The tide changes.

Finally I feel like we are pushing on with this trip again!

In truth, the past few days have been filled with lugubrious conversation of what to do next as the clouds in our soul came and went as frequently as the spring weather confuses the locals here.

But its time to stop beating myself up and give myself yet another break, otherwise what is the point in being here at all?

We have soaked up Melbourne and after a short week, have both decidedly spat it out. We thumped the pavements, and took with us every day a fresh pot of enthusiasm for seeing something exciting, strange and new from the city, only to see that pot emptied onto the sides of their beautiful tree-bracketed streets with loneliness, most of all loneliness. Despite our best efforts, it seems that optimism is sometimes an exercise in futility and that first impressions, in the end, win out over common sense.

For my part, the thought of returning to work is still playing on my mind, and even the excitement of working here, in a mad sprawl of metropolitan muscle, is something that appeals little right now.

It's not laziness that calls me in another direction, or at least if it is, its a sort of noble laziness where I truly believe that I am doing the right thing.

For some reason I feel I am being pushed on again, not allowed to rest and set up a new haven for myself here.

There is something of a need in me, the need of the impatient driver. I have to see everything, at 50mph in third gear, right fucking now, and to stop just feels like waiting in traffic!

I think it fed my depression a little too openly and the thought of pitching my tent here, asitwere, just sailed to the bottom of my hopes for this trip.

We tramped both sides of the Yarra from Carlton to Kew looking to uncover rocks of misadventure and all to no end. We kept the purse strings tight in expectation of moving on soon and for that I am grateful. The thought of staying here, accepting the working life in Melbourne and biding our time until friends lifted the veil of the city with us has become too dull, too tedious in comparison with all the travel and bustle around us, heading out into open Australia and romance, heat and desert.

And here's me, with money in my pocket and the smell of adventure in my nostrils. The realisation that we would have to make our own way and friends in the office world of the place is not one I could relish. So when we do return, I will be happy to greet Melbourne with open arms.

If ever there is a place to set up a life where you could be happy with humdrum office work, Melbourne is the place and you better believe that!

As soon as we decided to let the little studio in St. Kilda, that dank, lovable homely little apartment, I think the old rebellion in me started to rise with my blood level, and it suddenly became decision time rather than self-derision time.

In truth, the fact that I can't live in that lovely little hole, with its orange ceiling and blue walls, crazy neighbours and artsy landlord is the one thing that saddens me about our departure. I really loved the guy we rented it from, I was excited about meeting our crazy looking neighbours, and filled with wonderment and foreboding about what life in boho st. Kilda would unfold for us. But alas, it’s not to be, at least not yet, as the road is calling us again!

Hangovers abound here for want of a healthier activity, and without friends to share them with or work to struggle with it's often a lonely and quiet morning of hoping that the cloud of impatience will lift.

I am fed up of fighting my instincts to stay in relative mediocrity hoping for a shitty job so that I could fight boredom.

It seems that as soon as we rented the car with plans of a 4 day departure from Melbs, our mood of anxious foreboding lifted with the thought of moving on, of seeing more of the wonderful newness of travel, of feeling the dirt of the road on our skin and feeling the daring of travel again, complete with strange new bit-part characters, pitfalls, weariness and wonderful crazy. If it's all about existing on our own against the world, then I would rather do it with the crazies, the loons, the lost artists and stoic intellectuals of the road.

Discussions led to the futility of returning to strange urbania without friends, and we both realised that we didn't want to come back here, leastwise not until Cian and Sarah show up.

As it stands, they are loving their jaunt through the belly of god-knows-where and planning on extending their time trekking in Thailand and Laos and that whole trip. Well we can't just sit it out here ticking off the calendar and wasting money on self-indulgent spending, and we both decided that coming back to Melbourne alone would be an exercise in depression and a waste of hard-earned travellin' money.

We came here for a good time, not a long time, as the drunken philosopher muses on toilet walls, and its time to get back in the good and out of the hung-over rainy mornings and sunburnt afternoons of this broke backpacker haven.

A backpacker’s guide to Australia purchased in a chain-book-store has fed our dreams and whetted our appetite for the country I have had such trouble settling into. Pictures of the Great Ocean Road, thoughts of driving a new continent, and hopes of some new crazy friends in some beat-up hostels have led us to a new path, starting Sunday a.m. with the Melbourne Marathon, of all things, planned the same day. It will be a strange type of fun I am sure, trying to navigate our way out of the city with all the roads closed to those athletes, but worthwhile if it means some of real old Australia is one the menu. Captain Cook's Australia, before they built a Mc. Donald’s on every corner of this international sprawl.

In truth, and as you can see, my nerves were finally steeled to staying here, grinding it out for a few months to save money and for the greater good of prolonging the adventure, but after such a short time of adventure travelling, it seems unfair to ourselves to just lump in with more mundane office jobs. I think the time will come when its right for us to go back to work and save some cash for adventures, and that time may come quick, depending on how our adventure continues, but that time isn't now. And when we are ready to feed our bank accounts and not our hearts, I can think of no better place than Melbourne, with its thronging friendly streets, happy population and thousands of restaurant-cum-bars to settle and be happy in for a few months.

So I am sure of returning here for the greater good.

So it's suddenly up to me, to guide the little toy car we rented, a yaris, across 1700km of Australian terrain to Brisbane! In 4 days! What a trip and what a deadline!

The prospect is delighting me. At the least, it will make me feel a productive member of our travel party again, having sat back while Sarah powered through apartment rental, job hunting et al as I struggled with depression and called for more booze.

But optimism is in the air, and our destination is Nimbin. It's a tiny town, from what I read, close to Byron Bay, about two hours from Brisbane as the kookaburra flies, and therein lies a hippie haven, replete with the smell of weed and the thronging buzz of sixties music, idle backpackers and full bars.

Plans here change daily, but I have a feeling that the chill out of Nimbin will ease us yet further into this trip, mend the ills in my head with the idea of returning to work, and steel us to more time here in Oz as our holiday turns busman's holiday.

Melbourne.

The place feels like it got spawned when Dublin got drunk and fucked Paris, and then Paris took steroids and smoked throughout the pregnancy.
Its a fantastic muscular sprawl of a place, full to the brim of Australians, Asians, Asian-Australians, Aborigines, Greeks, and about three black people. Mullets are common place, as are lesbians, gays, emos and freaks and the underlying cold politeness stemming from the mistrust of other demographics. And nobody over 26 lives here.
Trams run like spiderlegs from the centre for miles and miles, making it simple to navigate, get lost, get found again and be really bored sitting in traffic. They are really friendly to tourists and backpackers, with free tourist trams and busses, and kind volunteers from Melbourne tourism wearing red jackets on the street, happy to answer questions, give out leaflets, and help people out with ways of spending their hard-earned whilst on holiday.

These first few days have been pretty rough on me.
I guess I haven't really settled into the newness. I am scared to open this package and am beginning to feel that this trip, and by extension my life, is lacking some forward push.

Or not that, how to expand and show you both sides... maybe that I'm crawling out of an old skin, an ill-fitting one, and into a new one that can't be removed. I'm wondering, more and more, what comes next in life. I have to leave the college life behind, the drugs and parties and freedom and fun, and embrace the reality of moving on, with words like "career", "mortgage" and "sober" repeating themselves like a woodpecker perched on the side of my head, and avoiding those words, well that's why I find myself typing this in an apartment in Melbourne. But beyond that, new words too, smiles, positivity and the Greater Gods of the Promised Lands guiding me though I don't want to be.


I remember lying in bed the first night here. My back arched against the cool hard mattress, just staring at the white walls around me trying to sleep off the travel-sickness in our sterile apartment.

And when I tried to sleep, the strangest feeling washing over me. The hotel felt like a steep dividing line, the walls became arrows, pointing home and away, obscured in the shade of the creeping evening.

And for that time, a brief lollygag of bleary-eyed semi-consciousness, I felt like nobody I have ever known. It seemed all in my past sat up, waving at my back no matter where I turned, a good natured push in this new direction, which is obscured to me like cloudy nights on foggy freeways.


And this is how Melbourne introduced itself to us. Subconsciously sending messages of underlying deep meaning through road-signs and random noises, that effected my mood which was as changeable as the weaether here.

I felt total elation, and that sometimes turning to immediate and swinging depression and negativity, anger, foolishness, dizzy with newness, and again like an old man, beat down by the world too much and aching for the terminal sleep.
Most times, walking around with my eyes to the sky trying to catch the whole vista, I feel like I am in a movie set. I don't feel like a real or full person, just a plot device in an old movie, and it's wonderful and sad and strange and crazy.
I have to remember that the voyage is only beginning. I have to remember Cian and Sarah beating a trail here. I have to remember Bob and Peter, and to hope to see them here with us soon too. I have to give myself a break and open my eyes to the newness of the world. I've discovered Australia, I've gotten here, and that is just the start, not the tipping point.

Our tactics for this part of the trip were agreed before landing. We started off slow and steady. I think it's important, considering we are here for so long, to dip your toe into the vast pool of unknown, rather than dive headlong in without knowing how deep the pool is, where the tide pulls, and where you get swept away.

