Trip to Chicago and San Francisco

I intended to write this entry really quickly after the trip (honest I did!), but if you know me then you'll know that these small unimportant parts of life tend to get sidelined for months at a time, then I send out a flurry of emails etc and then go quiet again for a few more months.

My trip to the US was a fairly hasty affair - I was on a customers site one day, and when I rang Kerstin afterwards, she told me that I was off to another continent about a week later. So after hurrying to organise everything, I managed to catch my plane and was off to Chicago.

The flight was quite surreal - I took off from Frankfurt at about 5.30pm or something, and it quickly went to twilight (before daylight savings started), which then lasted about 8 hours until we were over Canada.

When we arrived it was quite warm, which was a nice surprise - I've been used to nothing over 4 degrees for the last 4-5 months. The next day was also warm (17 degrees) - I was driving around with the window down, but I could see ice on all the streams etc and a little snow still piled up in the parking lots... The next day (Sunday) I found out why - it was back down to 3 degrees (and a nice cool breeze to go with it). The Monday morning it was warm again (so we walked to the office), and that evening it was freezing again (managed to get a ride back to the hotel...). After that it settled down and stayed cold (even snowed on Tuesday).

Chicago is an interesting place - the lake it so big that even looking across it (the short way) from the top of the Sears tower (highest building in the world before 1996), you still can't see the other side! So it is more like an ocean really. The central city shops etc are built on the second story - you can then go down a level and see more cars driving around (and its very easy to picture Al Capone down there blowing away some unfortunate). On top it is just like a normal city - buses and cars driving around amoungst the throngs of people that were braving the cold.

A view from the Sears tower













Other interesting things we did were seeing the 'Blue man show' - three guys (see the picture) who use colour, light, sound etc to produce a really entertaining show. We got to sit in the 'poncho' seats (to guard against splashing paint). Worth seeing if you are in any of the cities that it's spread to. We also visited the 'Green Mill' the old jazz club where Al Capone used to sit and watch both doors. Hence the cigar piccy below. The other thing worth mentioning was a mall that we found. I'm not entirely sure how big it was because the 2 or so hours we had weren't enough to get around it... The outdoors store in it was impressively huge by itself. It had a small pond with fish, plus a large fish tank over by the fishing rods... The gun selection was impressive too.

In the Green Mill













One of the blue men













The fish tank in the outdoors store













After finishing the training course I flew over to our development centre in Silicon Valley near San Francisco. Between meeting all the people that I work with from here, I found time to visit a few of the local attactions. First the cable cars which are funny little things, then Alcatraz island (the rock). Alcatraz is an interesting place - although its so damn hard to picture what it must have been like - you're in the middle of the harbour with fantastic views of San Francisco, the golden gate bridge etc - and obviously you're not stuck in one of the cages that aren't much bigger than the bed in them, and theres no one wandering around with a gun on the 'gun galley'.
A view from San Francisco of Alcatraz













A cell on Alcatraz













After that I visited the golden gate bridge, and then as light was fading on the one full day I had to look around, the John Muir forest with its giant redwoods trees.
DON'T JUMP













Some old chunk of wood I found lying around













One thing that will have a lasting impression on me regarding why americans are fat is shown below - it is the single worst meal I've ever eaten (one of the first in Chicago). The fat ran out in little rivers as you cut into the sandwich - its not often I can only eat half a meal and even then feel sick for the rest of the day. I really realised its not McDonalds that makes americans fat, its every restaurant - I started looking for the smallest portions I could find (I even took a half serving once and was still full). So the joke that is the american version of a diet (despite the size and fattiness of the meals it's nearly impossible to get proper milk - 2% fat is the closest), was fully shown.

My favorite meal of all time













By this time I was really keen to get back home - unfortunately Kerstin wasn't able to come along, so it was almost a relief to get into a plane for a gruelling 10 hours flight home.