Leaving California again

Well, not quite yet, but soon.
I'm sitting in Sargon's living room at the moment, waiting for Stefan to arrive for us to begin the road trip. But I won't quite be leaving CA just yet, since we'll be driving around in along the coast and in the parks for the first couple of days.

I'm in California? But the last time I made a post I was in New York. How did that happen? I want to say "ah, the magic of air travel", but that's only partly the story, and to be fair it was over three weeks ago when I last made a post so the fact that I'm now, "suddenly" in CA three weeks later isn't really that astounding.

I left NY on Friday 10th, and spent 18 hours on a greyhound bus getting to Chicago. I quite liked Chicago, especially since a) There was the Chicago Marathon the day after I arrived, and b) on that same day I happened upon a small Science Fair(NextFest, I think) that was being held and it made me think about doing Science/research again.

From Chicago I flew to Seattle, and as soon as I landed there I jumped in a rental car and drove up to Vancouver. My flight into Seattle was fairly late in the evening, so I didn't arrive in Vancouver until 2am. The benefit of this was that it meant I went over the border at 1am, and hence there was absolutely no line. I didn't realise the significance of that until a few days later, on the way back into Washington, when I had to wait over 90 minutes to get through.
I went to Vancouver to visit my Aunty and Uncle and cousins who live there, and while there I finally managed to go for my first "real" run in a number of months - 10km. And I really felt that 10km too. I've got a bit of work to do to get back to where I should be.
I also finally made it to Victoria on Vancouver Island, on my third visit to Vancouver. I felt kind of bad for not going there on my first two visits, but after discovering how long it took I don't feel so bad about that anymore -> 1 hour to drive down to the port, an hour and a half on the ferry, and then another hour on the bus from the port on Vancouver Island down to Victoria, EACH WAY. When you add in the extra time to ensure you're not late, etc, it meant that I left the house shortly after 7am and didn't get back until 21:30, and yet I only really had 5 hours 'in Victoria'. 14 hour day, 5 hours actually exploring. That's not a good ratio.

I was in Vancouver for about 3 days, then on Saturday I hopped in the car and headed out to Spokane. I was by myself, so I could go where I wanted, though it also meant that I would have to cover the cost of the gas myself. My original plan was to take Highway 20, which goes through top of the Cascade mountains and closes in Winter time [Google Maps will NOT let you plan out this route even if you try to force it, presumably because the pass closes], however I didn't leave as early as I had intended, and after the extra hour and a half lost going through the border, I decided it would take too long to do that route so I drove a little further south and went along Highway 2 instead. It was still a nice drive, and I saw some nice scenary - I even stopped briefly at Leavenworth, which is a German-orientated town somewhere near the middle of the mountains. Almost predictably, they were having an 'Oktoberfest' festival on that day. They've all the buildings to a strict style code, so one could almost imagine one was no longer in the USA - all the Starbucks and 7-Elevens have non-corporate-standard frontages.

I finally made it into Spokane at about 21:00, a little tired and a little crazy after driving nine hours by myself.

Ok, have to leave pretty soon, so I'll try and be brief(er): In Spokane visiting friends; did a bit of hiking; main museum in Spokane is closed on Mondays, the day I had intended on going. From Spokane I drove back to Seattle, this time taking the I-90 and with a passenger. People had told me that was a 'boring' drive, and the road is fairly straight for quite a bit of it, but there is still some nice scenary, especially around where the road crosses the Columbia river.

In Seattle, as a rarity, a bought a 'Citypass' to let me go to a bunch of places (only 5 actually, but it was still kind of worth it). I paid another $5 extra to finally see 'The Dark Knight' - at the IMAX. It was a fairly good movie, I suppose, and I much more pleasant IMAX experience than my first one - which was, coincidentially, 'Batman Begins' at a place in San Jose, I believe the Science center. After all the talk of 'the disappearing pencil trick' I was expecting it to be something slightly different. Didn't go up the Space needle - that was another $16, and to be honest, I've been up a few taller buildings recently: The needle isn't even the tallest building in Seattle. And despite what people might have expected, it didn't rain once in the 4 days I was there.

I flew from Seattle to San Francisco on Friday night and Sargon picked me up from the train station. We went out just down the street on Friday, which was fun but 'nothing to write home about'. On Saturday we went to a BBQ at Stefan's old host family's place - where Stefan was staying while here, and a number of the old IBM guys were there. It was kind of strange to be back here in San Jose (and especially in that area of it). Somewhere I am so familiar with but yet different at the same time. After the BBQ? We went to Mt Charley's. That was entertaining. I spent most of the night just laughing at the fact we were back there. Good fun.

Now? Road trip, terminating in Vegas for Halloween. That should be interesting.