FIL n k8's Excellent Adventure

[FIL]

As some of you already know, and some may not, k8 and I have just gotten home from a holiday in the US. We went over for my brothers wedding in San Jose, and only did day trips from there, which means we went up to San Francisco a couple of times and down to Santa Cruz and Monterey...

I'm finally sitting down to pick out some of my favourite pics so far... I've been putting them on facebook and flickr each night, but haven't really done much more than that till now...

This first pic will mean something to you if you happen to watch the Kiwi series 'Outrageous Fortune', it was one of the few things we planned to do during our stopover in NZ... k8's a huge fan, so we did a driveby on the only non-studio regular location that they use...



After our day in NZ, we were back on a plane for the 12 hour flight to LA....



I've known about the LAX Theme Building for a while, and was looking forward to getting a photo of it... As we were landing I noticed it was covered in scaffolds and was a little disappointed, but at the same time, it's not often that it gets renovated, so I guess this shot is a little unique with regards to that... We only spent a total of about 4 hours on the ground in LA, just enough time to switch terminals and have a coffee before lining up for the next flight...

Oh, we also got to witness first hand how rough the LAX/United ground crew are with your luggage... I saw them throw my luggage onto the belt, but didn't see it go into the plane, however a little later we witnessed several cases fall off the top of the belt used to load the plane and drop about 3 metres to the ground... Whether this is responsible for my Sigma 50-500mm lens now making a loud squeaking noise as it focusses, I'm not sure (it's had a hard life), but I'm happy to blame United for now, as they definately didn't help matters...

 

[FIL]

One of the first places we visted in San Jose was my brothers workplace, Google...



This is the Android and the Cupcake, if any of you have a HTC Dream phone (known in the US as the G1), Android is the operating system it runs on, and is written by Google. Cupcake was the name of the first major revision of that software, delivered over the air to users of the phone. The next major update is apparently called Donut, and will see a large donut joining the Android and the Cupcake.



And these are the Acrobats, about 50m from the Android and the Cupcake, they're situated out the front of a building that Adobe once occupied that is now part of the Google Campus. Despite being a part of recent history, no ones really sure whether the Acrobats were erected before or after Adobe named the software we all use today for viewing and authoring .pdf files... (some locals claim they were there before Adobe moved into the building, some say they turned up about the same time as the software...)



This is the main courtyard at Google... There's also a vegie garden, beach volleyball court and a couple of lap pools... The lap pools are only about waist deep, but they require a full time lifeguard to oversea them, apparently that is the cushiest job going at Google at the moment... (I didn't get any pics of the lifeguard, but apparently he's fairly well documented elsewhere anyway)

 

[FIL]

This is a special one for me, cos it's the first photo I took of the Caddy... It's also parked at the Winchester shops where we got the tux's for the wedding and k8 and I picked up our prepaid sim cards... Plus, the sign is pretty cool.... There's quite a few old neon signs around here, not all of them appear to be working though...



Mexican coke... For financial reasons, American soft drinks are usually made with High Fructose Corn Syrup instead of cane sugar. In 1977 the US government imposed a set of tariff's on sugar, making the local price of sugar about double that of the rest of the world. The US also has fairly heavy subsidies on corn products, which means a lot of stuff here uses corn or corn by-products in some way.. This is most noticeable in the soft drinks... The drinks we have at home that contain sugar, mostly have High Fructose Corn Syrup, which leaves a bit of an oily, corny aftertaste in your mouth... I can't stand the local coke now, and will drink only Coke Zero or Diet Coke, however, you can get Mexican Coke in some places... We picked up a carton within a couple of days of landing, as I'd already tasted US coke and decided I couldn't stand the stuff... Turns out many of the locals can't either... and of course, my brothers other groomsmen are from Australia and NZ, so as soon as they heard we had Mexican coke, they were keen to have some... (also, Mexican coke still comes in 355ml glass bottles, which is way cool)

And seeing as I'm drinking Mexican Coke and Mexican Beer (Corona) while we're here, what else to cover the seats of the Caddy in, but Mexican Blankets...