I'm being cautious, because I am scared and this storm of bitter sudden depression that has begun to subside has knocked my self confidence a bit, turning my into a malleable mouldable chunk of raw energy ripe for adventure.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still a charming bastard, but under that skin I am still hammering against a brick wall of my own fear trying to escape and be happy with being here, away from everything. I mean I have escaped!
Why imprison myself except for the greater good of prolonging the trip?

This place is one huge unknown, I am an x in an equation with a million other variables and by moving to here, I have introduced maybe a million more.
Home in Limerick I knew the rules, the score, the layout, the limitations, and what to expect. But there is a stifling tedium in always knowing the score.
I'm still loving the travel. The road, the planes, the ships, trains and busses, all fill my heart with hope.
Its the arriving I am having trouble with.

I just have no idea, as yet, where to go, what to see, how to get there, or how to get back again. Which is kinda funny, when you think about it, in the nation that invented the boomerang.

I can feel the call of Asia and almost smell it when I close my eyes. I can see the lights of Hong Kong, and smell the canals of Amsterdam, hear the cold stone of London, tread the beauty of Prague. But it's here first, and here longest, and I want to open up the underbelly of this place and find some beauty in the guts of it all.


On our first day here, the day we actually landed after the odyssey of backpain, boredom and disney movies, we got breakfast in an Italian eatery on Lygone st. which is a street composed entirely of restaurants and bars.
Most of the city seems to be designed in this way. Every street seems to have it's own theme. There is a bookshop street, a sports store street, a porn shop street, a camera shop street, a car rental street, and on it goes.
I'm not sure if the town planning here is fantastic or retarded. Most likely it's a total accident, but everything here seems to run like clockwork to an up tempo beat of happy youth and integration.
My first look at the place, after that breakfast, when we were out of our minds with tiredness and jetlag, having escaped the airport some two hours earlier and with 4 hours still to kill before we could check in to our apartment and sleep, goddamnit sleep!
Despite being so destroyed we were actually drunk on exhaustion alone, we had to fill in the time conscious around Melbourne. Most of those 4 hours, other than breakfast and ambling, were spent lying red-eyed and prone on a table outside a sandwich bar, smoking fag after fag and trying to stay awake.

The only effort of note, and memory, even now a day later is fading due to exhaustion, was that we walked down Swanston st. right to Federation Square, the centre of the Business District, and stared, completely in awe at the scope of the architecture, and completely freaked out about what was ahead of us. That was the clash the centre of our earth for the first few days.

We bought two of the cheapest bottles of rotgut we could find.
As soon as we checked in, the first bottle was passed around until it was empty, and by about 4 we were nicely drunk and things seemed much easier.
After battling such bad jetlag in San Fran, I was determined to stay awake, just keep my eyes open, until at least 8pm to try and survive the jet lag here. I made it because of alcohol, and the ability to be so tired that I could stop my mind from its freakout cycle through booze and my tobacco buzz. We watched tv on my laptop, and mono-syllabically supported each other with grunts of positivity and soft touches of re-assurance while our eyelids slowly got heavier and heavier until eventually the warming embrace of sleep took all my worries and let me rest for a good 12 hours of unmoving body warmth.







The next day we woke up at about 7:30am, or 10pm back home, and cooked breakfast.
Our first cooked meal in two weeks! You should have seen how happy I was to toss a pan and fry some meat, dirty up a kitchen and serve the food. It felt so good to eat home cooked food again, from even though the hangover feeling that we had woken up on the wrong continent persisted.
We walked on into town,strolling down Swanston st. towards the Central Business District. It's a sky-scraper-pocked landscape, with a hodge podge of neo-classical architectural styles, incredible buildings, huge wide ash-lined avenues and fantastic shopping and throbbing with people. We walked straight down to Fed Square and felt at the centre of everything for once.
sleep kept chasing us all day.
Because of all the time that stretched ahead of us to fill in Oz, it seemed like these baby steps of taking tiny tasks and digesting them day by day was the best way to slowly acclimatise ourselves to the ongoing reality of being firmly and definitely far out of the comfort zone.
I was still drained from putting myself through the ringer about actually getting here. Frequently I plunged into short-term depression and had to pull myself out or get pulled out by Sarah, still the ever-present rock.
Its totally man up time, and I have no energy to do it yet, but I feel that it is coming.

Most of the first two days were spent navel gazing, being in awe of a strange city, laughing at the awful tv and radio, and being misunderstood by the locals who seem to speak much slower than the rest of us. It gets annoying very quickly, that up-speak they sing at you. Why does everything have to sound like a question?
We couldn't decide what to do. the only thing we were certain of was that we werent having enough fun though I'm sure that is ahead of us.
The stress of the move sucker-punched us at regular intervals. We snuck into feeling ok after coaxing ourselves out the door to peak out at the surrounds, and then everything would temporarily fall apart as we unravelled in each other's arms, freaking out at what was ahead, what we were to do, and what was going to have to happen before we could relax here. Ahead of us was the option of travel through Australia, or settling and working in Melbourne while we waited for Cian and Sarah, or cutting and running to Thailand, where they were. I was thinking of just going straight home, and starting again, maybe in London, Amsterdam, Paris or Dublin. Anywhere that felt sane when compared to here. But that was just a coping mechanism I had developed and not a thought I wanted to follow through with, it was just a plot device I fooled myself with when It all seemed too much, and too far away for my liking.
I thought that when I landed in Melbourne, my future for the next year would just stretch out before me and the plan would unfold itself like a golden straight line road to Oz, like the fairytales my mom used to sing me to sleep with.

I realised that I hadnt planned at all for this trip. I had ended up in Melbourne with absolutely no idea as to how I should navigate it, what I should do next, where I should go to see anything cool, or where my life was going. It's a strange mix of liberation and imprisonment I can't explain, except to say that I feel like I couldn't be anywhere else a million times a day, and I wish myself anywhere else a million other times.
We only had a place to stay for one week, and were still tired and very prone to swings in emotion and depression.
The shadow of my failure in San Diego loomed large over me as I catapulted depression against the bedroom wall and took to drinking for any sense of normalcy when times started to get tough. I have smoked something like 3000 fags since landing.

But this cycle was destined to end. Emotional exhaustion alone returns the functioning brain to it's owner, and we really hit our stride on the third day.
My parents, whose every message to me since leaving has been positive and made me smile, got in touch again with more good luck. They told me that I was getting back 2900 euro in tax from my last year of work. I spent most of the hour after getting that text trying to contact them, pacing back and forth, smoking and refusing to believe it. I was hoping for 500 bucks. And they are going to front me out 3gs, for quitting my job and taking a long holiday from Ireland. I love it, sometimes, how the world works.
It seems that again, and how can you argue with me, that someone is pushing me hard in the back to complete this adventure. And I feel it pumping through me with the booze and blood and I have to defer to that. Im here now. And I cant go home, no matter how much I feel like I need to, and no matter how much my stomach or heart complains.
We spent the morning circling ads in newspapers, trying to find a place to stay while we are here.
Hope again lay in this necessity of existence and surprise, I jumped up to the task and finally was the one to find the place.
We called the most promising place and took a tram out to St. Kilda (a 20 minute trundle from the centre) to meet a guy who rents backpacker apartments. He was another crazy mad character and he sold us the place with his idiosyncrasy alone. I think he fancied himself an artist and found refuge in property rental, feeding out work to backpackers that came his way trying to find homes here. He was another lovely character, and put us both at ease, with his colourful shirts and light hearted banter. He led us to his beatdown old people carrier and whilst driving he tried to teach us about the area we were in, with his hands never on the wheel, pointing and girating while he talked on his mobile. He showed us a studio apartment a bit off the beaten in St. Kilda. When we pulled in, it looked like an abandoned motel, in need of some paint and love but solid and safe feeling. It has a bed, tv, oven, sink and fridge all in the same room. But the area seemed interesting, we dont have to sign a lease and we can leave as quickly or as slowly as we wanted so we grabbed it then and there.

We are moving in there on thursday. I think once we move there we will begin the job hunt. Surprisingly, I am feeling ok about it now. But the exciting thing is that between this sunday and next thursday, we have nothing planned, and nowhere to be, a car already rented and money to burn, and another adventure to plan, thank God.

Smokes! Lets go!

Well that was a 2 days of travel I won't soon forget.
I hate packing things up. I particularly hate trying to stevedore an entire life into my huge backpack without its seams bursting.
There were few extra possessions that I needed to lynch into it, a shirt, a book from City Lights, some guide books, and tat (receipts, bart tickets, museum tickets etc.) for memories, but the backpack just seems to be growing every day. I wouldn't mind it's flourishing, but I've killed every pot plant I tried to do the same with. It's a bulbous misshapen ball sack, like a hard syphilitic sailor's cock, and about as intimidating to be alone in a room with.
The impending doom of United Airlines hung over us all morning like a grey-cloud of bitter hangover. It even seemed to be infectious as the cloud spread over San Francisco and piddly drizzle and biting winds started to whip at our ankles as we killed time roaming hill and street until zero hour. It's hard to feel upbeat about two days of travelling, but it’s totally impossible when the travel is courtesy of the worst commercial air carrier I have come across. It suits our budget which is priority one (sickening though it is to admit), but is not designed for any kind of comfort.

