I just arrived in Madison, Wisconsin, where my friend Bonnie lives. It was really cool to see her again - after all, we had only met once previously and that was in Galway, Ireland in 1993! As you can see there is a very real danger of me staying in touch and popping up at your door, if you give me your email-address! Anyhow: the trip was a bit weird, especially security at San Francisco Airport, where they stopped just short of a full cavity search - but not much short.

Seriously: Security there is insane! It took me almost an hour to go through it. Granted, I had the rare privilege of being subjected to increased security measures, but still! It was really weird: All of a sudden I was told to step out of the line, follow someone and "stand against that wall" (no kidding). There were about 20 people there, about 18 of whom were foreign - so noone can tell me that there isn't some sort of targeting of foreigners going on. Anyhow: They took forever to go through our hand luggage both with multiple machines and by hand. And I have never ever been padded down as thoroughly as today either! They even had me remove my belt and open the fly of my jeans so that they could feel my waistline! Well, I told you it didn't stop far from a full cavity search!

Porn on the bus

After I arrived in Chicago it first looked like United had again lost my backpack. But fortunately it eventually arrived. I then took the bus to Madison. Now, everyone told me that you can meet all kinds of weirdos if you take a bus in the States. It's almost a cliche that you'll meet soldiers and ex-convicts on the busses here - after all every decent American has a car and thus only very weird people have to take the bus. So it didn't surprise me in the least when I saw a soldier get on the bus. What did surprise me a lot however was that a woman in her mid-forties booted her iBook in the seat in front of me and started to watch porn! I'm not kidding - she was watching a 90 minute hardcore porn flick right on the bus. Admittedly I found it a bit hard to concentrate on my novel. So as you can see, my day was a bit surreal. Oh, and btw: they do not serve food on domestic flights here! I was quite shocked to find that out - after all, my flight took four hours!

Back to California

But let's go back a bit and return to California again for a bit: My remaining time in Yosemite was really good. I met four girls at the hostel (Yosemite Bug, 16 USD/dorm) and drove around the park with them. It was heaps of fun and they basically threw in the money to cover for that days hire. So that was really nice. I can really recommend that hostel, btw - it's a really nice and cozy place and much cheaper tham anything within the park itself. The downside is of course, that it is 20 miles outside the park. I also met Aby, an English girl, who asked whether she could come back to SF with me. Of course I was more than happy to have someone in the car - particularly since she knew SF and could guide me to the place where I had to return the car. I didn't want to stress and drive to SF in one go so we stopped at the Pigeon Point Youth Hostel (18 USD/dorm) for the night, a hostel I had heard many good things about. It's right at the cliff, facing the Pacific Ocean and built just adjacent to a still working light house. Which of course is really cool. But the coolest thing is that they have a hot tub, right on the cliff! So you can sit in the hot tub at night, with only the beacon of the light house sweeping over the sea in front of you while you look at the stars and see the waves crash against the rocks. Very cool! The hostel itselef is unfortuantely a bit oldfashioned (lights out at 11pm, lock-out during the day and a "chore" to do on the day you leave), but we only stayed a night, so it was ok.

Back in San Franciso I went with Tamar and her friends to a concert in the Great American Music Hall. It was the Antiblas Afrobeat Orchastra (sic!) and really, really cool. There were 12 musicians on the stage, doing a mixture between bigband-sound, African music and reggae/ska. The venue was really nice, too. Really, really pretty in the style of a rococo theatre. I wish we would use similar venues we have back home, like the Cuvelliertheater, for cool stuff like that and not only Wagner and Mozart.

On the web:
Yosemite Bug Hostel
Pigeon Point Light Station
Great American Music Hall