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On Friday night Alexander and I visited Discovery 2008. We had a really good time and saw some amazing things. Like the Philips 3D TV that you can watch and see the 3D effects of without special glasses! We also had some great fun with the Shamestation. And we saw a flying device that flew by flapping its wings. Now also possible in theory!

I discovered a photo of myself from last year’s Discovery on their website, completely by accident. I’m so photogenic! :-)

I was so wasted last night. Came home from work and slept for an hour. I hadn’t slept so well the day before. Woke up in the middle of the night with a bad cramp, probably from my legs not being used to so much basketball. Yet.

I had a meal at Greenmeals, just around the corner from where I live, but it wasn’t so great.

Another thing I’m busy with: the Amsterdam rollerbasketball tournament on November the 8th. It’s getting close! And I’m getting nervous. So much still to arrange. It’s OK though: I’ll get help!

Milton uploaded some pictures from our trip in the US. Here are ones in which I figure.

If you were on Facebook and a friend of Joost, you’d be able to see much more, but there are only a few people so priviledged.

Here’s an impression of the final match in SF:

The team from Marseille played really well, but couldn’t score enough to win. The US beat them on penalties!

I’m hoping for a good video of some of our own matches later!

Just back from a long long trip. Home again!

The only sleep I’ve gotten in the last two nights has been in an airplane, so I’m pretty exhausted. I’m gonna try to keep real busy today and go to bed at a normal time tonight, so I don’t step into a bad rhythm. Gotta work again tomorrow, in my new office. First thing I’m gonna do is shower, do some shopping and then see if we have enough players for rollerbasketball.

The shuttle we’d organized from the hotel to the airport was a bit weird. We were being scammed! The taxi driver tried to get us to pay six dollars extra, for fuel tax. We hadn’t been told about it, so we were pretty upset. Not about the money, six dollars is not much after all, just about the fact that we were not told. We had agreed he’d pick us up at 3AM. He had another passenger to pick up on the way. Fine, but I really needed to go to the restroom. The idiot at Travelodge told me there wasn’t one. As if! The taxi driver also complained about that on my behalf. In the car he put up a whole show where he supposedly called his boss and suggested they never do business with Travelodge again. I had a real feeling there was nobody at the other side of the line. He also tried to get on our good side by engaging in conversation. We were three guys, so he assumed we must be in SF for the women. He seemed to confuse that concept with hookers. Pretty offensive. I told him we weren’t interested, to which he replied “Man, you’re in the wrong city!”. What bullshit! Luckily he shut up when the next passenger boarded, a woman. I was so fed up with him, I was happy he shut up and just drove us to the airport. We didn’t pay him the six bucks in the end, just a dollar as an appreciation for the drama performance.

I’m having a day alone in San Francisco today. My mates are visiting Alcatraz. I’ve never been, but I felt like wandering the city on my own more than seeing an old prison. Just bought a bunch of new books at Borders (they’re cheaper over here). Later I might check out a movie, to give my legs a rest (new shoes, my old ones were wrecked in the walk up Half Dome).

Tonight, around 3AM, we’re heading back home. We haven’t got a hotel booked, so it’s gonna be a loooong day. Tonight we’re meeting up for dinner with Zack, June and some of the other rollersoccer players from SF.

Yesterday we drove up from Santa Cruz, along a scenic highway, through some beautiful Redwood forest. We drove through the hills above Palo Alto, from where I could see Stanford, where I spent three months about fifteen years ago. Brought back some memories!

We’re staying at Travelodge Central here in SF. The staff has a real attitude problem there. Man, they’re so unfriendly! I should be careful what I say though, our luggage is still there, waiting for us to pick it up at 3AM tonight.

In the evening we saw Man on Wire. Didn’t live up to the hype, but still: pretty incredible story!

SF is a real city of contrasts. You see so many dubious characters here, wandering amidst high-street shops. Beggars and what can only be junkies everywhere.

I’m not unhappy about going home. My work-situation will have changed considerably when I get back (new office, about 200 new colleagues) and my house will be emptied of most of Marine’s stuff, so that will be a change too. I’ll kind of miss moving house everyday though.

Man, it’s been difficult to find time to write anything on this blog! There’s wifi everywhere, but hardly any computers I can use. This computer is in the hotel lobby. I have to stand up to use it, pretty inconvenient.

Trip’s been amazing. We’re almost back to where we started, in Monterey bay. Tomorrow we’ll visit the aquarium and move to Santa Cruz.

We’ve been to Lake Tahoe, climbed Half-Dome in Yosemite, saw giant Sequoias, skated on Venice Beach in LA, went to the Universal Studios theme park. And of course, we drove. A lot.

Almost every day we move to a new hotel. It hasn’t been too difficult so far. We usually manage to find a room where all three of us can stay. Tonight we have two king-size beds and a sofa-bed. I drew the short straw tonight so I get the sofa-bed. No worries though.

We don’t plan too much, so it’s always a bit of a surprise where we end up. For example, we never expected to end up at Buck Owen’s Crystal Palace, a fake western country club in Bakersfield.

Most amazing thing we’ve done? I guess the climb up Half-Dome. That was like a vertical marathon, a walk of 36 km (if we believe the signs) up a mountain. This was my second time, but last time we did it in two days, this time in one. The views were amazing, the waterfalls stunning.

We’ve got loads of nice photos and videos but no way to upload them, at the moment.

We beat the Paris team and came third! Our defense was just perfect and Andreas managed to score two crucial goals. It started off badly, with a Paris lead of 1-0, but we kept our cool and pressed on. We won the $1000 price! We never expected to get this far, so we were quite chuffed.

The final was between Marseille and USA Red, Zack’s team. Again, nobody really expected the USA team to be able to match up against Marseille, but they came out really strong! It went all the way into penalties. Like a cheesy movie, Zack, the founder of rollersoccer, actually scored the winning goal. It was the best game I ever saw. As you can imagine, there was a lot of partying afterwards.

I took a ride across the Bay Bridge with June, Zack’s wife, on the back of her motorbike, with just a skating helmet on. Crazy, and I promise I won’t be doing that again. Fun though, weaving through all the traffic like that.

Milton and I are at the hostel’s computers at the moment, waiting for Joost to wake up. He’s been partying a bit longer than we have. And then we’re off! First, to pick up Milton’s motorbike somewhere up north and then east to Lake Tahoe.