DaveM's Tales of Interest! You've read it. You can't un-read it!

Sydney 29th-30th April

2006-04-30T13:10:00.000Z

Well here I am, collapsed back in my hotel room after a good day and night out with Shelly and her Aussie mates. Disappointingly Im not going to have time to enter any sort of decent blog report as I need to give Tom the laptop - and so Im not going to do one! I'll try to write up a decent one elsewhere. However, in brief, Ive managed a tour of Sydney harbour, a tour of Sydney opera house, a visit to the contemporay art museum, a stroll around 'The Rocks', a very pleasant night time stroll around Kings park and Hyde park and a rugby game with associated eating and boozing with Shelly and her mates. (Shelly is another Michelle from work who comes from Sydney and who happens to be here on holiday the same time Im working). Climate is very nice, food is very good and the beer is actually quite good.

Anyway here are some photos, my camera battery died at the opera house so I only have a few opportunistic shots of it and none of Kings park.

Christmas tree Joy

2005-12-06T17:33:00.000Z

Woo hoo! We have a christmas tree and its *huge*.
Heres is the photo :-

And yes Ive not exactly been keeping the blog, er, up to date, mostly due to me working my arse off. This seems a situation thats unlikely to change so I won't even bother making vague promises to update the blog more often.

Flickr photos

2005-08-26T17:27:00.000Z

A bit random but I was browsing some of the photos of folks I know with Flickr accounts and came across a couple of photos I like, so here they are :-

Catch me if you can.

2005-08-16T18:30:00.000Z

This weekend was top stuff, it was in fact so cool it was 'the shit'.

Photos for the evening can be found here :-
Mine
Josh's
Shell's

For Josh and Jez's combined birthdays we would be venturing to Vegas. Some incredible genius, im not sure who, came up with the idea of all the guys going dressed as pilots and all the girls going dressed as air hostesses. Mere words and photos are not capable of expressing what an utterly, utterly, brilliant idea this turned out to be! But here we go anyway...

The night began with Keith, Gordon and I and Gill, Kate, Heidi and Shell getting ready at Castle street. Soon the guys were kitted up and looking smart, our newly donned pilots outfits compelling us to stand upright with stomachs sucked in and chests stuck out. We couldn't help but grin like maniacs as we stared out ourselves in the mirror through our oversized aviator glasses. The girls followed shortly after, giggling away in tiny shirts'n'skirts, huge heels and tarty make-up with pill box hats. Solid. Outfits ready we stutted our way to The Wash for a few pre-club beers, the genius of the night increasing with each arriving Pilot and Air Hostess.

We left for Vegas, most Pilots with a Hostess in each arm. You might want to re-read that. How cool was that? Walking down the royal mile in my Pilots outfit with a barely dressed Hostess in each arm. Woot.

Something like twenty? or so of us finally decended on Vegas. We then spent a really excellent evening drinking and dancing right into the wee hours. Even Keith and I managed after some Corona, expert tuition and good male/female ratio :)

Flatwarming

2005-08-01T18:43:00.000Z

Well on Saturday we finally had our flatwarming party. The theme for the evening was black and white. We decked the flat out in a combination of white and black ballons and ribbons. This was accompanied with an array of fairly lights that we had nailed to just about any surface that would accommodate them. All in all the place looked pretty darn cool. The Gulag(tm) in the flat was filled with 24 corrona, 18 IPA, 7 bottles of red wine, 2 bottles of white and a bottle of Champagne. One of these bottles of wine was empty and its contents inside us. All in all we were ready to receive our guests.

I think the black/white theme worked out pretty well. It was simple enough that most people could easily turn up in theme (and indeed had done so) whilst allowing those of a more flamboyant air to come all dressed up. Maybe next time a red / white theme? White Stripes. Woot!

The party really started kicking off around 21:30-22:00, it probably peaked around 01:30 with a full on party in the kitchen/lounge/hall/keiths room and stairwell before tailing off sharply around 03:00 to a one and a half room party. The hardcore remnants then kept going until ~04:40 when any remaining booze had become undistinguishable from the mountains of empties.

It was brilliant! I had a great time and I suspect that mostly everyone else had one as well. The night totally flew in to such an extent I almost felt cheated, it was over already? Noooo! I particulary enjoyed that there were quite a few normally disparate groups in attendance but that everyone appeared to be mixing well and having a good old banter. Woot! Much fun. The flat certainly bodes well for future parties. I mostly forgot to use my camera but will stick up some photos once I've had a chance to review them and peruse Gills camera as well, if anyone out there has any good one let me know and I'll link to them.

p.s. find additional blog entry below tallying the beer count.

Party beer tally

2005-08-01T18:21:00.000Z

During the post party clear up I was becoming increasingly awe struck by the shear quantity of booze that had been drunk at the party. For my own amusement I decided to tally the empties for an estimate as to how much had been consumed. Here are the results :-

- 1 x Plastic Bin of unaccounted empties
- 1 x Bin bag worth of empties later discovered under Keiths bed
Plus
- 28 x Bottles of Wine
- 24 x Bottles of Corrona
- 23 x Cans of Miller
- 18 x Cans of Grolsh
- 17 x Cans of Heineken
- 12 x Small generic Belgian beer
- 9 x Bottles of Stella
- 9 x Bottles of Miller
- 8 x Wild n Whippy chocolates
- 6 x Cups of Tea
- 6 x Bottles of Coors
- 6 x Mr Kiplings Exceedingly good french fancies
- 5 x Bottle of large misc czech Lager
- 4 x Bottles of Arran Sunset
- 4 x Cans of Carling
- 4 x Cans of White Lightning
- 4 x Bottles of IPA
- 3 x Huge Bottles of San Miguel
- 3 x Bottles of Becks
- 2 x Bottles of Krononburg Blanc
- 2 x Cans of Magners
- 1 x Tiny minature of Glen Goymer
- 1 x Bottle of Champagne
- 1 x Bottle of Cragganmore whiskey
- 1 x Bottle of Willis Black
- 1 x Bottle of Willis Gold
- 1 x Bottle of Cobra
- 1 x Orange and Cranberry J2O
- 1 x Can of Budweiser
- 1 x Bottle of Hobgoblin

Beer-tastic. If anyone had booze that isnt listed feel free to post a comment with tallying your unaccounted booze.

