: 20 June 2002 :

I'm in a library in Berkeley, checking my email for the first time since Monday (it's strange not to be looking at it several times a day) and generally dicking around and looking at things. The weather, as expected, has been really nice, and San Francisco is great. The great variety of food is one of the really good things about being here - meals so far include an Ethiopian restaurant and a really good Vietnamese buffet. We've got a nice private room with a big window in the Adelaide Hostel (address: 5 Isadora Duncan Lane). I have blistered heels from the new Dunlop Green Flash I bought on Saturday and which I suspect are slightly too small. Sore feet still can't dampen my excitement at being here, though.

On Tuesday we went to the very cool Museum of Cartoon Art. There was a Spiderman exhibition, which was great. I spent ages in there.

Yesterday we took the MUNI out to Ocean Beach and walked along by the Pacific. There was a hawk hovering over the scrubby cliffs by the road - I watched it for a bit until it came down, flying quite low overhead and then disappearing. We walked along to the Musee Mechanique, a big collection of old coin-op arcade machines and peepshows and fortune telling boxes and Laughing Sal, a great big woman who stands by the door and cackles in a frightening manner when you feed her quarters. There was a machine which supposedly read your character when you put your palm on a plate. This is what it told me:

You are exceedingly ambitious and high
strung. Ambitious, firm and self
confident . . . Desires to appear
prosperous before the world. Lover of
world travel and art, and will receive
great benefits from life . . .

It's pretty much all true, which punctured my cynicism for a moment. I thought about doing it again and seeing whether the second card said the same as the first but I didn't bother. Best not to mess with these machines.

The rest of today will be spent in Berkeley, wandering round various places and eating sushi for dinner, before we go to Oakland to get the overnight train into Oregon. Just my luck to be on the train when the England-Brazil quarter-final is on (11.30pm Pacific time). I phoned my brother this morning and told him to video it for me.

Don't know when the next instalment of this travel narrative will come - hopefully it'll be soon...