Springfield: Episode A

Day 63 (Wednesday Nov 24th)
"I'll have a burrito and a Margarita."

Alex had told me she'd be going grocery shopping early so when I woke up at 10am I texted her to see what was happening... she was doing her make-up in the bedroom. We checked out some thrift stores because I needed a jacket, I got a sweater, some gloves and a hat. At the grocery store we bought a lot of stuff for Thanksgiving and I picked up some veggie stuff. We got back to the house and Brian came home from work shortly after so we decided to go out to Chipotle. Brian and I had Margaritas with our burritos because we are manly men. Also in Chipotle was the old lady superhero known as "Pumpkin-hat" so I got some video of her. Back at the McDonald's I played some Rock Band, some Beatles Rock Band, Alex prepared Thanksgiving food, I was pumped full of vitamins and aspirin and then we went to sleep at about 1am.

Day 64 (Thursday Nov 25th)
"Happy eggplant parmesan day!"

I woke up with a bit of a cold, it had been coming on since the day I left San Francisco so I'd been taking lots of aspirins and vitamins since I arrived in Eugene. I watched some of the Macy's Parade and laughed at the awfulness of it all, everything is a commercial. The Reeds (Martin & Natalie) and Liz arrived at about 3pm and Austin arrived shortly after them. It was lovely to see everyone again and I managed to last at least ten minutes before I made an inappropriate comment to Natalie. We started drinking and had some nibbles while we waited for Vanessa, she arrived just after 7pm and we went straight into the proper eating. The Reeds had made some delicious stuffed mushrooms and Alex had made me some lovely eggplant parmesan so I had that with some peas, salad and a bread roll. We spent the night drinking, reading excerpts from Jon Bon Jovi's biography, playing Guesstures, Rock Band and silent Rock Band. The girls won Guesstures because they cheated a few times. Around 3am we all settled down for the night, falling asleep to Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

Day 65 (Friday Nov 26th)
"Vanessa the Mexicaninja!"

Waking up in a room full of people felt just like a hostel only this time I actually got up in time for breakfast, we had eggs, potatoes and toast. Somebody put Speed on and after that I put on Jingle All The Way, that's a helluva double bill! Vanessa disappeared at some point, Alex thought she'd gone out for a smoke but she'd actually gone somewhere in her car. When she came back it was time for Martin, Natalie and Austin to leave. We mourned their departure by watching The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Tosh.0, Wing Commander (oh yeah!) and a couple of episode of Dukes Of Hazzard. We went to a cool little independent cinema to watch Scott Pilgrim vs The World, it was okay but there was a bit too much going on for my brain to compute. I spent the last half hour of the movie trying to figure out an audio reference that I'd heard, it meant I couldn't really think about anything else until we got back to Alex's and I could check IMDb.... it was Ming's ring noise from Flash Gordon.

The rideshare to the Grey Havens (Oregon)

Day 62 (Tuesday Nov 23rd)
"Buy me some woman's underarm deodorant please."

I'd set my alarm for 6am but when I woke up I decided I'd not bother with a shower and get half an hour longer in bed. On the way to the train station I only had time to grab a muffin and a banana. It took about half an hour to get to MacArthur and I ended up getting there too early so I waited about twenty minutes before my rideshare arrived. Nick and his wife Elizabeth turned up in their old Saturn, we chatted for a few minutes and once our other rideshare Connor arrived we were on our way!

We had some constant chatting going for about the first hour, mainly between Connor and Nick. They actually knew a lot of the same people because they'd both lived in Seattle. I learnt that Nick lived in a gay man's commune kind of thing in southern Oregon and that Nick was a drum teacher for kids. Nick and Elizabeth took turns driving and sleeping and we stopped at a diner for some lunch, I had a veggie burger. Alex texted me asking if she could buy me anything from the store, I requested some women's underarm deodorant... it's one of my things. About half way into the journey there was a 'road closed' sign and we took a detour but as soon as we got back to the I-5 we hit major traffic. We actually didn't move for about an hour and at one point both our drivers got out of the car to go pee, which reminded me of the scene from Flash Gordon where the pilots disappear. Two hours of slow driving followed and it was getting dark so any nice views of the snowy mountains were not visible. We finally got to Wolf Creek at about 7pm and dropped off Connor.