Mph for "The Road Trip"

2005-07-28T18:04:00.000Z

So the headline news is that our average Mph for the whole whole trip is an amazing 29.75 Mph!! How cool is that!?!?!? This includes time eating, sleeping, cavorting. The whole thing. Woot!

We travelled a whopping 13,775 miles in 463 hours, 3693 of which were driven across America. Distances and times were measured from Edinburgh to Edinburgh. Working is below and hasn't been checked. Corrections will be filed in an industrial furnace.

Less cooly this also involved us chucking out something like 4837.31 Kg of Co2 per person. Serious environmental Karma damage. Oh well.

Miles in whole trip = (3665 + 590 + 55) + 3693 + (5442 + 330) = 13775
Hours in whole trip = 13 + (18 * 24) + 18 = 463
Mph over whole trip = 13775 / 463 = 29.75

Car Co2 per person on road trip =
3693 miles / 22 mpg = 167.86 Gallons
167.86 gallons * 8.87 kg of Co2 per gallon = 1488.92 Kg of Co2
1488.92 Kg / 3 people = 496.31 Kg of Co2 per person

Flight Co2 per person on road trip =
19.56 pounds of Co2 per gallon
1810 kg Co2 on way out
2531 kg Co2 on way back

Total = 496.31 + 1810 + 2531 = 4837.31 kg of Co2

June 25th LA -> Edinburgh

2005-07-28T17:55:00.000Z

Well I can't really be bothered writing too much about our day in LA so I'm going to do a bit about the jolly fine Bradbury building (its in BladeRunner!) and then describe most of the rest of the day in chronological order using short phrases. This should be enough to remind me what I did in LA in times to come if not much fun for you guys :)

The Bradbury building was commissioned by a chap called Lewis Bradbury. He went through a variety of architects whos design's didn't match his grandiose plans. Instead, and somewhat curiously, he then hired a draftsman with no architectual training. The draftsman had apparantly been instructed to take the job whilst conversing with his dead brother, which is certainly an interesting opening line for an interview and seemed to do the trick. The building itself is inauspicious from the outside but really neat inside. It makes heavy use of glazed bricks, ornamental tiles and detailed wrought iron work that appears to be in Parisian style. It has a nice airy feel from the central courtyard and the large glass domed roof which lets in copious amounts of light. Its great! and looks nothing like it did in BladeRunner, where it was the dilapidated apartment block inhabited by Sebastian.

Heres some photos from as high up as the public can get in the building :-

Ah, and the draftsman subsequently switched to being an architect and produced nothing of note for the rest of his life. Hmmm.

And for the rest of the Day :-
Wake, Drive, Bel Air, Look, Suburbs, Breakfast pie, Chap from 'Swingers', Stupid valet parking nonsense, Ooo lovely lovely Bradbury building from Bladerunner, Downtown LA, walkity-walk, What a dump, Everyone is spanish, Crippled chap doing a job that could be replaced with an IR sensor, Cheap labour, Silly, Hollywood sign, walkity-walk, Hollywood street with the stars on it, Ah godzilla has a star - wierd, Blokes dressed as storm troopers, Chinese man theatre, Beach, Mmm beach nice, Sun, Flight soon - sadness, Flight. Right.

June 24th Santa Barbara -> Los Angeles

2005-07-25T18:11:00.000Z

June 24th Santa Barbara -> Los Angeles

There were few things that could have voluntarily dragged me away from Devon's parents place. Brenna's promise of a Kappa Kappa Gamma soriety girl fuelled evening featuring a mechanical bull turned out to be one of them. After some general pottering around in Santa Barbara we cruised onto our final stretch of road :( and, with a seemingly endless array of songs about California, cast off for LA.

We arrived in LA and met up with Brenna's friends one of whom would be graciously supplying couch, bed and floor. They all looked exactly like the Californians on TV. It was a bit freaky, had all the ugly girls been culled under some secret Gattaca-esque eugenics program? Perhaps it's just that most people at UCLA come from pretty darn rich backgrounds.

We began the evening with a visit to 'In n Out', an apparantly famous fast food burger joint. I was initially sceptical but won over by the brilliant menu. The menu has 5 things on it! Burger, Cheese Burger, Double Cheese Burger, Fries, Coke. Somehow in an age of ever increasing consumer choice, fancy meals and anal nitpicking about exactly how ones sandwich should be constructed an 'optimised' menu had managed to remain! It's so easy, you basically decide whether you want cheese! Long live 'In n Out' I say.