These were picked up at the San Jose Flea Market for US$20 each, but the starting price at some stalls was up to US$50 each for the same blankets (roughly 7ft x 4ft 6")

 

[FIL]

Something else thats also caught my attention, even though I half expected it, was how many free papers there are around here, and how common these paper stands are... Advertising revenue's must be pretty good...



While my parents were in town, we checked out the San Jose cathedral, k8 made sure she got this shot of me on the steps doing the 'Buddy Christ' from Dogma... My parents had no idea what was going on, but my sister-in-law picked it up right away...



Santa Cruz... all the locals keep telling us it's such a dirty beach, but from what I could see, it's just got a bit of seaweed... And the boardwalk area is like a year round royal show (ok, so only the Aussies are likely to know what I mean by that)... Except there's no animal cr*p everywere, and you don't have to pay to get in...

 

[FIL]

This is the reason we're here.. My brother got married on the 22nd of August....



I didn't take the camera to the ceremony or the reception, as I was the best man... But before all that, they went to the local rose garden to take photos, the bride wore a different dress, which we all thought was a pretty good dress, but it was 'the cheapie' - destined to get dragged through a rose garden and then left in a change room for the actual ceremony...

 

[SupraMario]

shweet looks like you had a hell of a time

 

[FIL]

Babe's Muffler Man.... a few decades ago, these Muffler Men were all over the US, but now there's only a handful of them left... I knew this one was in San Jose and had been planning on getting a photo of it eventually, but we happened to drive past it one day, so got the photo early...



The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum... The Rosicrucian's are a bunch of religious crackpots, but they also have a bit Egyptian Museum in San Jose... We spent a few hours checking it out, they also run a show at their 'planetarium' that is a little average, but a good chance for a nap if you need one..



As I said above, there's some cool signs around here...

Of course, neon signs look better at night...

 

[FIL]

The giant Monopoly board is something that I knew about before we left Perth, but it seems that a few of the locals have never heard of it... It's about 25m x 25m... The properties have all been given local (or semi-local) names and many are sponsored by local businesses, including IBM...





I guess there's not as much government money to go around as there is in Perth, as there's a lot of adopt-a-park/highway/bus stop deals going on around here, from people who volunteer to clean graffiti off their local bus stop to companies like Adobe who have adopted all the open space around their headquarters, planting native species that don't require much water, running underground drip irrigation instead of sprayers to conserve water and putting a payground in for the kiddies... (Plus those dragonflys some of you have seen on my facebook page)





Parking inspectors in San Jose get around in these little things, and are incredibly efficient.. I hope they don't catch on back home

 

[FIL]

I don't think anyone does mini-golf quite like the Americans... This is probably a little below the average for their courses, and still way cooler than anything we've got back home...

Mind you, I don't think they have supa-golf here yet...



Of course, we're in Silicon Valley, and both k8 and I are at least a little nerdy... If you find yourselves in Silicon Valley at some stage, make sure you check out the Intel Museum...

As I mentioned above, we took a drive up into the hills around San Jose one night.. This is the view on the way back... there's a restaurant probably about 1km from where I took this shot...

 

[FIL]

Alum Rock Park is one of the bigger local national parks, and back in the early 1900's and late 1800's, was a very popular desination for San Jose locals (lack of cars meant that if you had somewhere interesting and a railroad, you had lots of people... Alum Rock Park had a railroad and plenty of things to do)

This place used to have a pub, a bathhouse (the park has 11 different types of mineral springs, and these were tapped for the bathouse) along with all the normal stuff that parks have...

the pub burnt down around 1900, the advent of the car meant that people weren't a slave to the railway anymore and the depression pretty much took care of the rest of the parks appeal at that time... After the war there was a resurgence in interest, but not quite as big as before... Even so, the park's popularity was taxing the natural resources, so when it's popularity faded again around the 60's, the parks authority decided to take a new approach, the bathouse disappeared, and the park now contains a ranger station / visitors centre, a 'youth science centre' and a couple of bbq areas and some walking trails...