We started reasonably well with a late breakfast in a traditionally modern Chinese restaurant just off Chestnut on one of those streets that's too small to make it into the guidebooks.
I had sweet and sour pork with bland bland rice and it was wonderful. It’s the first time I have tasted food that reminded me of home since I got here. It was so nice to taste home. My stomach also thanked me for liberating it from the fried Yankee breakfasts we have existed on since we arrived.

Autumn and early winter were both lapping at the heels of our adventure. The chill in the air and on our backs seemed to signal our departure and I couldn't help but feel distressed to leave.
The people passing by were poorly dressed for the sudden change in temperature.
Unhappy Californians shivered in their shorts and sandals and frowned into their mobiles and Bluetooth headsets saying:
"It's so cold",
and
"It’s, like, so cold."
whilst ignoring each other on the street.


We shivered around the streets, wandering how to pass the time between hotel checkout and airport check-in. After smoking, meandering, bookshop browsing and drinking too much coffee and not enough booze, we gave up and decided to hike it to the airport an hour early.


After being intimidated by the big city, enamoured with it, scared of it, fed up with it, and then round trip back to sweet love for it, we didn't need to squeeze anything else from the rind of our remaining time, so to go to the airport felt like a release. The start of the next episode.


Sarah knew I was being quiet but she didn't question it much.

This, the day of our flight into a new world, was the day that miserly pessimism decided to smash me firmly in the stomach, steal the seeds of hope, and replace them with the cold childlike fear possessed of all over-mammied Irish boys in new situations.

Australia hung over me like a monster in the cupboard, and I had no blanket to hide under.

I think Sarah knew she couldn't do anything about it. I was just working myself up into oblivion. I wound myself up and I was away, she isn't able to stop me. I guess I just ponder the worst too much.
Thank god she is here with me, stemming the wounds of my own inability to maintain forward motion in happy exaltation of new sights and experiences.
I'm frequently lost in the doldrums of self-hatred and she is my one guiding light. Her and this laptop, and the familiar rhythm of typing and deleting that lets me shut out the shadowy oblivion until drink, new sights or excitements steer me back on course to normalcy and the ability to put up with myself.
Again, I just hoped that the worst of my fear-binge wouldn't affect her too much. But it was becoming impossible to hide it from her.
For her I am an open book, even for my most embarrassing moments and lowest points.
She is my greatest friend and counsellor through life, who has helped me with everything from dealing with great sadness to dealing with athlete's foot. All I can think when I stare at her beautiful eyes is thank God for her.
Thank God, for something is spurring me on, and it certainly isn't me.

We went back to the La Luna to collect our bags. That little Motor Inn is framed in my brain forever now, incandescent Americana like the beach boys, chipotle sauce or chronic heart disease.
We definitely lived well in San Fran. I'm proud of how we managed to navigate our way through a strange few days. I feel closer to Sarah than ever now. We are bonded by weirdos and questing. Of course the budget wasn't a major issue, and we couldn't save ourselves from eating out continually, with no cooker or facilities, we were fed from the guts of the
American culinary industry for our entire stay.
I can't remember one bad meal, but my stomach is just aching for familiar fare.
I'm really missing home cooking. I love the messing around with saucepans and meats, going to a local shop, then another, then another to find all the ingredients for any of my ridiculously over-complicated dishes.
I only ever cook for Sarah though.
There never seems much point or reward in cooking for myself. I never smile at my own creations and I love to surprise and please her, even if it is only for something as silly as a warm cooked meal after a hard day's work.

I'm beginning to feel like I can do nothing for her. Laundry and cleaning and cooking are taken out of the equation.
All I ever want to do is make her smile, but I'm not always so good at it.
I think I would make a great housewife.
Sarah is like a rock through my ambling self-indulgence, shoring me up mentally. She is finding the accommodation and coming up with ideas. She is also eternally decent to me and basically carrying me on her back like I were a wounded ranting soldier wheezing morphinated nonsenses in cold fear of failure.
I am not sure how I will fare now that my old friend, self-indulgent depression, is beginning to swell in my stomach again. The bastard.
It's a plight maligned by all who know me, who know of my tendency towards the negative, but it is still a part of me, as plain to my familiars as the nose on my face, though I try to hide it like the sweat stains.
I try to bury it deep inside like we all do with our failures. But I still perma-suffer whilst upsetting most that come into contact with me and my sulks. I'm just grateful that all my great friends stick by me and feel that I'm still worth knowing despite my worn-on-my-shirt flaws.
I know who I am.
I don't know how to build a bridge over the pit of my stomach to make it to happiness from self-constructed despair.
I am definitely beginning to miss home, friends, comforts and the friendly open prison of my life in Limerick. And my little car with its squeaking brakes and baldy tyres.
I miss getting up and making myself a cup of coffee from my own kettle, in my underpants with a fag in my mouth, a quick scratch and a few wheezy coughs. I miss laundry and kitchen cleaning and the minutiae of daily living. It's strange the crap that you miss when you strip most of your life away except for one beanstalk of a backpack.

I miss friends most of all.
I miss my drinking buddies, my sage counsellors, my adopted children, my guiding lights and my confidants and my brother. I miss the group life, the secrets shared on drugs, the heartening steel of friends who stick by no matter what.
I will never miss working, but the rest is a hard knot in my heart, bound to me with chains and love.






In Melbourne, the place we have booked is a lovely central apartment, Carlton, a strong-armed stone's throw to the Central Business District, with its own cooking facilities.
That's heartening me.
Everything else is making me feel like a little boy lost in a supermarket. All the choice in the world, but no currency or intelligence to pick anything.

I really felt like I shouldn't catch that flight to Melbourne.

I feel like I should take the first hop of the flight, to LA, and then just cut and run, enjoy more of tourist's America and then go home to the palms of friends and family, find a job and a car and hop around the places I will always know, beginning something new from the ashes of the old.
I am not sure if travel with my world on my back is a beast I can tame.
I don't know if it's something I want. Maybe feeling like I have conquered this fear, just once, will mean that I can finally put this fear to bed, but maybe again I don't want to.
I hope I can, but it's the ever-doubting hope of a Catholic priest, peddling along in a profession where your boss never thanks you for a job well done. I never pat myself on the back for smoothing through the hard edges life sometimes deals me. I always kick myself worst when I'm down.

Maybe the meat of this story is in my stomach and how I learn to digest change, and all of the exotic foreign strangeness is just an aside to how I feel, right here, in the centre of my chest.
You already know I'm stubborn; I just need that heroic stubborn to push through and fend off the worst of the unknown until I am back on my feet mentally.
Fear of failure is at my back pushing me on. Fear of the unknown lies ahead, pushing me home. I feel like a leaf floating on the trade winds of both, with little say as to who wins. I'm hoping I will learn to sail these seas of meandering dread. I need a tiller to fend off the worst of these storms, a beacon of hope at the shore.
It's really not easy being this precious.





We took a cab to the airport. The of-Russian-origin driver ignored us and played classical music. I saw his hands directing and conducting it as he drove, and realised that he made me do the same. It was something or other by Brahms according to the DJ.
He was the only taxi driver I was in the car with in my whole time in San Francisco who didn't beep his horn in anger once. Most drove with one hand on the wheel and one hand on the horn. His hands clicked and he let the angry reactions he felt dissolve away into the rhythm of the classical music.

Once we arrived at the airport, weighed down with backpacks, we took the round-robin monorail that circumnavigates SFO to domestic terminal 3. We began our trek to yet another continent with a United Airlines flight to L.A (UA856) on sept. 28th.
It's a short jump, less than two hours of discomfort and ear-popping until LAX and the dreaded.

