Ce matin on a quitté la région de King City (qui porte le nom de son fondateur, rien à voir avec un roi). C’est une zone agricole qui offre des champs de broccoli, de choux de Bruxelles et d’asperges à perte de vue.

Le paysage a été vite remplacé par de grands espaces avec d’immenses champs d’herbes sèches où paissait le bétail. Il n’y a pas vraiment de fermes, seulement des ranchs, qui sont des domaines immenses dont on devine les limites de par les barrières qui longent les routes. Il n’y a aucun espace en libre accès, tout est propriété privée. Les habitations des ranchs sont soit invisibles car loin de la route, soit de simples cabanes ou sortes de bungalows. Quel contraste avec la Norvège! Les batiments agricoles sont pratiquement inexistants, il y a juste des abris pour faire de l’ombre aux bêtes. Les bottes de paille sont entassées dehors puisqu’il ne pleut pratiquement jamais. On voit parfois quelques vignes, beaucoup de bétail et c’est tout. L’immensité jaune.

Après une demie heure de route, on arrive au parc national de Pinnacle. Notre sortie du jour aurait plu à tous nos amis adeptes de randonnées en montagne, de géologie et de spéléologie. En effet, après quelques jours de tourisme assez relax, une journée avec un peu plus d’efforts nous fera du bien avant de reprendre l’avion demain. Après avoir payé l’entrée au parc et roulé sur une jolie route dans les bois, nous voici arrivés au parking, point de départ des balades. Nous allons faire le tour des hauts pics du Pinnacle, un circuit de 10 km environ.

On entame la montée sur le “côteau des faucons”, bien présents dans les parages. Il fait déjà très chaud à 11h, bien que nous soyons au mois d’octobre: 30 degrés et plein soleil. Nous avons pris nos précautions et misé sur la crème solaire, les chapeaux et les lunettes. La montée est dure, surtout pour Iseline qui a chaud et (déjà) faim. La nature est très aride, il n’y a aucune herbe verte, surtout des buissons et des pins.

À un tiers du chemin, on fait une pause casse-croûte à l’ombre en profitant d’une vue très dégagée sur la région qui apparait comme presque désertique par endroits.

Après un travail de motivation intense pour empêcher Iseline de redescendre toute seule (“De toute facon, je suis grande!”), on reprend notre chemin.

On est maintenant sur le haut du massif, et on contourne de nombreux pics de formes bizarres. Le paysage est magnifique, la végétation colorée malgré l’aridité, c’est un vrai bonheur. Par moment, on doit escalader un peu, emprunter des ponts, des marches ou des tunnels. Le sentier est très bien aménagé tout en restant un peu sauvage. On rencontre des promeneurs, mais tout le monde ne fait pas le même circuit, ou bien ils le font dans l’autre sens, de sorte qu’on ne se gêne pas.

Ce massif se trouve  juste sur la faille de San Andreas à la limite de la plaque pacifique et de la plaque nord-américaine, et est un excellent exemple du mouvement des plaques tectoniques. Les rochers Pinnacles sont soupçonnés de faire partie du volcan Neenach qui a eu une eruption il y a environ 23 millions d’années près de l’actuelle ville de Lancaster, en Californie, à quelques 314 km au sud-est. La faille géante de San Andreas a divisé le volcan et la plaque du Pacifique glissa vers le nord, portant les Pinnacles. Le travail de l’eau et du vent sur ces roches volcaniques érodables a formé les structures rocheuses insolites vues aujourd’hui.

La descente est évidement plus facile et plus motivante, et on profite encore de superbes vues sur les pics.

On a une vue impressionante sur une coulée de lave encore très visible.

On s’approche d’un petit barrage qui marque l’entrée d’un système de grottes. Ce ne sont en fait pas des grottes à proprement parler, puisqu’il s’agit d’une gorge profonde qui a été comblée de blocs de pierre lors d’un éboulement majeur. On peut marcher sous ces blocs de pierre où les interstices forment des grottes.  Le réseau s’étend sur un 1 km et permet de ressortir plus bas dans le vallon. On était équipés de lampes de poches et tout le monde a adoré ce passage.

