Memorial Day weekend. Part 1.

Jim arrived at 9 am and picked up Robert and I from Roberts place.

Click here for Google Route map. (It will open in a separate window. You will need to refer to it. No, there won't be a test at the end.)

We headed west along Woodside road up ino the mountains and turned right onto Kings Mountain Road. We climbed up the mountain and crossed Skyline Boulevard and went down Tunitas road.

We stopped approxmiately at B on the map and the first 50 photos are from this location. Including such delights as this Banana slug that I saw on the ground.



Robert and I being naughty by tresspassing ....


Here's a closeup of the sign, so you can see how naughty we were.


And Jim wringing his hands in despair at our naughtiness. ;)


And the Forest Troll we found.


And the trees were the usual tall Redwoods. Robert and Jim acting as height comparision.


We then drove down to the coast and parked at the San Gregorio State Beach, where this pleasant, laughing chap let us buy a ticket to park there.


We then walked up to the headland and took some photos and enjoyed the sea breezes. This is looking south.


And looking north.


Robert and Jim then guessed where Australia was.


We walked back down to the beach and explored some caves underneath the cliff.




We then headed inland up the Pescadero Creek rd and turned off at Alpine rd, and went to Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve.


So many things to watch out for !!




We found the California state flower, the Californian Poppy growing wild in the field.


This is looking back towards the Pacific, down the Pescadero Creek valley that we just drove up.


The bees are big and black with only one stripe.


Grass seeds stripped off the stalk.


We drove back to Skyline Boulevard and stopped at a Vista Point (Lookout) and looked back towards Redwood City.


We stopped at Alice's Restaurant, where Jim's ute looked slightly out of placed amongst the other cars.




After lunch, we stopped further down the road where you coulod see over both sides of the ridge.




We then drove onto the freeways and dropped Robert back at 18th Ave.

To be continued ....



Lots more photos here.

Apartment.

I went and signed up for an apartment today. The address is 1 Maple St #1303, Redwood City, Ca. USA. 94063. So it's apartment number 1303 at 1 Maple St. in Redwood City in California, USA. ;)

Their website is here, the overhead shot from Google maps is here and the street view is here. My apartment's balcony is the arched one above the "For Lease" sign.

It's in a very nice part of Redwood City, there is an organic supermarket just up the road, the railway station is fairly close by and it's about a 10 minute bike ride to work. It comes half furnished with a fridge, microwave, dishwasher, clothes washer and dryer, and has a gas stove. The floorplan is Residence A in the first link above, click on Prices and Floorplans in the left hand menu and then on Residence A.

Todays random photo is a No Smoking sign. It's more like a legal document than a No Smoking sign.



Update : Bike route from the apartment to work.

SSN and BA

I finally recieved my Social Security number and went and got a bank account.

Yay, means I can finally get paid and have somewhere to put it !

Long weekend for memorial day on Monday. Jim is coming over on Sunday to go bike riding in the hills near here then, take me over to Berkeley for the afternoon.

So lots of photos and tall tales on Monday. :)

Language.

I've had a couple of interesting encounters with the language. The area around the factory is fairly Hispanic, and at a local restaurant for lunch the waitress came up and started speaking Spanish to me. She only stopped when she saw that I was very puzzled. She then had to go and get the other waitress to translate to ask if she could clear the table.

I've had a couple of times when I've asked for a drink of water. They pronounced it waaater and can't understand my accent.

A similar thing happened when I asked for a macchiato coffee. It must be that different 'a' sound that confused the waitress and she didn't know what I was asking for. I gave up and order an espresso. She later came back and realised what I'd said and was very apologetic.

Steve and David at the office are easy to understand and we haven't had any difficulties, but then they are both born in Australia. The other engineer Jim sounds a lot more American than he did in Australia.

Random photos.

Roach Coach.


Trucks, trucks and more trucks. The Mercedes looks small.


Real Butter comes in sticks !


V Australia ticket. The wording is as follows.
The Stub. Ever wonder where this part goes ? so do we.
The Big Bit. This part of your ticket is fiercely loyal to its owner. While The Stub cavorts off to who knows where, The Big Bit sticks around to help you to your seat. Treat it well, and it will be yours forever.


Roberts looking puzzled and bemused by the 20 ft high American with gold eagle on top.


More American flags and eagles. This was in the local hardware store.

More weird things.

• Some American cars don't have indicator lights. They just flash the brake light.



• Driving on the other side of the road feels less weird than I thought it would. The hardest thing is roundabouts. The other trick is "long left, short right" for turning left or right around corners.



• Robert's car automatically locks when you put it into Drive.



• They are a lot of really, really big utes on the roads.



