1st December, 22:00

Once more I have randomly blundered through a variety of obstacles with surprising ease. First of all once we got there, I explained my predicament to a nice ticketing man, with the use of some puppy dog eyes, which I keep in my bag. He then wrote randomly on a piece of paper that I could go through to San Fran, and the bus driver seemed happy to accept it. Woo! Then the driver managed to do the prepared route backwards, but I realised and still got off at the right place. I then staggered haphazardly towards my hostel, which I found far to easily. I checked in after an initial scare that I had lost my passport and a girl showed me around the hostel.

I'm on a 4 bed dorm with a Scottish guy called Mike who has lvied in Oz, America and England. He's currently going for football try outs at a San Fran based team who are gonna play in Major League Soccer, which is damn awesome.

I grabbed some bread, cheese and water and wandered through a few streets, but I was insanely tired so I went back and am now gonna crash out.

BANG.

1st December, 18:08

And another dose of Kerouac, and I feel like writing again. I'm tired, my brain feels compressed and my journey is far from over, but I'm not worried. It's dark now, though it appeasr we're following some form of waterway according to my GPS. Many mesmorising lights are silently whipping by and my eyelids are starting to feel heavy. I hope it's all good.

And as I sat watching myself digitally, without any exact plan when this journey ends, I thought:

Holy Moly, I've gone across america on my own.

Somehow, so far, I've not quite comprehended it, but in the midst of blissfull uncertainty I realise it's all pretty cunning. Interestingly we just went through Richmond. Kudos to American originality. It's also a bit odd that we're going the fastest we've been all day through a built up area: 85mph.

1st December, 16:53

I can't remember if I mentioned my ponderous predicament but I only booked a train to Emeryville, rather than San Francisco. Lukcily there is an Amtrak bus there but it leaves 15 minutes after we arrive in Emeryville. So in that time I have to get my baggage, find out if I can get tickets for it, and then where it is. Amazingly, though, we got to Sacramento an hour early AND no one is getting off at Davis so we're sailing through that. Plenty of time for me to get lost in Emeryville then.

I was going to write this in the lounge but there's some goth/emo kid in there who's completely drunk after drinking straight from a bottle of whiskey all afternoon. Sun is setting now, soon I can shower! Mwahahaha.

1st December, 12:29

Wow, scenary is totally amazing. I have my GPS working now, which is highly handy, for instance I knew the lakes to our right were coming up before they did. We have some guides from a local railroad museum and apparently we're entering the cold water valley. We're doing soem crazy 180 degree turn to get through the valley. There's also a tunnel at some point. Last time we had a long tunnel some fool apparently pulled the stop train cord and then loads of foolish people had panic attacks in the tunnel, including Wade (who is also petrified of flying among other things). I had some coffee.

At this rate I'll need a new SD card, I may try and get on in San Fran. Whoa, an amazing lake view, the afformentioned valley I suspect.

Okay, this is phenominal, I can't describe the view, huge mountains, perfectly still lake. Thousands of straight, giant trees densely populate all the hill sides. It's very hard not to be a slave to my camera.

We're now going through the 2 mile long Tunnel 41, called the big hole. 11600 ft above sea level is our highest point, along the Sierra Nevada, which will occur at end of this here tunnel. And problem just when my mp3 player runs out. On that note I've just realised all of my multitude of gadgets are black. Awesome.

My handwriting has really deteriorated. And my spelling. I should really have brought more dollar with me, as I have about 3 cereal bars left. To make matters worse my GPS reckons we just derailed...

1st December, 06:47

As I sit, waiting for a huge ball of extraordinarily violent flaming gas to ascend the heavens from behind it's mountain bunker, I think to myself "Darn gosh, I wish I'd remembered to put my clock backwards". No worries though, I bought a coffee with my last two dollar bills and am munching strawberry nutri-grain bars. Look's like these's a ground frost, which would explain why I was cold last night while experimenting with new sleeping positions that cause overnight damage to muscles I didn't know existed.

Finally we're off again, and now the cloud's are hugging the ground tightly, barely giving us a few metres of vision. Jolly foggy.