De retour à la voiture, un petit casse croûte avant de prendre la route pour San Francisco, où on va dormir dans un hotel près de l’aéroport.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium is located in the former premises of Hovden Cannery, a sardine canning company founded by the Norwegian Knut Hovden in 1916.

Knut arrived in Monterey in 1905 and was a very smart guy (he left Norway and moved to Monterey, already a sign of intelligence). He revolutionized the sardine canning industry. Where they would previously weld the cans shut by hand, Knut invented a welding machine. He invented a machine that automatically cut the heads and tails off the sardines. As if that was not enough he also installed a system with pipes that would suck sardines straight out of the boats and into the factory. Since he needed more sardines feeding all these efficient machines he also made the fishermen use stronger nets that could fish faster.

This all seemed like a very good idea until the sardines started disappearing around 1950. An investigation was started to find out where all the sardines had gone. The conclusion was famously worded as “They’re in cans.” The canning companies started canning squid while they waited for the sardines to come back. They never did, the damage was permanent and the sardine population has never managed to return in any great numbers. Hovden Cannery was the last canning company to shut its doors and did so in 1973.

Sorry about that. What was I talking about again. Oh yeah, we had to stand in line for about 20 minutes to get tickets to the aquarium. Many people had recommended the aquarium to us and I was really hoping it was worth the wait and the small detour. We were not disappointed.

The aquarium was gorgeous and very well adapted to kids of all ages. We ended up staying for almost 5 hours and even took a behind-the-scenes tour with one of the employees as our guide.

This is actually a seahorse. The boys wondered wether Peter Jackson got inspired by them when he made the talking trees in “The Lord of the Rings”:

There was even a pool for petting the rays. This is Viktor saying hello to one.

There were also lots of good exhibits about climate change and some very orginal ways of drawing the attention of the kids. One exhibit was a kitchen, where there were screens inside the cupboards and in one of the frying pans. The presenters on those screens spoke about how different foods affect the environment. If all American families avoid eating meat one day a week it will have the same effect as removing 20 million cars from the road.

It was a good reminder of what we are doing to the planet and a good opportunity to talk with the kids about this important subject. We have taken our own measures at home and the kids are aware of them and glad we are doing something.

We did not bring up the subject that we are traveling around the world using airplanes…

We were quite tired after having walked around the aquarium for so long. Time for some ice cream before continuing.

It was already after 4pm and we needed to hit the road to make sure we had daylight during our trip through Carmel Valley. Our good friend Haavard had recommended going through the valley and we were not disappointed, We discovered a magnificent landscape of hills covered with trees and yellow dry grass only interrupted by lush green vineyards. A treat to the eye.

After a very nice 90 minute drive we reached our destination for the day, King City. We were all hungry and quickly checked out the local eating options. Mc Donalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, Denny’s Diner. All the chains were here. A bit hidden at the end of a road we found V’s Diner, a local place. We checked out the parking lot. Plenty of cars. A good sign. Dinner was more than adequate and the servings could have fed another family and their horse.

Another Inn with a good Wifi connection. I have  a feeling we might miss that during other parts of the trip. Well, at least for the time being I can transfer lots of pictures for you readers to enjoy. See you around.

Eirik

—–

P.S. Irony of ironies. Just as I finished the last part above the internet connection went down. After 3 calls to the front desk and 2 calls to a technical support line it came back up again after 40 minutes. It is extremely frustrating to be knowledgable about these things and talk to someone who is convinced you are not.

• “Have you tried turning your computer off and back on again?”
• “Listen, I have tested with two different laptops and an iPhone, I have turned AirPort on and off multiple times. THERE IS NO WIFI SIGNAL IN THE AIR”
• “Can you please turn your computer off and on again, sir?”

Sigh.

October 7, 2010

This morning we got up at around 8am planning to be out by 10, which was check-out time. We hadn’t prepared anything in the evening and quickly found out we had been a bit optimistic on the timing. It was difficult to get everyone into gear and the kids were not always cooperating.