We flew low around LA for a while, waiting to land in one of the busiest airports on the East Coast.
I was listening to channel 9 on United Airlines in-flight radio, distracted with the business of stopping my brain from going where my body doubtless was.
For some reason, this quirky channel 9 was a direct link to the LAX control tower radio, full of "Ready to push" "219 and holding", fast prompt requests with token politeness underlining commands that needed urgent responses or lives or jobs would be lost.
I heard American, Australian and Japanese accents all asking to land and take-off and calm voices from the ground telling them how and when.
It landed me (but not the plane) again in the familiar tranquil home of a 12 year old boy spending time with his dad.
As long as I can remember, my father has always had a portable multiple band radio, one of those radios with a million short wave frequencies and eternal battery life, possessed of all older generations desirous of a world beyond their own limitations.
These little portable radios (they were constantly upgraded, about one a year) went everywhere with him. In the back of his car, out whilst gardening, to his office in work, and when I was a kid, it seemed to contain entire unknown worlds that could be digested by even my weak stomach from a safe distance. I had grown up with the strange sounds of airports, taxicabs, garbled low frequency messaging and I remember how relaxing and intriguing it is to listen in on conversations whose meaning, other than garbled reading between lines and judgement of tones entirely eludes me, like a Spanish soap opera.
As we hit closer to LA itself, I took to gaping out the window. The expanse of the place was a distractingly hyperbolic sight. It was approximately 8pm and twilight was hitting in, and the lights of a big city stretched further and further to the end of the landscape, time, space and the universe. Under me, and beyond, all I could see from both sides of the plane, an eternity of suburbia and advertising, pushing and hacking away at the desert.
That song, playing over in my head, Sandy Shaw.
"LA is a great big freeway, put a hundred down and buy a car. In a week maybe two they'll make you a star"
My heart soared away with it, a dot on the skyline I was staring at, turning happily into largesse from obscurity, or just learning to live in what must be the largest goldfish bowl in the world.
I might never see LA again, and though I have only ever viewed it from the safety of a plane or a bus, passing through to a friendlier start, I don't think I could breathe there without money.
Lots and lots of money. Any place like that should never have existed in the first place.
I can't help but wonder, also, if Australia is my San Jose.
Is it an idol I have held up, to be toppled by impossible expectation?
A reflection of a memory of a place I have never seen that cannot hope to live up to my dreams for it. I have lived in the wonder and excitement of getting back on the road for so long that it seems impossible that it holds anything for me but disappointment when compared to the picture of it in perfect 20/20 in my mind's eye.

We landed bumpy on the tarmac, and again, sweaty brick wall of fear hits in and Nick goes postal.
I caved and babbled at Sarah over cigarettes outside, everything came out and it felt good to know she knew my heart, even if it's a dank place in my chest that suffers with malignant fear.
I have a feeling that in the next few days, she will see more of my heart and soul than she could ever hope to. I just hope it doesn't send her screaming and she still thinks she can deal with me until after I grapple this monster.

I hate showing that side of me to other people.
I hate how often I cave and people see it anyway.

But she exists forever in my heart, lighting through my darknesses, vices and weaknesses.
It's only fair to show her the rooms I haven't cleaned for her yet. After all she is paying for them.

I really felt like I couldn't get on that flight.

Everything it represented suddenly seemed appalling to me, as I sat supping a double whiskey in LAX waiting out the 4 hours till the dotdotdot.
Even Sandy Shaw's sweet voice, exalting the dream of travelling for the sake of friendship, rebirth, and the power of dreams over the reality of rampant consumerism is mixing bitter with the cold fuel of upset in my brain.
Now the same song, over and over in my head just felt like a bitter rampage against a disgusting world we so easily immerse ourselves in, mulling like bitter wine.
Maybe my travel reflected her anger, and the reality of her dreams probably floated away in a trip from recording studio to concert.

"And all those stars that never were are parking cars and pumping gas."


UA839 to Melbourne via Sydney.
An arrow through the commonplace that sustained me.
A bullet through my happiness.

A placebo where a smile should be.

My mind hung on grimly through the white-knuckle boredom of security, check-in and dawdle. Playing over and over in my head and the pit of my perma-weak stomach, the same in-flight movie of terror and the need to run back home.

I gulped it back again and again, deep into my chest, imprisoned in my head so I could learn to tame it, swimming against the tide of my own revolting cowardice.

How silly, I kept on thinking.

How fucking hilariously sick and silly.

And how ashamed I am of where my mind goes, what I put myself through, and how I dawdle along with decisions, shambling and ambling through life on the back of other's dreams like every writer until the reality of reality hits in and I want to run home to mommy like a sobbing schoolchild.

Fear of flying has nothing on fear of landing.

I really want to explore more of this great fear I have for the unknown. I need to quench my thirst for the knowledge of its origin, or how and why it controls and tries to win out over the rational calm side of my brain.
I know the only hope for me to learn to control this abominable ague is to sit through the fierce distemper of the instability and land myself in a world unknown, but I don't know if this will reveal a sour scared tempo to my personality. I want to succeed, for Sarah and for myself. I just would hate to push her away amidst this fierce and personal battle that she cannot hope to understand.

Through my brain, images of this cycle through my life were beginning to play out their late show.
I know it started with pre-school. I didn't like pre-school. I asked my mom if I had to go anymore after three days. I can even remember then, the same fear eating away at my stomach about this strange new world, with its swings and sandpits and strange toys that everyone else seemed to love, and the brisk and even tempered woman who presided, designating lunches, rewards and nap-times with ever-patient kind smiles. I don't think she had a tool in her teacher's handbook for dealing with my monsters though.
I just wanted my own toys.
My own thoughts in my own room with my family where it was all safe and suffocating, and the droning of relentless life could patter about around me in my own little cell of comfort. So I didn't go to pre-school. I started school in Infants with the same fears and let them wash over me with every new change, right through my time in school, right through again to the dawning of adulthood.

You remember when the teacher was ill? And your class got divided up into groups of 4 or 5 and fed out amongst the other teachers, set to do nothing for the day? How wonderful and freeing it was to sit elsewhere and not work and have the day off from the mundanity of school?
I hated it. I hated the change. It upset my stomach. I broke out in sweats. I sat sullen, hoping for time to fly by and take me back to normalcy.

Seeing as how it started so early, how can I hope to remember the trigger that started me off on living with the fear, rather than rising up against it? I want more than anything to battle tooth and nail to the grim and bitter end with all of my forthright stubbornness until I taste sweet victory or bitter defeat in the arms of a foreign world and time where I could finally know myself.
At least to know myself would be victory, even if it meant sidling home in defeat. To know so little of myself that I let this fear win out all the time sickens me almost as much as the alternative.

I was only allowing myself to think that the boredom of flying would mean I would be glad to land anywhere, and that this is how it was meant to be. 16 hours in the sky, over the Pacific to Sydney was the prospect.
The Pacific.
In the words of every sailor, traveller or any who have traversed or dealt with it, what a poorly named ocean. But the great size of it alone made it seem like there was all the time in the world to plan and get over this hurdle.
I boarded the plane and took my seat. I got the middle seat, no comfort of the window, its cold shoulder to sleep against, and no comfort of the aisle, with its quick escape to bathrooms without bothering others.
We seemed to spend forever taxiing around aimlessly. We spent another hour waiting for clearance to take off. (Again, in flight radio was telling me exactly when it was no-going-back-sucka time, through the calm robotic voices of LAX control tower.)
Friday, at about 11:15pm on American time we finally got our clearance to leave, took off, trundling down the runway towards the inescapable reality of something new and scary.
It's done now I thought. Just accept it. Dammit, enjoy it you fucking pussy. You fucking total pussy.

I slept furtively, and watched some of the same movies I had seen on my United flight to San Francisco. Within a few short hours, boredom set in like a drunken bastard at a taxi rank.
My 6 foot 1 frame was not built for air travel. I clashed with my seat, pushing the fucker as far back as the evil capitalists who designed airplane seating arrangements would allow (about 4 inches). This then caused a clash with the person behind me's knees (some poor woman who was clearly distressed by my aggressive seat pushing. What could I do? As I said, 6'1''. Not exactly easy to squeeze that into the smallest seat space per person of any transatlantic carrier.)
The seat in front also took a bashing as I squish squashed left and right to gain some leverage and 15 minutes of comfort before ass-numbness prompted the next round. Sarah on the window seat and a Peruvian to my right who had the misfortune of getting the aisle seat next to mine also took a beating from my constant squirming.
The Peruvian to my right, couldn't have been older than 20, got woken up some 4 times during the night by my incessant need to get out of the tiny little cushioned prison I had paid a fortune to be trapped in so I could go to the bathroom. I went there to not pee despite needing to, splash cold water on my face and quietly fart, navel gaze and stare at my ever more haggard complexion as I exalted in finally being able to stretch to my full frame if even for only a minute.
My breath rapidly deteriorated to paint thinning grade halitosis ad the pit stains slowly grew to meet the chest stain.
I read Tom Robbins and drank white wine. I took prescription medication my dad had bought me to relax, but it didn't work. (How could it, it wasn't a horse tranquilizer.)


Like all things though, time and the worst of the self-imposed torture passed, and quickly became just another jotted individual memory like everything else on this crazy trip.
Sarah and I were already planning how to get back home by taking flights by any other airline, and taking hops of no longer than 6 hours each time.
I will never ever fly with those fuckers again. It’s possible I will never fly again, and just swim home, or hide in a freight ferry with a crate of whiskey and a packet of rice in my pocket.
We tipped down in Sydney at 8am local time. I was wild-eyed from furtive sleep and travel, prescription drugs and booze, and barely able to coherently navigate the airport. Both Sarah and I found it impossible to orienteer our way through the signposts and snapped at each other whilst getting lost for an hour before we found our gate.
We are both intelligent people. We both have good heads on our shoulders, and I have always believed that only morons get lost at airports.
Total morons.
But this was before I took a 16 hour flight. My IQ was less than my age plus my shoe size at that point, all I could do was drool and roar, and fantasise about punching someone, anyone, repeatedly, until their face caved in and they were left with nothing but a jiggly stump of spinal cord waggling cartoonishly where their head used to be.
We took a transfer from Sydney to Melbourne, so we still hadn't arrived at our final destination and when you are transferring from Sydney, they don't let you fucking smoke while you are waiting. Again, the over-regimented anti-smoking laws meant that I couldn't get my much needed fix.
This is after multiple freak outs.
After 16 hours without a smoke.
After the worst airline in the history of the world for that full 16 hours, no decent food and some 45 minutes of sleep.
They gave me jelly beans and a packet of crisps for breakfast.
And the stupid fucking pious holier-than-thou fucks who designed the airport didn't have a door that opened to the outside to just let me have a cigarette between one fucking awful flying experience and another.
All I was thinking throughout my whole time in the airport was "those fucking fucking cocksucking total absolute cunts." and similar colourful descriptions.

