California Part 2

Now here's part 2...

I managed to purloin Liz's laptop again tonight, she isn't happy though, it means that she doesn’t get to read Dlisted tonight. For the benefit of all the lucky people out there who aren’t aware of Dlisted, its a celebrity gossip blog, it also happens to be the bane of my life, reading it comes just after plucking my nasal hair with rusty pliers on my to do list. Anyway, Liz loves it so I'm running quite a risk by writing this post tonight.

For those of you who have got this far and have yet to read the previous post, get a clue and read that first, this post has part 2 in it for a reason. Just scroll down and read the post below it first, you can come back to this one later.

Hopefully everyone reading this part should now have read the last post, so you'll know we're starting off from Friday of last week which is 7 days ago.

Friday we went up to a much bigger lake where Liz's parents rented a speed boat, it was a pretty big one though. I think the name of the lake was the New Mahoneys or the New Maloneys, something like that anyway. We had a big inflatable raft that we dragged around off the back of the boat. Basically one or 2 of us sat on the raft while someone drove the boat around the lake, trying to make the people on the raft fall off. It was brilliant, me and Liz went on a few times together and I went on once on my own. I also had a good go at getting Liz's dad to fall off the raft, I didn't quite manage it though, driving the boat was pretty cool though and I managed to keep it intact in the process which is always a bonus.

Me and Liz went off on our own again the next day on our trip down the coast. We started off by going to San Francisco and staying with her Aunt and Uncle, we didn’t go into the city on the first day as we didn’t have time, setting off from the cabin at about 3pm. So on the Sunday we went into the city and saw all the sights down the embarcadero. Alcatraz etc, we didn’t go over to Alcatraz because we didn’t really have time but I'll do it some time.
Unfortunately the Golden gate bridge was covered in fog so I didn’t really get the chance to see it, the rest of the city was clear though. It wasn’t that bigger deal, most of you know me well enough to know that I don’t care about touristy stuff so much.
At about 2:30 Liz's Aunt and Uncle came to pick us up to take us to a sneak preview of the California Academy of Science, it wasn’t due to open for a while but Liz's Uncle Mark had tickets to the sneak preview. Unfortunately the organizers picked just about the best day possible to hold the event. There were chocolate tasting events and Chinese Moon festivals going off left right and centre and the city was rammed with traffic as well as the swarms of pedestrians milling round stuffing there faces with chocolate and buying dragon charms (I’m speculating there, the only pedestrian I payed attention to was the guy crossing the road while being totally off his tits, he preceded to collapse in the middle of the road while cars drove round him, luckily he managed to get up and haul his intoxicated arse off the road before getting squished).
After like an hour and a half of driving through traffic we got to the building , there was no parking there though, it had obviously filled up with the charm buying chocoholic people. Someone from the Academy approached the Car and asked if were there for the event. He then told us that there was no parking so we should dive to this car park not far away and a bus would bring us back. On a normal day that would have been fine, but we only had a short time left to get to the event and the traffic was so thick we would have been there for hours getting to the parking area, let alone waiting on the bus to get back. For this reason we went home.

On Monday we got up and drove to Monterey, Monterey is a little seaside town , you'll probably have heard of it, it's where the pebble beach golf course is at. Also I believe John Steinbeck wrote a book about it, so there’s a little titbit for you mum.

When we got into town Liz was n a bit of a panic because nature was calling and had been doing so for quite a while up the road with no toilet in sight. I directed her past 2 petrol stations, both of which she failed to pull in at, she proceeded to drive around frantically, unable to find somewhere to go, I finally got her back to the petrol stations, she missed both again and refused to waste time going back to them. She then randomly turned onto a road which went up to a military facility. We were turning round when she spotted a portaloo by one of the buildings, we parked and I had to stand and guard the portaloo while she went and I was constantly being glared at by military types who obviously were puzzled as to why we were there, we jumped in the car quickly and drove away pretty fast.
The manager at he hotel greeted us with the information that he was sorry, we couldn’t have our room because he over booked, he then apologised for the fact that he was going to have to upgrade us to a suite with a Jacuzzi and a brand new bed. It worked out pretty good.

