California - 22nd July 2010

The 1st day - of a trip I hadn't envisioned a month ago.

I eventually landed in San Franciso, and had a very comfy and deep sleep at Patrick and Julie's place, conveniently just a couple of blocks from a BART station. My last few weeks of unintentionally practising being in Pacific Daylight Time helped enormously - zero jet lag experienced! Plus I was told there was a lovely 500 awaiting me in the garage - not to be inspected until the morning, but huge, huge thanks Jess. :)

The flight from Frankfurt was on United Airlines. The tight-wads allow one free 187ml bottle of wine with a meal, and that's it. But I did have loads of water - and something that was an attempt at coffee - had something like 'Barstucks' on the cup labels - yuck! :)

I got the last seat available on this 777, and so one might have guessed it would be the worst position, at the back in the middle near the loos surrounded by screaming kids. No, it was seat 17b - at the very front of the Economy Plus section, no seat in front, loads of leg-room, and although an aisle seat I could see just fine out of the window and was never bashed once by a trolley-dolly. So a very comfortable flight although sleeping was slightly inhibited by lack of alcohol.

Typical, after landing I was the only one jumped on by customs (very politely), and my 'ram-it-all in' approach to packing led to some grunting as the guy manfully extracted the contents. This was not helped by a helmet that basically had to be 'given birth' out of the small opening, stuffed as it was with socks and knickers. He took one look at it all, and said "Sorry sir, I think it best if you re-pack this lot" - which I duly did - eventually! He was surprised to hear I wasn't going to some race meet at Monterey...

So tomorrow will be one of fitting GPS etc to the 500, some minor exploration, plus whatever then off to my cousin Pauline's place for three nights.

© Jim Crowther and Kristin Gallagher 2010