After considerable stress and some raised adult voices we finally managed to get the house emptied and the car packed. We left at around 10:45. After 2 minutes on the road Iseline exclaimed that she really, really, really had to go to the restroom! The simplest solution was to turn back and visit the house one last time. So, at around 11am we were finally on our way.

I wanted to show the family the coastline going south. It is quite different from the valley and a very nice area in my opinion. We headed over to Half Moon Bay and followed HIghway 1 towards Santa Cruz. The highway follows the coastline and we got some good views of the Pacific ocean, the beaches and the cliffs.

Not too far after Half Moon Bay we saw a sign saying “Hay maze, next left.” Intriguing! We took a left and found a pumpkin farm that had morphed into an amusement park.

The main attraction was a very large maze made from hay. Really cool. It took us a long time to find our way through it.

A bit further down highway 1 Hélène spotted a nice beach and we pulled over to have a look. It seemed like it was very close, but in reality it was quite far away and we had to walk down a steep slope to get to it.

At the end it was too steep to walk, but someone had laid out a rope. Well, if we had come this far… We worked our way down to the beach one by one.

It was well worth the effort. There didn’t seem to be any other access to the beach and except for a man and his dog we were alone. At last we could touch the Pacific ocean, an ocean we are going to see much more of later during our voyage.

The water was very cold.

Adrian wrote in the sand. It’s difficult to see the scale here, but those letters are about 3 metres (10 feet) tall.

Sweaty, thirsty, happy and full of fine-grained dirt we got back into the car. It was probably not the smartest move to leave the car on the side of the highway with all our belongings, but we got away with it.

Next stop was Santa Cruz. I had spoken with several people who told me we had to go see the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. Now, being a modern intellectual I of course do not ask questions, but say “Uhum” and “We have to do that” when I do not know much about a place. Then, as soon as I am within reach of an internet connection, I go to Wikipedia.

“Boardwalk” turned out to be “a wooden walkway for pedestrians”. The Lonely Planet guide even said the one in Santa Cruz had been made in 1906. Cool. So I told the children we were going to go walk on a street made from planks on the lovely beach of Santa Cruz.

When we arrived there was no sign of planks, but several signs pointing towards the boardwalk. We went through an entrance marked “Santa Cruz Boardwalk.” There was a roller coaster and many small stores and rides that were closed. OK, so there is a small amusement part next to the boardwalk.

It took quite a long time for reality to come into alignment with the model I had made of this thing in my head. The “Santa Cruz Boardwalk” is an amusement park! There was no small amusement park next to the boardwalk, There was only an amusement park. And there were no planks. Not only that, the park was closed!

One place was open, but the dessert they advertised was a bit too American for us. Deep fried cheesecake? You just can’t make that up.

I was rather sheepish on our way back to the car. Another small planning mistake. Well, you can’t win them all.

Next stop was Monterey and the 17 mile drive. This was really worth the visit and I felt I earned back a couple of stars from Hélène. We drove around the beautiful Monterey peninsula and had multiple stops. What a gorgeous coastline.

Then we set our course for our final destination for the day, Carmel-at-the-sea. After checking in at the Inn we hurried down to Carmel beach to see the sunset. We were extremely lucky with our timing. The moment we arrived the solar disc touched the horizon and we got to see the sun disappear into the Pacific.

I made a comment about us being lucky to have arrived before the sun had moved below the horizon. Viktor corrected me and said “Dad, don’t you know the sun isn’t moving, it’s the earth spinning.” I had to admit he was correct.

After some seafood in Carmel we found our way back to our rented beds. It had been another nice day.

Eirik

—–

During dinner yesterday we asked the kids what they wanted to do tomorrow (today). We gave them the choice of staying at the house and playing in the swimming pool or go up to San Francsico and visit the Exploratorium. The vote was split and Viktor was the only one who wanted to go to the Exploratorium.

I had found the Exploratorium on a list of things to do with kids in San Francsisco and checked their web site last night. It turned out they have free admission one day a month and that was today. There were warnings on the site that it would be very crowded. Bummer!

Viktor and  I drove up to San Francisco anyway while Hélène stayed behind in Menlo Park with Iseline and Adrian.

