This is a more experimental kind of blog. It might be quite long.
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So we got to long beach and spent some nights on the pier and met a guy called Bernard, that much you know already and it takes us up to the 17th of December. On the 17th a guy called Dominic said Tom and I were welcome to stay with him and Jamie, his girlfriend. Dominic works at Bikestation, which is a cool cycle initiative which offers free secure bike parking and access to a workshop with help from the mechanics that work there. Anyway, so we cycled back with him after work, he has a collection of bikes but mainly rides a touring bike with an extended wheel-base. He also has 2 racing bikes for sale, including a barely-used Bianchi racer and you should contact him if you’re interested. Dominic and Jamie are about our age and share their flat with 2 kittens, which I shall call Tony and Penelope for lack of their real names. They are being reared as social cats and kept us entertained at night by jumping on our heads and things.
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We stayed at their flat for the rest of our time in Long Beach, depleting their stock of beer. They took us out a couple of times and one evening secretly put my name down for karaoke to sing “I am the Walrus”, which is probably a good song originally but I couldn’t remember the melody (or rhythm) and my impro style didn’t win over any of the hardened crowd. During the daytime Tom and I mostly cruised around the city. We have bought running shoes in preperation for next year’s events and tried them out one evening. Eight months without running anywhere resulted in us limping around for the next 2 days after a very slow 3-mile run, which is a little concerning. We also went in to LA one afternoon but it’s not a glamorous (or nice in any way) place, the highlight was stomping on the names of actors and actresses we don’t like.
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The USA uses half the voltage of Europe and so my charger doesn’t work anymore, I went in to a shop to get an adapter or replacement and a girl working there came over to help. She picked up an adapter and said it was what I needed but I know the voltage adapters are huge and this was tiny so I told her I thought I needed the bigger one but she wasn’t to be persuaded and explained that this was a brand new design and when I asked her she told me that they kept the older, bigger, more expensive model in stock because “people like old stuff, like it’s more reliable or safer”. So I bought the revolutionary design, took it outside and opened it up and predictably the instructions said “THIS IS NOT A VOLTAGE CONVERTER” so I took it back to the woman who had made up the ridiculous, bare-faced lies for no apparent reason. But get this, she didn’t apologise, no, she called her superviser over and told him how the silly Englishman had been careless and picked up the wrong thing and then the bitch just gave me this evil look. Anyway, that was an aside.
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On the 21st we departed from our hosts in Long Beach and headed back into LA for our train up to San Francisco. A highlight of the journey for me was the announcement to “please place trash in approved grabage receptacles”. Actually the journey is spectacular and we spent most of our time in the glass-walled dining car. I played chess with a guy who explained to me how he felt victimised by ‘Brights’, a society of skeptics, for not recognising him as a member just because he believed that every single religion is true and their gods real, that his wife is an accomplished psychic and because his career is in metaphysics. Such discrimination.
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We arrived in Oakland (a city next to San Francisco) late in the evening and were welcomed by Jenny, our couch-surfing host. We dumped everything at her flat and then headed into San Francisco (AKA San Fran, AKA “the city”) to meet her friends for some beer. The first bar rejcted us because of our attire and the second because I didn’t have any ID, the third reprimanded me for using a student card but let me in anyway, missing that the photo was of Tom, who was standing right behind me. We just stayed with her the one night but it was great because she was fun, she’s going to be a nurse soon.
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Then yesterday we left Jenny’s flat and took a train in to San Fran (AKA San Francisco) and then took a ferry from there up to a place called San Raphael and cycled up towards Jessie’s house. Jess is a friend of mine from a trip to Costa Rica a few years ago, her family invited us to stay for Christmas, or atleast Jess told them we were coming. Jess and her dad came out to meet us on our way to their house. They told us how they live on the top of a big hill, which we scoffed at but let them take our bags for us, and then struggled massively to make it up.
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So this is where we are, the Hoylmans are a really friendly family and so it should be a great Christmas. Ho ho ho.
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Thanks to many generous donations and one very generous donation, the charity totals have passed the first target and so Tom is in debt to us all for one complete upper body waxing, you can expect to see the horror show on here soon.