The Photo Journal o'Doom

A photo taken of me, but my BART buddy while he was showing me how to safely get from SFO in to the city.

The first photo I took in San Fran, and proved I could use the digital camera I'd borrowed... Cable car - though I guess you knew that already.

My elbow from the cable car, and the city behind me.

Me and Alcatraz.

The Golden Gate bridge, all artistically framed and stuff.

That windy street that gets used for stuff.

Hmmm, this is already getting to be big and I'm still on the first day of photos, time I work out how to make them smaller.
"Nob" and naked men, it was too stupid to not be a little funny. I guess San Fran is famously gay for a reason. Puns that bad really are just, well, gay.

The view from SFO at night - and it looks really crap small (it was supposed to look awesome but I got carried away reducing my photos with Picasa and they are now all so tiny as to be basically useless - my bad).

I was there. 36 hours in transit, for that.

My prison cell at the Zoo - accommodation not as expected.

A practice run self-portrait, to see if I could and which turned out not too bad.

The proper self protrait turned out so toolish that I've since removed the head. It shows off the pretty clothes my SugaMuma bought me, and that's what matters.

I'm eating with people (well, Fritz). I'm socially adjusted and normal and stuff.... really....

Chipmunk.

Seems like a bargain....

Kalamazoo Train Station

and the proof I was there.

Toronto, and really feeling like I was in a big city for the first time (San Fran is big, but somehow didn't really seem it when I was there).

Architecture is stupid.

Architecture growing out of what was once a beautiful stately museum.

Awesomely creepy house in Niagara.

Canadian squirrel.

Matthew vs. the American Niagara Falls.

Matthew vs. the Canadian Niagara Falls (ie. the good ones).

Rainbow off the falls.

A clock tower, standing out about it's surroundings.

A university building looking as they should.

Their Maitland St is in a whole other kind of devil's acre.

All hail the great sky wang! I mean, the CN Tower.

Cower beneath me, tiny earth skyscrapers.

My feet shall crush you from on high.

Prairie, as it turns out, is a nice world for an endless expanse of nothing worth looking at.

Vancouver, a city on a very dirty river. Note: plane is landing and my digital camera is still on. Oops.

Compensating looks much the same the world over, *cough* tiny *cough*.

Vancouver Island, as seen from the ferry terminal with the unpronounceable name.

Food so bad, it made American food look palatable. Never eat food on ferries, when you are a captive audience they know they don't need quality.

Landscape - pretty.

Sunset at Nanaimo.

Aunt Ellen, looking entertainingly more manic that usual.

My punishment for pavement pounding Toronto.

Why I went all that way: my grandma. She is awesome.

Campbell River - our drinking water has planes in it for extra nutrition.

Elk Falls, Campbell River.
Impressed me much more than Niagara had.

Now there is a sign that would have me run in to buy stuff. Hooray for income tax, I want that one.

Airsickness and seasickness all at once. Joy.

The milk needs to be in four litre bottles so they can fit all the nutritional information in all required languages...

Victoria, BC

My first bear.

My second, third and fourth bears.

My first bald eagle.

A massive starfish I dragged up in a crab trap from the bay off Sointula.

The view from where I stayed in Sointula.

Meeting my cousin, Sean, for the first time.

My father felt the need to immortalise the pores on my nose.

My father at the primary school he went to (now an art gallery).

Inspecting the red tide.

My first raccoon.

Meeting my uncle, David.

Meeting one of my father's many cousins, Ann.

Dad introducing me to Barbara. A lovely woman who had the misfortune of marrying in to the Robertsons.

My cousin Erin and, I think, her husband.

My grandmother at the party for her 80th, with her sister.

A picture of me looking so retarded, and bald, that I couldn't not share it.

My grandma and five of her nine children.

A hoard of Robertsons.

I did say "hoard", right?

My grandma, and some random uggo.

My father chatting up a teenager - dirty, dirty old man.

Some pontificating wanker, going on like he was the pontiff or something.

Robertsons and fire - sounds like trouble.

I shall fear not the giant elk.

Nootka Sound is looking weirdly like somewhere I've been back home from here. What was the name of that sound again...

Art shots can even make me look good-ish.

Dad proving my hat actually does look better on me than it does on some people.

Sneezing.

Canada says goodbye.

And so should I, now that I've eaten more of your bandwidth than you were expecting. Photo journal complete.

All photos available in 6 megapixel on request.

Home doesn't appear to want me back....

So there is me, all beardless and stupid looking and back in my office.
All should be good, I've got home and all. Right?
Well, weather gods have been out to get me. Dunedin had snow the first morning I was back and has generally been a bit arse ever since. On Monday the combination of ice, gravity and a fence split open one of my knuckles and gave me a nastily bruised shoulder. Work on my thesis has got no-where at all, and I'm moving offices yet again.
I'm being tired and grumpy.
Part of this is because my retard flatmate and her semi-live-in not-boyfriend have been having drunken domestics at 4am, which is not helping with my attempts to get over being jet-lagged.
In happier news, I discovered today where I've been haemorrhaging money - it turns out I'm not but that StudyLink has terminated my payments, and can't so much as discuss it with me until next week. At least, I've not accidentally overspent hundreds of dollars without noticing as I was beginning to dread I may have.
All up, I really am thinking I should have just quit the masters from afar and got a crappy job in British Columbia - skipped over the whole coming back thing all together.