Judging from the web site I had expected a flashy modern museum with lots of activities for kids. The first impression was very disappointing. The place looked dirty and very worn down. The building seemed like it had been an old warehouse and the ceiling could not have been cleaned for decades. The expositions looked like it hadn’t been renewed since the late 1950s, except for the computer stuff they must have thrown in during the 80s and 90s. But I quickly realized that Viktor was having a ball and that, old as it might be, the place was riddled with high quality science experiments for children.

There were a lot of people, but no too many, we practically never had to wait.

We spent 3 hours in there and time passed very quickly. This was curiuos kid heaven and both Viktor and I learned a lot during our stay. We discovered how iron ore dust will align itself to the lines of a magnetic field, even through your hand. There is a strong magnet under Viktor’s hand here.

Look at the wall behind Viktor below. The wall is completely flat, there are are only square tiles and all lines are straight and parallel, believe it or not.

Here is a normal picture of a boy creating shadows by standing in the way of some light sources. But, hey, those shadows have color. How can shadows have color? Answers in the comment field below, please.

Laaaarge bubble in the making.

A square wheel will actually roll very nicely and can be used for a car, as long as the road has this shape.

On our way back to Menlo Park we stopped by a supermarket and bought some thick american rib-eye steaks we later had for dinner.

Tomorrow we will have stayed in this nice house for a week already and it will be time to hit the road.

Eirik

—–

On a commencé la journée doucement avec un peu de travail scolaire pour Iseline et une séance de saxophone pour Viktor.

Ensuite on a achevé notre pélerinage informatique en passant par le siège de Facebook. Cette fois on s’est fait gentiment chasser par un garde parce qu’on était mal garés. Il n’y avait bien entendu aucun accueil particulier réservé au public, mais on a fait notre photo souvenir et on est repartis… Notez que le logo sur le panneau est encore plus petit que les autres.

Après quelques jours passés à San Francisco, il était grand temps de franchir le pont de Golden Gate. On commence à connaître la route entre Silicon Valley et San Francisco, et on ne se lasse pas encore de la largeur de l’autoroute (6 voies de chaque côté).

Le pont de Golden Gate est effectivement impressionnant de par sa taille et sa construction. Il enjambe l’entrée de la baie de San Francisco et est placé à un endroit très venté. Avec sa couleur rouge, il se détache du paysage autour. Le pont étant tellement grand, il est constamment en train d’être peint. Quand on a terminé à un bout, on recommence à l’autre.

Ensuite nous avons repris la voiture pour nous diriger vers Golden Gate Park, un immense parc de 5 km de long en plein centre de la ville. En route, on s’est amusés à rouler dans les rues du centre qui sont si raides. C’est assez incroyable de construire des rues face à la pente dans une ville avec tant de collines. Ici, ce ne sont pas les mules qui ont fait les sentiers…

Après un déjeuner Thai rapide mais excellent, nous voilà donc arrivés au Parc de Golden Gate. Les enfants ont surtout envie de jouer dehors sur les terrains de jeu, et Eirik les accompagne, pendant que je prends une heure et demie de libre pour aller visite l’exposition impressioniste au musée de Young. Plein de magnifiques tableaux prêtés par le musée d’Orsay. Le plaisir des yeux. Encore un petit tour au Jardin Japonais, un havre de paix très dépaysant,

avant de retrouver les enfants qui ont pu brûler un peu d’énergie. Sur le panneau est inscrit: “Interdit aux adultes non accompagnés par des enfants.”

Retour “à la maison” avant de ressortir dîner avec des anciens collègues et copains d’Eirik. Une soirée bien sympa.

Hélène

At breakfast Iseline insisted on sitting on a very tall chair without a back rest. At first we did the standard cultural norming reaction of “YOU CANNOT DO THAT!” However it struck me that we had no good reasons for forbidding it, except that it was unusual.  I like different, and I think kids should be allowed to be different. It makes them grow into free and happy human beings. It’s so easy to go with conform, but that makes us behave like the famous monkeys in the banana and water spray experiment. For Iseline the situation was nowhere as complicated as it was for me and Hélène. She just wanted to sit on a very strange chair and was very happy when, to her utter amazement, we let her do it.

