Hello everyone! It is some five weeks since I returned home from my grand adventure. I have had some time in which to reflect upon a smattering of my experiences and to begin the longer term process of assimilation and acceptance. I have also, of course, enjoyed a wonderful time back home surrounded by loving family and friends: any trip, no matter its length nor substance, is rendered worthwhile by the happy moment of home-coming; in my case a bus-side reunio...

Hello everyone! After three wonderful days in Eugene, I caught a ride north to Portland with one of Courtney's housemates and her boyfriend. The drive was scenic and otherwise uneventful; I spent a large portion of the route slumbering peacefully in the back seat. We missed just one turn on the journey - and that was not well-signed - before arriving in the sleepy, leafy suburb of Hillsdale, a mere ten-minute drive to the south of the city centre. Here I rende...

Hello everyone! In a final visit quite unforeseen, I retraced my steps into central San Francisco once more to call upon the first friend I made during my adventure of the previous seven months. Dan, my amigo from Tennessee, my house-mate in Buenos Aires, had recently completed a move to the city and so we arranged to rendezvous one evening with a bottle of Californian red to reminisce about "old times". I arrived late, the cold, damp night hanging l...

Hello everyone! After spending a little time becoming acquainted with the area in which Abra lives, including a visit to the main campus of Stanford University, a swift twenty-minute walk to the west, I braved a train-ride from Palo Alto into San Francisco proper, a full hour away to the north. After such an idyllic day visiting the vineyard and Monterey, followed by a lovely day exploring Stanford, replete with uniform, stately sandstone buildings of a neo-...

Hello everyone! I arrived in San Francisco late in the evening of Wednesday 16. The next day, Abra and I took to the road and headed south out of the city district into the luxuriant agricultural valleys of the Santa Cruz and Monterey regions. Our plan was to visit some of the places made famous by the great American author, John Steinbeck, whom both Abra and I hold in high regard - indeed, Abra takes her name from a central character in my favourite Steinbeck n...