The journey towards living it up in San Francisco

Well, after a night with little sleep (thanks Tara, Nikki and Kath!) HB and I managed to pull ourselves out of bed and get to the airport on time to catch our flight. I was amazed to find that in our 2 hour wait in the departure lounge, there was not 1 televison! Thats right not one! The domestic terminal has tv's and you only have to wait there for up to an hour, but in international you get nothing but tacky duty free shops and to stare at a wall. Didn't they know that I wasI'm leaving the country for 3 months and needed to catch as much of the Ashes as I could, gosh!

The plane ride was pretty cool, we managed to get seats in the emergency exit aisle which was fantastic as we had room to stretch our for the next 12 hours, and we both have little tv's to play with and occupy time. The only downpoint was when the ice creams came around (splices I might add, mmmmm!) they were so cold that when I went to suck on one my lips got frozen to the ice cream (like off dumb and dumber with the licking of the chairlift). Never thought this thought of thing could happen but it did. I managed to remove my lips from the offending ice cream but in the process ripped off a good portion of my lower lip - sexy! At least the blood scared all the onlookers away...

Luckily everything else apart from ice cream eating has gone rather smoothly. Our bags arrived at San Francisco and not Vladivostok which was a major plus and we cleared customs fine. HB checked his snowboard bag before customs to ensure no Shappelle Corby like shenanigins and everything was ok. Almost been run over about 5 times, really have to learn to look left before I cross a road, however this isn't always the case as a lot of the roads are one way streets, so I still end up almost becoming a permanent addition to a Cheverlot's bonnet.

It's been rainging pretty hard today but we hit the famous hilly streets anyway and had a good wonder around downtown and the dock area. Within 5 minutes of walking HB's 'holy' shoes were drenched and he had wet feet for the rest of the day - a shoe shopping trip is definately in order for him! Our first meal in the USA was (fittingly) fast food. Oh the Land of Convienance! The 99c taco's were simply too good for HB to pass up. Managed to score some free food samples later on in some markets, and got several free cans of 'Monster Energy' (ala. red bull ripoff) from a passing promo vehicle - once a stingy student, always a stingy student?

In the end its the little things that have made the US different. Like having dinner in a shopping mall food court but being able to buy beer. Seeing an 'Afo Hair Care' aisle in a priceline pharmacy equivilent store.

Ok well im out of quarters will have to go, stay tuned for more updates and photos.

Less than 1 week to go...

Above photo: How do you work this new kind of invisible ATM?

After many months planning and a lot of money spent there is now less than 1 week until HB and I head off overseas. An exciting time indeed! I would like to say that last minute plans are being finalised, bags being packed and repacked, emails and addresses for postcards are being gathered... but that would be a big nasty lie. I am still in exams at the moment, so those bags will have to be packed later; it will make for an amusing first few days when I find out that in my haste I packed 6 pairs of pants, 1 tshirt and no jumpers for a country just coming into winter! Anwayway there is no better way to procastinate from study then do start up a travel blog for our impending trip so here it is.

Being the somewhat lazy git that I am, and the fact that keeping track of everyones email addresses is harder then finding something other then reheated chicken slab to eat for dinner at college, I have decided to buck the group email/facebook/myspace crowd and start a blog. Read it and post comments if you want, rest assured im not going to fill up your inbox with group-travel-spam-email.

A quick rundown of our plans. I finish exams on Wednesday November 22, a few days of hard partyin and even harder packing before we fly out to San Francisco on the morning of Sunday the 26th. In San Francisco we have a bit over a week to look around California before starting work at lovely Lake Tahoe (on the border of California and Nevada, near Reno) on December 8. We'll be working at Heavenly Ski Resort, HB as a liftie and myself asd a ticket seller, with our spare time filled with boarding down steep mountains during the day and doing our bit to support Miller and Budweiser at night.

Stay tuned for more...