I slept for most of the two hours to Eugene except for when I heard You Could Be Mine by Guns N Roses and realised that was the first song I'd heard from Nick's MP3 player that I also had on mine. They dropped me of at iHop and Alex turned up about five minutes later. I met her husband Brian and then Alex made me my first ever grilled cheese sandwich, they were amazed that I'd never had one before. It was already quite late so I ended up watching an episode of CSI: Miami and then going to sleep on the sofa.

San Francisco in a day

Day 61 (Monday Nov 22nd)
"In your message please tell me one thing that you're grateful for"

The first thing I did when I woke up was to check online and see if there was any change in my travel options. My dad had spotted that train tickets were available again but for about $20 more. I quickly booked one and then checked my emails to find a couple of replies to my rideshare post. One asked me to reply with a bit more info about myself and the other one left a phone number which I called. It went to voicemail and she sounded like a very hippy woman so I left a message. I called Amtrak to check if could cancel my ticket with no charge and the woman said that would be okay up to a couple of hours before my train leaves so I left my options open. I stored my bag at the hostel and went down the road to a cafe for a veggie chili bowl. Then my plan of doing the whole of San Francisco in a day went into action!

Union Square was my first stop, there wasn't much going on there so that was simple enough. I walked through Chinatown, it was mostly Chinese people, I'm used to Chinatowns being full of tourists but this one was different. It was pretty cool and seemed to go on forever! I walked a bit west to get to Lombard Street and see the famous steep winding road. There were lots of tourists here just standing in the middle of the street, it was rather amusing. Next stop was Pier 39, I'd been told they have sea-lions and that it was a good location to see Alcatraz, both of these things were correct but also correct was that I'd been told they don't have as many sea-lions as they used to... damn humans. I had a pee and a poop on the pier (in the restroom) and then Nick called me about the rideshare, he seemed like a nice guy and the only condition was that I had to get over to Oakland which was about half an hour on the BART train. I called Amtrak and cancelled my ticket, it was all rather easy, Amtrak is good. I had a long pleasant walk along the waterfront to the Golden Gate Bridge and then walked about half way across it. I headed back the same way that I'd came and managed to snap a hawk that was perched in a very good photo op, I also got a comedy pervy video of a couple snogging. I'd decided to get a cable car back towards the hostel but the one near the waterfront had a massive line so I walked a bit further to the next one. It was still about a half hour wait but the ride was pretty fun, I rode hanging on the side of the car because I like living life on the edge..

I got back to the hostel at about 6pm and booked another night there. The room I was in the previous night was now full and I ended up getting a different room all to myself. I went to Golden Era Vegetarian which was a fairly cheap Vietnamese restaurant around the corner and I had Pho. It was a bit confusing because I had a bowl of stuff and a side dish with just bean sprouts and a lemon segment. I dumped some of the bean sprouts into the bowl and chowed down. It was a tasty and very filling meal. Nick called again at 9pm and we confirmed everything, he'd done the research on which train I'd be getting in the morning and how much it would be, very helpful indeed. I'd need to get to the pick up point for 8am so I went to bed quite early.