Today we went down to Campbell in the morning to meet my old friend and Troll, Hal. Hal is a great guy with a trademarked smile.

He has a great blog called Two Big Cats, two big cats (duh!), 2 dogs and about 100 000 bees. His cats are of the breed Maine Coon, a type of cat closely related to the Norwegian Forest Cat. Here’s one of his beautiful cats.

Hal had been kind enough to wait with harvesting some honey so that we could do it with him. He has 3 hives in his garden and told us a lot about beekeeping. I hadn’t thought much about it before and have been naïve enough to think that you basically put out the hive, wait for a few months, and then harvest the honey. Nothing could be further from the truth. Hal could go on for days about the intricacies of beekeeping. It’s a really interesting subject and Adrian and I have already planned to get a bee hive when we get back home. Hélène is not as enthusiastic as we are.

Hal dressed me up with the appropriate equipment and tried to smoke away my body odor.

Then we gave the bees some smoke

and stole their honey.

Note that some of the honey cells have been sealed off. That’s when the honey is ripe for harvesting according to Hal. We scraped off the sealed honey and let the bees have the rest back. Bees venture about 2 miles (3km) from the hive and it takes nectar from about 5 million flowers to create 1 pint (half litre) of honey. The bees keep a temperature of about 100 degrees (40 celcius) inside the hive at all times and worker bees only live for about 45 days.

Honey is finger licking good.

The honey was heated up to become more fluid and then filtered.

And in the end the kids got to bring a jar of honey with them.

Afterwards Hal and his wife treated us to a great tuna sandwich based lunch.

We then drove over to Cupertino to have a look at Apple’s headquarters, or the mothership as we would find out they call it. We saw a sign with “visitors” and hoped there would be some kind of visitor’s center. It’s after all one of the best known brands on the planet and a lot people must be coming here on pilgrimage? No such thing. We asked an Apple employee we passed and he was a bit surprised by our question. All they had was a retail store which seemed to be for employees only. Well, it was cool to have been there and we got our trophy pictures

We would not let ourselves be demotivated by this lack of hospitality, so we headed over to Google and their Googleplex in Mountain View. There were only small signs to be seen and we couldn’t find anything that looked like a main entrance. We walked into the campus and were quickly and diplomaticly thrown out by Google security! We went back and took a photo by one of the small signs.

Enough was enough, we skipped going to Facebook headquarters and went back home to Menlo Park to cook dinner.

Eirik

—–

We started the day with some school work for the kids. They logged in to the Norwegian online school and all 3 worked hard.

And then straight out to a well deserved session in the pool.

I spent the better part of the day catching up on blogging and setting up a good infrastructure for further blog work. I’ve been struggling a bit with setting everything up but things are coming into place now. The very fast internet connection at the house is a blessing. Notice the difference in clothing style.

We had all been invited over to Benoit and his family for dinner. Benoit is a good friend of mine and a former colleague (troll). I was so engulfed by getting everything right on our website that we ran late, but we managed to get there only 20 minutes late. In France that is considered extremely punctual.

When we arrived Benoit was busy preparing barbecued lamb for us.

Benoit is a French-speaking Belgian. He and his wife have 2 lovely girls. One slightly younger than Iseline and one a bit older. They both speak French and the kids had a ball together.

The girls prepared a fire

After a great dinner

we sat outside next to the fire as it got gradually darker.

Benoit has astronomy as a hobby and had a 50cm diameter telescope standing in the garden. We got to see a double star in it during the evening.

Hélène and I also climbed on top of the house to get a great view of Silicon Valley from the roof. I took a few pictures while trying to hold the camera extremely still. Benoit had no belief in them turning into anything. Look here Benoit, not bad given the conditions, eh? (OK, I admit it’s not what I hoped it would be :-))

All in all a great and relaxing day. Tomorrow we will go visit Hal (the guy who is not going to get walnut wine, jam and liqueur) and his bee hives.

Eirik

—–

Westward going jet lag is a blessing when you want to get up early in the morning. New day, new possibilities!

