Califail and Caliwin

So, today is Friday 04.09.09 and I'm having a super time in Sequim, Washington. But this post actually refers to how I got major Zondec on the 30.08.09, so lets go.

On the last post I wrote about how I talked to the German dude, Benjamin, and we said I'll join them for a hang-around in San Francisco. I told him to wake me up around 30 minutes before they're off so I'll have time to prepare.

So, on the accursed day I woke up at around 8 as usual because the host lady was doing a hell lot of noise, but I kept lying in bed, wating for her to go away / waiting for the Germans to wake me up. After a like an hour of doing that I decided to get up and check what's up 'cause I heard the Germans are already up. And what's the first thing I see when I get out of bed? Benjamin carrying a huge bag outside talking about how they're leaving in 5 minutes. FUCK. Apparently Hoaquin was joining them becuase he needed a ride to his next host, so I couldn't keep them waiting for long. I just put a t-shirt and some pants on, brushed my teeth and jumped outside with my camera (No breakfast, no extra clothes, no going on CS checking what's up in SF...).

On the way to SF there was a lot of awkward silence and my attempts to get people talking by playing a few words games failed miserably (only Hoaquin seemed to even be interested in making sounds). By them time we got to SF, everything was misty as hell and quite cold. Hoaquin got off at his host and we kept driving for a few minutes while debating what we wanna do.

One of the girls was talking on the phone to someone else in German and I asked Ben what's up? He said they're thinking of taking a scenic drive around town because it's too cold to be walking around. I was pretty down to that but then the NAZI WHORE (ahem) just looked at me and said: "aren't you going out?". I was like: "huh? I'm ... hanging out with you guys." and she was like: "I made plans with two other germans girls around SF so we don't have enough room for you in the car." ...

WHAT THE FUCK?!

They were "kind" enough to give me an old map of SF torn out of some magazine and just left me out there, in the cold, with no idea what I was going to do.

- GONE DWARF -

Well, I didn't to get in a fight with them, and I already was in SF so I decided I'll just start walking around and find something nice to do. And that actually turned out quite okay. I saw a lot of cool stuff, been to cool places and had a great time. I can't really be bothered with writing the description of all that happened, because it was nothing spectacular but it was fun nonetheless.

I took the CalTrain back to Sunnyvale and walked from the station back to my hostess's house. There I met with Ariel the Israeli, had some really bad Instant Thai food and went to sleep.

Okay, I would probably write about my last day in Sunnyvale as well, but Dave is taking me out JetSki-ing and then Hiking, so I guess I'll save that for tomorrow.

Peace.

Nathan.

Sorry for being lazy and rushed and not going into more details. I'm just having so much fun lately that I don't really have time to put into this blog.

Caliwin and Califail

Hey there,

I'm writing this post aboard the Train going from San Jose, California to Seattle, Washington (teh 24hr trip woot). So far I've slept thru half of the ride and for the other part it's pretty cool with tons of really beautiful views (I took pictures for a while and then got tired ... might do more of that a bit later).

Anyway, back to catching up.

I landed at SJC at about 9 or so. Talked to Kathleen (The lady that hosted me) and she said she's in the area and she'll come pick me up in a while. 15 minutes later while I'm telling her I'm at Terminal A and she tells me she's at Terminal 1 I realize that we're in different airports ... yeah. She arrived about an hour later to pick me up and it was a roughly 10 minute drive to her place. Both her daughters (19 and 22 if I recall correctly) were home, so I got a bed in the living room. It was pretty comfortable and I was really tired after about 40 hours with little to no sleep, so I just went to bed.

The next day I woke up pretty early, Kathleen was just leaving for work, and I had the Progressive Nation concert at 6pm. I spent a few hours at home studying maps of the area and the public transportation and then I just set out to town to check things out. Now, the concert was in San Jose and Kathleen lives in Sunnyvale so I had to take the tram for about 45 minutes. I got a Day Pass and took the first tram towards downtown San Jose. The stop was right at the entrence to the Civic Auditorium (where the concert was being held) but the ticket-collection booth was still closed and the informative dude told me that they open 2 hours before the show and the show starts right on time.

I took the rest of my time to walk around downtown SJ and grab a bite at a place that makes McDonalds feel like health-food: Johnny Rockets. Downtown SJ was good. Got back home, changed and caught the tram to dtsj again. Getting my ticket took like 2 minutes and at 6pm exactly Scale the Summit started playing. Now, I'm not a going to write a musical review about the concert, I'll just sum it up. Scale the Summit play instrumental prog metal, it's nice. Next on came Bigelf who play ... something that's a cross between the Beatles, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin - and it's good. Zappa plays Zappa which came next totally blew my mind with all sorts of crazy stuff. And last came Dream Theater which used their own equipment to literally shake the place from the foundations. They were loud, they were awesome. It was awesome.

At this point I should mention that during that entire day I tried to reach Omer Kornitz (an Israeli guy living in Sunnyvale) who didn't answer at all. When he did call me back, 5 mintues before the concert started, he told me that he and Ohad Benbenishty (another dude visiting from Israel) were going to Outside Lands on the next day to catch Pearl Jam and Incubus. So on that next day, I joined them and it was awesome again.

The day after that was pretty uneventful. Omer was pretty lame and we only met for like a few hours and helped one other Russian Israeli dude living in Sunnyvale move a bunch of stuff to his new flat. When I got back home I met with Kathleen's other surfers. There was Joaquin the Spaniard (whom I've known from the day before) and 3 Germans (Benjamin, Sonja and the bitch whose name I don't remember). Me and Benjamin sat for a while and discussed music. I gave him some music and he gave me some and we talked about how I might join them for a drive to San Francisco on the next day so we can all hang out together.

On my next post I'll elaborate on how everything has gone dwarf.

Feeling the Shuk draw near,

Nathan

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Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/relvox/CaliforniaPart1