Coming home
June 16th, 2008We fly out tomorrow night to head back home. See you all shortly (with a few additional kilos - some in our suitcases).
Wine Country
June 15th, 2008After a fantastic breakfast at an “old-fashioned” diner (to those that have visited Wayne and Ashley, yes, he made us eat the “biscuit” with the sausage gravy), our hosts organised a wine tour for us with a local jeep touring company called “Cloud Climbers Jeep Tours”. The four of us jumped in the back and headed into the hills behind Santa Barbara to sample some local wines.
Travelling across the desert
June 15th, 2008Today we drove from Vegas to Santa Barbara to catch up with our friends Wayne and Ashley who live there. This involved a drive across the desert. We left with the temperature approaching 40 degrees. I was amazed that there is a four lane highway in the middle of the desert packed full of cars.
There were also many trucks taking humvees somewhere, lots and lots of them.
Not a whole lot to write about. Wayne had warned me about getting anywhere near Los Angeles traffic and the traffic found us as we crawled along the 101 for a couple of hours and then finally got to Santa Barbara. Once we reached Santa Barbara, Wayne and Ashley took us out to dinner to a fantastic French creperie. For some reason, Greg decided to have escargot for entree…
“O”
June 15th, 2008Today was a full day racing around Las Vegas to get all the shopping done. Up until now we have been holding off because we had planes to catch and didn’t want to carry around everything for the whole trip.
Viva Las Vegas
June 13th, 2008Today we flew from Fresno to Las Vegas on Skywest. The plane was a small twin propeller where even the air hostess wore ear plugs. The flight following ours was heading to San Francisco and we were a little amused when the operators started to ask people to move to a different flight due to “weight restrictions”. In the end they were offering $200 and a free flight anywhere excluding Hawaii and Alaska.
Yo Yosemite!
June 11th, 2008Sunday morning we flew to the city of Fresno. The instructions the woman gave us at the counter were how to get out of Fresno, which is pretty much what everyone does. Passing through, I can understand why.
I realised a problem when I picked up one of my suitcases. The suitcase which has all the chargers and the GPS window mount would no longer unlock. Something had happened to the inner workings and I was presented with a couple of options. 1. Tear open the case (not preferred), 2) go without my technology (not preferred), 3) Get the lock cut open with a pair of bolt cutters. Of course finding a hardware store would be difficult. So I approached the TSA (Transport Safety Administration) security check point with my suitcase. This raised all manner of problems with the TSA. They couldn’t work out why I wanted to cut open a lock on my own suitcase and why I was trying to go through security when I had just arrived. Before I knew it I had a couple of security people wanting to scan my case with a “special” scanner and I had raised the attention of a supervisor. I gave them all the details on what was inside the bag and that I could prove the bag belonged to me. They were more concerned about approaching them and not passing through the cattle hurder that everyone else goes through.
San Diego Splash Down
June 8th, 2008Today was a full day in San Diego, although trying to twist Meg’s arm to let me go on Stars and Stripes this moring, unfortunately, no dice.
We started with a seal tour on the bay. These were a lot like the duck tours we did in Boston last year. These vehicles were a lot less authentic, but had the same abilities. It’s evident from the local attactions that the military sure do put a lot of money into the economy. About 14 billion so the tour guide said. 148,000 service men and women in the local area with another 250,000 dependents.
Later, Long beach
June 7th, 2008
Want to know why nothing has been written up until now? Well I’ve been at a conference which is technically work. Megan was tagging along and hiding from the illegal hiding mexican’s who do all the housekeeping duties in California. My hotel was booked for me and we were never quite sure if she was supposed to be in the room and they only ever game me one room key.
The end, nearly, on stand by.
June 10th, 2007Today we wrapped up our last day of our trip finishing off some last minute shopping and then dropping off the rental car. This was the easy part.
Disney and Epcot
June 10th, 2007This is a two part entry. After attending the conference today, we decided to make a road trip with some of the other Australians. We drove towards Orlando to have a night out at Disney World. The infrastructure to support the several theme parks in the area is amazing. Roads, car parks, monorail and on/off-ramps everywhere.