Anyway, this is a travel blog and I'm now not travelling. Thus, it is time to say goodbye. This thing is over, though I will at some point soonish post a decent photo-set of my trip with photo blurbs and maybe give a proper sign-off after that. Otherwise, goodbye.

Proving I'm capable of making new (if very temporary) friends, really.

Fritz and Sarah - a pair of nice Canadians who tolerated me well in Kalamazoo.

Home

Wednesday, I spent hanging out with a friend in Christchurch who gave me the best massage I've ever had. I'd always assumed massage was secretly just foreplay in disguise, but this was quite unpleasant as it was happening but even days later my back still feels awesome. Seems there may be some non-foreplay uses for massage after all. I was also made to shave, so I now have naked chin for the first time in a very long while.
Wednesday night I blobbed out with Wormgirl and her sister.

Thursday I got myself to Templeton to hitch home. I was stuck there about an hour, leading to a larger than intended purchase of CookieTime products from the factory there, before being picked up in an extra snazzy car just when I was giving up and considering booking a bus. At least the weather was nice and mild. Anyway, my ride - which a second hand car dealer - got me all the way to the south end of Oamaru in the lap of luxury with very pleasant conversation (if a slight agenda to convert me to voting National).

From there I was picked up by a couple of Dunedin civil servants after only a couple of minutes wait and delivered to my door. Very successful hitch hiking once I got going. Strangers are great.

Thursday afternoon/evening I took great pleasure in completely unpacking and doing laundry (even if my flatmate has taken to smoking in there (having defined it as outside) and stunk the place out) before heading to my mothers to drop of stuff for her from family in Canada in exchange for a meal.

Friday, I blobbed. I watched the second season of Weeds interspersed with napping. Jet-lag has left me very sleepy - which is annoying as I should have gotten over it already (says me who take a good week to recover from daylight savings). Then I went out to be social and prove how little most of my friends had even noticed I'd been gone.

Today, napping continues.

Southern Englishness

In Christchurch as of last night. My cunning plan to standby a cheap flight from Wellington didn't - due to Air New Zealand no longer doing standby. Finding this out lead to my missing the morning ferry by ten minutes. So I stashed my luggage in a locker and spent a few hours nosing about Wellington before the afternoon ferry.
The ride was good. I had a nice chat to a welsh tourist before the trip started, but he was planning on spending the trip inside reading a trash novel of Dan-Brown-lameness, I spent pretty much the entire trip outside on the front of the ship, mostly the only person out there. It was mild but blustery - so I ended up with awesome manga hair. Fortunately for the readers of this thing, I no longer have a camera.
I did manage to line up a ride down to Christchurch while still on the boat with very likeable people about my age and who even know one of the girls that I am staying with. So it all worked very well. Having arrived in Picton at sunset - thumbing it was not looking great.
I even got dropped to the door of where I was staying. People are great. We even had a lively discussion about Jesus.

Back in my time zone

Wednesday morning I got up and packed, farewells took ages and made my arrival at YBL (Campbell River Airport) late and my making my flight a closer call than it should have been. After watching Dad and a couple of his siblings waving at the plane as it took off, it was a short flight to YQQ (Comox) and then a somewhat longer (though still only about half an hour) flight to YVR (Vancouver International).
At Vancouver airport I went through US customs and in to a weird holding pen/mall, the stores took both currencies but only gave Canadian change, it counted as the US from immigration purposes but everything sold was Canadian and I'm mostly sure I was still under Canadian law, they sold prepaid Canadian Post postcards but there was no post box and the only way out of the pen was to fly to the US - so they weren't usable. The flight to SFO (San Fran) was in a much tinier plane than expected.
At San Fran I saw no customs and for the first flight all trip had no security checks at all - just a bit over three hours in another holding mall with captive audience food prices. While there were pleasantly no security checks of any sort there, the mall was depressing. Come preboarding time my passport was confiscated due to irregularities in my Returning Visa - for a couple of minutes it looked like they were going to leave me in San Fran - where I'd probably have been shipped back to Canada. Just when I started to panic a little they realised the problem was with their computer and not my passport and all was fine. I boarded the plane, this time not getting an empty sit as a neighbour, unfortunately.
The flight was long. I watched Out of the Blue and something else I will hopefully manage to recall later and then got a fair whack of sleep. I woke up with pretty much only time to watch Galaxy Quest before landing in Auckland.
New Zealand customs kept querying my accent/Canadian passport combination as if I was somehow a bit criminal to be not travelling on an NZ passport - I think they thought I was ashamed on this tinpot little country.
I got to Wellington and slept through my bus ride to Upper Hutt. I found Tina and, after ditching my luggage, headed back to Wellington with her for luch with Tasha - a friend from uni who I've had basically no contact with in the many years since. Caught up with Giffy (whose wedding-celebratory button-badge travelled with me) and then had a quiet night trying to get back into NZ sleep patterns at Tina's.
Now, Saturday morning (on a week with not Thursday) I'm lying about glad to be back in NZ, and looking forward to actually getting home.