Post burger (with cheese) we loaded up on a raft of our old friend 'Deux Eques' and Corona. We proceeded back to to the flat and begin drinking with Brenna and Co and await the arrival of the remainder of the Kappa Kappa Gamma gaggle. A few degenerative beers later we were ready to hit the town. However, it turns out getting a cab on a saturday night in LA is really, really, really hard. Multiple attempts and summon a Cab and some more beers later we decided to blow morality and pinch a Cab that had turned up looking for someone else. Hey-ho, lets hope the mechanical bull doesn't attempt to recalim some karma by throwing me through a wall.

Disgorging from our ill gotten Cab we entered 'Saddle Ranch', a bar with a mechanical bull and OC stylee crowd. A quick round of drinks later the Bull looked fun, and reckoning that any more beers would impair my ability to get on the Bull never mind stay on it I began reading the lengthy legal documentation I would have to sign to approach the Bull. The Bull itself is a human controlled mechanical beast that bucks and rolls around. Whilst on the Bull your only allowed to hold on with one hand, the other must apparantly be thrown around in a cowboy like fashion. Mounting the Bull I managed to stay on for a respectable period and longer than I expected, Keith slid off like his trousers were made of a some sort of super frictionless teflon and Josh with a vice like grip with his soon to be bruised thighs managed to stay on for the full run of the Bull. There were also numerous female attempts on the Bull which I mention only to note they're a bit rude to detail. One I will however mention was from a lassie who was quite clearly, well there's no other word for it (gulp), fucking the Bull. Bizarre. I mention it as I have never, ever, seen so many camera phones produced so quickly, a new danger of our times indeed :) Other than that the evening passed acceptably in an odd world of californian style chat with mexican liquor induced haze.

Tomorrow we bum around LA before catching flight back home.

June 22nd, 23rd Santa Barbara

2005-07-12T18:32:00.000Z

June 22nd, 23rd Santa Barbara.

Driving towards Santa Barbara I felt a pang of sadness. Despite it's enormous size we'd somehow managed to run out of America to drive across. I still felt the road trip momentum, I still wanted to keep moving, try more places and, unusually for me, I was nowhere near ready to return to bonny Scotland. However we weren't over yet! and mentally reviewing our journey so far I drifted into Santa Barbara with a satisfied smile.

In Santa Barbara we had the immense good fortune to be staying in what can be best described as tasteful opulence. We were staying with Devon's parents. Devon's physicist father had started a Infared detector company at some point, had done rather well out of it and bought an old, run down, spanish style villa with grounds to do up. Well they done it up alright, it's now a *gorgeous* tastefully decorated villa complex based around a central courtyard. It comes complete with stables, six horses, riding area, wine cellar, guest house, easy access to a pool etc etc and some cool pets. It's also in the same sealed community as Oprah's place, and it looks much cooler than her's. Within hours I had a whole new desire to be incredibly wealthy.

In our infinite wearyness and lazyness the only real event we managed to attend whilst here was a parade celebrating the summer solstice. The parade was pretty big and watchable enough for a while, but Edinburgh's Beltane celebrations completely blow it out of the water. Also, despite promises of nudity and cavorting none was evident and no-one was even carelessly chucking around cans of fuel and matches! Interestingly though the parade did seem to confirm the odd sort of alternative lifestyle vibe that I'd been kind of getting in Santa Barbara, and despite and this being a very posh and expensive place to live there's still a few hippies managing to cling on.

The rest of our time was pleasantly spent eating, recuperating by the pool, cruising downtown for food and beers and chatting with Devon's family and friends. Steven (Devon's father), Brenna (Devon's sister) and Kathryn (Brenna's friend) were all really gracious hosts and looked after us well. Their sharp, combatorial and sarcastic conversations were a welcome return to a more British (In my mind anyway) mode of speech that I found I had been missing this a little during our travels.

Ah, I also went swimming in the Pacific. I think this is my first time swimming in an ocean. It turns our they're big, cold, and are fun to use for swimming, sort of the opposite of small, heated lead weights.

So Santa Barabara, or more specifically Devon's parents house/family, was a really, really pleasant place to spend a couple of days, and with our batteries suitably recharched we got ready to depart for Los Angeles.

June 21st, Vegas.

2005-07-06T18:51:00.000Z

June 21st, Vegas.

I should probably say somethings about Vegas first but the night out is at the end so you may want to skip to that.

The whole thing that everyone thinks as Vegas is a series of Hotels and Casinos either side of 'The Strip', which is just a long road running North/South. Despite the fact that there is only a single road that everyone wants to go up and down there is no decent public transport. There actually are a few buses that run the length of the it but they are so few in number that you have to wait for a few to come and go before you can actually get on one. Also all the roads are jammed full of cars and so it takes ages to get anywhere. I cant believe they havent build a decent tram service that loops up and down the strip.

Suprisingly Vegas doesnt actually look very much like Vegas, even at night time. It seems that perhaps everything is on too large a scale and so you cant see enough of it from ground level to be impressed, only enough of it to be loomed on. We later found out you have to go up high for Vegas to look like you want it to, i.e. glitzy, shiny and flashy.

The casinos themselves seem universally pretty horrible. They are packed *full* of slot machines, easily 90-95% of the floor space is given over to them, which is so boring. I mean wheres the fun in watching people play slots? or in fact playing slots? Hurrumph, not enough card tables or poker games. They are also universally murder to get out of once your in them. The layout usually forces you to take a few left/right turns as you enter to slightly disorient you, then you find all the outside light cues are hidden and your stuck in some bland slot machine filled uniformity, murder.

Well enough and that onto the evening....

I had read a review for a bar called the "Ghost Bar" and it was described as a place for "stylish young trendsetters" where "the beautiful patrons are the focal point". Thinking there could not be a more apt description for the travel worn Josh, Keith and I this sounded like the place to go. It was also in the Palms resort which Josh had heard was cool, so if we didnt get in there we would have other alternatives.

