M- We're outta here!

Well looks like we might make it out of here today. We have two bikes, registered and almost insured. Josh is installling electrics into them, so we can use our radios and charge things such as the phone and camera as we ride along.

Here is the new bike:



Jeff and his flatmates keep telling us not to go yet, so I guess we were pretty good guests. You guys can come and stay with us anytime!

We didn't get to go to Alcatraz, but I'm sure Josh would say "that's something we can do when we are old."

The boys have finished college for the semester, and after the tests ended there was some serious drinking to do of course. and then some serious recovery. Here is Jeff all snuggled up preparing for the third night in a row...



Huge thank you again to Jeff, James and Pete the vegan!

I really love reading the comments everyone is leaving for us - keep them comming!

M- And maybe another bike...

A couple of days ago we looked at an ok bike... Anyhow we were waiting for the Russian owner to cave in on the price, but he seemed pretty stubborn. He advertised it at $2000, and we really only wanted to pay $1800. He had said he wouldn't go lower than $1900...

We had a couple of others to look at today, one old one down in the Mission district (close) and one new good sounding one over in Berkley. We couldn't get hold of the guy in Berkely, so went to the mission in the mean time. That old bike was a bit shot, so not a goer, and when we got home there was an email to say that the one in Berkeley was already sold - after only one day!

Grrr, we are keen to get moving outta here, so we said we'd meet the $1900 for the Russian. We are going to pick it up tomorrow.

I think it's time Josh wrote a post, he's feeling well enough to drink white rum!

Some stuff we saw today:


2400 Fulton St, just up the road, where Jefferson Airplane used to live.

St Ignatius Church on Fulton which is big and impressive. (This is only the top half)


Big Pink house which is crazy!

M- Back to searching

Josh got pretty bad yesterday, fever of 101F and heaps of coughing. He stayed at home while I travelled out to the airport to meet my brother Richard and his family. They are moving to Sante Fe and transiting through San Fran. Dad said they had about 16 bags plus hand luggage, so might need some help. I was intending to go anyway as I wanted to see them as they come through, it might be a while before we get to Sante Fe if at all. Anyhow somehow I missed them. I don't really understand how, I was right outside the gate when they landed and I waited about an hour and a half. When their flight had dissapeared off all the boards and there were no longer anyone coming out of the door I gave up. Maybe I just left too soon? A taxi driver had told me it normally takes about 15mins to clear customs.

Richard had tried to call our cell phone which I had left with Josh. It wouldn't have helped though as it is broken and and the person on the other end can't hear us. We can hear them fine! Rick left a msg to say call him back, but didn't leave his number and it didn't show on our missed calls list only "Withheld"

So, that was a bit of a waste of a day, but it meant that Josh had a quiet one. He was still very ot last night as we went to bed, but feels better this morning, so I think he's on the mend. I had threatened that if he was still so bad today I would take him to a doctor, that might have done it!



Here is a photo of Jeff's flat where we are staying (thanks again Jeff!) You can see the new bike parked outside. Jeff's flat is the 1st floor.

M- We have bought a bike!

It's a Suzuki Bandit 1200, and we had to ride it home from East bay, over the Bay bridge. That was quite fun, but the toll gates were a surprise! Luckily we had some money.

If you've read the previous post about the negotiation difficulties, then imagine we give him $2300 like we agreed, but he is uming and ahing, so Josh starts looking for another $100, but instead he decides to give us $100 back! "You guys can have it for $2200".

M- We might have bought a bike?