We went down 17 mile drive on the Tuesday while on the way to Morro Bay, 17 mile drive is a scenic drive around the coast of Monterey Bay. Id describe it but you wouldn’t get a good idea of what it's like (and i'm tired so i’m leaving stuff out) so you'll need to wait and see the pictures.

We got into Morro Bay that evening and went out to the big rock to see the sunset, unfortunately it was cloudy over the coast at the time so we didn’t really see it, I got a few nice photos of orange clouds though, and a few of the waves coming in etc.

After a night in the hotel we went down to the promenade to check out the shops etc, we left for Bakersfield at about 3pm and arrived here about 6pm. since then we've just been chilling out. I made curry for everyone last night and they're all still alive which is obviously a good thing. It went wrong but they seemed to like it and don't seem too ill today so I'll mark it as a success anyway.

Well I’m off to Antigua tomorrow night so everyone wish me luck. Not sure when I'll next write but make sure you comment on my posts this time you lazy bastards, 2 is a poor show, It's not to bad here but what about when I'm in Guatemala and, heaven forbid, this is my top source of entertainment. Get your acts together people!

Later

PS. can’t be arsed to load any photos into this post tonight, maybe another time

California tbc...

Ok, I finally managed to find time to write a post. Before any of you start complaining about how long it has taken for me to write on here, first understand that the only way that I have made time to do this is by nabbing Liz's laptop before everyone went to bed. I’m now sitting here at 20 past midnight trying to remember everything that we've done over the last 2 weeks, so don’t give me any hassle about it.

Ill start from the beginning and write a long post as it’s been so long since the first one.

I set off for the airport at stupid o'clock in the morning which was not fun and arrived with plenty of time to check my bags and get the flight. However, even though I had already checked in online, they refused to check bags until I produced evidence I was actually leaving the US. This is something which they did not put on the ridiculously patronising and seemedly useless "what to bring along" list, which they included in my check in confirmation. They managed to put in "umbrella" and "infant food", both items which would obviously be of dire importance to me when cruising at 30,000 feet over the Atlantic. Anyway I asked her where the nearest internet cafe was so that I could print my E-ticket to Guatemala, she directed me toward one, waiting until I began to walk away before adding that there was no printing facilities there. She then told me to go to the "United" check in desk as they would be able to print confirmation of my flight details because I was flying with them. This was in another terminal building however so after a 10 minute walk with all my luggage I arrived over at Terminal 1 where I waited in line at the "United" information desk. I say a line, there wasn’t one really, it was just me waiting while this self important old lady and a morbidly obese guy tried to deal with a query from the guy who arrived before me. Obviously it stretched their collective brain power a bit too much because they then called in a third "United Employee". It wasn’t until about 5 minutes later that they twigged and dealt with me. I got the really really fat guy who had an IQ slightly higher than a cheese sandwich. The conversation went a bit like this:

"Are you here to check in"
"No"
"Check in's over there"
"I’m not here to check in"
"Ok"
"I need you to print my E-ticket for my flight to Guatemala on the 14th of September from LAX"
*Typing Typing Typing* "At 2:30pm?"
"No I think it's about 1:35 in the morning"
*Typing Typing Typing* "There is no flight at that time"
"Yes There is"
"No there isn’t"
"Yes there is, if there isn’t why have you taken my money for it"
"There isn’t"
"There is"
*Typing Typing Typing* "Oh hang on, are you sure you don’t mean the flight to Guatemala at 1:35am"
"That’s what I asked for isn’t it"
"Name?"
"Richard Ives" (I’m getting frustrated at this point and thinking that this guy would be far more suited to a job like electric eel juggling food tasting for Russian dissidents, maybe not suited but the customer satisfaction would be very high at least)
"Hmm you aren’t on this flight"
"Yes I am"
"No you aren’t"
"You told me it didn’t exist a minute ago"
"Yes but now I’ve found it and you aren’t on the list"
"Well why did your company E-mail me with my E-ticket'
"I don’t know"
"Try it as Richard Thomas Ives, Virgin attached my middle na...:
"I cant"
"Why"
"We don’t have details of whose on the flight"
(amazingly that answer didn’t really shock me after the rest of the conversation)
"How did you know I’m not on it then"
"How should I know whose on it, we don’t have access to that"
"why"
"we cold share"
"what does that mean?"
"It means that we cold share"
"yes but what does that mean?"
"We cold share"
"I heard the cold share part, what is cold sharing?"
"we cold share with another airline"

I think you get the jist of what the rest of the conversation might have been like, basically it ended in me not getting anything apart from extremely stressed.