With a good many formative beers inside us and our funky-est Tshirts and party pants outside us we ventured forth. Our pockets bulged with over hundred dollars each, locked and loaded we were ready. (Incidentally we all came home with exactly zero dollars, stiffing the taxi driver for his tip). The intention was to start of with some light gambling on roulette, given we weren't going to gamble for long we thought we'd be best off going for something with obscene odds so we *could* at least finish with a load of money rather than piss around for 20 minutes and be $5 better off. A collective $60 and ~3 minutes later we decided roulette was a mugs game, to summarize, "Odd", "Arse", "Odd", "Arse", "Odd", "Arse", "Hmmm".

Approaching the Ghost bar we tried to look like we were sylishly setting trends, like getting poor very quickly at roulette, this appeared to work some $10 each later we were being bounced into lift and off to the 55th floor.

Exiting the lift a grin quickly appeared on my face. From the overly minimal decor to the excessive use of UV to the stunning views from the 55 story balconies with bars this was a pretty funky place. I could feel the urge to stylishly set trends rising in my gut. Three $7 + tip bottled beers later we were out gawping at the view, after last night this was great! It was Vegas! Woot! Woot! Most of the rest of the evening was spent with Keith and I merrirly chatting away to assorted groups we had accosted whilst Josh went off and did his thing. It was a pleasantly spent moderatly drunken evening in some good surroundings, cool. The end of the evening was spent in a very different manner however.

This started when I noticed Josh chatting away to a middle aged chap and his wife, rather than a group of young ladies, confused I approached to see what the score was. Getting some odd looks from Josh that I completely failed to interepret it quickly became apprant these guys were *total* nutters. The first I had met in our travels so far. Intrigued I engaged in a series of highly reasonably put (from my side) discussions to try and work out what right wing nutters are actually like and what their views are. It turns out they were too insane for me to reasonably convey. The more crazy / unexpected statements were, it is good for people with disabilities to die in the streets, that Britain should have nuked the USA for their involvment with the IRA, that the Statue of Liberty should be sent back to France and that the World Health Organization is a "crazy commy waste of time". When the Wife stated she hated France and that they had obstained from French Fries for two years I enquired as too why, after about 5-6 seconds she said "because they are against everything we believe in", asking for specifics led to the responses "stuff" and "everything", genius. Crazy ignorant sociopaths indeed, but still two out of all the USA is pretty darn good going. Josh later revealed they had both said that the were 'packing heat'. Packing heat! In a club! Nutters!

None the less a good night and with our wallets, brains and bladder suitably crippled we taxi'd off home for a bit of a kip.

Tommorrow Santa Barbara for some OC sweetness!

June 20th, Flagstaff to Vegas.

2005-07-05T18:41:00.000Z

June 20th, Flagstaff to Vegas.

Now that the flat move is over (more on that some other time) its time to resume the blog! I will however be more than a little hampered by the apparant sacrifice of my little travel notebook during the move :(

Well the 21st seen us back on the road and off to Vegas. The drive was through some pretty-darn-similar-looking-to-yesterday desert. By now Ive given up on seeing desert thats has bugger all in it - the deserts here are far too lush for my liking with lots and lots of small shrubbery, hurrumph.

On route we stopped at the impressively scaled Hoover Dam. The dam is not, as I assumed, named after J Edger Hoover but is named after the Herbert Hoover the 31st president of the United States. I wont rattle on about it too much other than to say it interesting in an engineery sort of way with some nice 30's style flourishes in the architecture. Its Also the single hottest place Ive ever been. The wind appears to come in straight of miles and miles of desert and get funneled into a single people cooking gust, yuck.

Arriving in Vegas we found our Hotel the 'Lady Luck'. Wandering in it appeared we had, in the words of the dead knight dude from Indiana Jones, "Choosen poorly". Not only was it a pretty decent distance from the fun parts of Vegas it was also populated with 'huver-around' clad oldies bumming away dime after dime in the slot machine filled ground floor. However, no mere collection of soon-to-be-poor oldies could dampen the mood! This was Vegas! And with our minds buzzing from flashbacks to 'Swingers' we stepped out to sieze our first night in Vegas.

About 40 minutes of walking in 40C heat saw the mood well and truly sweated out of our rapidly dehydrating bodies. Walking in Vegas was a bad idea. In dire need of a beer we fell into the next casino and grabbed some seats in the bar at the back.

The bar had some 'entertainment' in the form of three dubiously dressed filipino singers and their associated band. It was weird, really weird, and the 60 year old lithe filipino audience who were salsa-ing with frightening proficiency didn't help. At this point I considered I had somehow and without remembering dropped some acid. Was I experiencing a 'fear and loathing in vegas' style trip? Looking around I decided this probably wasn't the case - my imagination wasn't *this* warped. A couple of beers later we dragged our still heat exhausted and confused hides back into the night and off to our Hotel, resolving never to walk again and to do Vegas properly tomorrow night!

Vegas Photos

2005-06-25T11:00:00.000Z

Hiya,
We're currently in Santa Barbara chilling by the pool in some truely opulant surroundings i.e. Devons parents villa - I can see Oprah's House and it doesnt look as cool! Also yesterday I went swimming in the ocean for the first time ever! Its salty. Tonight we head of to LA for some partying with a mechanical bull and a plethora of Brennas girlfriends. Tommorrow we will browse LA.

