Text in red is comments made when turning my original email messages into web format.

Status Report - Sunday 22-Mar-1998

Describes 10-Mar-1998 to 21-Mar-1998

Los Angeles
Santa Monica
San Diego
Tijuana
Las Vegas
Grand Canyon
Death Valley
Independence
Susanville
Eugene, Oregon

I arrived in Los Angeles on the 10th of March, about half an hour before I left Brisbane (?!)

I spent a couple of days at Santa Monica, which was nice, but I had a heap of trouble organising a motorcycle to rent over the payphones at the hostel.  The company that I remembered wasn't in the phone book, so I ended up finding the right phone number via a computer at a local internet cafe.

I rented an 800cc Suzuki Intruder (for anyone that cares :-) that looks pretty, but is not the most suitable bike for long distance riding.  The petrol tank lasts about 120 miles, which is about as much as I can take of the seat anyway.  (I think I know where the motorcycle's model name came from :-P )

I rode to San Diego, which I liked much more than L.A.  The hostel there (as in Santa Monica) was excellent, and while I was there I took the opportunity to go across the border to Tijuana, which was a fun day.

The next day I rode to Las Vegas, through the Mojave desert.  Las Vegas is crazii!   I didn't gamble any money at all while I was there - in fact, I found a total of 26 cents.  There are scenic flights out to the Grand Canyon, so I went on one of those.   We flew over Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam, and then along the Grand Canyon itself.   Since I was by myself I got to sit in the copilot's seat, which I enjoyed until I thought about what I'd have to do if the pilot dropped dead for some reason.  :-)

	The brochure reads: "Thrill Seekers Only!  The Big Shot shoots you, at 45 m.p.h., from the 921 foot level to the 1,081 foot level in 2.5 seconds... then lets you free-fall back to the launching pad.   You hit 4 G's on the way up and then 0 G's as you float out of your seat on the way down. The view from the top was fantastic... if you opened your eyes!"
At the entrance to the Mojave Desert

The next day (after visiting the Coca Cola Museum (how could I resist?)) I rode through Death Valley on my way to the Sierras.  Death Valley was really beautiful, and lots of fun on a motorcycle.  All the roads through to Yosemite were closed (I thought they might be), so I followed the road north, in the shadow of the mountains.

Zabriskie Point - Death Valley

In the Sierras

On Wednesday I started to cross the mountains, and even though the weather was clear and sunny, I don't think I have ever been so cold in my life.  My problem was my hands - the wind chilled them until I got pins and needles, then just a constant sharp pain and I found it hard to uncurl my fingers.  It probably wasn't a big deal, but the cold is beyond my ken so it made me worry (I need my hands!).  I was riding along roads that were perfectly dry, but surrounded by a metre or more of snow on either side.

I had about a day and a half of the cold before I emerged on the other side of the range.  From there it was half a day's hard slog up the (relatively uninteresting) interstate to Oregon.  I arrived without incedent at Glenn's house.  It was strange to finally see someone that wasn' t a stranger after all this time, and it was a relief to be able to stop for a breather.  It took two days for my ears to stop ringing and for my face to stop stinging (from the cold or the wind or the sun, I have no idea).

Glenn's wife Ann is lovely, and their daughter Alexandra is amazing.  After a tour of Dynamix (Sierra) yesterday (I want to get a job writing games!), Glenn took me for a drive to Crater Lake.  More snow! but it was easy to take in a car.

Crater Lake - Oregon

It started raining today (as it does in Oregon), so I'm not sure when I'll be able to leave.  I should go soon (fish and visitors smell after three days, as they say) and I also still have to see the Oregon and California coast.  I've heard that the roads around Big Sur have been washed away, but we'll see.

I leave for Cairo on the 29th.

I've tried to keep this message brief so that you won't get too bored reading about I did this and I did that etc.  I got my first batch of photos back today, so when I get settled in England I'll try to get the more interesting ones scanned, and set up a web page with more detail about where I've been for anyone that's interested (and for my own memory).

Status Report - Tuesday 21-Apr-1998

Describes 22-Mar-1998 to 29-Mar-1998

Eugene, Oregon
Brookings
San Francisco
Los Angeles
Fullerton
Santa Monica

I'm in England now, in a small village in Devon called Ivybridge, living with my father again, after all these years.  Devon is beautiful! Everywhere I've been looks like a set for an english-village movie!

You may remember that in the last episode I was at Glenn's place in Oregon, and it had started to rain...

