The Adventures of Andrew Maurer

We had a very late start as we were waiting for Jonny and Yelena’s bags to come be delivered from the airport. But by 1pm or so we finally left to head to the piers of San Francisco.

The weather has been supposedly typical ofthe summer in SF – cloudy, foggy, without rain. On the other hand, temperatures inland farther south in CA and AZ are over 40 in some places – scorching!

Pier 39 is a popular tourist place with souvenir shops, fudge shops, and art museum, and the like. It was really windy outside, so we spent a lot of our time in the art museum.

An excellent dinner at a seafood restaurant at the Pier. Kelly, Katie’s oldest sister, and her two-year-old son Aden joined us.

We finished off the day with an Absinthe demonstration by Kara. And of course, us under-21-year-olds had no part in the drinking whatsoever.

San Francisco transit

Entrance to Chinatown

Tea tasting

We woke up at 11:30am this morning – an excellent sleep indeed! The day was spent bussing into the city from Kara’s house on Treasure Island and then perusing the city. Chinatown is home to some rather excellent tea sampling (matcha with rice is so tasty!). We met Kara at 5pm after an incident involving a building and a golf club for some supper of chile and clam chowder sourdough bread bowls.

Jonny and Yelena

Jonny and Yelena arrived at the airport at 9pm. Their bags did not. We’re hoping that they’ll be shipped asap.

More touristing planned for tomorrow

We woke up with the sun in Portland around 7am. First night sleeping in the car – a success! Slightly stiff – but it was pretty amazing being able to crawl through from the front seats into bed. The aluminum foil “curtains” worked well – we need to add a slight bit more material to a few of the panels though. That’s what duct tape’s for!

Breakfast was at the next rest area – the first time using the stove. Oatmeal and a banana – not so gourmet, but delicious all the same.

Drove down through Oregon, arrived at Caliornia in the afternoon, drove some more and stopped for dinner to get $2 sandwiches at a Safeway around 5:30pm. Awesome deal! The heat through southern Oregon and northern California was inescapable – no air conditioning in this 1988 Plymouth Colt. Luckily we have the fans at least.

Continued on down to San Francisco – departing from the I5 (interstate 5 highway) for the first time since reaching the US. The highway grew more and more massive as we got closer to the city. Katie pointed out that our side of the road had 7 lanes at one point!

Arrived at Kara’s (Katie’s sister) just before 10pm and were very happy to have arrived. I was beginning to worry about a wheel alignment problem as there is a definite wobble at speeds over 100kmph. We’ll see whether or not it’s a problem as we go farther into the trip.

For now – a week in San Francisco with Kara. Jonny (Katie’s brother) and his girlfriend, Yelena, are to arrive tomorrow.

Ps – I just did the gas milegae computation with odometer distances verified by google. Our average gas mileage over the trip has been 43MPG! Amazing!

Set off at 8:19pm at last after being hastled by an impatient driver for taking up the whole road to take a picture. We got the start up picture though!

Still needed to pick up another 4.4L of oil from Canadian tire (only $11, score!), a pack of Kicking Horse espresso from Safeway, and get the espresso ground at Starbucks. Departed from Vancouver and crossed into the US around 10pm. Woo – gas prices are so much cheaper in the States!

We drove down through Washington and down past Portland – arriving at a gas station at 3:33am. We decided to call it a night and hunker down in the car for some sleep.