I still have my Vegas entry to blog up but its too sunny and pool-y just now and we're heading off to the Santa Barbara version of the summer solstace parade, in the meantime here are some photos from our night out in vegas :-

June 19th, 20th Albuquerque to Flagstaff, Day trip from Flagstaff to Grand Canyon

2005-06-24T11:00:00.000Z

June 19th, 20th Albuquerque to Flagstaff, Day trip from Flagstaff to Grand Canyon, 410 miles.

Ive already posted the links for the photos, but here they are again, Albuquerque and the Grand Canyon

On the 19th we headed from Albuquerque to Flagstaff, intending to use Flagstaff as our base for visiting the Grand Canyon. We decided to keep this night fairly quiet, partially this was the conspicuous hemorrhaging of dollars and partially this was 1. Mexican beer 2. Tequila 3. Repeat from 1. So, quietly skulking off to the local cinema we sat down to watch 'Batman returns'. There's a lot that could be said about the movie but I don't think I'll bother blogging it, in short its generally quite good but with some flaws.

The 20th seen us day tripping to the Grand Canyon. On first impressions it is quiet awesome, the shear scale doesn't quite compute and it takes a while to sink in. Once the novelty of the scale wears off some of the other sights start to register; the red and orange cliffs, the incredibly wide panorama and the green glints from the distant Colorado. Well worth seeing.

After an afternoon of wandering the rim and visiting various view points we ended up at 'Hermits point'. From here there is an unmaintained trail down into the canyon to where a hermit used to mine. The trail was described as 'for experienced desert hikers' and headed with a billboard informing us of the deaths of people, including various marathon runners, who had died here whilst insufficiently prepared. The guide book recommends 8 liters of water per person per day and to not hike between 10:00 and 16:00. Cool. None the less I did persuade Keith and, after some cajoling, Josh, to hike down for fifteen minutes or so just to get a different view of the Canyon. God it felt good to stretch out my legs and work my lungs for a bit! Such a shame we didn't come prepared for some proper hiking, and there was sooo much good climbing about as well, sigh. Next time more water and equipment!

In between all this we managed to catch some glimpses of a decent amount of wildlife, from numerous birds and lizards to scuttling little desert versions of mammals, which I found quiet cool. Actually from the 'DANGER DANGER' signs they had about the squirrels I was surprised to see anything else alive. The squirrels are reportedly rabid, bubonic plague bearing aggressive little sods, perhaps leaving nothing in their path but blood and nuts.

So that's about it for the Grand Canyon. The remaining night in Flagstaff we found a cool bar and had some beers, however the night was hampered by the fact that we needed a designated driver (Keith) and that we had to drive back and forth a few times picking up increasingly valid forms of ID to get into the pub in the first place. Hey ho. Anyway tomorrow we're off to Vegas! Cya.

June 18, Santa Fe to Albuquerque.

2005-06-24T10:30:00.000Z

June 18, Santa Fe to Albuquerque.

In the morning we verified there was not much to do in the pretty Santa Fe and after cake-pie, WiFi and coffee decided to opt for the Albuquerque night out rather than the Santa Fe night out. Molly was on a date that night but none the less had asked us if we wanted to join her later, I guess dating really is different in the states.

In Albuquerque we once again attempted to explore on foot only to be defeated by a large yellow lazer in the sky that was attempting to incinerate our flesh. Thank god for factor 35 suncream, even if it is leaving my skin a pasty white.

On the way back we happened across a nice little diner in classic American style. It had a bar-like structure surrounding the open kitchen which itself came with wisend bitter looking chef. We got chatting to the mostachioed dude who appeared to be running the place, i.e. he wasn't doing anything, and the waitress who was doing all the work. He turned out to be a huge soccer fan and over the next hour and a half we proceeeded to cause chaos as service ground to a halt due to various discussions with them. The dude was a huge soccer fan and extracted all the meager knowledge of football that Josh, Keith and I have. This lasted sometime before he adopted listing all places in L.A that we should visit. Subsequent grumpy customers and mis-changings occured left right and centre.

Chatting to the waitress also got us an invite to a "12 keg-er with Jungle Juice" featuring four goth/industrial/metal bands. She reckoned that everyone would be heading to this (a 4 keg-er gets 100 people apparantly) and that we should come along. Basically a big illegal piss-up in the desert with free booze, bonfire, bands and allegedly, babes. It sounded loads of fun but we said maybe, it was in the desert well outside of town and neither Keith or I fancied driving there and back or giving up booze for the evening. She then, somewhat sportingly and without us knowing, phoned a bunch of her friends to see if any of them weren't going and could take us out downtown. It turned out they were all going to the 12 keg-er, maybe a bit of a shame as she said "...don't worry they're all cute too".

Having decided to stay in town we had our dinner, a quick beer and phoned Molly. She was still on her date but said to come on down to the 'Perl diver' and join them. Wondering a bit about American dating we headed off to meet up with Molly, her date Aaron and her friend Heather. As an aside as we walked into town passed the diner the 12 keg-er lassie chased after us down the street and took our cell numbers. This is unprecedented and would have been much cooler if she wasn't only seventeen.

We arrived at the 'Perl Diver' and met up with Molly and Co. It was a really good night, excellent and witty chat ensued and there was much hilarity all round. They were sharp and interesting, and were social libertarians to boot, hooray. After a couple of beers on our part, and a couple of waters on the part of our hosts we all had some smooth, smooth tequila. Closing time then promptly arrived and the bar disgorged us onto the busy street. There was a brief discussion about continuation of drinking before the impossibility of finding somewhere open or serving alcohol became apparent and we parted with happy waves.

