Hill

Yep, that just about describes San Francisco. That and DAMB COOL!

What an incredible city, we drove in early in the morning, past the Port of Oakland shipping cranes which were apparently George Lucas' inspiration for the At-At Walkers in Star Wars, over the Oakland Bay bridge:

The very flat island that you can see on the left in the picture above is Treasure Island, sadly not the one the featured in Robert Louis Stevenson's famous novel but the former US Navel Base closed by Bill Clinton during his time in office. Apparently real estate is very reasonable there now.

The last 12 days in brief... and photos

My apologies for being laps with the blog entries, I have literally been so busy when I havn't been working I've seeing stuff and subsequently not writing my blog. So if anyone is still reading... I'm going to attempt to bring you up to speed.

Here goes.

The Second day in portland Lucy, Jon and I, or the 'kids' as I like to refer to us, hired bikes and cycled up to Washington Park

which involved some pretty intense sock-in-trouser action

Lucy introduced me to Goecashing (not entirely sure if that how you spell it...) which is a sort of world wide treasure hunt involving clues downloaded from the internet in the form of a grid reference and some kind of complicated sat-nav/compass. When I was given charge of the complicated sat-nav/compass my inappropriate foot ware caused my to promptly fall over in the "muddy-mud" (as Jon pointed out)

Keep Portland Weird

Despite not having any significant tourist landmarks or things to ‘go up’, Portland has been my favourite stop so far. It is a very clean city and the people are very friendly. This is fortunate as we had two days off here. Day one I awoke on the bus, feeling a little worse for wear having stayed up later than I perhaps should and having dunk more beer than I perhaps should to the sound of a man enthusiastically ringing a bell. Unenthusiastically I got out of my bunk to discover the tail end of the Portland marathon passing us by.

The rest of the day mostly consisted of tax free shopping, which is a pretty big draw for the area, and wandering around the markets drinking the local brews. To sober up Lucy, Jon and I, then stumbled across Voodoo Doughnut which is something of a local sensation with a long cue of people out the door (they call them lines here?) patiently waiting to pick up their very own “Grape Ape” 
raised doughnut with vanilla frosting and grape powder or a “Dirty Snowball
” chocolate cake doughnut covered with pink marshmallow glaze and surprise filling.

One of the more sickly and bizarre culinary experiences. We finished our day in Powell's City of Books which claims to be the largest independent new and used bookstore in the world. This could well be true as it is definitely larger than any book shop I have ever been to before.

Seattle

Seattle was a lot of fun, our first day was off and I did pretty much all the touristy stuff. Continuing the great tourist tradition of 'going up tall things' we went up the space needle and also took the monorail. The city is the home of Starbucks, which are literally everywhere. Coming out the front door of our hotel and turning left the nearest shop is 45.910m and turning right just 45.564m. Yes thats right, I did measure it.

Lucy also led us to an amazing but also pretty discussing wall of gum,

I also had some pretty damn good oysters:

We watched some men throwing some fish at the Pike Place market which apparently is famous but was les exciting than I had hoped. Here is Jon eating an apple.

Everyone went to bed so I endeavoured to drink the entire bus stock of beer alone but I got through three, fell asleep and still woke up in Portland with a hangover.

Our bus turned up and I got in quick and bagged a much coveted middle bunk. Happy days. Here re some pictures of our bus:

The driver is a chap called James who has an incredible southeren accent!

What’s it called? Monorail! Once again… Monorail!

I'm already starting to think this may be quite had to keep up since so much has happened since I last wrote anything and its only day 4... I think...

Monday was load in, it went pretty well th

ere was lots of coffee and doughnuts and then lots more coffee and lots more doughnuts. It was a pretty long day and I wasn't ever quite sure what time it was. I woke up at 3:46 on Tuesday morning suffering the effects jetlag but with the tiredness of Monday, to intensify this unpleasant situation I had ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’ by Gil Scott-Heron stuck in my head.

Tuesday mainly involved programming since we got the whole system in and working the day before. I went for dinner with team video in a great Sushi restaurant, which apparently is the best thing to eat in Vancouver.

The first show went really well for a first show and the audience were mad for it.

There were some great reviews too:

http://www.spin.com/articles/sigur-ros-jonsi-debuts-knockout-solo-tour

I thought I should probably try and see a little bit of the city on Wednesday am since we arrived at night and had only traveled 3 minutes from the hotel down a grim back ally to the stage door of the venue. I took a stroll down the waterfront to Stanley Park which is stunning, here is a picture of a tree:

More later...

It has begun...

After a slightly traumatic flight, giving up my aisle seat for the "pleeeeas can you swap seats with me so I can sit with my kids..." lady and the resulting journey during which I watched the end of the Ian Dury bio pic three times, sat between two elderly men who appeared to have very little regard of personal space, I am in Vancouver. Oh and the bearded hindu lady that was sat by the toilet can't go without a mention because that was slightly odd! Since Greenpeace was founded in Vancouver I thought it would be conscientious to consider the environmental impact of my outward journey and according to carbonneutral.com, my seat on the flight produced 0.9 tonnes of CO₂e and with a donation of £10.35 I can buy a clean conscience. Perfect.
On the drive from the airport to the hotel it looks like a cool city. We are staying in the downtown area and the venue is about three minuets away from the hotel.

The Venue:

We have just been for a beer in the Irish bar which is joined on to the hotel and I have leopard print curtians in my room so I am definitely getting a full Canadian experience.

It is now 22:50 or 06: 50 in the UK so I have bee up 23 hours and am beginning to go a little bit mad, so its probably best if I go to bed.