Guy & Bruce Visit
11 March 2002
It's more than two months since I last wrote a long e-mail and a few things have happened in that time. Thank you to those who have written; it's always nice to hear what everyone is up to. We have kept ourselves busy in the new year and have planned out much of the rest of the year (so many things to do in a limited time in the US).
We started the year in Vancouver, visiting Greg and Alex. We had a great time and Vancouver was not as cold as I had feared; it was even sunny on our first full day there. They also knew how to throw a good party for New Year's Eve and we met some great guys there.
At the end of January we escaped the cold and rain of San Francisco for a week in the Caribbean on a cruise
We met lot of guys on the ship, some from San Francisco and many from other parts of the US. This is Jeff from Washington sitting by the pool with us. There are other photos on another page. Now we have a few people to visit in other parts of the country. The Americans said finishing the cruise was like leaving Summer camp, wanting to do it all again soon and eager to meet up with new friends again in the near future. Our first opportunity like that was seeing Billy and Bruce when they separately visited San Francisco recently. We'll be visiting them in Palm Springs at Easter.
It's spring here now and in some ways it feels more like Australia with the wattle and gum trees in bloom in the woods on my way to work. I bought a new digital camera (Canon IXUS V), so the quality of the photos with my e-mails has improved:
Walking along Market Street a few days ago I was struck by how like St Kilda it looked, with tram lines overhead and palm trees in the middle of the road. The F line trams which run along the street here are all "historic" tram cars including one from Melbourne (which I haven't ridden yet).
We have started doing more on the weekends now that we have regular access to a car. Shopping at Costco has been something of a novelty. Everything there comes only in large containers (but is very cheap). Here I am with five gallons of soy sauce (which we did not buy), as even at just over a dollar per litre we still weren't going to use any.
Two weeks ago we visited Marin County. This is the area North of the Golden Gate Bridge. We drove across the bridge for the first time and went to Stinson's Beach and then Muir Woods. Muir Woods is one of the last stands of original redwoods in the area, with many trees over a thousand years old. It seemed a little incredible that they were still chopping redwoods down in 1976 when the house we live in was built from redwood.
Last week we had our first visitors from Australia to stay. Guy and Bruce came to escape Mardi Gras and visit San Francisco instead. We went to Tiburon on the ferry with them last Saturday and on Sunday we went to Baker Beach. We hadn't been there before but we could tell we had found the right place because of the flaggers:
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