Greetings from San Francisco! In my last trip log I left off with how I met up with Amy and Theo for a trip to the Jelly Belly Factory. Now that we're back in SF we decided to make it up to our pancreases by eating a healthy dinner at the Herbivore restaurant [one of my favorites]. During this part of the trip we are staying with good buddy John Trippe, who has a wonderful house with lots of cool roomates, art, and a shitload of skateboards.

Our temporary living courters.

The boards.

The FecalFace office.

Lots of art in John's room.

After a good nights rest, Michelle and I took off to meet up with Theo and Amy down by the Fisherman's Warf. It's a super touristy area with tons of shops selling nothing but shot glasses and t-shirts printed with bikini babe bodies on them, but we had the once in a lifetime chance to get an authentic tour put on by San Francisco's "Ride the Ducks" for free. For those of you who don't know what "Ride the Ducks" is, it's a huge amphibious military vehicle that they give you tours of the city and bay in. Normally it costs money's, but 'cos Amy's friend works there we got to go for free. Thanks Amy's friend!

The driver was actually a super rad WWII vet with a killer accent, who gave a pretty imformative tour. We started things off by driving around the Fisherman's Warf area, and then all the way to China town. He told us lots of great stories about famous quakes and fires from back in the day. I didn't take too many pics, but here's what I've got.

Some burning man sculptures.

At this point we had pulled into the ocean and told us about some of the different docked ships.

Then he let some of the passengers steer for a bit.

Amy Friesen.

The city.

The stadium. Anyway, after that was all through we thanked our guide and explored the city a bit. Theo showed us around mostly, and took us to a rad roof top bar. I didn't even get carded!

Some graffiti you could see from the roof. After a final beer with Theo, Michelle and I got lost for about an hour trying to find John's place again. We did see some cool stuff along the way though.

Like this hand painted sign,

and this tuckered out crack whore. Eventually we got back, ate some food at the Herbivore again, and met up with John's roomie so we could go down to the Needles & Pens show. I guess they got busted for "posting bills/flyers" and so they were auctioning off all this great artwork to help pay their massive fine.

During the show we got to talk tons with old friend Ert, and some of her friends who were really really friendly. We were getting tired though, so we made plans to eat at the Baghdad cafe the next morning, followed by a trip to the huge ass "Gay Pride Parade."

On the way home we saw this, and were left thoroughly amused.

The next morning Michelle and I woke up, packed our crap, and headed down to the cafe. I ate an over priced tofu scrambler, but atleast the company was good and Michelle gave me all of her toast. Afterwards we all walked down to the parade, and I saw this along the way.

Then we got to the march and realized that it was super crowded, and to our disappointment, there weren't actually any leather daddy's fucking in the streets. Oh well, at least there was this guy!

And this guy, with his strategically placed plush boaconstrictors.

And this guy, with his oarange and green puffball bicycle. And about a million other guys, or atleast lesbians that looked like they were guys. I even saw one with a t-shirt reading "DADDY," whose facial hair was thicker than mine, and as if that weren't enough, it was also a super creepy blonde color. I think it may have to be somthing you see in person before you get the right idea though.

From there we said our farewells, and took off to visit Michelle's family in the armpit of America: Fresno, CA. Thanks again to Theo for letting us crash in Oakland, and to John and his roomies for the SF accomadations. You guys rule. All in all, the trip is going quite well. We would not be alive if it weren't for burritos, which actually is true back home too, but burritos here are just 4539087 times better. No major road problems, no problems finding food, gas money is going faster than I expected, but other than that, all is well. Anyway, I'll leave it at that for now. Thanks for reading, post some comments, and stay tuned for next time for exiting news from the "no" (Fresno.)

Yo! Greetings from the beautiful Fresno, CA! Last time I wrote a blog, it was all about my stay in San Francisco and how I was getting ready to drive Southeast towards the fine city of Fresno. Well, since then I've made it all the way down and past that, but here is a little recap of my adventures thus far. The drive was mostly made up of brown hills, some times flowered with huge wind mill power generator things, which really was just a foreshadow of our stay in Frezno: Not too exciting, but still interesting to observe and take in.

I updated the window paints on the back of the car so now other drivers can see where we've been. It's been an excellent conversation starter at gas stations and parks, we get a lot of friendly honks and waves, and it prolly gets us a little sympathy from other drivers too. Michelle's car is kicking butt with its gas mileage [30-35MPG], and we are seeing tons of craaaazy things ... like a tiny fawn hauling ass down highway 1 to avoid getting hit by a fast-moving semi [don't worry, it was okay]. And we just finished listening to Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH book on CD. So good! You may be asking yourself "why the hell did they go to Fresno?" but the whole reason we made the stop here has been to visit Michelle's old hometown. Lemme just say that while Fresno has been boring as hell, Michelle's family time has been mucho quality. Lots of delicious food and poopy jokes. I've been spending a lot of time with her knuckleheaded sisters and little stepsister, sitting in a lot of air-conditioned environments, eating way too much good food, swimming in tons of pools, and watching a lot of bad-to-mediocre teevee. Wednesday night we watched "You've Got Mail," which I love, as well as some "Mystery Science Theater 3000" flics. Those were good, but there are way too fucking many court TV shows on these days ...