I’ve spent ages writing and have yet to leave the airport let alone arrive in the US so I'll skip the part where the pilot arrived 45 minutes late with no excuse, I get pestered every 5 minutes by an air hostess attempting to ply me with cheese wraps, the extremely chatty woman in front and to the right keeps interrupting the women in front from watching sex in the city and gives me a headache and when customs guy refused to explain to me what he meant by "left hand" when I was trying to get through customs (he meant me to scan my finger print but who knew). Ill even leave out the part where my loving girlfriend neglected to met me at the airport (I’m joking, it wasn’t her fault, the traffic in LA was terrible).

So now I have skipped to the Sunday after my arrival and we are having a party at Liz's house with all her family there. I was a bit silly, finding myself on my 6th beer and 2nd Margarita while everyone else I was sat with finished there 3rd beer. We then started to play beer pong (look it up, I can’t be bothered to explain, this post is long enough as it is) I was on a team with Liz's cousin Tyler and we beat everyone. In fact I was undefeated until my last game after Tyler went home (Liz was dragging me down). Needless to say I got very drunk but luckily that didn’t seem to offend any of Liz's family so I was reminded very much of home.

Me and Liz set off for her parent's cabin in the mountains the next day; it was about an hour drive which didn’t bother me. What did bother me was Liz's habits with the radio, I don’t think I heard to the end of one song she flicks back and forth so much. Although she did find it amusing to leave it on all the bible thumping stations just to wind me up. "Gawd neyds yew ta send owl yer muny to the cherch o' the saycred blydn' hart o' Jeyses chriyst" or something to that effect seems to come up on every other station.

Anyway we got to the cabin and it's very nice, there are deer everywhere and amazingly enough there is still plant life up there without any help from the magical orange rope suspended on garden cains (most of you wont get that joke those of you who are familiar enough with my back garden or my Grans gardening habits will). Id try to describe the cabin to you but I don’t think I'm good enough at descriptive pros to get it over to you so you'll have to just rest safe in the knowledge that it's very nice.

On Tuesday we went to a national park called Yosemite (pronounced like the ginger cowboy cartoon character), it’s famous for its waterfalls but they are dry in autumn unfortunately so we didn’t see them. It was still great though, I couldn’t quite persuade Liz to climb a mountain with me but we did walk quite a few of the trails. I've hopefully, by the time you read this, loaded up some photos, if not I got too tired and went to sleep.

Wednesday we went pinecrest lake and went out on a pedelow (no idea how to spell that, you know the boats you peddle and they go at like 2.5mph) we took lunch and stuff out with us so it was pretty cool. I hope all fishermen get swallowed by giant carp now however due to the number of them who sped past are boat and nearly knocked us over in their wake.

Liz's parent arrived that night and in the morning we went to "Big trees" national park, guess what they have there. Incase you didn’t get it, its a park which has sequoias in it, some of the trees were over 100m tall. Basically they were pretty damn tall, ill let the photos do the talking.

That brings us up to a week ago, I’m getting tired now so I’ll post this and do this week tomorrow probably.

To be continued...

PS. I can't work out a way to put photos on the post properly so if they look sloppy or dont show up then it sucks for you i suppose.

2 Days to Go

Hey Guys,

Well here's my first post...

In case you hadn't already guessed from the title and the date, I haven't actually left for anywhere yet. It's Wednesday today, although only by about 45 minutes, and I don't leave till Friday.
Mainly I'm just putting this post in as a test to see if this blog thing is working properly, I suppose it's also partly to do with the fact that I'm bored but can't be bothered to do anything that's actually constructive. Most of you will know what I'm like, meaning it will all get done on Thursday.