We had spoken about taking the train (Caltrain) to go up to San Francisco because we wanted to avoid rush hour, which can be very bad in this area. We were a bit torn on the issue and I suggested that I could call our friend Benoit to find out how bad it would be. It was around 8 am and I almost called him before Hélène stopped me. It was Saturday! We’re already losing track of the weekdays. Well, that took care of the rush hour problem.

Hélène and I then spent some time going through what I had come up with as a plan for the day in San Francisco and by 9:30am we were all fed and ready to go.

We cruised northwards on 101 and the kids marveled at a highway with 5 lanes in each direction.

We got a pretty good impression of the hills of San Francsico as we got into the city and headed for Fisherman’s Wharf. So many people wonder why there are Norwegian farms on the most difficult to get spots in the mountains. An equally interesting question is what they had been smoking when they founded San Francisco. You’ve got this beautiful bay area with lots of easily constructible flat land and one of the best climates in the world. So, what do you do? It’s obvious that you put the city on the steepest hilly area you can find. The only place that is covered by fog all the time. Where uncomfortable winds are present continuously and where the temperature is the lowest. I wouldn’t be surprised if  a Norwegian got the deciding vote on that one.

I had brought a map of San Francisco on an iPad but, gadget freak as I am, had to quickly admit that for some things paper still does a better job. I bit the bullet and bought a 20th-century-technology map.

Fisherman’s Wharf is very touristy of course, but still worth the visit because of the main attraction, the sea lions. These cute creatures turned up here after the earthquake in 1989 and just decided to stay. Today they are protected and must represent a colossal value for the San Francisco tourist industry.

We had a great seafood lunch at the Wharf. Hélène is allergic to gluten and cow milk, so she made sure to order tuna with rice, which is normally very safe. However that would unfortunately turn out to be a bad choice.

After lunch we continued walking along the piers and had some great views. Alcatraz in the background.

I’m probably the only person to ever have photographed this sign.

At the end of the piers we reached US chocolate heaven at Ghirardelli square.

At the square we met a very talkative and funny guy. He played the guitar and had a stand with lots of bragging newspaper clips and photos. The guy had photos of himself with an impressive list of late 20th century stars. Gorbachev, Pavarotti, Europe (the pop group) and many, many more I cannot remember

He claimed he spoke 25 languages and asked us which language we spoke. To our astonishment he first spoke with us in French before he switched to fluent Swedish (which is very close to Norwegian). Amazing guy. Here he is.

We raided the Ghirardelli store for a few kilos of chocolate. Oh my, oh my, the temptations in this place. I’m going to have a weight problem real soon now.

Next on the list was the famous cable cars. We spent an hour waiting, including having to change car because of a techinical problem, before we were finally on our way. It’s a cool way to be transported, but not the most efficient. We got some beautiful views of Alcatraz and Oakland bridge and a very good feel for the city. Lots of steep hills and lots of strange buildings.

We hopped off at Union Square and went to the restroom at Macy’s.This is when Héléne started to realize there must have been butter in that rice she got at lunch. She was in pain, but we continued slowly nevertheless.

We did the mandatory hot dog

before venturing in to Chinatown.

Note the little teddy bear Iseline has in her hands. It is the bear of her good friend Gabrielle (Hi Gabrelle!). iseline has promised to bring the bear with her around the world and take pictures of it at different places.

Grant Avenue was a big tourist trap with a strange mix of jewelry shops and umpteen zillion souvenir shops all selling the same worthless plastic things. It beats me how they are all able to survive.  Some of the jewelry shops had carved mammoth tusks on display. Totally fascinating. Talk about a limited resource.

Once we found our way over to Stockton Street we got to se the real Chinatown. It was like we were in some suburb of Beijing. Chinese was spoken all around us and the food shops had typical chinese goods on display. The dried fish emitted a very distinct odor.

We worked our way up to little Italy in search for a store that supposedly sold gluten-free bread. Disappointment then when we discovered that the address Hélène found on the web was to a restaurant that served gluten-free food.

Once we had gotten this far we continued to the Coit Tower. Hélène’s stomach was now in a state of total revolt after the invasion of butter at lunch. She lied down to relax outside the tower while the kids and I took the elevator up. We got a magnificent view of San Francsico but couldn’t see too far because of the fog.