We stayed at Michelle's mom's new, but temporary (long story,) apartment while we were there, but these are some shots from her house. She's kinda into collecting finches, in a really unusual way. I think there's got to be at least 50 or 60, if not more in her main room.

I got to feed 'em one day. The whole process takes over a half an hour.

Her finch fetish is so strong in fact that when the little guys die, she puts them in little baggies to freeze for months... Some of them are super rare species, and I guess she just can't bare to part with them. There were literally dozens ...

Freaky.

Poor Maggie. She's one of Michelle's younger sisters who had her wisdom teeth pulled while we were in town. When she wasn't passed out with ice bags on her face, she was a real sweet heart.

Christine and Charlie, the house dogs.

The heat is blistering and we've been swimming pretty much every day. I think the universe took some mercy on us and it cooled down to 97 one day though. Tuesday we headed out to Wild Water Adventures, a huge water park with lots of kids running around, and bathrooms full of snotty/peepee/poopy water all over the floors. We rode a ton of fun slides, and hung out in their wave pool with a bunch of obese Americans. It brought back a lot of good memories of going to water parks as a kid, and totally helped us to cool off while burning the skin off the bottoms of our feet. Since we've been here we mostly just alternate between visiting with Michelle's family and searching the town for places with WiFi [wireless internet for computers]. After scouring the town, we finally holed up at one of Michelle's old high school coffee shop haunts, The Revue, which is one of the 3 places in town hip enough to provide WiFi to the populous. In a town of half a million people you'd think people would at least have WiFi, but most have never even heard of it. One night we headed out for a taste of the Fresno night life at the River-Park Starbucks. For whatever reason, every middle-aged semi-urban professional in town both owns a crotch-rocket motorcycle AND heads out to this particular Starbucks every night around 11pm. From its outward appearance, one would assume that this Starbucks would be packed with a homosexual version of the Hell's Angels, but alas it was filled only with typical Fresnans, lazy eyes and all. Thankfully we headed out of there on Thursday, bound for the California's Central Coast ... which really IS beautiful. Fresno was alright, but I don't think I'm gonna worry about any future plans of going back any time soon. From there we headed back towards the coast where we popped into the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which is huge and awesome and puts the Seattle Aquarium to shame. Seriously, it's at least 3 times the size and the habitats are a lot more natural than the blue cement tanks that are so common at the Seattle Aquarium.

This was a sign I saw in Downtown Monterey. Thought it was funny.

I had a hard time figuring out the best way to take pictures through 3 inches of glass to show you all what was inside the tanks, but here's my "best of" photos.

This tank had a little crank below it that you could turn to change the water's current.

A former whale.

Tank depicting polution. Check out the deep fryer basket!

This tank had a bunch of tuna, turtles, hammerhead sharks, and a few other things.

I think these were anchovies or somthing. There were tons, all moving so fast. Check out the vid to get an idea of what it was like.

Not the best vid, but whatever.

There was also a really rad jellyfish exhibit that blows the Seattle one out of the water.

This one is a video of a few Warty Comb Jellies. They have little "hairs" that they use to paddle around with, which act as prisms, defracting white light into rainbows.

They also had a decent sized exhibit of paintings and other art pieces at the museum.

Michelle didn't like this one by David Hockney.

Below are some pieces by Dale Chihuly.

Lava lamps?

Now this stuff was amazing. They're part of a series called "The Symmetry of Jellies," by Ernst Haeckel. They were made all the way back in 1904 by this artist, doctor, and scientist. Later during his life he put out a book called "Art Forms In Nature" that was a big hit. As soon as I get back from my trip I'm gonna find that one at the library for sure.

Here's a detail of the last one. Anyway, after we left the aquarium we drove down to Big Sur and stayed at a campground for the night. It totally brought me back to the days when I was a boyscout, and although expensive and kinda crowded, it was probably my favorite camping spot yet on the trip.

Alright. That's all I've got for this edition of my travels around the US of A. As usual, thanks for taking the time to read, and feel free to leave some comments down below if you'd like to share a story, ask a question, or just say hello. As of right now I'm actually in Austin, TX, but I'm sorta back tracking and catching up on all the blogs I havn't posted yet. Tomorrow I take off for Houston, and then am going to be taking a few days to work my way up to DC. If any of you have any advice or suggestions of places to stay in between there, totally hit me up. But yeah, I'm off, so wish me luck!