Thanksgiving, San Francisco, Ice Skating, Karaoke

For Thanksgiving I went up to San Francisco to Ms H.'s 'uncle's' place. There we ate a huge 10kg turkey, and gorged ourselves on pumpkin pie, cheese cake and ice cream chocolate mudd cake :D Then I joined in the traditional Trivial Pursuit game, which was published in the 1970s, however I still managed to score 4/6 pieces that you are required to get - yay for being smart ;)

Fortunately the days that I was up there, the San Francisco weather was like Wellington on a nice Autumn day - still, sun shining, a bit cool but nice. So we took a stroll in the Golden Gate Park which was needed after all that eating.

The Friday night I was there we learned that there was an ice skating rink setup in downtown San Francisco. I had been ice skating twice before I think, so was a little hesitant of what skill I would produce. Fortunately I am coordinated and managed to glide round without much problem.. Well the only problem I had was stopping, where I managed to do some theatrical spins, stop and continue, all without falling over :D

Later on it was some karaoke! Sure of course it wasn't my choice, but I enjoyed it :D They did have a Crowded House song, which along with the fellow kiwis who met up with us, was sung proudly :]

Las Vegas

Vegas, bright lights, kitsch, money, alcohol, clubs, guys pushing girls to your room - that is Vegas. Well Vegas really is a weird place. You have a full spectrum of people: you have the very rich (pompous even) people who fly in on their own jets, to the hard working individual out to have a good time, to the guy who is struggling to feed himself because he has a gambling addiction.


One side of the 'strip' is very new and well kept, while another side definitely does not look or feel as sharp, or as safe. However wherever you go, you hear the jingle of slot machines, which sums up Nevada in my opinion, i.e. Nevada is a gambling state bent on enticing anyone to 'gamble'. What I found funny was that right when you get off the plane, you can go and play on some machines hehe..

Anyway my visit to Vegas was with a group of misfits. People from work, friends of friends etc., and we all packed into two rooms at the Excalibur. Needless to say my sweet accent helped to get free room upgrades :D

On the Friday night we tried to go to a club called LAX. When we got there a bouncer approached me and said for my group to cut the line I would have to slip $150 under my ID and still each pay the $25 cover D: "What?"- I thought! Needless to say I declined and then a person from the club approached and said we could get in right away, only if we got a table and everyone spent like $100! Of course we realised that for that kind of money we could be having a much better time somewhere else. It kind of soured the night, and made the next place we went to feel not as good as it could have been.


On Saturday we went to look at the different Hotels and ate a very tasty buffet Dinner at Treasure Island. It was really quite good I though, especially with the selection of what they offered. I'm sure that I got my $26 worth from it! ;)

After that it was off to Stratosphere, a sky tower look alike, but it has thrill rides at its top. E.g. we went on Insanity, which was ride in which you were seated at the end of a crane type arm, which went out over the edge and proceeded to spin you round and you ended up looking straight down at the ground, which was about 300m below.


For dancing we went to Rum Jungle, which I highly rated. It had lots of dance floor space, the music was good, they had 'dancing girls' and acrobats which actually did entertaining feats.

The Sunday was spent gambling and playing roulette. I started with $20 and ended with $50, with my last bet being silly and costing me $10, but I thought that was a good result from playing about thirty minutes worth of roulette for the first time :)

Hoover Dam

So on the Friday, I went out to the world famous Hoover Dam, near Las Vegas. It really is a very large concrete block, and I can understand how it was a marvel of construction when it was built.

For those that don't know, the bridge resides in two times zones. Pacific standard time, and Mountain standard time, as it is cut in half by Nevada and Arizona (the Colorado river is the state line). Because I walked across it, I now can say I have walked across a time zone :D

I took the discovery tour which took you underground to one of the tunnels they built to channel the Colorado river around the site, when they were building it. We also got to see the massive generators that they use.

Interestingly due to heavy traffic and security concerns over the bridge, they are building a rather large bridge across the canyon. It will have a massive arch and I think will complement the dam, as it itself doesn't seem like an easy feat of construction..

Sharks Game!

Last night I went to an NHL ice hockey game between the San Jose Sharks and Phoenix Coyotes at the HP Pavilion in San Jose. I must say I wasn't sure what to really expect and went with no expectations what so ever. The amount of flashy stuff they had was cool, lots of light and sound, in addition to a good game.


The opening couple of minutes was exciting as there was a big hit - a Sharks player slammed a Coyotes guy into the glass and the Coyotes guy didn't take too kindly too it. A fight ensued with them swinging a couple of punches.. a helmet flew off there, a glove there.. all the while the referees were standing around. Once the fight hit the ice, the referees jumped into stop the fight. The Coyotes guy was ejected from the game and at this point I thought things were really exciting :D

Well for the first period the Coyotes dominated territory and shots on goal, however the Sharks looked dangerous on each attack they had. After some sort of penalty, the Sharks were defending a power play late in the first period. They managed a counter attack and scored a short handed goal - the crowd erupted - i.e. watch the video.


The only thing that surprised me was how many actual stoppages there were in the game. Each break between periods was twenty minutes, plus the time stopped when there was an infringement, so an hour game took two and a half hours to play..

Anyway the sharks scored another goal in the second period to lead 2-0. In the third they scored again, another fight broke out and yet again another Coyotes player was ejected. From that point the Sharks completely dominated and scored two more goals, finishing the game 5-0, with me thrilled to have watched an exciting game :D

Jumpy Jumpy..

On Friday I went to Sky High, a trampoline activity place. Here they have a whole floor full of trampolines and even on the walls in which you jump about on! What fun, why doesn't New Zealand have any place like it??

Of course while attempting flips, I managed to arse up and land on the padded metal bar (yellow things in photo) - making my side nice and tender in the process. I just had too much forward momentum when I completed my flip. Instead of jumping up after it, I jumped forward and yea well managed to land awkwardly..

The place also had a foam pit, which was nice, however it was a bit shallow :/ and I kind of jarred myself at one point, as there was a lack of foam to pad my fall..

But anyway, I rate the place a 4.5/5 in terms of entertainment, because you pay by the hour ($9) and you get a really good sweat on in the process, with a half star off for the safety features for the uncoordinated being under my preferred standard.. :D

Images from the previous week...