September 2005
11 Sunday

We flew via Air New Zealand direct to San Francisco on their first refurbished 767 plane. Raewyn and Brendan had left a few days before to visit Los Angeles and they picked up a rental car and drove up to meet us at Russell's place in Mountain View, about 45 minutes south of San Francisco in Silicon Valley. Nic took us out to the Auckland airport nice and early so we had quite a bit of time to fill in, but by the time we went through two lots of security and browsed the souvenir shops the call for boarding had arrived and our flight lifted off at 7.15pm, right on time. As usual, we didn't get much sleep on the plane but as I took a sleeping tablet I probably got more sleep than Vern.

Freeway 280 snakes up the Bay towards SanFrancisco

Anza Lagoon just before touchdown at San Francisco International

When we arrived in SFO we had to queue to go through customs. We had our fingerprints and photos taken as part of the new security measures which the US has adopted quite recently. You had the feeling that you had committed some ghastly crime and they were trying to catch you. Russell met us and we were transported in his nice new van south to Mountain View. It was fantastic seeing Calvin again and seeing how much he had grown and matured. Raewyn and Brendan arrived later that afternoon .It was good to catch up with them again.

Russell's apartment in Boranda Ave, Mountain View