Pier 39 for a while, where the fog had cleared up and we were able to take photos (which, given that I'm on a public computer, can't be uploaded, but will be shown when we get back to Oz on the weekend) of Alcatraz and of San Francisco's sea lion population, which have an area at Pier 39 where they can "beach" themselves on a series of floating pontoons and sun their bodies, or have play-fights, as most seemed to be doing. We even took in lunch at the aptly named Sea Lion Cafe, where we had great views of the sea lions, Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge to accompany us (after one of our "random American" photos for the day, one of our best so far with Alcatraz featuring in the background).

After lunch, and a stop at a souvenir shop (where I couldn't help myself, and bought a Red Sox hoodie), we waited at the taxi rank for Pier 39 for our connecting shuttle to.....the San Francisco SeaPlane. One of Sarah's dreams for today was to take a helicopter ride over San Francisco - well, I went one step better and got the less noisy, better for photos Seaplane to do the honours. We were picked up (or, the "Kelly's" were picked up) and taken, along with an English couple, to the seaplane base in Sausalito, a suburb of San Francisco, which meant a less-windy ride over the Golden Gate Bridge again, and loaded into the plane for what was an awesome 35-minute plane ride (the plane was a seven-seater Fokker Friendship, but there were only five of us in there, so all was good) over San Francisco and it's surrounding areas, allowing us to view, and photograph, San Francisco from up high (and I wish I could show you the photos now, as they are pretty awesome)!! This was another of those activities that we both really enjoyed, as it was a bit of a departure from the normal kind of touristy-thing, and seemed to be over far too quickly for both of our likings.

When we landed and re-entered dry land (the plane takes off on water. so we had to walk along a dock that swayed with the tide a bit), we were shuttled back to Pier 39 at Fisherman's Pier, and jumped back on the hop-on, hop-off bus to our original stop, passing through some pretty interesting San Francisco sites on the way. After a visit to the Westfield shopping centre next door to pick up another part of Sarah's birthday present which was only released today (she'll tell you more about that shortly), as well as looking for another suitcase to bring all of our extra purchases home with us (no luck yet, couldn't find anything under $90, which is far too rude for what we need it for - no matter, the souvenir stores that specialise in 3 for $15 San Francisco t-shirts will look after us), we arrived back here at the Hotel Pickwick, which brings us to this point here. Dinner will be on the cards shortly - not sure where yet, in my role today as "birthday slave", I'm waiting to be told what to do in this regard), then I think Sarah has something else planned, which she is going to research on the Internet shortly.

Before she does though, I'm going to depart the floor for the night and say my goodbyes - I will return tomorrow night from Los Angeles (the plan for tomorrow is to take Highway 1 from San Francisco to Los Angeles - reportedly one of the most beautiful drives in America), as ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, it is my great pleasure to, on the anniversary of her birth, introduce to you for this first time in these blog pages to describe her birthday and her present haul in greater detail...the one, the only, Sarah Jane Lynn...all yours, honey!!

Well did I get spoilt today. Most of my presents i already knew about due to being there when he bought them but there was one in particular that I was no around for and this is a gold necklace with a heart on it with diamentes and 3 coloured stones on it which I adore. The last minute present was a Janet Evanovich novel which was only released today and the 15th in the series.

Off to dinner now (editors note - the Eating Machine grow restless), so goodbye from San Francisco.

Good evening all, from the business centre of The Pickwick Hotel in downtown San Francisco. Given that the laptop is still on the fritz, and a bunch of late-night text messages from my brother Daniel determined that the best course of action would be to leave it lying catatonic until our return to Melbourne on the weekend, I'm sitting here in the darkened business centre (until I find a light switch - ah, there it is!!) paying five bucks for twenty minutes of Internet time so I can keep you up-to-date with what's going on!!!

Going to be a relatively short blog tonight for two reasons - a). today was primarily a driving day, and b). five bucks for twenty minutes - we're in a bloomin' recession here, folks!! We left you last night in Las Vegas, moaning about the lack of go in my laptop and theorising that it could be the end of this humble little blog - which, thankfully, it isn't!! The night ended in rather tame fashion - we were going to catch up with a childhood friend of mine, Allan Barrett and his family who are also holidaying in the US right now (and happened to be in Vegas over the weekend), but Sarah came down with a bit of a tummy upset - which thankfully was cleared up by this morning, a nice long bath helped!! Thought it might have been the BLT with no T (tomato) that was devoured by the Eating Machine last night that could have been spiked, but it was bereft of mayo. butter and all things harmful. By the way - Johnny Rocket's - right up there with In-N-Out Burger as the best burger I've had in the States (and now that we are back in California, look out In-N-Out Burger!!). We also planned today's trip to San Francisco, and enquired about a couple of sightseeing adventures for tomorrow, Sarah's birthday, which we hoped to hear back on.

In inputting the destination address into Google Maps, to get a rough idea of directions and travel times, it came up with two different routes to San Francisco. The shortest was back down I-15, the same way we first came to Vegas all those many weeks ago from San Diego, over the Californian border then off I-15 at Bakersfield to transfer onto I-5, which was projected to take a touch over eight hours. The other way was through northern Nevada towards Reno, then turning off and travelling via Yosemite National Park to San Francisco, which was projected to take eleven hours. Much to my surprise, Sarah chose the longer option, wanting to see Yosemite National Park as driving scenery instead of the billboards, chain motels and fast-food restaurants that dot the usual landscape.