Yeah. I'm mellow.

Thank God that our last flight was only another two hour hop down the coast, but by this stage, I was existing entirely on the far edge of the seat.
My head comprised 95% vein throbbing in anger and 5% black rings under my eyes. I ignored the air-hostesses as they smiled and asked me stupid questions, for if I had opened my mouth, I would have bitten one of them, possibly on the throat, and then spent my time roaring and drinking the blood whilst screaming my anti-United anti-Capitalist manifesto until I was subdued by at least two, possibly more of the multiple mullets on the plane.

Finally we landed and got through border security thankfully quickly. We picked up our prodigal bags after waiting an hour at a rotating carousel, bleary eyed and barely able to stand.
Cigarette, smoke, fag, toke, pull, tug, drag, filter, tobacco, smoke smoke smoke smoke smoke smoke.
We then had to get through customs. They scanned our bags with haste, possibly noticing how my throbbing forehead vein was reaching toward them whilst their backs were turned, trying to strangle them. We got through to the arrivals lounge, and sped, no sleep and exhaustion disregarded, we sprinted out to the Melbourne air, fag and lighter already in my hand, for the final smoke I had been looking forward to for what seemed like 20 years.
Fucking total cunting bastard United Airlines and cock-assing Australian government can suck my smoke filled cock for all eternity.
Bastards and scum the whole cocking lot of them.

There are no dirty cars in California.

I'm sittting in the hotel, slightly freaking about Melbourne whilst sipping good Californian wine and hoping to get a bit drunk to ease the worry that has plagued me ever since I set out on my own in life, at 17.
You know you have a problem when even your 16 year old brother is texting you telling you not to be so worried about things, and of course, he is right.
But just as certain is the fact that there is only one person that can stop me worrying, and after all the strange and crazy I have been fed here in San Fran, I think that I am due a little freakout. I have been trying to mask it from Sarah so as not to worry her, though I know she would kiss my cheeks and neck and make me feel better about everything. I just don't want to heap my shit on top of her shit and make anything more difficult for her than it needs to be.
I don't want to be putting a bad spin on what is sure to be a great and grand adventure. I also don't want to cut and run.
Most times I am a stubborn bastard, but I'm always quick to cut and run when the going gets too tough or I know I can be happier elsewhere.
It's a gift and a curse. I mean I sat through 4 years of that goddamn Comp. Sys. course through sheer stubbornness. But the freakouts turned me into a drink lovin' stoner that passed through giggling, smelling strange and attending no lectures. I know I couldn't have had a better time in University than I did, but the thought of cutting and running never crossed my mind.
I just have to strike a balance between knowing I want to be there and being able to function as an apartment renting job-hunting capitalist. It's the latter part I am worried about. This last month away from any and all work has made me lazy, and happy too.
I mean look at me.
I'm writing like I did in college.
Im starting to dream, and dream beyond nice cars and LCD tv's and Xbox 360's and all the stuff that they make you want when your life is already shit.
I have smiled more times in 9 days than I have in the whole of the previous year. It seems childish to think I can continue like this. I just wish that there was some way to escape the sickening rat race I have been caught up in, for jobs I don't want in an industry I hate.
Pot, weed, smoo, the reefer, mary jane, ganj, as always, makes things a lot easier.
I hate being away from Eamonn sometimes. In the past month where I was living at home, he really made everything easier for me. He's smarter than I am, has more direction and verve than I do. He is like me with youth re-injected and with a desire to strike out on his own as soon as he can.
I really love that kid.
Through all the years of big-brotheryness, and largely ignoring him through college, I used to feel guilty that we hadn't bonded more. Now I see that he is doing fine for himself, always has done. And its a privilege to be related to him. I have a feeling that I'm destined to be in his shadow, and I am truly delighted about it. I just want nothing but total success for him.
For me, I just want to avoid working for a little longer, maybe score some more weed, and to relax and have fun, not freakouts, in Melbourne.
Sometimes I feel like the little brother and I want that to change, but I can only be who I am. Success would give me ulcers.
Lets face it.


We spent the day camped out in the hotel. Venturing out for breakfast, dinner and booze left me tired and sore.
I think all the sights we have seen have knocked me for 6, and it's nice to stop and smell the hotelroom coffee once in a while. I really needed the time off. I feel much better about the potential 30 odd hours of travel facing us tomorrow.


I am glad to be leaving California, strange as it may seem. It would be great if it wasn't for the Californians. And their fucking soy milk.
Today, for dinner, I had, and I quote from the menu:
Corn meal beer battered mahi mahi tacos with lime guajillo and a mango and red cabbage slaw.
They were battered fish on tiny tortillas with not enough sauce. We ate in this restaurant because every time we passed by it was always packed, brimful of white well-to-do's waiting at the bar, eyeing the tacos. This is just another encapsulation in daily minutae of the style vs. substance and money vs. happiness debate.
In California, style and money won.

The heat is finally on.

We got up late this morning. It was nice to sleep in but I was still cranky before breakfast. Coffee resurrected me. We had booked tickets to Alcatraz on the ferry and had to get to Pier 39 by 1 to make the trip. It was only 11, so we ambled down Chestnut to the touristy cusp of San Francisco, Fisherman's Wharf. The heat was fierce, about 30 degrees, so we stayed on the shady side of the street all the way down and got there sweaty with two empty water bottles.

Alcatraz is an incredible place. The island is named after a Mexican term derived from alcatrices, a nod to the huge amount of Avian wildlife on the island.
In a hilarious duality, since the Ice Age flooded the bay area and left Alcatraz as an isolated unfriendly rock, there has never existed predators on the Island to threaten the bird population, making it an ideal nesting spot.
If you are ever in San Francisco, you can see Alcatraz from the top of virtually every hill. Its a permanent fixture on the horizon, about a mile off the coast and very easy to spot.
I had noticed it before and was really excited about going back there. Of course I visited it when i was first in San Francisco, but only had a postcard memory of the place that I wanted to cement with an ambience.
The place has atmosphere. The architecture is imposing, a product of a hodge podge of many generations of different building styles, as its structures dated from as early as civil was era, and as late as the late fifties. Its history is colourful, and steeped in blood and redemption. It exists now as an independent national park, complete with park rangers and no smoking signs.
We strolled around behind bars, and heard stories from old prisoners and prison officers on the audio tour. it was fun and creepy and occasionally sent shivers down my spine.
We finished up our tour at about 4:30 and headed back to the pier to wait for the next Ferry and swat the many flies that had suddenly come out of nowhere to annoy us all day.
The ferry took 15 minutes of humpy bumpy on the Pacific to land back in tourist land. We went to In n' out burger, an acceptable fast food place near Fishermans Wharf that trades on the freshness of its produce and making food to order.
After that we took the long walk home, though my legs, knees and ankles ache from walking. It feels good to get all that exercise, and I like arriving home caked in sweat to stand in front of the air conditioner drinking icy cold beer.

I must admit I am getting very anxious as the prospect of Melbourne and a new continent as the time to leave California draws near. We are leaving on friday, which leaves us with just two more days near. I don't even want to think about leaving. This trip is so strange and weird and wonderful that I just don't want to return the tone to apartment and job hunting and the reality of the money chase.
I am missing driving and cooking and my own place and home and friends though.
I'm wondering how much mental strength I can muster to thrive there. Sarah is doing great, checking the net for hostels and hotels, reading guidebooks and feeding me facts to help me digest the lump of unknown that faces me, and occasionally manifests as a dull panic in my stomach.
Sometimes I really hate being so precious.

I'm good to go.

We spent the day kinda out of it.
I wanted to go to the Exploratorium, a hands-on type science museum for doubting Thomas's of physics. We got there at about 11 after another morning in which i got up early feeling strangely refreshed even though I drank that wine last night and stayed up late after another exhausting day.
For some reason I only need 7 hours sleep now and I'm good to go.
Unfortunately, because it was monday, the Exploratorium was closed. I didn't mind too much though, because it's located at the Palace of Fine Arts, a hugely opulent arch left over from some 1916 economics fair. We sat there in the park, looking at the manicured lake and its arches and smoking cigarettes and cursing while disapproving mothers steered their children around and away from us.
I can't help cursing too much, I'm Irish. Cursing is as alluring as good poetry to me.
But here in California, cursing and smoking on the street makes you akin to a homeless junkie, or one of those moron hippies begging for weed money or bus money or soy milk latte money.
That just makes me want to curse and smoke more. I think I have had over 120 cigarettes since I landed. I can count them from the 600 we bought at the airport. Though I am smoking much less weed because it's very very strong.
After that we went back to the hotel to get a bit of downtime and watch daytime tv until the heat of the midday sun stopped beating down on the cracked landscape.

