Testing Custom domain

Stupid bloody google switching off ftp..

Civilised my bum

En route to Brisbane, internet shockingly absent & expensive in Oz.

Bloody cold.

Still having fun though!

More as it is possible!

Love,
Jono

FIVE HOURS!!

I swear, I swear I will add entries on Portland & Sacramento. There WILL be photos of the Gay Pride parade and commentary on Australians.

But right now? Right now the ONLY thing I give a fuck about is that my Jen will be arriving in FIVE HOURS!!!

Heeeeheehehe!! I have butterflies.

I also have syrup on my face because I just ate a waffle.

San Diego needs a health warning

I've been lax on the blogging again, my apologies.

Thing is, since I left Vegas I've pretty much done nothing but party it up. This leaves little space for blogging between hangovers and drunkeness.

San Diego is groovy though, setting aside the hostel (which I've decided is actually best thought of as a nightclub with beds - Bristolians, it bears some resemblance to the Black Swan). The weather is fabulous (actually today the weather is crap, otherwise I'd be at the beach right now), the people are friendly, its quite pretty in a European kind of way. Their mall in downtown has no roof, which I interpret as a bit of a boast about the prevailing weather conditions.

Balboa Park is very charming, if somewhat full of roads (fairly common with big US parks), featuring a collection of museums, zoo, tiny railway. Your standard park stuff.

I have an inescapable feeling of marking time while I wait for my beloved Jen to arrive now, but I'm enjoying the marking so that's OK.

Might go up to Portland to visit my cousin depending on what he's doing - I hear there's an awesome doughnut shop there..

[hunter s quote goes here]

So... First impressions of Las Vegas...

Well, Dean asked me for a one word summary of the place, the best I can come up with on that score is - carbuncle.

I feel it is appropriate on both counts. Vegas is from a certain visual point of view, a glittery gemstone plonked in the Nevada desert.
It is equally true that its the pus-filled point of an infection. The one place where all that puritan repression comes spurting out in thick, hot, streams of stinky yellow goop.

Ahem. Not that I'm trying to do the place down you understand.

All I'm saying is that I walked past three drive through chapels, a dozen adult movie theatres, several strip joints (one with a swing set out the front) and a number of passed out drunk people to reach the hostel... Which is across the street from a 24 hour topless cabaret.

This is Blackpool without British reserve. In the desert, with millions and millions of dollars.

I think I like Blackpool better..

I should be taking either the 'fuck it, let's partay!' or 'Fascinated observer of the carnival of grotesquerie' here I think. But the whole place thus far is so totally alien to me that its vaguely stomach turning...

Had lunch at the Bellagio's buffet - that at least was fairly impressive. $20 for a pan-global selection of foodstuffs and gold plated cutlery. Mostly tasty, but all very strange.

Ridiculously Short Video

Here is a minute of hiking -

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is..

That's Douglas Adams on space. I'm borrowing his words because they're the best ones I can think of to describe the Grand Canyon.

You eventually get really tired of people telling you about this place because they repeatedly inform you that you are, despite your best efforts, failing to imagine how huge this thing is.

I hate it when people are right.

The Canyon is so big your brain doesn't process it properly - it looks fake for the most part. Remember Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? Remember that bit with the invisible bridge? It looks like that. (We're coming back to Indy in a bit, by the way)
There's a really obviously real bit, and then about 200' away from wherever you're standing there is a painted backdrop. Like the edge of the sky in the Truman show.

I mean, its a really cool fake - there are condors flying around in it, clouds, rain, snow (yeah, I got snowed on at the Grand Canyon), tiny specks which turn out to be mule trains, or even further below, rafts on the Colorado River, when you look through binoculars.

It is stunningly beautiful. There are photos - look at them and imagine that shit is bigger than anything you can reasonably imagine. Think about a mountain, and imagine that inside out maybe.

It was Cool.

The tour was great, somewhat astonishingly they arrange it so as to sneak the canyon up on you and surprise you with it (this involved walking around staring at the ground for a bit). I can confirm that is possible to sneak one of the largest natural things on earth up on 15 people. You thought your last birthday present was a surprise? Pfffft.

There will also be a very short video clip of hiking in the canyon - this is bloody exhausting, because you're more or less going down a cliff. We did two and a half hours, reaching something called Cedar Ridge (big finger of rock sticking out into nothing), just past Oo-Aaah Point (seriously - that one isn't signposted because every time they put one up, somebody nicks it.)

That was the sissy hike - proper hikers go from one of the rims, to Phantom Ranch down on the river, then back the next day. You don't go down and back in one day, because that's how people die here.

Yeah. People die at the canyon. There's a book about it which gets updated every couple of years.

However the single most common injury at the canyon?

Squirrel bites.

Moving swiftly on from wonders of the natural world for a brief swing by movies -

Indiana Jones 4 came out on the 22nd, so I went to see it today. I won't spoil it for you, on the basis that you should probably see it. However - I give it a C+ must try harder, rising to an A- at several points. Also, you can tell this is later Spielberg. I'm not sure if mentioning Ai in this context gives away too much...

Anyway!

Let there be some (er.. lots of) photos -



And some more, from Austin -

Austin