We have bought 2 new cameras for the voyage. One of them is a Canon Powershot SX210 IS. A technological masterpiece of a compact camera with 14x optical zoom. I put it to the test and photographed Hélène 64 meters (210 feet) above her. First without zoom, then with full zoom. Pretty impressive for such a small camera.

We walked down a set of very steep stairs to reach the car, which we had parked at Pier 27. We were exhausted and happy. On the way down Iseline told me, without being asked, that it had been a very good day and that she really enjoyed traveling. A sharp contrast to the Cholera vaccine session, when she screamed to me that she did not want to travel. Just before reaching the car we found a small supermarket with organic food. They had gluten-free bread! The day was saved.

I drove us down to Menlo Park again while Hélène managed to take a nap. We were invited to have dinner at Ash’s home and he treated us to some really good indian food.

Unfortunately the kids were so tired they started to crash completely at 9pm, so we could only stay for a couple of hours. It didn’t take much effort to get them to bed when we got back “home.”

Hélène also collapsed, but the viking in me wanted to blog about the day. It took me about 20 minutes of total inefficiency before I realized that even vikings need to sleep from time to time.

I fell asleep in about 14 seconds and slept like a baby for 8 hours.

Eirik

—–

The kids started wriggling at around 4 am but didn’t get out of bed until 6:30. Iseline was very hungry and had breakfast with the leftovers from yesterday’s dinner at 6:30

and then joined our common breakfast at 08:30. Impressive.

We started having a closer look at our home for the next week. We’ve got 2 sleeping rooms, 2 bathrooms, a nice well equipped kitchen, a small dining room and a quite large living room.



There is also a very nive back yard with a patio, a pool and a bonzai garden

As soon as I get the photo album on this site working I will put up some more photos of the house and the garden.

After breakfast the kids did not waste much time getting into the pool.

After a long morning in the pool Hélène started to get restless and wanted to have a look around the local area. I have spent a lot of time during the last 2-3 months on planning the voyage and booking everything, but I really haven’t spent much time planning for the bay area. I used to go here very often (about 6 times a year) as part of my work. However, I now quickly realized that I am not at all used to being a tourist here.

All this planning and the feeling of being extremely prepared … and I had no idea how to use our first day here.

There is a guest book in the house and we had a look there to see what other guests here recommend. We were starting to get hungry and found a recommendation for a diner not too far from the house. We ventured out and found a classical American diner.

I know from my previous stays in the states how difficult it is to not gain weight here. The major reason for that is the monstrous portions coupled with the Norwegian lutheran attitude of always finishing what is on your plate. Judging from the meal we had for lunch I’m going to have to really watch out during our 6 weeks here.

OK, time to introduce the kids to US culture. Large portions, ketchup on everything:

Viktor enjoyed his pancakes

After lunch we headed over to Stanford and took a stroll in the university park.

There are some statues of Rodin at the entrance to the university depicting “The Burghers of Calais.” Some dudes who sacrificed their own lives to save a city. The faces were extremely well done and fascinating to study.

In our random stroll around Stanford we ended up at the Hoover Tower and got a very nice view of the campus. There is a cool exhibition of some of Hoover’s belongings at the base of the tower. It turns out that Herbert Hoover was a fisherman and I couldn’t have said it better myself:

After Stanford I had an appointment with some former colleagues (trolls) at a bar. I had jotted down the address just before leaving and was stumped when the GPS app on the iPhone asked if it was “N California Av” or “S California Av”.  I had only noted “California Av”. I picked N and off we went. We arrived at a Baptist Church! Either my former colleagues were trying to send me a message or we had gone to the wrong place.

So, I went drinking while the rest of the family took an expedition to yet another American cultural icon: the shopping mall.

Our first day in the area was really good, but I promised myself to prepare better for later locations. I spent parts of the evening getting ready for the next days trip up to San Francisco.

Eirik

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After a good nights sleep (some slept more than others) we had breakfast at the Novotel at Heathrow just before they closed the buffet at 10am local, 11am Oslo time. The kids slept from 1 am until 9:15am UK time. We had managed to adjust half the time difference before boarding in London. Not bad.