My last day in L.A. and first night in San Francisco

Day 59 (Saturday Nov 20th) "Anybody in from Iceland? Yes."
I woke up to the sounds of an American guy being interrogated by the Mexican cleaners. He was saying that he didn't know when he was checking-out and they were asking if he was lost. Me and the Welsh guys chatted to him for a bit but were none the wiser as to his situation. The Welsh boys were leaving and one of them gave me a Jon Bon Jovi biography because he couldn't fit it in his bag. I did some planning for the Oregon part of my trip and sorted out a rideshare to San Francisco for the next day. It would be with a guy called Michael, he said there would possibly be another guy joining us. I went out for a veggie burrito at Chipotle because I hadn't been to one of those for about a week. I almost left my bag in Chipotle because I wasn't used to taking it out with me. I'd decided to turn up at the Big Blue Bus depot because the security man hadn't go back to me but they wouldn't let me in without the proper paperwork. They told me to go to customer service which I did but to no avail except that I got to chat with a nice lady about the bus, she used to drive them. Back to the hostel and I booked the San Francisco hostel for the next night. I went to buy some headphones because mine had broken and then went down towards the beach for sunset. I'd planned to walk down to Venice Beach but it was getting too late so I only made it as far as the Speed bus explosion location. I bought a blueberry muffin from a CVS across the road and did a weird little photo re-enactment. That actually really cheered me up for ten minutes as I walked back towards the hostel listening to the Speed score. I managed to get slightly lost for the first time in Santa Monica but only because they print the maps the wrong way round to make it look like the beach is to the south. At the hostel there was a middle aged English guy badly chatting up a young Japanese girl much to the amusement of everyone in the library although Daniele (Japanese Brazilian) was getting a bit fed up with it and wanted to close the door, I wouldn't let her. The giggling French girls from Flagstaff turned up at the hostel (not the French girls from New Orleans). We found out that a stand-up comedy night was happening in the hostel so a few of us decided to go to that. It was four comedians telling mostly bad jokes to about fourteen rather tired and mostly foreign, totally sober travellers. It was never going to work although the stand-up woman was quite cute. I thought about going back after the show to chat to her but she left before I had the chance. In my notes it talks about a cute Chinese girl coming into the library straight from the shower, wet hair, dressed for bed and then me ending up alone in the library with her and a Japanese girl. I'm going to skip that bit and say that I went to bed.

"The Firehouse Restaurant, the bus and the muffin all fit the doubloon!"

Day 60 (Sunday Nov 21st) "I thought it couldn't be you but then I heard that Liverpool accent"
I got up at 9am but I still managed to be the last one up. I checked-out, said good bye to Danielle and then grabbed a slice of pizza for breakfast. Micheal my rideshare guy turned up in a snazzy BMW. We drove to the station to pick up our other rideshare dude but when Michael called him it turned out he was still in San Diego so that wasted half an hour. Micheal had a massive stammer but it would be rude to mention that so I'll just say that on the seven hour journey in between the massive spells of no talking we talked a lot of crap, he kept telling me about women he'd been with and I talked about Speed, we went to In & Out Burger but they had a massive line so we waited to eat at Panda Express which had a couple of nice veggie options. When we got to San Francisco at around 6pm and he needed to pick up some medical marijuana and for the purposes of this blog I most definitely did not buy a marijuana cookie off him. He dropped me at the hostel and I checked-in. The room was quite cold because there was a window open... I closed it. A couple of French guys came back to the room so I chatted with them for a bit, they'd been sutdying in the US for almost three months and were heading home in the next week. I planned a whole day of walking around San Francisco, trying to fit in as many of the major tourist things as possible. I asked one of the hostel staff if it was possible and she gave me the green light. After all my planning and deciding I could get a train to Eugene at 9pm the next night I discovered that the trains were sold out for the next two nights. I posted on Craiglist about getting a rideshare and found that Greyhound was back-up option but it was about $80 for a 15 hour journey. I popped out to Walgreens to grab some snacks and bumped into Victoria from Liverpool who I'd hung out with in New Orleans. After some snacking I went back to the hostel and was in bed by midnight.

