Number of miles driven: from 10500 to 19200 means nearly 9000 mile!
Weight: from 74 to 68 means a decrease of 6 kilos!
Countries: Mexico, USA and Canada
Number of Bud and Miller beers: a lot
Other beers: Heineken, Gulden Draak, Duvel
Other cocktails: Long Island Iced Tea, Margarita, White Russian, Sex on the Beach, Strange pink drink, …
Free drinks: A lot!
Number of times drunk, impressing even an Australian guy: 1
Number of times I could not remember the night before: 5
Number of times embarrassed by not remembering the night before: 2
Number of times my site was down: +/- 10
Number of times my site was hacked: 1
Reaching the cars maximum speed: 1 (in the desert so it was safe)
Money won in Vegas: $40
Money lost in Vegas: $80
Money won elsewhere: $10 (bet: $2)
Photo’s made: 5 rolls (disposable) and 1170 digital
McDonalds visits: +/- 6
Burgerking visits: +/- 1 (tried the new angus) (pretty nice!)
Subway visits: A lot
Duitse au-pairs: 4
Days that I spoke German: 3
Postcards send to Holland: 12
Postcards with objectionable content: 1
Postcards and packages that were lost: 4
Still to arrive (I hope) because being send by boat: 1 (posters)
Sites where you could speak German: San Francisco
Sites where you could speak Dutch: Brice Canyon
Weirdest monologue: Fat black guy in Detroit
Accidents with planes: 33%
Luggage lost: 1
Illegal substances brought to America: 0
Illegal substances offered to me in America: A lot!!! (hash brownies, mushrooms, XTC, heroine, marihuana)
Illegal substances used: 0
Manga books bought: 3
People interested in reading my manga books: A lot
People addressing my driving: 1 (park ranger)
Talking about ocmputers: 0 … yes, really zero!!!!

I think this will be my last post from the US of A. The PC that’s at my home in Holland seems to be slowly dying… but still it worked for quite some time (thanks to webmaster Frank!).

See you all in September!

Yesterday I arranged to spend the remainder of my time here in the hostel I’m at. I also got a public transport card so I can use public transport for a week and make the city a little bit less safe.

Today I’ll just hang around town and maybe visit a submarine that’s docked at the harbor. For the rest of the week I don’t have any plans yet but I figure I’ll take it easy and get some rest. :-o (=yawn smiley)

The visit to Alcatraz was nice. The entire island seems inhabited by seagulls and everywhere you look things are covered in a little layer of bird shit.

Today I also returned by car to the rental agency. I notices that during my trip I accumulated quite a large amount of souvenirs. :-(

Today I rented a bike and found out the hard way that San Fransisco really is not a good city to explore with a bike. Man, I was devastated by bicycling up and down the hills. After the biking adventure I got a nice burrito to eat and this burrito contained so much filling it seemed like two meals. At night I had dinner at a Macy’s and had an original homemade hamburger that contained about a kilo of meat. :-r…

Today I went on a nice tour in a cable car. It is the most typical method of transportation in San Fransisco and a means of transport that is almost exclusively used by the tourists. At the beginning there are long lines of tourists waiting for the cable cars, they board the cable car and then the cable car cruises through SF until everyone get off at the end point.

Yesterday and earlier today I was improving my German. I met a group of Germans and some people from Austria and we spend yesterday night in some dark park drinking a few bottles of alcohol. Today we also went and see the sites together. We already arranged a visit to Holland so I can show them the sites there and eat some typical cake.

Yesterday I did a nice tour of San Fransisco and this was a really cool tour. The van was a total wreck with texts written all over the inside by other people that were on previous tours. Both inside and outside that was a lot of rust and after driving through San Fransisco for about an hour one of the cars windows was almost falling out!

After seeing some of the houses of the rich and famous we had some time off to walk around. We decided to go and look for the home of Charles Manson, a famous serial killer that according to the guide lived in the neighborhood. Well, nobody could help us and regardless who we asked either they didn’t know anything about the famous Charles or were to stoned understand the question or to answer it.

It is very cold in San Fransisco! Oh no!

I was informed that San Fransisco was very much like a European city, but I did not expect it would resemble Europe even in the temperatures. The climate was a bit of a disappointment. I was walking across the street in my shorts, flip flops and a t-shirt and even the homeless people were looking at me in a strange way.

I parked my car just for a second in a place where you should not park. Suddenly some Japanese guy starts talking to me telling me I need to move the car a few meters to the rear. I comply and back the car up two meters thinking that now everyone can be happy. Wrong, I exit the car and close the door. Lock it, and realize my mistake. The keys are still inside.

I was not amused.

But I was in luck. The first think I did was head over to the first person in uniform I could find. This person listens to my story and steps right on the middle of the road to stop a big truck that was passing by. The truck driver was also some official who could open my car for a mere $55. That $55 would be returned by my triple A insurance. The guy get his Slim Jim, walks over to my car and poses a second for a picture and truly, in a mere 10 seconds he opened my car.