The big attraction at breakfast was the the toasting machine with a conveyor belt

After breakfast Hélène and I spent some time reading email and paying some bills we didn’t get time to pay before leaving. To my horror I realized that I had forgotten to bring one of our bank-ID security devices. M*rde! I quickly called my sister to ask her if she could fedex it to us in the states. She laughed and reminded me that she was on vacation in Spain. Grumble, you can’t argue with that excuse. I finally managed to get hold of my niece who heads over to our place.

In the meantime Hélène discovered an email from the city of Oslo concerning the building permit of our garage. Something was wrong with a drawing so they refused to accept our application for changing the originally accepted application. The drawings that need to be redone were in our office at home. I get hold of my niece again and she was able to kill two birds with one stone by picking up the device and the drawings.

We got so occupied with fixing things that we went over the time we had decided to leave the hotel to go back to terminal 5. As is quite common for us we ended up eating up our entire planned time margin and then some. The shuttle from the hotel was very slow stopping at every hotel you can imagine, Tension rises, but we manage to check in in time, stressed but with high spirits.

OK, Marius, here is the next plane. A classic, a Boeing 747-400:

The kids were fantastic during the entire flight. The three of them got seats next to each other while Hélène and I sat in the row in front of them.

They basically tended to themselves during the entire 10 hour flight! We didn’t even have to follow Iseline to the bathroom, just help her get out into the aisle. The kids loved the British Airways entertainment system and also had fun with their iPod touches. They managed to stay awake during the entire flight. Frankly, it couldn’t have gone better. No crying, no arguing, no loud noises, no vomiting, no fights. Just peace, harmony and smiles. This is very promising for the rest of the trip.

i knew that Adrian was good in English (his school came in 2nd place of all schools in Oslo during national testing of English proficiency 2 years ago), but I hadn’t realized just how good. He handled all interaction with the flight attendants like it was his mother tongue.

I have made a point of telling the kids from very early on that it is extremely important to learn English. It’s a risky strategy, I know. Sometimes a kid will do the opposite of what you want if you try to drive a point through too hard. I have told the kids  that English is the key to the world (sorry France) and that dad never could have done many of the things he has done at work and met many of the people he knows around the world if he hadn’t been good at English. I’m not going to take the credit for all the hard work Adrian and his teachers have put down, but it does warm a father’s heart and make me proud when I hear Adrian speak English.

Adrian was also helping his siblings all the time and making sure they were fine. He did a great job. Kudos to the big brother!

Once we arrived in San Francisco

Iseline started to get a little tired and grumpy. Luckily it often doesn’t take much to turn her around again. The pole inside the shuttle train to the rental car area did the trick. This young lady has just flown for over 10 hours and it’s 2am in her home time zone:

We got our car, stopped to get some groceries and found the house we had rented in Menlo Park without a problem. I had bought a Tom Tom iPhone car kit before leaving and we put it to the test for the first time. I had chosen Navigon as the GPS-application on the iPhone. For some strange reason they have decided to try to pronounce place names in the style of the language you have chosen.  My phone is set to French and we all got a good laugh when the program told us to drive in the direction of “Sehn Frenseusio” Apart from that it worked like a charm. Yet another part of my grand master plan for travel gadgets worked out.

The house we are renting is fantastic. I’m now sitting in a large living room in a beautiful house instead of in a miniscule hotel room at twice the price. The best thing is that there is a large swimming pool in the garden. We are going to enjoy staying here.

Eirik

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P.S. The title of this entry comes from an almost forgotten ingenious Norwegian comedy/music group called “Prima Vera”. On one of their great albums (called “Ha ha he he ho! (De gærne har’e godt)” ) their rendtion of “I left my heart in San Francisco” is introduced with: “Johnny Pacemaker will never do this mistake again”. The song is quite short. After singing the opening line which is identical to the name of the song you can hear Johnny groan in pain before he falls to the floor. Go here, scroll down to the song and press the little play button.

Later in the album “Johnny Pacemaker makes the same mistake again” with his interpretation of “My heart goes boom bang a bang”. You can hear it on the same page above.