Los Angeles continued: Dreamworks and some live music

Day 57 (Thursday Nov 18th) "Vagina!"
I woke up with one of my "I'm still drunk" hangovers. It wasn't painful but I was feeling very zoned out. I was supposed to get the bus to somewhere near Burbank but in the end Damon came to pick me up. We started with a beer run because Damon had to re-stock the bar in the hidden room so pretty much the first thing I got to see at Dreamworks was the hidden room. It's quite an incredible thing and there are so many stories that go along with it, Damon is my hero. Guillermo Del Toro was apparently on campus doing a book signing but I didn't get to see him. We grabbed some food at the canteen and then sat outside for a bit. Back inside and Damon showed me some cool animation stuff from How To Train Your Dragon while he was explaining exactly what it is he does. I also got to see some early stuff from The Croods. Matt was in an office nearby and Damon left me with him while he went for a meeting. Matt showed me a bit more of the campus, lots of cool artwork, a big wall of famous signatures and then a sequence from the upcoming Kung Fu Panda 2. At the end of the working day we headed for the hidden room and this time it was full of people. I tried a pint of one of the beers that's brewed by people that work at Dreamworks an hung out with some of the interesting animation folks. A lot of the people seemed to be writing novels so they were all talking about that. I met a woman called April who told me a lot of movies that I should watch and I found out that her husband actually worked on the bus explosion scene from Speed. Someone was telling a story about the "saying penis louder than the previous person" game and that's where the quote for this blog entry came from. Damon drove me back to the hostel and on the way we went to Norm's for a veggie burger. When I got back to the hostel the Chris, Leigh and Stuart were loitering and Stuart was going to Hawaii the next day. We had a bit of banter, added each other on Facebook and then went to bed.


Day 58 (Friday Nov 19th) "Spare some change for an old fool?"
I didn't sleep too well and when I woke up it was cloudy outside. I had a missed call from the bus manager guy so I called him back. He passed me on to a bus maintenance man who gave me some information about the bus and said that they'd kept one for historical purposes but I'd need to clear it with the head of security before I could go in and see it, I left a message for the security guy. I put my laundry on then headed to an Indian vegan lunch buffet about twenty minutes walk away. I ate two plates of lovely food but I think it was too much because I felt too full for the rest of the afternoon. On the way back to the hostel a homeless guy said "spare some change for an old fool?", I replied with "sorry, dude" and he said "have a good weekend buddy". I thought that was a nice exchange. I was really tired but was checking online for interesting things to do that night when I remembered that one of my old internet friends Justin had a gig in L.A. tonight. He has a band called Lemon Drop Kick who originally were three American guys with a Japanese female vocalist who sings in Japanese, I messaged them about four years ago on Myspace because I thought it was an interesting set-up and Justin had replied, we'd kept in touch ever since. I made sure I knew which buses to get and headed to a venue called The Strange in an area called Silverlake. It took about an hour on the Rapid 704 bus and then I had to walk five minutes through a slightly dodgy looking area. The venue turned out to be some sort of art gallery with a performance space which meant I didn't have to wait outside. Justin arrived about five minutes after I got there so I said hello, his band were on first so he had to set up his stuff. LDK did a good set although they said it wasn't one of their best performances. I got to meet the rest of the band when they'd finished and I also recognised Jeff as one of the old members of the band, he'd come along to support them. The second act was a trendy young black man doing some beat-boxing, dancing and rapping, he was quite cool. The third band were called The Slants and they had some Asian Jonas brothers on guitars who jumped on some boxes at the front that then lit up. The front-man had some great dance moves and had a mic stand that lit up. I can't remember the name of the next act but it was a rather camp Japanese man doing some electro-pop with some dancing women and a dancing man in a monkey suit. They were quite entertaining although the singer had a video of himself doing backing vocals behind him, he even conversed with himself between songs, it was quite creepy. Paul the LDK bassist told me to talk some random Japanese women so I had a go at that, they preferred my English accent to my lame attempts at speaking Japanese. One of the girls was literally the prettiest Japanese girl I've ever seen in person. The next band were Dead End Amelia, a lot of people had left and it did kind of feel like the night should have been over. I was mainly sticking around to hang out with Justin after the show but DEA turned out to be a very cool band. The front-woman was rather hot and I stood with Justin up near the front to take in the full show. They had some cool songs and did a really good cover of Change by Deftones, so good in fact that a balding dread-locked black man started going crazy at the front. Justin and Jeff spoke to him after the show and he showed us his driving license, his name was officially Freak. I said hello to more people at the end of the show including the sexy front-woman who had to mock my accent... but I didn't mind. Justin, Jeff and I drove to Mel's Diner which is where I'd almost gone with the BTTF gang, I knew where it was but Justin didn't, that was weird. I had a veggie sandwich and fries. Justin drove me back to the hostel and I had one of the latest nights I'd had in quite a while, in bed by 3.30am.