Tomorrow we head for Flagstaff as our base for day-tripping to the Grand Canyon. Cya,

Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Grand Canyon photos

2005-06-21T22:55:00.000Z

Hiya,
Still a few blog entries to write but in the meantime here are the photos from the last few days.
Cya,
Dave.

Santa Fe
Albuquerque
Grand Canyon

June 17th, Roswell to Santa Fe.

2005-06-20T00:17:00.000Z

June 17th, Roswell to Santa Fe, 200 miles.

Again we had a lazyish start to the morning, we sorted out some boring things like laundry and Josh's haircut before visiting the Roswell "museum for UFO research". Its was comically bad and, probably correctly, very much looks like its been stuck together by a bunch of enthusiasts who don't know much about public displays. Roswell is funny though, the cafes and shops have things like "Alien resistance HQ" and "probe free service", its makes me laugh.

Over yet another huge lunch we thought we had a bit of a dilema. The conversation went something like :-
Josh : "Hmm, aren't we booked in for Vegas on the 21st"
Dave : "(Checking the plan) Yep"
Josh : "Well (looking at watch) this is the 18th and we've got 4 days of stuff planned before then"
Keith : "Crap, we must of lost a day somewhere"

The irony of losing a day in Roswell of all places was too much and guffaws and jokes about little gray dudes ensued. With new found impitous we hastily re-planned to spend only one night in Santa Fe, gobbled our massive lunches and set tail for Santa Fe. Once on-route the combination of laptop, PDA, and mobile phones soon made it apparent that it was the 17th, Doh. It seems some watch-timezone-adjusting around Roswell had gone horribly wrong, hee hee.

We arrived in Santa Fe in good time, party due to our fake-crisis-induced driving.
Santa Fe sits at 7000ft and so was a very pleasant temperature, the sun however is painfully strong. We wandered around the city for a while soaking up the styles and atmosphere. Santa Fe has a lovely mix of Mexican / Spanish style architecture in cosy ochres and oranges, the mountains again providing an impressive backdrop. It really is very, very, pretty. However we found ourselves walking with an increasing sense of foreboding about the evenings festivities, nothing seemed to be going on, the place was a lot smaller than we realized and there didn't seem that much to do, hmmm.

After dinner we departed and, relieved to find that the place had busied up somewhat, entered the liveliest bar we could find. It turned out to be a billiards (pool) hall and served moderately fine locally brewed ales. We had a few games of pool, in which I specialized in sinking the white along with the black. Josh attempted to recruit a couple of nearby lassies to join us in a game. They politely declined but did invite us along clubbing with them later. After they had inexplicably increased their number to four cute girls they joined us and we headed to the "Paramount". It turned out to be a very cool bar with plenty of opportunities for chat before we went to shake our booty to some R&B. Unfortunately Keith's digestive tract had been suitably crippled by green chillies and so had to bail out early. T'was a good night though, that seen us collect an invite to a night out with Molly in Albuquerque, an invite to a BBQ with free booze with in Elena Santa Fe, and a lift back home, neat.

Tomorrow, well we're not sure now :)

June 16, San Antonio to Roswell

2005-06-19T00:49:00.000Z

June 16, San Antonio to Roswell, 655 miles.

Today was the "beast" drive we'd been fearing, 9-10 hours of scrub-cum-desert traversal with all the killing-each-other-in-the-desert opportunities this afforded. In practice the huge car, having two drivers, Josh FM, books and interesting scenery gave us a pretty darn pleasant drive, which was good.

Roswell was pretty much what I had envisioned a smallish town in the middle of the USA in the middle of nowhere to be like. The whole place was stretched along the main street, which was also the road north, with few buildings venturing far to either side. It was exactly the sort of place I'd imagined us stopping at on our trip across the plains and deserts, which was kinda cool, and when we went out for some beers I did so with a little spring in my step.

We sauntered over to a bar across the way called 'Bud's'. After eventually finding the door we almost didn't go in, there was a very specific dress code which none of us came close to meeting. Braving ourselves we stepped forth to give it a try anyway, finding no-one to be respecting anything like the dress code we breathed a sigh of relief and ordered some surprisingly tasty Buds. The place gradually busied up (like 15 people :)) over the night and had an interesting, weird small town feel that was none the less pleasing. The odd mix of hip-hop and country could only but help. Yeah, Roswell was weird, but neat, or maybe it was the effect of the 9 hour drive ;) Tomorrow some time in Roswell and then onto Sante Fe.

June 15th, Houston -> San Antonio

2005-06-18T12:11:00.000Z

June 15th, Houston -> San Antonio, 200 miles.

I already posted the photo link for San Antonio but here it is again anyway :)

We arrived in San Antonio around one, which gave us plenty of time to sample the cities various delights. The heart of San Antonio is a series of renovated flood control canals collectively named 'Riverwalk' and they languidly snake their way around the underbelly of the city about 15ft below street level. The canals are clean, lined with lots of green fauna and punctuated with the occasional boat and bridge. They make for a very pleasant route to navigate the city. The nightlife also centers around here, most of the route being lined with bars and restraunts whose tables spill out onto the walkways up to the banks of the canals.

We started the afternoon ambling the length of the pretty darn gorgeous Riverwalk. We stuffed ourselves with the usual mountainous portions of food at one of the many Mexican places. The mexican food here is sumptious, definitely the best mexican if ever had. We then waddled downtown for a look around and a visit of the remains of the Alamo fort. There's not much to see at the Alamo and the oppressive 100f heat was starting to get to us, so we headed back to the Motel to recover and prepare for the evenings festivities. Apart from the heat I can understand why everyone in this area drives; air conditioning. Walking in this heat and humidity is really sapping.

