After Vegas

Just a quick post to recap on where I've been for the last week or so- since leaving Vegas (oh blessed wings of escape!) I've been on the west coast, San Francisco and Marin County north of there. it's been brilliant- Rowan flew out to join me and we spent a fabulous week enjoying the people and places of this amazing area.

SF is a tremendously welcoming and endlessly fascinating city, and my first night there was at 4600 Square Foot of RAD a.k.a. the Pwndepot- a converted car body shop on 15th street where you can, for a modest fee, rent a spare bed and join their world of downtown cool. Guys thank you for a tremendous welcome and a hugely entertaining evening and brunch. There really is very little in this world as fabulous as being introduced to a new town by people who live there and love it- a great start! Brendan, Lisa, Preston, Laura, Steve, Mike, Matthew everyone- thanks (especially for sharing the birthday cake- what WAS that made of?).

After one night in the world of PWN, I went to pick up our car, and the very nice lady at the AVIS desk at SFO did me a sweet deal- initially I'd just booked (at a really low price) an intermediate car. For some reason booking Avis in the UK is much cheaper than using a US site, so it was really cheap. Then she says that for $15 I can have a Nissan 350 ZX convertible! A bonafide sports car- a cheap porsche! Damn was that amazing, and for fifteen minutes while I tried to fit in my luggage it looked great. However, the boot is a bit smaller than a paperback book, so with broken heart I went back to the desk. Ended up with an Altima 2.5 s coupe which was ace (but no V6 rear wheel drive soft top glory, ah well).

I collected Rowan after quickly getting used to driving a wrong hand drive automatic sports car on the wrong side of the road (fun on those cliff top routes!) and we headed into town for a quick meal at Walzwerk, San Francisco's premier East German restaurant, and then sped (at a responsible 55mph) over the now dark Golden Gate Bridge to start our Marin break together...