Cormac texted us to meet up. He and Meg had just biked over the Golden Gate from Pier 39 on rental bikes. It sounded like fun, and Sarah and I decided we would have to include it in our own plans for our last three days, after Cormac and Meg left for New York. The bike route took them all the way across the Presidio Park along the beach and across the bridge, then back again before their 3 hours ran out.
I can't stop thinking about Cian and Sarah and what faces them. They are taking off from Ireland soon and spending a year in Australia with us. They are starting their travels in Bangkok, a place that frightens the shit out of me, and from there, moving to Phi-Phi and Laos and other places whose pronunciations are up for argument.
I knew that Sarah hadn't got her loan confirmed and was hoping that that and the other bureaucratic bullshit was all sorted so they could worry about taking care of themselves and getting nicely drunk to ease the culture shock.
I was also worried about Cian. In the weeks before we left he seemed very self assured. He has this quiet confidence and is never phased by the big stuff that sends my stomach twirling and my mind to heac-achey distraction.
He took refuge on the Internet, reading up about where he was going and what he was doing, making sure he knew as much as possible about what was in store to protect against any potential trouble.
That workhorse style has to have its just rewards.
I definitely thought that that was a good move on his part. I'm doing the same with Melbourne, reading guidebooks, forums and websites to find out as much as I can. I still feel like Melbourne is going to kick my ass for at least two weeks before I humble myself enough to apologise and buy it a drink.
I remembered that I did the same thing when I first came to California on a J1. After I spent two weeks in San Francisco, I moved to San Diego to find a job and a place to live for the summer.
That was a bad move. I hate San Diego, and after leaving California yesterday to get to Santa Cruz, I realise now that I also hate the rest of California outside the boundaries of San Fran itself.
It's such a strange state, full of surfers and surfing, liberals, hippies, soccer-moms, vegan restaurants, Pro-gun weirdos, organic foodstores and nuclear families.
I'll give you a minute example, try to put the jigsaw together of the tiny things that make me feel like this.
At one stage, whilst more ambling, we passed by a beaten up Volvo estate with two kids in the back, and an overweight mom in the front berating them. The licence plate read "NRAYES." It took me a while to figure that one out but when I did I loudly started insulting them as we passed by. I couldn't help it. The idiocy of making one pro-murder statement so important to you that it's labelled on your car every time you take your fat ass to the foodstore to slap your kids some more and buy them some diabetes. It just made me see red.


We met Cormac and Meg at the Palace of Fine Arts again because they hadn't seen it and I wanted a closer look. Meg was badly sunburnt on her shoulders. When I was sitting next to her, I fancied I could actually feel the heat from her back it was so red.
We walked back to our hotel at my suggestion as the lads were tired and wanted to use the WiFi we had set up at our hotel, Cormac rang his mom from Sarah's laptop, waking her up because it was 12am in Ireland, even though it was only 4 in San Fran. We drank Sam Adams in the hotel while everyone took turns surfing the net. We were all just talking and relaxing, everyone seemed happy and the vibe was great.
We decided to hike it to North Beach (A wonderful Italian area of San Francisco with a million restaurants and bars, but no beach) to get some good cheap Italian food on our last night together. We set off and walked almost the full length of Chestnut Ave across about 20 or so blocks. We meandered around the small parks and restaurants looking for some place to eat, and eventually stopped in an Irish bar called O'Reilly's for a drink before dinner.
The American barman in the Irish bar poured a bad Guinness that was brought to our table by an Australian waitress while U2 played on the stereo.
It was that kind of place.
Posters full of pictures of Irish bars and Newgrange and old-timey Dublin in the toilets, violins, green post boxes and random old looking bikes hanging spare everywhere.
The waitress recommended the Trattoria Siciliana on the corner a block away for cheap and cheerful pasta and pizza, so we went there. I got the best seafood spaghetti ever. Baby calamari, clams, mussels, prawn, shrimp and miscellaneous in a garlic and tomato sauce.
Cormac and I both really liked our meals, but Meg and Sarah weren't delighted with theirs.
It was a cheap place though, so I put it on my credit card, collected some cash from everyone as I am running low.

After that we went back to the Irish bar again. As soon as we arrived, a guy sitting on his own outside started berating us with drunk Chicago. Ken was his name. He looked like a cross between Charlie Sheen and Simon Cowell with bad teeth.
He was a mad laugh, full of contradiction and contrite diction like most Americans.
Pictures of his kids, Irish jokes, patriotism and flirting with waitresses. All were in his arsenal and all got a stage tonight. I love that East Coast cynicism. California certainly needs some.
He entertained us while I got drunk on more bad Guinness.
I got such a kick out of being Irish and drinking Guinness and smoking on the street outside an Irish bar with no Irish people in it in North Beach San Francisco. I keep catching myself like that, suddenly amidst the doldrums of travel or eating, I keep realising the enormity of San Francisco and the wonderful novelty of being abroad, far from home, and just out to have fun.

We said our goodbyes to Meg and Cormac as we pushed them into a cab. I was really sad to see them go. I don't think I will see Cormac for a year, Meg, I might never see again. I hate those kind of goodbyes.
We got our own cab home and stumbled around the hotel room, rolling and smoking weed, feeling dizzy, changing channels, shouting at the TV, surfing the net and generally being typical Irish hotel guests.

I woke up at 5am and turned off the TV and lights.

Hippie with vet bills and cute dog. Please give generously.

The day started well. We got breakfast in the same place we had eaten for the two previous days.
I think it's just important for Sarah and I to have a breakfast place, I'm pretty sure we will probably get one in Melbourne pretty quickly.

Its true what they say, I'm totally capable of eating the exact same meal for breakfast until I die.
As long as that thing is crispy hash, bacon, two eggs, sausage and a motherload of great coffee.

We caught the BART to the airport to rent a car, figuring that the airport was the easiest and quickest place to actually rent one. Also, SFO is about 15 miles out from the city, and opens up straight onto the Santa Cruz freeway, 101, highway 280, and basically a driving route straight out to Santa Cruz
So basically we had done our revision when planning the route.
PARAGRAPH DELETED

I had about 6 cigarettes in an hour and a half, but in the end we arrived safely at Santa Cruz.

We were there to meet Cormac's sister, who was studying in UCSC for the year.
The campus is ridiculous. It might make sense if it was a cartoon show version of a University for kids and the students were all squirrels and chipmunks, but as any model of a functional college, its just totally ri-goddamn-diculuous.
The whole thing is across what must be like 40 or 50 acres of Forest. The SU is a bus ride from the Dorms. All the study depts are miles away in some backwater forest. There are frequent deadends leading to scenic nothingness for no apparent reason.
For some reason I really loved the campus.
The only problem is their unhealthy attitude to not drinking.
A college campus should really focus on the booze. Students living on campus are only allowed to drink on campus if they are in their room, on their own.
And they want to prevent problem drinking.
Hannah is 20 and has been drinking for at least 4 years in Ireland. But because she is in America, she cant have a drink for the year. I felt really bad for her, so I used my drivers licence to buy her two bottles of wine. She was really fun and had a great attitude to life, kept high-fiving us at the excitement of living in Santa Cruz for a year.
While we were ambling around the campus, we couldn't help but get immersed in Californian student speak. These dreadlocked disapproving deciduous kids with ideas about a life they had only just begun to taste made me laugh.
They reminded me of me when I started University, so certain of myself it was ridiculous considering that I knew absolutely nothing.
The conversations of the students there were ridiculous, even if you aren't a wannabe intellectual snob like me.
"I cant believe that the senior class didn't know the difference between "Should of" and "should have"" "I was like, my god."

"The thing u gotta, like, realise is that college is not like high school.
It's a whole different animal."

I'm serious. Students here are idiots.

We drove around Santa Cruz for ages, looking at beaches and promenades and piers. It was all pretty samey and dull, very disappointing, but I was still delighted to have the drive up and see the California countryside again.
Pretty much as soon as we left campus I was aching to get back to Frisco though. I only have 4 more days here after today, and I don't want to waste them in shitty seaside towns like Santa Cruz, replete with surf shops, students, surfer morons, vegans, rich hippies, organic supermarkets and goddamn soy milk.
Fuck soy milk.
It was nice to see the place, but even nicer to know that I wasn't staying.
Goddamn I am hard to please.

We finally left at about 7:30 after dropping Hannah off at her campus with her organic groceries.