Justin (LDK), me, Jeff (former LDK)

Another movie location day and my first day in Santa Monica

Day 55 (Tuesday Nov 16th) "Nice night for a walk"
I didn't leave the hostel until about 2pm and I kept forgetting things so I didn't get to Mann's Chinese Theater until about 3pm. I just wanted to go there during the day because that's when it was seen in Speed. I then got the subway over to East Hollywood and checked out the Vista Theater which was used in True Romance. Then I started my walk to Griffith Observatory. It's on a hill that overlooks L.A. so it was a bit of a tiring hour to get up there. On the way I stopped by a tunnel that was featured in Back To The Future and War Games. Some opening scenes from The Terminator were filmed at the observatory but for a change that wasn't the only reason I was visiting a filming location. It was really nice up there, the building is quite interesting and there were some really good views... through the smog. I took a different trail going down and then went for a Thai yellow curry at Truly Vegan. They had a comedy night at the hostel but when I walked past I heard some terrible jokes so I decided to just chill in my room and get an early night.


Day 56 (Wednesday Nov 17th) "China Wednesday!"
I checked out of the Hollywood hostel and got the bus to Santa Monica. On the way I stopped at the Viper Room where River Phoenix died. It was something I had to check out but then wished I hadn't, it just felt kind of morbid and not very fun. After checking-in at the Santa Monica hostel I struggled for an hour to get on the internet. I couldn't actually get online in my room which was a bit annoying but they had little library room with a good wi-fi signal which ended up being where I'd spend a lot of my time. Sharing my bunk was a middle aged Australian man called Russell. The only way I could print stuff was by using their computers which was about 10 cents a minute with a $3 minimum. It was rather annoying and I ended up having to call up customer service because the code for the rest of my minutes disappeared before I could write it down (I can't be bothered to explain that any more that I have, it was annoying, I'll leave it at that). I tried to find a veggie or vegan food place nearby using Google Maps but there didn't seem to be anything cheap in the area. I walked around the block a few times and eventually found a Greek fast food place with a falafel wrap thing. I walked to the corner or Ocean Park and Main St which is where Annie got on the bus in Speed. Then I walked up to Rose and Main which is where Bob's bus blew up. I tried to re-enact the phone call between Dennis Hopper and Keanu and then went in to the Firehouse Restaurant. It's more of a bar now so they didn't have any muffins, instead I had chips and salsa. I walked back to the hostel via the beachfront and Santa Monica pier and then went online for a bit. When I got back to my room there were two Welsh guys dressing up as Austrian women. They introduced themselves as Chris and Leigh and explained that they'd recently started a tradition of dressing up every Wednesday and calling it China Wednesday to confuse Americans. There was also an English guy Stuart who had dressed up as a gynecologist. I blew up some balloons for the Welsh guy's breasts and decided to join them on the hostel pub crawl. There were about twenty people out on the pub crawl, we had three voulenteer guides that were going to take us to four bars. At the first bar we played drinking games with a a Korean guy and a Japanese guy, it actually went pretty well despite the language barrier. In the second bar they had a Beatles cover band and after a few songs they let people go up and sing with them. We put our name down for a couple of songs but only Stuart and Leigh had time to do one. The third bar (which ended up being our last) was a long sports bar with karaoke at one end. I put my name down for Power Of Love and gave the woman in charge $10 so she could bump my name to the top of the list. I was quite drunk and didn't dare imagine the state I'd be in trying to sing that song an hour later. I chatted with lots of people including a Terry McDermott lookalike, nobody knew Terry McDermott so we resorted to chanting "Keegan! Keegan!" at him. The Welsh guys spent a lot of the night explaining China Wednesday to everybody, they came up with a whole fake history for it. I befriended a Japanese girl who didn't know any Japanese because she was brought up in Brazil, that didn't stop me trying to speak nihongo to her. Lots of drinking took place and I was told by the Welsh guys that they found me asleep in the hostel library. I have a few videos from that night and my narration did sound quite nonsensical but Daniele (JapBra) and a couple of other girls made sure I got back to the hostel.