Maybe, we're not quite sure, you see the guy wasn't very easy to talk to. As we set off from Fulton, I said to Josh: "I've got a good feeling about this one". He has a cold so just grunted in reply. We had to get there by 6pm, so we take the BART train under the bay to Oakland. Unfortunatly I put us on the wrong train and we never went past the station we were expecting to get off at. By the time we realised we were way down south somewhere! No big drama, just catch one back the other way, only we were now seriously late. Then the next drama was to hurry to the bus stop, then realise we didn't have anything smaller that a $20 which the buses just will not accept. Ahhh! Josh buys a coke to solve that problem, and the bus shows up, driven by the world's most unelpful bus driver. Basically we don't know where we are going, our map only has half the streets on it. We get off the bus when we see our street, only now we are at number 600, and the bike is at number 2260!!!! It's about 10 to 6 so Josh calls ahead as we start walking. The guy explains to Josh about 10 times that we could have stayed on the bus and got off at the other end - yes ok we realise that AND IT'S A BIT LATE NOW! He was off to the library so we walked the rest of the`way and then sat in the sun in his driveway until he returned.

Anyhow he wanted $2500, not a bad price for a 1998 Suzuki Bandit 1100. It's in good nik, but could do with a tune and will need a new rear tyre soon... we offered him $2400 as he had explained that he had turned down $2200 already. After about six or seven hours of him thinking, checking with his wife, and asking random questions about our overseas licences, insurance and have we checked with the DMV? he finally said we could have it for $2300 (thats $100 less than we offered) and gave us a ride back to the BART station.

So, keep your keyboards crossed that the deal hasn't changed before tomorrow night when we go back with some cash!

Josh is loosing his voice so I made campbells soup for dinner.

M - Tram ride time

No bikes to look at today, so we set out in the afternoon, and have now tried both the trams, and the cable car. Different from the Wellington cable car, this one runs up the middle of a main street, which is too steep for ordinary trams (and the old horse drawn ones I think!). There appears to be a cable underground which is constantly running (you can hear it when you walk over the line) and I think the streetcar grabs onto it when it wants to move. Can anyone confirm/explain this better? Add a comment.

Air quality wise today was much better. We could see much further and a local explained to us that most of the clag was in fact sand and dust blown up from the desert rather than pollution. Apparently the indigenous people noticed this before the white man came along, so it is unlikely to be related to vehicle emissions.

Generally I have found attitudes (and bylaws) here to pollution, public transport, and waste to be more enlightened than in NZ. I’m told this will change once we leave San Fran however. The trolley buses run all over the city and have “Zero Emission Vehicle” painted proudly on them. Perhaps I should email Kamikaze Kerry…

M - It's exactly as I feared!

So far the coffe has been terrible!

To be fair I haven't actually been to a proper cafe yet, we are on a tight budget after all...

San Francisco is working out pretty nice so far. We are staying with Jeff Fink in a student flat which is every bit just like a student flat in NZ, creakey floorboards and all. Jeff's Mom and Josh's mum are cousins. Jeff and his flatmates Pete and James are really great, giving us a place to stay and heaps of advice and help.

There is great public transport here, the BART train which runs from the airport right across the Bay area, and buses all around the central city called MUNI (pronounced Moonie). Muni costs $1.50 pp and you get a transfer for a second ride within 90mins. We quickly discovered thought that the drivers don't check the transfers, so you pay one fare in the morning and then use them to get onto buses for the rest of the day.

Visitors to NZ often comment on the clean clear air, and when I was in Europe I could see why, and now I see it again. San Fran doesn't seem particularly polluted, but the view is definitly limited by the clag hanging in the air.

We are on the hunt for our motorbikes, and looked at two today. There are heaps all over the city, so I am optimistic about finding something. J and I discussed how we were both nervous about test riding bikes without first being used to being on the other side of the road, but as it happened the oppotunity came out at Ocean Beach where it is pretty quiet traffic wise, and not much in the way of intersections. So Josh was able to have a cruise up and down on practise a bit in relative safety.

We are really close to the Haight-Ashbury part of town where the whole 69 summer of love thing went on. To me it is just like Cuba St, so I feel quite at home there. Also close is the Golden Gate park. It is really cool, often overgrown and wild. It makes a nice change from completely manacured sculpted gardens often found in major cities. We have yet to get to see the Bay Bridge, but I saw the the towers today from the bus.