After Alum Rock Park, we headed out to Livermore, about a 45 minute drive from San Jose, where the Relics and Nobles car clubs have been having a regular Friday night meet up at John's 1/4lb Char Burger for at least the last 5 years...



John's is just off the end of the main strip in town, which was redeveloped about 4 years ago into something that more resembles the Freo Cappuccino strip (sorry, another reference than means SFA to most people on here...) than the old 4 lane divided highway that used to run through the centre of town... It's a really cool family type place now, they have a large grassed area that the local kids have pretty much taken over with about a hundred of them hanging out, throwing footballs and having fun whenever we went past...

The car in the photo above belongs to a bloke named Winston, and it was his fathers car back in the late 50's when he was a member of the Nobles in Sioux City... Winston put the car back together about 5 years ago, and as far as he's concerned, it's finished, cos he's having too much fun driving it to pull it off the road now...

 

[FIL]

The next day, we went and had lunch at Hooters... We were planning on going to the Aussie themed restaurant 'The Outback Steakhouse', but they weren't open so we went to Hooters instead.... (We were always going to go there before we come home, just not today...)

So far, of all the burgers we've had here, I think the one at Johns (in the post above), and the one at Hooters, were the best of the lot... and we've had a lot of burgers...



On the way home from Hooters, we dropped in to eBay, to get a shot of the eBay car in front of the eBay sign... Had a little attention from security for driving around their carpark, but once we told them we just wanted to get a few photos, they were all good...



And then, we had a drink

 

[FIL]

shweet looks like you had a hell of a time

hell yeah... we had an awesome time... now we're trying to work out when we can go back...

i had plans when we left, to post every day, but once we got there, we were rarely sitting round with time to post... i did however make sure i got at least one photo a day worth uploading, which was something i was determined to do...

we've left the car in San Jose, and would really like to get back around July/August 2010 and do a road trip from San Jose to Bonneville, down to Vegas and across to LA.... I'm trying to convince a few mates to buy cars from the US over the next year so that they can come with us

 

[FIL]

We went to San Francisco a couple of times. The first time we went via the Bay Bridge and stopped off at Treasure Island on the way. Treasure Island is a former US Navy base that consists of a lot of disused Navy buildings, some housing that now has civilian residents and a couple of businesses who've found that the location and rent happens to suit their needs.

For those who've been to San Francisco before, Treasure Island is between Oakland and San Francisco, just off the Bay Bridge. Most people who visit it, go for the awesome views of the city, Bay Bridge and Alcatraz...


This is the part of the Bay Bridge from Treasure Island to San Francisco.


While this is the view from the other side of Treasure Island back to Oakland.




Treasure Island also has a couple of good spots for car photos (there's heaps of rundown buildings to use as backdrops), this second one would have been better when there wasn't so much sunlight entering the undercroft and hitting the car, but you get the idea.

 

[FIL]

After Treasure Island, we jumped back on the Bay Bridge and continued into San Francisco, we'd been told about a 49 mile scenic drive that the council have marked out, but besides the street signage (which is pretty comprehensive) there's not a lot of info around. We knew that it started at City Hall, and that it was marked by light blue and white signs with seagulls on them, so we plugged City Hall into the GPS and set off... Unfortunately, about a block from City Hall, we hit a problem.. A cop car was blocking the road we needed to take, and the second best option was from the other side of a gridlocked street, so we turned down another street and figured we'd make a left turn and work our way back... Except that the street we'd turned down is one of the main trolley routes in SF, and every street was marked No Left Turn... As it turned out, we were heading towards the wharf area, so we kept on going, and parked on the side of the road down there... We then wandered up to Pier 39, which is part of the touristy part of the wharf, they've got Hard Rock Cafe, a carousel for the kiddies, heaps of souvenir shops, restaurants etc, and the sea lions that made their home at Pier 39 after the 1989 earthquake. The maritime authorities closed down part of pier 39 to accomodate the sea lions, and now there's a constant crowd of tourists checking them out.



