San Diego

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  San Diego, California, United States
Friday, May 23, 2008

Ok so hello! I'm finally going to update the blog. It's kind of novel that some people actually read this and have been hassling me to update the blog. I've been doing sooooo much that it's been a little like Uni where you procrastinate to the point where it is so intimidating how much you have to talk about that you want to curl up into the fetal position under the table and suck your thumb. Now that I've finished doing that I guess I can start to fill in the gaps from the last few weeks!

So on the 21st I left Canberra and my temporary home of 2 months. Leaving my family, new friends and a job that I will one day will need to seek professional help to overcome. I flew up to Sydney, kicked around in the airport for what seemed like an eternity then jumped on my Pacific Airways flight to LA via Fiji. Sounds kind of cool right? Wrong. The plane was massive and kind maintained islanders style

Fiji Bitter aka Crap

. The video screens were so scratched that watching whatever was on them probably did permanent damage to my retina. In addition the videos they were playing were obviously VHS tapes which had been rewound way too many times. The staff though were so chilled out which was pretty sweet. They were very generous with the amount of red wine they send my way at odd times of the morning/eavening/whateverthehelltimezoneweerein. Arriving in Fiji I was kind of hoping for mechanical troubles so we could have a couple of days lay over on the beach... it wasn't to be. Instead I had to settle for 3 hours in the airport which I used to sample a couple of Fiji's finest beers. Upon sampling I discovered that they were in fact shit... which after closer inspection made a lot of sense. They were brewed by fosters pacific.

The flight from Fiji to LA was long. Very long. Enough said. As we came approached LAX the sheer scale of LA was amazing. Suburbia seemed to stretch into an eternity of filth and pollution. It even extended to about 30 m below the aircraft as we came into land. As we were landing I watched a heap of fire trucks and police cars keep pace with the plane as we hit the runway and slowed to a stop. I thought to myself that America really was a little over cautious in monitoring planes landing but I just shrugged it off... it was the US. When the fire trucks and police cars positioned themselves on the runway and our engines shut down it was confirmed. Americans are insane. Our pilot came on the intercom and ensured us that everything was normal and we'd be taxiing to the terminal momentarily. As the bustle of activity continued outside the pilot came on the intercom again and confessed that the hydraulics on the front wheels had failed as we landed. An hour and a half on the tarmac after a 14 hour plane journey (from Fiji) wasn't exactly ideal be it was better than dieing,,, I guess

Airport time killer (& brain cell)

. Finally we made it to the terminal. I caught a shuttle over to the central train station (through crawling traffic in the middle of the day) and jumped on a train down to San Diego.

I sat with a brother and sister from Fresno in California who were on their way to visit their dad in SD (San Diego). The train followed the coastline passing through the OC with the train at times running so close to the water that you couldn't see the beach. It was beautiful. Arriving in San Diego I stumbled through the public phone system and got through to Jackie, a friend I had made in Vietnam in October. About 45 minutes latter she and her roommate showed up and we trekked back to their place in Pacific Beach. It was strange that I had only really met Jackie once and only for a couple of hours months before. Now I was crashing at her place and hanging out for the next few weeks. Jackie's place was this cute little three bedroom down a back alley only 10 or so blocks from the ocean. Welcome to San Diego!

After dumping my gear on her floor and meeting the roomies they decided that they had to check out the "Australian Pub" which was down the road. I joked that when they came over to Aus I would take them to an American Bar, but I didn't really care. Turns out there was NOTHING really Aussi about the pub except they had four Aussi beers. Fosters (blah!), a couple of others and to my surprise Coopers! Needless to say I bought a few over priced coopers to share some good Aussi beers with my new friends. They approved. And so they should have :)

I collapsed in a jet lagged heap and woke up the next day in the US believe it or not

Fiji Gold (much like XXXX gold - crap)

. My (non-existent) accent caused much confusion and amusement, as I would rattle of an entire sentence only to see blank faces and confused smiles. The girls would then turn to each other a shrug their shoulders while I struggled to translate my English into American. As a side note, these awkward exchanges have continued and continued. It's kinda funny.

In San Diego Jackie took me down to check out the Flow Rider which is right on Mission beach... totally freakin awesome. As I watch some guys tear it up and others eat shit I had to remember that I was going to work an awesome job and that breaking my collar bone having a go probably would not have been ideal. We cruised around, checked out San Diego state university and just hung out. That night we went out to a restaurant and one of Jackie's roomies started spelling the menu out in highly studious detail. About halfway through as I smiled and nodded, in fact after she told me that a Hawaiian pizza had pineapple and ham on it, one of the other girls stopped her and said something along the lines of "He's Australian not stupid" and we all proceeded to laugh our asses off while they quizzed me on different words and pronunciations we used 'down under'.

Later that night Jackie went and collected Nancy and Ryan who had flow in from New York for our impending road trip. I had met Nancy in Vietnam as well along with Jackie, Katie and Camilla. Incidentally the two girls I had spent the most time with and had actually gotten to know I won't see on this trip. Camilla bailed on the road trip that night while we were all packing and Katie couldn't make it because according to Nancy was a crazy Nomad.

The next morning we packed up our stuff into Jackie's two door Honda and set off on our road trip. Next stop Vegas bitches!

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

The Aussi Pub San Diego	Real Aussi Beer!	Jean	Kiley
Hanging at Mission Beach SD	walking down mission beach SD	Jackies Bike... good times.	Nancy & I

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