I guess I will get used to it, but I find the poor people begging on the streets a little bit hard to deal with. The locals just ignore them, as I suppose we do at home, but there are so many of them, and unlike in Wellington, these people are activly begging, I presume for their survival. They are amazingly cheerful however, the american service ethic even counts for the Bums, as you look the other way or shake your head they call out "Have a nice day!"

J - paging passenger Buzz Aldrin...

Getting there is half the fun. Mostly it was lots of confusion mixed with waiting.

Anyway we left NZ with not much fuss but arrived in Tahiti overdressed for 26C, I swear it was 110% humidity. Merewyn forgot the name of the place we had booked so we wandered around the deserted Tahiti airport at 9pm, aimlessly for a while, we were getting a bit stressed out because there was no one there really except a few souls who wanted to rip us off. We tried to get a taxi ride for an earthly sum into Papeete, failed, and eventually called on a fellow NZ'er who had the foresight to buy a Lonely Planet. This sadly did not contain the address but we decided to go in with his plans and we were soon ferried off to Pension Maha Iti, by a nice frenchman.

The place was nice, lots of stray dogs and things but quite a lot of character. At 11:15pm the roosters started crowing, and they didn't stop until about 6am when most of them by the sound of their voice had shattered their vocal chords. Apparently the neighbour has 5 roosters. At about 6am I dimly remembered that there were ear plugs in the air tahiti comfort pack, these allowed me to actually get by conscious level down far enough to dream some quite bizarre and confused dreams for an hour or two until 9.

The next day we hauled our enormous collection of baggage onto the local bus and headed off into Papeete, I am still amazed at the amount of scooters there. Everyone has one.



We wandered around, inevitably got very hot and decided that a swim was in order. Swimming is not permitted in the city. We bussed out to Mahina for a swim, which was good, we seem to have stumbled on a kite surfer beach. That was cool.



Back in Papeete we had a brief foray into discovering the 'seedy underbelly' of Papeete but couldn't really find anything.





We had a little trouble catching the airport bus, there didn't seem to be any signs, it was dark and everone was gone, the bus terminal was abandoned and so one but eventually a bus like vehicle stopped and we got on and away we went to the checkin. "I'm sorry you can't go into the USA you don't have a return ticket." Lots of waiting, for officials muttering secrets, and a swipe of Merewyns $500 limit (sssh) visa allowed us to get on the flight.


Maybe 10 hours later we arrived in some sort of disgusting smog filled hell. I commented to Merewyn that it was good that we weren't staying in LA. (apologies to any LA residents) She concurred. Merewyn walks up the immigration counter all nervous because of the last debacle. 'I'm sorry you will have to go back to ..." No! Wait! I have a Visa! '...the end of the line and fillout form 245I, then come back.'


We proceeded thanks to the kind but unsolicited direction of about 10 airport staff, to our transfer flight and immediatly were selected for 'double screening'. Yay! The experience was a little more interesting when Buzz Aldrin was also selected for double screening and we got to furtively point and stare at the glorious american hero just behind us in line. Merewyns official seemed quite nice, mine was a dick but we got through eventually.

Not completely though, in regulated chaos and the maze of queue ribbons (they had people who's only job it was was to stand their and unhitch the ribbon to let people through in to the 'next level' of screening, not just 1 but 10 or 20.) merewyn left behind her passport and boarding pass (which every official in the whole of LAX inspected).

Paging passenger Merilyn Ellis please come to gate 40 to pick up a lost item... It's not just the newbies that lose their cool either, 10 seconds later it was. Paging passenger Buzz Aldrin please come to gate 40 to pick up a lost item...

I looked around No one in the airport even blinked.

M - The beginning...

We are off tomorrow on an adventure around the USA on motorbikes. Then when we are tired of travelling around we are going to live in Canada for a year.

Our first stop will be a night in Papeete, Tahiti. Hopefully this will be a chance to relax after all the stress of getting ready to leave. Josh spent time in Tahiti when he was a kid so it will be nice to go back. Once we arrive in San Francisco we will be busy again, trying to find suitable motorcycles to buy and getting organised.

Right now we are feeling tired and looking forward to getting on the plane. Last job to do is to find a decent book...