The evenings festivities started of at Mad Dogs a 'British theme pub', we selected it for its lack of cover charge and cute staff in belt length tartan kilts with knee high Dr Martens. However the bizaro combination of cabaret, karaoke, and mid forties crowd soon had us on our way for a funkier venue. Forfeiting five dollars we entered 'Club Rive' and followed the sound of some funky R&B tunes towards the bar and dance floor. The music was good, the room was dark, the bar was long and on top of it unexpectedly had three incredibly nubile lassies girls grinding away on poles. Hmmm. A quick round of two large smooth tequilas with Coronas started us off and the club was starting to fill up. The dancing crowd was mostly made up from black dancers who were shaking booty with intimidating proficiency. This and a lack of suitable candidates made for a dance-free night for myself and Keith and, apart from a quick spurt at the end, Josh. Instead we mostly settled for sampling Mexican liquor and nubile dancers before heading on about half one.

In a bizarre footnote we bumped into a lassie, Heather, on the way out who was a regular visitor to Scotland in her youth for Clan reunions. She promptly and very competently demonstrated a highland dance and a sword dance and from there we all got chatting. I wonder what the odds of meeting a highland dancer were? :)

Anyway tomorrow we've got a bitch ass drive of 8 hours to Carlsbad or 10 hours to Roswell if we press on. See y'all there! Er, metaphorically.

San Antonio photos

2005-06-17T21:06:00.000Z

Still to do the San Antonio blog entry, but its so gorgeous I had to upload the photos anyway

June 14th, New Orleans to Houston

2005-06-17T18:59:00.000Z

June 14th New Orleans to Houston, 392 miles.

We were aiming for San Antonio early on the 15th with Houston marked as our intended stop off. By the time we had nursed our respective hangovers it was actually quite late in the day before we managed to set off. This gave us few chances to stop off on the way and for a late arrival in Houston, making for a rather uneventful day. From Houston's (not Keiths) ugly, ugly appearance this is perhaps no bad thing. We used the time to plan the rest of trip, which has us spending tomorrow in San Antonio before heading Rosewell, Sante Fe, the Grand Canyon, then Vegas baby. San Antonio here we come!

New Orleans; Beads, breasts and balconies.

2005-06-15T09:54:00.000Z

June 12th, Mobil -> New Orleans via beaches at Pass Christian and southern pie at Bay St Louis.
June 13th New Orleans.

Photos can be found here

New Orleans is interesting indeed, although in an entirely different manner than I expected. We are staying in an area called the French Quarter, this is also the area where all the nightlife is. It is an area of about 60 blocks of colonial style houses converted into bars, hotels, bars, clubs, bars, restraunts and er, bars. Most of the nightlife takes place along Bourbon street, which runs the length of the Quarter, and is lined with balconied clubs and bars. The idea is that you pick up some drinks and, drink in hand, wander the length of the street popping in and out anywhere that takes your fancy.

Now the surprising part is that it is the custom to buy yourself a load of beaded necklaces, stand on the balconies and yell at passers by that you want to strip. Amazingly loads of people flash ass or breasts or sometimes, er, other bits. After they have flashed their, um, goodies, the callers chuck them a load of beads. Very wierd, but makes an interesting backdrop to an evening.

Our evenings here we spent cruising Bourbon street, drink in hand, soaking up the atmosphere and crashing other groups of people to have a blether. It turns out that doing a road trip and coming from another county gives as loads of conversational ammunition and the local cocktails, the 'hand grenade' and 'hurricane', were giving us plenty of fuel.

So the whole place has an atmosphere of non-stop party. However it it is like a Spanish resort style party not a down'n'dirty R&B grind fest or finger clicking jazz / blues chill out, and in this respect New Orleans was not what I was hoping for, although its still a real fun place.

In other news I was ripped off to the tune of $300 dollars from the bag in my Hotel room. Insurance or the Hotel will cover it, however it meant I had the dubious pleasure of chatting to New Orleans Boys in Blue. They popped around to the Hotel for an interview. Most of the interview seemed to be spent persuading them it was unlikely to have been, as they suspected, Keith. Or as he put it "Trust your buddy with you life but not you money or you wife".

Random notes I

2005-06-12T09:09:00.000Z

Yawn, sitting waiting on everyone having their respective showers, so some random notes.

- So far everyone here is nice. Really nice, and keen for a bit of a blether. Im really going to miss the service here.
- So far everyone seems pretty much happy and relaxed.
- No-one gets sarcasm,
- example one, Josh orders the same thing as two Americans he is with, saying "Just to be original I'll have the same thing", they pause and correct him saying that to be original he'd have to order something else.
- example two, Im discussing various sports with a chap who refuses to believe Im not Irish and keeps asking me about Irish bands. We are discussing female softball, the teams consist of lots of highly fit young ladies I say sarcasticly "Hmm I cant imagine why this is so popular", he corrects me with "It is because they are all hot"
- The weather has been a distinctly curious yet pleasantly steady temperature with mild humidity, nice and bright but without ever really seeing the sun.

Oop we're starting to pack now, cya.

June 11th Decatur -> Mobile

2005-06-11T23:59:00.000Z

June 11, Decatur -> Mobile, 377 Miles.