After leaving Pier 39, we managed to pick up the scenic drive, and as a result, ended up at the Palace of the Fine Arts.



This place was built in the early 1900's, and now is starting to show it's age, but is being restored, and it's an amazing sight..



The scenic drive then takes you through the Presidio district, and past the Fort Point area, which is a pretty good spot to get some photos of the Golden Gate Bridge.



From there you head up through one of San Francisco's bigger golf courses, to the Palace of the Legion of Honour and down to the coast, you run along the 'beach' (I'm starting to think the worst beaches in Perth sh*t all over the beaches in California), past Golden Gate Park and then back through it, unfortunately, this is where we lost the trail, as a music festival in the park that weekend meant that the road we were supposed to take was closed...

 

[FIL]

Here's a couple more touristy San Francisco photos...



Golden Gate Bridge from Fort Point, shortly before the local cops came to kick everyone out and lock the place up for the night.



The Caddy out the front of one of 4 Mel's Drive In's in San Francisco (and of the 3 we checked out before getting to this one, the only one with a car park so you could actually "Drive In")

 

[FIL]

Here's a few more SF shots.... Like any good tourist, we drove across the Golden Gate Bridge...



Then we walked back....



The view from here is really nice...



But not everyone comes to the Golden Gate Bridge for the view... Thats why they have these phones across the bridge...

 

[FIL]

Looking from the bridge towards the city, you can see the carpark from which I took the night shot a few posts above....



These are the cables that hold the bridge up....



And here's yet another view of the bridge...



These pillars are huge....



This is a very busy bridge...

 

[FIL]

One last shot of the Golden Gate Bridge to add to the collection of photos of the Cadillac in front of famous stuff..



From one of the biggest bridges in the world, it was off to the street that claims to be "the crookedest street" in America, Lombard Street. Some of the priciest real estate in San Francisco is on and around Lombard street.



A few people (mostly my family) had told me that you couldn't drive a 6 metre long vehicle down Lombard street without scraping the sides, so of course that meant we had to try. (For the record, we made it down easily, I only hit reverse once, and k8 was adamant I didn't even need to do that)



We did a little more driving around, and made our way to Haight-Ashbury, even if you don't smoke, you should still check out the smoke shops here, I don't think you'll find a better collection of 'herb jars' and pipes outside Amsterdam.



There's even a shop themed after The Goonies.



And of course, when I saw this Airstream parked on the side of the road by the Golden Gate National Park, I just had to grab a photo.



If anyone ever dares you to drink this stuff, don't. Clamato beer is beer flavoured with clams and tomato, and I'm sure it was a good idea at the time, but I definately don't recommend it.

 

[FIL]

They even have cops on horses here.... (ok, so we have them at home too, but considering we're getting rid of bike cops cos they cost too much, the horses can't be far behind). Something else we noticed about cops in California, is that every roadworks site we saw, had at least 1 cop in attendance while the work crews were there, smaller sites would have a cop directing traffic, while the roadworks on the Interstates had a CHP car with it's lights flashing to warn people to slow down.



mmmmm.... alcohol.... This is just a small selection of the liquor department at the local supermarket in San Jose, not a dedicated bottle shop, just in the supermarket, next to the fresh fruit section actually... The prices over there are really good too, we drank Corona's that cost about US$20 a carton and the bottle of Woodford Reserve bourbon a few posts above cost US$29, the same bottle in Perth goes for AU$75



Just another old sign, the car was was still there, and still in use, but you enter from the other side of the block, nowhere near this sign.

 

[mk3design]

Sweet pics, The Cadillac is awesome