I suppose I'll use this first post to do a bit of housekeeping so to start off. For the less computer literate of you (I'm looking at you Mother, Grandad, Uncle Mick etc.) I will now explain a few of the feature that I have put on the blog, although it will probably be pointless as I know full well it doesn't matter how well I explain it, Mum will either not use them or she'll call Dad and get him to do it for her. Uncle Mick will most likely try but somehow manage to end up on a pornographic site, but then instead of coming back here to try again, he'll stick with the porn (only because of how well photographed it is of course) probably then getting caught by Zoe who will patiently take him back to this site and "slowly" explain to him how to use the blog properly (don't worry when you still can't get it after Zoe's shown you though Uncle Mick, that's why I put the "slowly" in quotation marks.

Anyway I suppose I should get round to telling you what features I have added to the site. After setting up this blog and scrolling through the lists of useless crap you can put down the sides of these blogs, I briefly contemplated such useful additions as the Bombay Stock Exchange Index or the Barack Obama Quote of the day (not that I don't like him, it's just that there are only so many quotes you can have when the only words are "hope" and "change", aside from the relevance issue of course)
Anyway I eventually decided on a few things to add, among these were: satellite photos of where I would be staying, a live weather report of wherever I would be, an indicator which would tell you whether I was online with my Skype phone or not etc. Unfortunately I have only discovered now, whilst writing this post, that the majority of the features which I added to the blog actually don't work. And the one's that do aren't particularly exciting. If you look to the right you will see:

1. A slideshow of pictures of Livingston, as you should have worked out by now, I am in fact not there at the time of writing this and, believe it or not, I did not take those pictures. I will replace the slideshow with my own photos as time goes on. If you are reading this and it's mid-December or something, I'm sure you can work out for yourself that this post may no longer apply. (You'll notice that I told you anyway just in case)

2. Below that there is a blog archive, you can use this to see posts which you have missed in the past. However obviously none of you will need to use that feature unless it's purely to go back and read one of my posts again so that you can rejoice in artful wordsmithery that is my writing. We all know that this reading blog is going to be the highlight of the week for most of you, if your lucky enough to get a post that often. Don't let the length of this post fool you into thinking that I'm going to be sending you all an essay weekly. I'm sure the novelty will wear off very soon and you'll be lucky to receive a photo with a paragraph once a month when Liz pesters me to do it because Mum's been texting her to ask if she's heard from me.


3. There is a clock below that showing the time in both California and Guatemala, I have added the UK time also for those of you who have yet to master looking at the bottom right corner of the screen to read the time.

4. After that there is some tabs which can be used to create something called a "live bookmark". What a live bookmark does is basically tells you whenever there is a new post on the blog. Most of you wont need to use that however as I'm guessing the majority of you don't use a bookmarking service like "Google Bookmarks" or "netVibes" etc. So for you all you need to do is go to this link:

http://richsyearout.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

And press "Subscribe now" you then just press "ok" or whatever when a window pops up.

This will put a live bookmark in your bookmarks/favorites menu in your browser. When you run your mouse over the bookmark in the menu it will show you all the titles of the posts on my blog. If there is a new one, then you know I have added something new to the site.

On the other hand you could do what Mum will almost certainly be doing and check the site every 10 minutes, or even better set it as your homepage.

Anyway, that's it for the features, nothing too complicated, I'll probably add more as I go along, that is if I can find any useful ones that work. Unless of course anyone would like me to add a copy of the periodic table or some fairy art of the day (no Simon, not that kind of fairy).

Ok now before I go I will just clarify one thing. I don't care about the spelling, grammar, vocabulary of my writing or if indeed any of it makes sense. So you needn't bother commenting saying stuff like "Hmmm, well I think you should get a spellcheck feature on there" or anything like that.

Right, that's it for the first post, Ive wasted a good 45 minutes on this now so I think it's served it's purpose. I'll start posting properly when I've been i California for a bit.

Later