We had a lazy start to the morning. Decatur is a pretty little place so we wandered around for a bit sampling the WiFi and coffee. The coolest coffee place was a little arthouse place full of interesting types, subtely played mellow jazz and good coffee. It was also called the java monkey, which gets it extra kudos in my book for having monkey in the title.

About tweleve we were suitably caffinated and blogged out so we grabbed the maps and looked for our next port of call. The grander plan has us hitting New Orleans soonish. We decided to get the guts of that trip out the way by aiming for Mobile (Mo-beeel) tonight, it is only about 2-3 hours from New Orleans. Mobile was described as a "crappy version" of New Orleans by our ever-helpful bar staff. Hmm.

So Keith and I alternate driving for about the next 6 hours. This puts us ahead of the game milage-wise and will let us slack of in New Orleans for a couple of days. The weather report still reports a tropical storm on its way, should be an interesting way to see New Orleans :)

We arrive in Mobile and head for the centre to check it out. It is absolutely desolate. No-one is moving and there are hardly any cars. Most of the businesses are also closed. Hmmm. Its also a bit of a dump, which is in complete contrast to the pretty lovely suburbs we drove through on our way in. Eventually the penny drops and we notice sand bags placed in front of some places, we reckon there has been a storm / flood warning and everyone has buggered off inside rather than chancing it.
So we abandon plans to spend much time in the centre and head out to find a WiFi'd motel. Soon enough we come across one, check in, dump our stuff and head out for some grub and booze. The meal was as usual huge, good and cheap. The beer was as usual small, dubiously fizzy and cheap. I'd forgotten my ID but a combination of cursing, pleading, questioning the need for ID and pretending to be Keith, soon got me some booze.

I finish the night playing with the new toy I got today at one of our road side stops, a Nikon coolpix 7800 camera :) I got this one because it compatable with my iRiver and so spend a good 10 minutes transfering stuff to and from the iRiver and camera just because I can :) Heres the test photo I taken in Mobile :-

June 10th - Charlotte -> Decator (Atlanta)

2005-06-11T11:17:00.000Z

June 10th, 299 miles so far.

We started off the morning watching some unintentionally funny CNN in our reasonably luxuriant hotel. The weather section comes on and announces that tropical storm Arlene is causing some damage around Florida, and that if its winds continue to pick up it will become a fully fledged hurricane. The projected path appears on the TV screen, it looks eerily familiar, ah yes we'll meet it on our drive to or arrival in New Orleans. Cool.

We get in touch with Josh and arrange to meet at his Hotel, We bail into the car and head off, this is my first driving in USA experience. As pre-arranged Keith shouts "right lane! right lane!" for the first few left hand turns.

We arrive at the Hotel to meet a Josh. He is donning a wicked grin and is walking with a spring in his step. He explains that he's going to be a bit late as he still has to pack and get Hannah out his room. Hannah? He pauses then grins. Hannah, it turns out, is an American lass who Josh successfully deployed "the chat" on. This was who Josh was on a date with last night. It was a proper American date as well, where Josh gets to pay for everything, the arrangements featured her asking "So, what's your budget?". He reckons he spent about $100 on booze, Hannah was trying, extremely unsuccessfully, to drink Josh under the table going head-to-head on Miller lites. Josh, being used to drinks with reasonable alchohol content was not effected.

Off we go! We check out, partially legging it before anyone gets to see the inside of Josh's room, which has Hannah's spew and various other detritus.

We're on the road to Atalanta!

Our first stop is a city called Greenville. Its a pleasant leafy place once you get into the centre but the outskirts are surrounded by mile upon mile upon mile of car sales lots. We have a mighty sized and yummy lunch, and pick up a road atlas from the map store and "pretty map girl", as she has been dubbed. Back on the road we continue heading toward Atalanta, we're making good time until we hit the outskirts of Atalanta and take a wrong turn. We're heading for a little city within Atlanta called Decatur (Dee-Kay-Tor). The wrong turn costs us about and hour and a half and a good number of sanity points. Honestly, the road signs in the US are non-existent, they are so bad! The map we have isnt high enough resolution to find out where we are.

We finally arrive in Decatur, find a motel and then hit the streets. Decator is a very nice little collage town with a sort of central square of a few streets. The atmosphere is good, lots of people out and about, feels like theres a lot of easy going fun happening. We dine at the 'Raging Burrito' have a few beers and then head out to the pub for a few more. The pubs we find are nice and a little art housey. The bar staff are all friendly and we manage to extract some facts about Decator from them, apparantly it is the gay capital of Georgia. Looking around this explains some things :)

Anyhow Im totally running out of time and writing far too much, so im off. Tommorrow we will try to find some Wi-Fi and start the trip towards New Orelans.

June 9th - Arrived in Charlotte

2005-06-10T12:00:00.000Z

TODO - For now see Keiths blog :)

Nearly off to the US...

2005-06-07T18:30:00.000Z

Well its nearly here! Keith and I will be dispatching ourselves to the US on thursday morning. We'll be meeting up with Josh, who is already in Charlotte, and together we will be hammering across the states for two and a half weeks of culture shock. Groovy.

We leave Glasgow on Thu 9-Jun-05 at 11:05 and arrive in Charlotte 17:39. Total travel time, including check-in in time and getting to Glasgow, is about 17 hours :) We fly out of Los Angeles at 20:45 on Sun 26-Jun-05.

Below is a very rough route map, although we will be mostly deciding where to go once we are out there. Click on the map and select 'all sizes' to see a larger version.

We're going to have a laptop and every few days will be doing some intermiable slog across swathes of the country in the car, so expect to see a few blog entries every few days :) We will however be slogging across the country in some style