Day 54: The Price Is Right and Japanese drunks.

Day 54 (15th) Monday "Berry good Danish man! kusou yarou!"
I got up relatively early but I still didn't have time for breakfast, this was the day of The Price Is Right. I walked the to CBS studios and grabbed some chips to eat on the way. It took about an hour to get there but when I arrived I followed the map to the car park rather than the front entrance. If this had been a show in England I probably wouldn't have got in but being ten minutes late didn't seem to matter here. The audience members were all hanging around for about an hour before some people handed out numbers and got us to fill in some details about ourselves. I chatted to a nice lady called Norda and her rather lovely niece Alisha. Norda's parents were also there celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary. Alisha was a stand up comic but she was going to say she wrote children's books, she said this was because she didn't want to be put on the spot but I think she was going for the "aww factor". I'd already decided that I was going to say I was a grave digger because I thought an English grave digger might have a chance of getting on the show. They interviewed us in small groups so they could choose who they wanted to be on the show. I told them my pretend profession and then the guy asked asked me about how I got into grave digging. I said "I just fell into it", I didn't actually intend to make a pun, I'm just a genius like that. Alisha was actually one of the first contestants to be picked but she didn't get any further than contestant's row (where they stand at the front guessing the prices). Nobody actually won on any of the normal rounds, apparently that's not uncommon but it made for some impressive anti-climaxes. It was insane how much clapping we were being told to do and it was funny how even Americans were struggling to keep the enthusiasm going. The strangely thin Drew Carey chatted to the audience between rounds and he was quite funny. They had a guest announcer from Heroes but he only started in season three so I didn't recognise him. One of the funniest items was an in-car microwave, Drew was laughing about it and he made some pretty funny jokes about how unsafe that could be.

After the show I decided to walk back a different way, via Fairfax and Sunset. There were some quite interesting shops including a few really big music stores. Once again I ended up at Truly Vegan and had a Truly Spicy, pretty much just a Chow Mein but with more peppers and hot sauce. I thought about going to a comedy improv show that Alisha had recommended but it didn't look too great. I asked my L.A. friend Justin about live music but the places he recommended all had a steep cover charge. Shintaro came back from his daily adventures, he told me that yesterday he'd been at Gamble House (Doc Brown's house), he same place I'd been. We did some Japanese joking around, the more I divulge about my knowledge of Japanese culture, the more embarrassing it gets. He told me that he'd made friends with a Japanese girl called Tomomi who was staying at the hostel, he popped out and brought her back to our room. We chatted over a beer and then decided to go out for drinks with our other room mate Jesper. When we got to a bar we realised that both Japanese were only 20 and they were IDing at the bar so we decided to buy some beer at the store and drink it back at the hostel. What ensued was an international night of drinking, jokes, bad language in lots of languages, awful translations, foosball, opening beer bottles with various objects, Shintaro the lightweight and then sleep.