Whoohah. I've been busy, let me recapitulate for you. As usual I got up Saturday, the 26th, got out of the hostel and left the four friends of mine who felt a lot more like doing some shopping than I did. My mission was to get to the motel before the night. So, I went to the train station and did some accurate studies of the automatic ticket machine there. I ended up with putting 4 dollars into it and pushing some random buttons, and it worked great. With the ticket in hand I entered the 2 floor CalTrain, which brought me to Sunnyvale in one hour and 12 minutes. Here I had some problems. The Indian, like in Asia India, woman at the train station building (which is so small that she actually pretty much filled the whole station by herself) in Sunnyvale couldn't understand why I would need a map of the surroundings. So, I gave up getting any hints from her, and just walked in the direction of the 101 highway, as I figured the motel had to be somewhere along it.
For the next hour and a half I only met Spanish speaking people, and noone had ever heard of Ahwanee Avenue. I was very happy when I at last discovered it all by myself, and soon after found the giant Vagabond & Denny's sign. Some from the group were already there, and I got a room with 20" TV, bathtub, an air conditioner whose noise will make sure I don't oversleep, a queen size bed and no refrigerator whatsoever. Oh well. I also noticed a small swimmingpool and a large Coca Cola vending machine before I started my day in phone hell. Using the list I had received at the Convention Plaza I for some funny reason started on the top and worked my way through it. The list was of course alphabetical, and at last I managed to get hold of someone at West Valley Charter Lines that could get me a bus for Sunday. Noone seemed interested in helping me out with anything, so I spent most of Saturday afternoon doing this. I also had to find out where the 7 cars we were renting from Hertz was. That took a couple of hours to work out, but finally I was told they were in San Francisco. So. Quite a few jetlagged drivers had to go to San Francisco and get them Saturday night. They all survived.
After having introduced Kentucky Fried Chicken to the rest of the group, I went to sleep. Until Sunday came. At 9 a.m. Bill and the bus rolled to the entrance of the motel. 46 seats to 47 people made the counting of heads easy at least. "Is it overcrowded now? Yes? Then we're all here." First we drove to a vineyard south of San Jose, where we persuaded the owner into letting us in, drank all their wine and errr... ate almost all their grapes and got out of there very quickly. Then we went to Monterey and saw Cannery Row, who Steinbeck made so famous. Uhm... None of us had read the book. Tish tish, never mind. It IS famous, trust me. Even more than Sweet Thursday by the same author. The Monterey Bay aquarium was also very good, even though it is way overpriced. There's quite a few small sharks to see, swimming a few centimetres from your head, a lot of fishes, seals and other things that live in water. I walked a few streets away from Cannery Row and found a nice small restaurant with no tourists in it except me, where I boldly tried some seafood. Not too bad.
On our way back to the motel we stopped at a redwood forest, which we didn't really have the time to do. Someone went into the forest to uhm... relieve himself, and all of a sudden sheep mentality made everyone disappear in all directions. So, I had to play shepherd and get people back to the bus so we could return. We returned 20 minutes after schedule, but Bill said it was okay, we didn't have to pay extra. I happily watched the bus get out of my life. For the rest of the week I have no responsibilities whatsoever. I have never been so tired in the US before.