Introduction

Well as most already know, I'm setting off on the endeavor of my lifetime. I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area establishing residency and applying for an Italian Visa to go and live in beautiful country of Italy. I arrived here on June 28 and decided I would start keeping a sort of journal to chart my experiences. I started this journal pretty late so I will try to sum up whats happened so far.

Day 1
I of course arrived in San Francisco airport then from there I took a turboprop to Monterey where my friend Stacey was waiting for me. We then decided to go ahead and go straight to San Francisco (yeah I know what was the point of going to Monterey). I basically decided I would cave in to my internal dislike for such a thing and we headed for the largest Gay celebration in the universe "San Francisco Gay Pride". It was fun, and we saw a lot of things we were both expecting to see and sometimes not expecting to see. Funny as it is, I think my first observation from the whole thing was how many people were smoking weed on the streets. It was everywhere to say the least. Overall we both had a good time and after a nine dollar beer we headed back to the car and drove by the Italian Consulate. I had butterflies in my stomach immediately. We then headed on back to Watsonville which is almost 2 hours south.

Day 3 - Car Rental
Stacey was going to be away for the entire day, so I decided I would rent a car and drive up Highway 1 which is without a doubt my favorite road in this country. I first went to Santa Cruz and walked on the Pier and the boardwalk, took some pictures, had a slice of pizza and t-shirt at Pizza My Heart, and then headed on up the PCH toward San Francisco. This road is simply amazing, and it hugs the coast for most of the trip to SF. Cliffs upon cliffs, waves crashing, lighthouses, and rocky enclaves come at you so fast its almost impossible to not stop and take it in out of the car. As you approach San Francisco you cut through woods and huge rocks, with another treasure of scenery standing by around each corner. I went to the city and had a really nice time. I drove up and down the northern part of the city gawking at the many beautiful mansions that seemed to go on forever and ever. I have always like touring extremely wealthy neighborhoods and San Francisco has never been short of them. I like to be surprised and for my preconceived notions to be wrong, and I actually didn't realize just how many wealthy homes there are in the downtown area. It simply amazed me. I then headed south to the infamous Haight-Ashbury area (site of the Summer of Love) and thought it was pretty neat. I got offered weed twice (I declined) and overall just mainly walked through. I did stop at a huge record store and purchased a few records since I figured they would be easy to take with me. John and I are starting a record collection. I picked up about 5 titles each costing roughly 3 bucks and with that I headed to Baker Beach to see if I could get some good pictures of Golden Gate Bridge. It's really a great beach with a wonderful view. I climbed on some rocks trying to apparently kill myself, but luckily I didn't slip and bust my head open and got some great pictures of the bridge. I then wrapped up the day and headed on home, enjoying more picturesque views of the Pacific Ocean.

Fourth of July
On the Fourth of July we went to the beach (God I need Stacey here to get the names right of the beach) but it was really nice. I got sunburned during the day, went to a bar late in the afternoon with Stacey and two of her friends, and then we headed back out to the beach with her friends (Paul and fiance whom I cannot remember name, again where is Stacey)and joined by his mother we watched fireworks on the beach. I'm telling you in almost 30 years on this planet, I don't think I've ever seen this many fireworks being shot at once. You could see them up and down the beach far in the distance, miles and miles away. It was simply amazing. What was also amazing was the cops trying to enforce a fireworks ban. This was the strangest thing to me. Literally I watched as the cops were giving some people hell, writing them a ticket, and making them leave the beach. While they were doing this fireworks were streaming through the night bursting in all directions. It was a really bizarre and really in a way kind of sad. Something that this many people do, for the most part harming nobody, and their government actually trying to take it away. Its obvious that sometimes liberal governments would rather stop people from doing things that they enjoy so they can cut costs. One observation I could clearly make so far in my trip was that there was a lot of people out here who are patriotic. It almost seemed like they were a little more than the South where I'm from if that could be possible. Now minded, I was not in San Francisco, but I was in a very liberal county. I completely underestimated the celebrating of Independence Day, the flags everywhere, the parades, the clothing etc. It was everywhere and it made me feel a little better about my country than I did before I left. On the East Coast we almost get led to believe at times that this area of California especially was quite different than the rest of the state and overwelmingly different than the rest of the country. Its not seemed that way to me at all really so far. Anyway so yes fireworks going on everywhere, cops trying to stop it but majorly unsuccessful, and meeting Paul's very old fashioned, charming and all around nice mother. She made some very like-Jay statements about the country, the cops, and Michael Jackson and was a pleasure to meet. Overall I had a fantastic time at the beach. I can't believe I forgot to mention we went to the San Francisco Giants game against the Astros the night before. It was yet again the same story for me. The Giants are suddenly winning 13-0 and its the third inning!!!! Needless to say there would not be another run scored the entire evening and this baseball game fell into the books as "pretty boring". It was nice in a way though and I still enjoyed the game. They had fireworks after the game, and I was once again slightly surprised at the amount of patriotism. In the town of San Francisco, liberal hated Lee Greenwood's Proud to be America blared on the speakers to the whole crowd as fireworks rose out of the bay behind the centerfield scoreboard. And, the city didn't require "I won't forget the men who died" to be changed to "those" who died. Its the little things about the city that sort have been winning respect with me here and there.

Lots more happened with Stacey and I had a great time with her. Unforunately I'm gonna have to fast forward for now. Hopefully I'll be able to get back to this.