So we were up early this morning, checking out of the Venetian with a lot more bags than we arrived with, thanks to our expedition to the Las Vegas Premium Outlets yesterday, got the car from the valet, found out that valet parking at the Venetian was free, and we left Las Vegas, not having seen a single penny of our money leave our possession by way of gambling, which I'm pretty proud of!!

We set out for San Francisco via Yosemite, hoping that the GPS would show us the right way (I had some written directions scribbled down just in case), but when I added Yosemite as a way point, it lead us a merry dance, via the exact route set out by Google Maps last night. The drive through Nevada was pretty boring, given that we were looking at nothing but desert the entire way through, until just before a little town named Tonopah, when I saw probably the first other car on the road for about half an hour, and it had red and blue flashing lights that started once I passed it, and followed me up the road. Startled, I looked down to see my speedo reading a few miles over the posted speed limit, and thought I could be in trouble. Never fear though!! Once the officer sauntered up to my window, demanding to see my license and car registration, I unloaded with the most polite Ocker I could - and he fell for it!!! We got to talking about footy, and the differences between Australian Rules, gridiron and soccer (I was out of the car by this stage, as he wanted to see my passport in conjunction with my Victorian drivers license, and the passport was in a bag in the boot of the car). It ended with the officer apologising for being an inconvenience, wished us well for our trip, and shook my hand!!! Off scott-free!! Mind you, I did keep a close eye on my speedo from then onwards.

The trip through Nevada went without any more hassle, and we crossed into California at about midday, headed for Yosemite.

Entering Yosemite is much like entering the Grand Canyon - you have to pay a fee per car to enter the park, which in this case was $20. Yosemite, though, is more set-up for hiking and camping rather than sightseeing, although Sarah did get some pretty good photos - I didn't think I'd see snow-covered mountain peaks in a Californian summer!! Where the drive was made longer, though, was not just by the diminished speeds through the eighty-odd miles of road in Yosemite (distance-wise, the Yosemite route and the I-15/1-5 routes to San Fran were almost identical distance-wise), but by the winding hills and valleys after you get out of Yosemite's park limits, then having to deal with the RV's and caravans that are doing nil miles per hour in front of you when you get into the flats! Still, we manuevered all of them successfully, and navigated our way back onto the freeways surrounding San Francisco, then over the Bay Bridge and into the Hotel Pickwick, our home for tonight and tomorrow night!!

That pretty much sums up today - and this time I really have to duck off and get my beauty sleep, as it is a certain young lady's birthday tomorrow - she's claiming a 41-hour birthday, though, as at 7:00am here this morning, it ticked past 12:00am on Tuesday 23rd June in Australia, so it's multiple birthdays for Sarah this year. Being the dutiful boyfriend, I've allowed her control of the itinerary tomorrow (which she has been planning for a couple of weeks now) and have said I will do whatever she wants tomorrow as well. There's also the gifts, which, thanks to prudent bargain hunting, haven't left as big a hole in the pocket as they could have, but I'm hoping will still bring a smile to Sarah's face - I'll let you know tomorrow night!! Until then, though, I bid you adieu, as my five bucks has quickly turned into twelve, so I need to save some money for tomorrow night's blog. See you tomorrow night!!

Good evening folks, from a pay internet kiosk just outside the Grand Canal Shops here at the Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, where we may have suffered a major blog malfunction.

Twenty minutes ago, everything was looking OK - we had just finalised our hotel bookings and driving directions for our trip to San Francisco starting tomorrow, and I was just about to start on today's blog entry, when the problem I've been having with the wi-fi connection here at the Venetian struck again, in that the computer shut itself down to safeguard against a system crash, however there was a difference this time - it hasn't fired back up since. Calls have been made to my IT support back in Australia - ie. my brother Daniel - but it looks like the computer can't be fixed without Dan looking at it, short of blowing away the hard drive and starting again, which would knock out all of our photos (which Sarah still has on her camera, thankfully) and all of her iPod songs, so I'm reticent to do that.

What that means, is that I may not have the facilities to continue writing the blog. Thankfully, after tonight we only have three more nights in America, so it's better to have happened now than at the start of the trip. Hopefully, our accommodation from here on in will have some sort of pay internet stations, so we can at least report in to say that all is well and check e-mails, comments etc (so keep commenting folks, we'll still get them)!! Luckily, not much happened today, as we basically had a "shopping" day at the Las Vegas Premium Outlet mall, but Sarah was going to make her blog debut tonight and outline the massage she had today at the Canyon Ranch Spa here at the Venetian (and Mum and Nan, we had the photo of Sarah in the top that you brought her to put up here too)!!

I'm just about out of time here, so I will have to bid you adieu for tonight, and hope that either a miracle happens and the computer regains life (it won't boot up the Windows start-up sequence), or that the Pickwick Hotel in San Francisco can look after us on the internet front. We'll try and get something up here tomorrow night, but I can't vouch for quality or quantity. Until then, folks, we are still both safe and well, so there's nothing to worry about!!