Life and all that

Today was all about collecting the hire car. I was somewhat… concerned about driving over here. I was up early because of the jet lag, and it took me about 3 hours to leave the house. Mostly because I was trying to put off having to drive for as long as possible.  I set off at about midday to wander my way to the Hertz office, so I could watch people driving and work out where I needed to go to get back to the apartment. It worked quite well, though I was having to squint. The sun is reaallyy bright and I didn’t bring a hat!

Wandering about was interesting, I moved aside to let a cyclist through on the pavement and he thanked me which felt nice. I think I surprised him by speaking all English back at him though. There are lots of eating places, and some really randomly specific shops – I found one which sells only lacrosse equipment. I nearly went into a 7-eleven, but then I didn’t. Thrilling story that.

I got terribly confused by pedestrian crossings, I just couldn’t work out where I was meant to have priority over cars and where I wasn’t. Some places said I couldn’t cross, and I got worried because I remember jaywalking being a criminal offence over here. Eventually I tried the pelican crossing to get over the main road, big dual carriageway thing, and it just never changed to let me cross. So I wussed out, and moved to cross at a different point. That crossing was more cooperative, and it changed (they have a red hand for don’t cross, and a white running man for gogogo). I set off, reached the central reservation and it had a count down saying ‘20 seconds to go’ so I set off across the next carriageway, and suddenly 3 cars appeared and tried to run me over. Apparently when the white man shows it means you have priority, not that no cars will drive at you. Frightened the life out of me.

I collected the car and the woman accepted my VISA debit card as a Credit card, so that was alright. Apparently I had already paid on the Internet so she only wanted to check who I was. She gave me  a white Yaris (pictures of these things are all available at InfiniteView). It looks nothing like a Yaris, just a generic 4 door car with a Yaris nose on. It took me a few minutes to get used to it being an automatic, I couldn’t work out what was wrong at first, til I realised I was subconsciously using the brake as a clutch. That doesn’t end in happiness for the car. I could see the woman pulling faces at me from behind her desk, so I quickly joined the main road and adventured back to the apartment. Have to say, driving wasn’t as bad as I had expected, but I was trying to do nothing complicated. Staying in the right hand (slow) lane, and hoping I didn’t reach any traffic lights on red when I wanted to turn right.

For the rest of the day I dithered about in the house trying to get rid of my jet lag. Matt came home at 5.30 and I drove us to the Hertz place to have him added to the car as an additional driver. Took a few minutes but didn’t cost any money which surprised me. Then Matt directed me off to Palo Alto to a diner known as ‘The Creamery. Interestingly parking appears to be free here in the states, we parked in a multi storey and there were no tickets or anything. Palo Alto looked strange, from what of it I saw. Reminded me of Spain. The diner was nice though, looked like a stereotypical US 50s diner, complete with juke box. I had steak with grilled veg and it was lovely, though I avoided the steak sauce which confused me. It smelled like cough mixture. They had Heinz ketchup and ‘pourable mustard’ which just seemed to be english mustard in a ketchup bottle. We also had milkshakes, I had cookie dough, and it was served in a metal tub with a glass to decant it into. Amazingly tasty, but after a while it was just a *bit* too much.

I let Matt take over driving. We headed off to Frys, which appeared to be a computer/tech hypermarket. Was the size of maybe two ASDAs and just sold interesting tech things, a whole aisle of motherboards, computing books, computer chairs, pre-built computers. Matt said there’s an aisle full of oscilloscopes somewhere. I think I’ll be buying a third party battery for my MBP before we leave, they’re cheap and seem to work (compared to my current battery which just dies randomly with no warning after ~10 -> 30 minutes of use).

Then home! We played rockband briefly but I was suddenly so tired I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Jet lag sucks.