• The road verges are very messy. they are full of weeds and not cut. The roundabouts have haphazard bushes on them



• There are a lot of food vans tucked into little bits of unused road space selling Mexican food. The local name for them is "roach coach" Yuck.



• Traffic lights are funny. Instead of having the turning arrows to one side of the main set of lights, they are all in a vertical row. Stop, Caution, Go, Left, Right.



• Most houses don't have a driveway entrance, the kerb just rounds off a bit and that's it.



• American drivers are less aggressive on the roads. A lot less road rage. I guess it that some American carry guns in their cars.



• Americans have trouble with our accent. If you spell 'a' they think you are saying 'i'. So my name is now spelt indrew !



• The price of petrol here is about $3 / US gallon. Which works out to about 79c/litre and they complained when it went up to $4 / gallon. ($1.05/litre)



• They can't make good coffee.



• Ever.

That's about all I can think of at the moment. I'll try and get some more photos of things and post them tomorrow.

Stanford University

This is making up for missing one the other day. We went briefly to Stanford University on Friday.

Absolutely gorgeous architecture with wonderfully deep green grass.



This was the main chapel on campus, dedicated to Leland Stanford the millionaire who founded the uni.


Sculptures by Rodin.


Saw a blue bird in hedge looking for insects. He allowed me reasonably close before hopping away.


And a squirrel. He didn't let me anywhere near him. They are a lot smaller than I thought they would be, smaller than a rat but with a big fluffy tail. I could imagine Mac having a great time chasing them around the place.



And another crazy road sign...


More architecture. I love the curve from the pillars to the roof.


This is the Hoover Tower which houses the Hoover Institution which was started by Stanford first student, Herbert Hoover before he became President. The Institute is a research center and public policy think tank to protect the "American way". ;)


We then went along University ave for dinner and saw some Hare Krishnas.


Newsagents are very rare in America, instead they have the daily paper in a box onthe corner and you put the required money in to open the door and lift out your paper. Pharmacies are where you go if you want birthday cards and things.




They sell everything in the Pharmacy ...



Traffic lights are different too, they don't have Walk and Don't Walk, they have a red hand indicating stop and a white man indicating walk.




And a sweet shot to finish on...

Golden Gate bridge and Muir Woods

Robert and I drove to Muir Woods via the 280 freeway, crossing the Golden Gate bridge and having lunch in Sausalito. Map of the drive here.

We started off by driving west to the 280 freeway which runs up the middle of the peninsula on west side of the urban area.
It's your typical 4 lane freeway.




(Click photos to view larger images.)

The freeway ended at 19th Ave and went through the Golden Gate park, which is 20% bigger than New York's Central Park, for those keeping count.

And 19th Avenue had trams !!

We eventually ended up driving across the Golden Gate bridge and stopped at the very crowded tourist lookout on the other side. Very cold and windy too.





We then drove through a colourful tunnel to Sausalito. This is a pretty little town on the side of the hill overlooking the bay across from San Francisco (on the left in the middle photo). We had lunch at a restaurant on the edge of the bay and enjoyed watching the yachts zip back and forth on the bay.




After lunch and a very brief windy stroll through the boat yard, we headed north and up into the mountains to Muir Woods, home of the giant Redwoods. It was the usual sort of natural tourist spot with old faded displays and volunteers manning the ticket office. We walked up one side of the stream, past some very nice wooden bridges and down the other side, crossing back back over the stream to the carpark.





The label in the middle of the tree rings indicates that the tree started growing about 990 AD and it died about 1925.





We then drove back to the Golden Gate bridge and stopped on the headland on the other side and took some more photos.





One for the rock queen !


More photos.




The left photo has Alcatraz Island on the left and Treasure Island in the middle.
The photo on the right, has the bridge on the left and the strip of green in the middle of the houses is the Golden Gate Park, which we visited after we left the headland.

Just as we were about to leave, the Sea Princess came through under the bridge.





We saw a Trolley Car on the way to the Windmill. A trolley car is a cross between a bus and a tram and looks like a big grasshopper !!



Oh sorry, didn't I mention the Windmill ?!? It's very famous. It was built on the Pacific shore to pump water for the gardens and is known as the Dutch Windmill.





There was also a sign at the park entrance letting you know all the fun activities that you could do in the park.



We walked down to the beach and realised that there was nothing between us and Australia. Well, except for the Pacific !
I got Robert to point to Australia, he's not a very good model as he blinked in all the photos !



The photos belowe are: Looking back to the entrance to the bay, people on the beach barbequeing and houses along the beach next to the park.





We tried to get into the Beach chalet for dinner but it was going to be a 2 hour wait, so we headed back to Palo Alto and had dinner there. Then went home and collapsed into bed !!

More photos from the day here.