I know she was glad to see us and hear Irish accents and see familiar faces, but she still walked off without glancing back at her brother, or by extension, I guess her old life.
I really sensed that everything in her was resiliently looking forward. She smiled and said a word to a guy with dirty dreadlocks who came out of her dorms, and strolled into her room.
I really liked her.
We drove home. A fast scenic race against the sunset to change hotels and get some food.
We got as far as one BART stop from the airport before we turned back and decided to drop the car back to the airport rather than driving into San Fran tonight and leaving the car back in the morning.
I was so glad because I couldn't face driving through the San Fran town centre, even if it was late on a Sunday night.
I just don't think I could have sat through that.
So we brought back the rental car (Corolla), got screwed on the cost of petrol (The guy went to wanting to charge us 60 bucks, to 40 bucks, to 23 bucks), and took the bart mack to mission.

We got off at Mission and 24th.
Its the first BART stop that vaguely resembles city, opens up onto a well lit intersection. Its preferable at the moment to getting off at Mission and 16th, even though both stops are equidistant from our motel, but Mission and 16th is much rougher area.
Or so I thought.
On our way back, passing Mission and 23rd on our way to the El Capitan on Mission and 20th, I saw a cop car crossing by on 20th st.
I turned to the guys and started telling them about how cool I thought it was that there were so many police patrolling the tougher part of the city, and how safe it made you feel, even in strange areas. But as soon as we reached the end of the block I realised that something was very wrong.
The cop car that passed by and went out of sight had stopped just a block away, and was now lost amongst 6 other cop cars and an ambulance.
We passed by, silent and worried. I turned to the right and looked, curious as always about what could warrant such a response.
There was a man lying prone on the street.
the police were shining a torch over him. The EMTs from the ambulance were ambling about 10 feet away, The guy was dead and they were shining a torch to examine the scene.
He was one of 7 shootings, stabbings and attacks in the Mission area in the last week.
he was the only victim to die.
We hurried back to the El Capitan, picked up our bags from Cormac and Meg's room, hailed a cab and got the hell back to Lombard and the La Luna as soon as we could. We were tired and hungry after the day and were aching for comfort like the lambs we are.
The Mission is fine really, but after the two dead bodies in two days, a little too much reality was on display and I was glad to turn my back on it, however callous that may sound.

It seems very easy to slip into habitual racism here. I'm not talking KKK or Neo-Nazi stuff either. I just mean racism of the mind, that never crosses your lips and is hard to admit even to yourself. Crossing the road to avoid a group of poorly dressed Latinos on a dark night. Feeling uncomfortable on the bus. Survival mode kicks in and you just don't want to take chances, no matter how silly it all seems the second the imagined danger has passed.
Something non-specific seems to make every demographic want to keep to itself and that even infects the tourists. I hope it doesn't stay with me after I leave.
Still, nobody can tell us we didn't see as much as we could have on my return to San Fran.
I still have 4 days left here, I'm wondering if I will get the hat trick of corpses before I go.
The cab driver was silent and sullen, but he went like the wind, carrying us away from the mission and towards the comfort of a motor inn.
Thank god for him and the bottle of fantastic 2004 Amarone in my bag. I got nicely drunk for the first time since I got here. And man did it feel good. I watched TV for most of the night while Sarah got her Internet fix. At one stage, I managed to flick channels for a full 16 minutes before I saw something that wasn't an advertisement.

The tighty whitey mighty fighty.

Today we spent the day like real tourists. We strolled through Union Square and up on into China town. It was bustling, the air was full of exotic smells and the streets were swelled with Chinese people. The 4 or 5 blocks of China Town we walked through had the heaviest footfall of anywhere in the City.
It's a great place. Everyone there is respectful and cheerful, and apologetic when they inevitable bump into you because the crowds are so thick. All too quickly we had strolled through it, and we stopped off at City Lights. City Lights is a bookstore / occasional publishing house that is one of the Historical homes of the entire Beat Generation of writers that I adore. Across the street is the Beat Museum. A door down is Vesuvio, the famous bar pictured in many of the most famous Beat scenes. This was another real highpoint of the holiday for me.
Just walking through there, I felt connected with all the drunken, crazy, esoteric glaring genius that the place had sucked an existence from. I browsed through more Beat writers than I knew ever existed and felt elated. Hairs were actually standing up on the back of my neck as I red the placards under the pictures on the wall. It really was a shrine to the Beats, the star fucker of the entire 50's literary and musical counter-culture scene.
There is an air in the place like a hushed church. Jazz music plays slow in the background as people quietly amble through pictures of Ginsberg and Dylan.
Something else has been happening lately.
For some corny reason, I can feel my faith and spirituality is re-awakening. I am beginning to comprehend the thoughts of higher powers without making a face or contorting in the anger of a staunch atheist. I don't think I was ever a good Catholic, and the idea of their doctrine is still laughable to me, but somehow I am feeling a higher power looking over us on this trip.
Sarah lost her credit card in the bookshop.
I think it must have happened when she opened her wallet to pay for three postcards, little paper plaques to connect us to the place.
The guy working behind the counter came out onto the street and asked
"Are you Sarah Madden?"
She nodded affirmation. We were both really confused, not knowing if we were to get some prize or the cops were about to show up.
He handed Sarah her credit card. It was a bit of a shock for both of us. We were delighted to have it back but incredibly freaked out at what might have happened had this worthy guy not been so perceptive.
Phew all round.
And thats what I mean, little strokes of luck like that have cropped up a number of times since we got here. Tidbits from conversations, sage advice, crazy fun, all have popped our way for no reason and for which I am grateful and slightly shaken.
When we were outside, we started talking with a college professor who was taking some students on a tour of the area. He started asking me about writers that I had never heard of, but also had a font of information. He pointed out Francis Ford Coppola's building, and also the cafe where he wrote his screenplay for The Godfather. He showed us a famous speakeasy on the corner, and the first topless dancing bar in San Francisco.
Apparently the Beats were allowed to flourish in North Beach, a largely Italian area. I was wondering if this was because of the continental, ignore what you can't fix attitude, but either way, when I left the bookshop i was in awe.

From there we went to Coit Tower. It was a gift to the City donated by some kind and moneyed lady, and stands tall on North Beach with a towering view. You have to pay four dollars fifty to ride an elevator to the top, but once you are up there, a panorama of the city awaits that is quite breathtaking.
The view was great but the plastic windows you had to peer through made it feel fake.

Pier 39 was our next stop. It's the most tourist friendly area of the city and also one of the worst money traps. It has a lovely atmosphere and a million vendors lined up to take money off of you for sea lion teddies, candy floss and hot dogs. Everyone there is not a local because there is nothing in Pier 39 for any non-tourists.
I remembered from being here 4 years ago that one of the main attractions were a huge number of sea lions that lazed around on floating crates at the end of the pier. I thought it would be fun to take everyone down, because we were in the neighbourhood and it's great cheesy fun. They fight each other like puppies. We watched them for ages, completely transfixed by the strange interactions.
By this stage we had walked through most of downtown and I was ready to drop. I strolled to pier 33 to buy tickets to take a ferry to Alcatraz and then we caught the bus back to the hotel.
We had a nice smoke and took the weight off of our feet, but after an hour we got up again and we all hailed a cab for Golden Gate Park. We ended up getting a limo there. We hailed a normal cab which passed us by, but this small black limousine pulled up behind it, ready to take us. The guy was really decent and took us all the way to Golden Gate Park for 20 dollars, like 5 dollars each. and we got to ride on leather seats with the windows open and hear him tell us stories about how it was his first day back and his boss was already on his back.
When we got off at the Haight it was just as dodgy as before. It was made even more dodgy in our heads because the Cab driver had told us stories of people being gunned down in broad daylight by automatic weapons. So understandably, we strolled past upper Haight and Hippie Hill quite quickly. The only trouble was that by the time we got there, all the bike and boat rental places we were closed and we were all too tired for serious hiking. Cormac found us a bus and we took it all the way downtown so we could get a BART back to the hotel, find a local restaurant, eat there and fall asleep early for tomorrow, when we are hiring a car and driving to Santa Cruz. I'm really looking forward to it, and also to the La Luna Inn, where we are staying tomorrow night. We are leaving the El Capitan two days early to head back to cable TV and motel based king size bed comfort. It's only 50 dollars a night each and is worth it for the toilet in our own room alone.
Really looking forward to tomorrow. It's one of the few times I will be on the open road in America. Meg is driving as she is the one with the American licence, so I can drink when we get there and everything.
Excited!

Friends!

We met up with Cormac and Meg after a half an hour or so of uncomfortable waiting around outside the BART station. After seeing some of the worse elements of the Mission, and also having experienced the red-eyed lunacy that long distance air travel can reduce to you, I thought it would be better to meet them and escort them to the hotel, to save them the thinking about where to go with no sleep in 36 hours.
Again I think it was just a situation where I was unfamiliar with the area, but Sarah and I kept moving around to avoid any potential trouble.

Cormac and Meg were in great form, particularly as they had just travelled for 20 hours. We walked them back to the hotel and they stayed up for a beer and a smoke with us. It was great to see a familiar face, and also to hear an Irish accent. It's very hard to stem the incorporation of a mild Cali twang in my voice, but while anyone else Irish is around, its much easier to cut that out.

Turtles must have sore backs.