The forecast on the Sunday morning was for more rain, but getting progressively heavier and further south during the course of the week.  I decided to make a run for it.  Saying farewell to Glenn and his family, I headed more or less directly west, for the coast.  I only had rain for the first half hour or so, so it was pretty comfortable.

The Oregon Coast was lovely, what I could see of it.  During the afternoon a weird fog (sea mist? I don't know!) descended, but it just made everything look prettier.  I hit heavy rain in the last half hour of daylight, so my boots and gloves were absolutely soaked through when I stopped at Brookings.  So was everything in my saddlebags!  I had to lay out everything I had on the furniture of my room for the night.

The next morning it was still teeming, so I spent an hour or so finding a supermarket to buy some garbage bags to waterproof my belongings.  When the rain stopped I made a break for it and headed south.

Heavy heavy rainclouds threatened me all day as I scooted through the redwood forests in northern California.  The forests were misty like the coast on the previous day, which gave them very strange lighting.

I made it all the way to San Francisco that day, but the sky had burst about half an hour before the city.  By the time I got there it was nighttime.   It's dumb to ride a motorcycle in unfamiliar territory at night (in the rain (on the wrong side of the road)) but I had to get to the hostel at Fort Mason.

Riding through the rain and fog I was still gobsmacked to see the Golden Gate Bridge appearing out of the mist as I rode across, even though I had been expecting it.  I realised that it was the first landmark that I had really recognised on the whole trip!  There was a toll booth on the southern end, and when I stopped to pay the toll collector looked at me as if I was the dumbest thing he had ever seen.   Soaked, trying to get coins out of several layers of clothing, and at the side of the booth with no windows, because the roads were American, but my brain was still Australian.  :-)

I spent the next (sunny!) day in San Francisco doing lots of walking.  The hostel was across the bay from Alcatraz, but unfortunately tours there were booked out.  :-(  I did, however, walk to Haight Ashbury, which was one of the things I had really wanted to see.

On the Wednesday I left San Francisco to go back to Los Angeles.  I rode along the coast until I got to Santa Cruz where I stopped for lunch.  I decided not to go along the coast any further - the roads around Big Sur had been washed out, and besides, the rain had caught up with me again.  For the rest of the day I would dry out for an hour then get soaked for 5 minutes, dry out for an hour, soaked for 5 minutes.

The best part of the day was the Ventura Highway (actually, I think it's the Ventura Freeway now, but it doesn't sound quite the same.  :-)  Just as I was riding along the coast there, there was a spectacular sunset of the most gorgeous colours.

Then it started to rain.  Hard.  I rode for about an hour in really heavy rain, in the dark (if L.A. ever really gets dark), at 70 mph on the freeway while cars and trucks passed me like I was standing still.  I was cold and wet and sore and very aware that I had to pay all my attention on not getting squished!  I had memorised all the highways I had to change onto, to get to the youth hostel in Fullerton, so I just kept going.

The hostel in Fullerton was very cosy - just a small building that housed a half dozen people or so.  I had gone to Fullerton because it was just 5 miles away from Disneyland, where I went on the Thursday.

Disneyland was fun, and small enough to take in in one day.  I missed my kids really badly that day, seeing all the things that they would have really loved.  The worst part was when the guides at the rides asked how many people were in my party, and I told them "1".  One guy, early in the day, said "You're by yourself in the happiest place on Earth?  Man, that's sad!" which helped a great deal.  :-P

The Indiana Jones ride was the best.

On the Friday morning it was a short ride to the motorcycle rental place (then a short ride to a car wash to clean the bike and save me $30).  In the two weeks I had the bike, I rode 2708 miles!  The rest of the day I spent doing nothing back at the Santa Monica hostel.  It was like coming home!  It was good not having to cram in as much as I could in the day, to get back to travelling.  There is a lovely lounge room there, with a fireplace, and you meet interesting people from all over the world.

On Saturday I went to Universal Studios for the day.  It was a lot of fun!  I think I liked the "Back to the Future" ride the best, although the Chicago-style pizza for lunch rated pretty high too! :-)  All in all, a nice last day for the American leg of my adventure.

On the Sunday, the hostel (hostile!) people wouldn't let me leave my luggage for a couple of hours without paying (even though I had paid them to look after it for the last two weeks!), so I didn't bother going for a walk to Venice Beach like I had intended.  It was getting too close to the time to leave, anyway.

Instead I borrowed a book from their library - "The Accidental Tourist" - which I found very interesting because half of me is like Macon Leary in the book; when he is forced to travel he goes to places that are as similar to home as possible, so he doesn't feel uncomfortable.  I found myself going to McDonalds whenever I was too weary to try something new, just because it was easy.