We checked out from the La Luna inn on Lombard after waking up at 8am again.
I was really sorry to leave.
The relative luxury in the place made a nice comfort blanket.
It protected me from the worst of the early homesickness, and also seemed a safe haven from the outside world.
I love a cocoon, and I was definitely a little apprehensive about moving to the Mission district, even if it was only for 2 nights.

The jet lag has us beaten up a bit still but we slept soundly with ear plugs for a nice 8 hours.
Lombard is a busy street and the traffic starts at 6am and doesn't ease all day so the road noise is quite bad.
I was pretty hungover when I woke up.
Not puking and headachey hungover, just that cranky tired feeling that Sarah has had to put up with for so long.
I drank a lot of vodka last night to try and get drunk, but I couldn't get any sort of buzz on and fell asleep at 11:45 watching Family Guy.
Because of this goofing off last night, we had to pack our backpacks this morning before we checked out. I grabbed two coffees from the breakfast tray downstairs and packed everything up as quickly and rolled up and folded all my clothes to try and make them fit as snugly as possible in my overflowing lifepack.
I don't know how anyone can haul a big heavy backpack like mine around everywhere.
I know I don't want to do it much.
Backpacking and world travelling from hostel to hostel is something I think I could never enjoy. I don't feel like a backpacker. I'm too early-old and middle class to enjoy the grime of the city. I like to see the sights and hide from the seedier aspects of the area.
In many ways I am akin to an ageing American tourist.
I'm a bit disappointed with myself saying that, but I'm pretty sure that I will never be the kind of person who would never be comfortable roughing it.
I threw out some old clothes to make room for cigarettes and lighten the load a little bit.
My socks have gone nuclear since I got here, if Sarah smells them she might pass out. I'm used to it, and there comes a point where the smell of my socks gets so bad it's actually vaguely impressive.
Like how sometimes you can revel in the smell of your own gas.
I didn't want that smell permeating through my 65 litre bag, infecting the remainder of my clean clothes, so I was glad to see them go, and taking out a few of my heavier tee-shirts and anything I bought in Dunnes made for a much happier back when I had to throw the big bag over both shoulders.
It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to carry the laptop bag around too, but its worth it for music, and the fact that I can actually write no matter where I am.
I still can't believe how the writing is pouring out of me. I have to get everything down so quickly, to try and remember exactly what was special about this trip.
That's been bothering me lately too. This style of diary, mile a minute writing, there is no finesse to it. I can't rewrite and fix things. Though I always thought that the first draft is the honest one. And each rewrite introduces a new lie to the story, even if you are only lying to yourself.
But it is great to flex my personal writing muscles. I'm thinking that it might be something I will look back on when I'm old and useless and be proud of some of the travelling I did while I could.
So many times I have seen wonderful things, and for the want of a photo, or a little note to self, the memory of them flits away like an autumn bird, only to return in a fleeting dream, or just hiding over the tip of my tongue, tantalisingly out of my memory though I fight to reclaim it. But this is possibly just one small part of what definitely feels like a new stage in my life, I am beginning to feel really adult, and I am certain that I want to remember this experience forever.

We got a cab straight from the La Luna to the mission. wondering what was in store at the El Capitan hotel.

I'm really certain that the most interesting people in San Francisco are the cab drivers.
First off, the way they cut a swathe through the traffic is really impressive. Aside from that, for the ten dollars or so I give them, I generally like to ask a few questions, you know, find out a bit of local info straight from the horses'.
Is this restaurant nice?
Whats the music like here?
Basic stuff.
But as soon as you ask one question, there seems to be an automatic warmth built up, these crazy people are all on their way to something better, or people happy with their life, and they all seem to have great stories or attitudes or smells.


The cab driver we got to the Mission was one of the best.

He really reminded me of Hammy.

He played guitar, mandolin, ukulele, piano, just about everything. Told us he was moving to France next year with his girlfriend.
He was 61 and was going out with a french woman for 12 years.
I initiated by asking him if there were any Irish bars in the city, so we could catch the rugby, but as soon as I started him, he was off sprinting.
He began with tales of how he had played in a load of blues groups in the city and segued into his back catalogue of musical proficiency.
Pretty soon, he was telling us about how his mom died.
She left all of her 7 kids a little note telling them not to mourn, that it has to be this way, so get on with your life, live it and be happy.

This guy seemed really happy, and from nowhere, I suddenly hoped that his mother is happy too.
This is another sin that this city commits. My spirituality is coming to life, despite my cynical mind trying to keep it down.
I even hate the word spirituality. The non-specificity of it makes it a cliche. Particularly in America where spirituality refers to everything from healing crystals to Toyota Prius's. But somehow, I have a hunch that there is something, somewhere, keeping a general eye on us, content to watch, but occasionally intent on poking in the right direction. Its nice to feel that protection, particularly as we didn't buy travel insurance.
I turned to the cab driver as he was telling us how much he missed her, just missed talking to her about his life. For some reason I said a very catholic thing. I told him that he should still speak to her, because she will always listen even if she doesn't reply.
Its funny how the bond of mothers and sons can cross even that barrier. I remembered my mother in a stomach warming flash. It was calming to know that the Atlantic barrier we had could be traversed with a phone call or an email, and I know she will always listen too.

The cab driver kept telling us how lucky he was, and he had high hopes for France, which was to be his retirement home after all. He is retiring there to play in a band with some of his friends. He was also a native American, part of some tribe I don't remember, and he made jewellery in an Indian style. He had a cert to teach English as a foreign language . He also lived in Haight Ashbury in '67! He saw the summer of love.

I hope I end up like that guy. But I probably drink and complain too much.

We pulled up at the El Capitan and he helped us with our bags. It was a real beatdown place. From the outside it looked like an abandoned cinema, a place that had definitely seen better times. When we got to the reception the military guy that ran the place was very friendly, very matter-of-fact.
The room is pretty bare. We have a sink, a small bed and a cupboard. And a TV from the early '80s where the picture is predominantly red and never in focus. I always leave a TV on in the background. Like a lonely dog, the chatter is comforting to me if I'm alone or Sarah is quiet.

We were pretty happy with the place, but disappointed with the bare functionality in comparison with the La Luna, though neither of us would admit it to each other. It's great to feel that both of us are really trying to make the most of every situation. Even if we are both secretly unhappy about something, sometimes just ignoring it makes it go away, and soon we were laughing and I had a smile on my face again.
We owned up and both decided to head back to La Luna for the last 3 nights. I felt like a lost tribesman wandering in a rival's patch for some reason, like I really didn't belong in the Mission. I couldn't really weed out the anthropological reasons for my discomfort, but I was happy to run with it and call up the La Luna to book the last 5 nights there.
And its pretty cheap too, less than 50 dollars each a night. I will put it on credit card and worry about it when I get to Melbourne.
We went for breakfast, leaving our worries about the El Capitan behind as we crossed it's threshold.
I love American diners. The choice is fantastic.
Two types of mustard, ketchup, grey poupon, half and half, skimmed milk, cream, bacon crispy burnt or mild, eggs up, over, easy or medium, hash crispy or buttery, and coffee, lots and lots of good coffee with everything.
Why don't they have English muffins in England? Or Ireland for that matter. It is the final perfection of toast. The predator of toast. It will hunt down all white, brown, sourdough and baguettes and destroy them mercilessly without regard for creed, colour, or nutritional value. If Jimmy Page was a baker, his Stairway would be the English muffin.
I was full as hell after breakfast and lit up a cigarette as soon as we came out of the diner. The diner we chose was just over the street from the hotel, so as soon as I came out, I could see the entrance to the El Capitan. The main gate, a big steel edifice that was clearly put there for a reason, was obscured by a police car, lights flashing, no siren. Hairs on the back of my neck suddenly at half mast.
When we had a look in reception, it turns out some guy, late 40's, died in his sleep last night. His work called the hotel when he didn't show up last night.
I know all this because I eaves dropped on the military guy who runs the El Capitan talking to the police.
Well I'm trying to write, and I;m curious about everything and everyone, and death is pretty interesting stuff.
The guy who runs the hotel said it was the 11th person to die in the hotel in 6 years. He also said that the guy who died used to work security in the exact same hotel.
He must have known him well.
The dead man lived here permanently. Its kinda sad because its hard to imagine some guy dying alone in a small bedroom in a hostel in San Fran. Nobody would have known for days if his job hadn't called the hotel, probably angry about his no-show. I think he had a more pressing appointment that night I hope his employer will understand.
The real unfortunate thing was that when we left after collecting our maps from our room, when we passed the stairway to the exit, we also passed a corpse shaped white plastic bag, with a stretcher next to it and two EMT's sitting around silently.
The guy was easily 6 foot and probably about 15 or 16 stone. Stout like most security guards, but I wouldn't say fat. I guessed all this from the lumpy shape in the white plastic bag which was the only memorial left to this guy's mark on the world, other than a possibly unpaid rent cheque.
I left a note with the receptionist to tell Cormac and Meg which room we are in so they would know where to go when they arrive tonight. Looking forward to seeing them really. Its hard being so far away. I called my dad this morning and it seemed so weird to hear his voice so clearly from 5000 odd miles away.