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I had a pretty good flight home (Qantas 747-400), however, I can't work out why Sydney airport is incapable of organising a taxi queue. It took 30 minutes to get a taxi - in Singapore, a busier airport, I would have been in a taxin within miutes.

The cats were very pleased to see me home, especially when I opened the food jar.

Stay tuned to the blog, I will be downloading some photos over the next few days.

My next trip will be in December/ January, a motorcycle tour of Nepal and Bhutan with a stopover in Singapore and Malaysia on the way home.

From Albuquerque I flew Southwest to San Francisco wih a change of planes in Las Vegas (Boeing 737-300 and 737-700 respectively). Las Vegas airport, of course, has a slot machine area.

I stayed at the "Inn on Castro" a fabulous B&B run by expatriate Dutchman Jan. It's in one of those wonderful Victorian San Francisco town houses right at the edge of the Castro Street strip. It's a wonderful place - highly recommended.

The highlight of my SFO trip was the "Up Your Alley Fair", a leather themed fair, which is the curtain raiser for the huge Folsom Street Fair. I met up with my friends Santos and a few of his friends for the day. As this is a G rated blog, I'll leave it there.

The next day I met Eric, who I'd been chatting to online for over a year. He showed me a few places outside SFO. First upo a visit to the massive redwoods of Muir Woods, also the venue for one of the meetings that led to the formation of the UN. Next a visit to Jack London's estate in the Sonoma County and  visit to Eric's home town of Benicia in the "Outer Bay" area.

I have been to San Francisco a few times and I just love the city. It and New York are my two favourite US cities. San Francisco has a wonderful feel, it has a wonderful collection of neighbourhoods, which are places you get out and walk around. I spent a lot of time in the Castro and there are always people around, great restaurants, coffee shops, bars.

After hot and humid weather in Chicago and hot and dry in Albuquerque, San Francisco was quite a contrast. they are having an unusually cold summer with highs only in the teens. The usual weather pattern was morning fog and cloud with the sun (but not the temperature) appearing around the middle of the day. SFO has a localised climate as it would generally be warmer elsewhere in the bay area.

San Francisco is also blessed with an excellent publi transport system, MUNI, a callection of light rail, trolley buses, buses and cable cars. You don't need a car here! Some really great features included a display on all the buses showing the next stop. Major bus stops had a dispaly showing minutes to the next two buses (which were accurate)

I fitted quite a bit in over the next few days. I headed to Alcatraz, along with several million visitors. It would have been a pretty grim place when it was in operation, especially with SFO so close by. I also visited Angel Island, a former military base and also home to the "Eliis Island of the west" - this is where immigrants arriving on the west coast were processed.

I had a good walk through Golden Gate Park, San Francisco's answer to New York's Central Park folllowed by a trip to Ocean Beach (I noted the surfers were wearing thick wetsuits) and a walk and dinner in Chinatown.

One of the days I headed to San Jose to try out a couple of transit systems. First was Caltrain, the commuter rail line - this had a colelctuion of very impresive stations dating from the glory days of rail. San Jose has expanded its light rail system since my last visit in the 90's. SJ is a different city from SFO, more of a car dependent spread out city. the northern part of the light rail system runs through Silicon Valley and you see names like Cisco and Lockheed Martin as you go past.

That evening I went to the show "Beach Blanket Babylon" a musical comedy. This started out as a 6 week show in 1974 and has been running ever since. It is updated regularly and pokes fun at US politicians and other prominent US figures. I laughed all through the performance.

Today was my last day which included a visit to Alamo Square to see the "painted ladies" a row of Victorian town houses with a view of downtown San Francisco behind them. Then down to the food market in the old ferry building - the ferry building has finally been refurbished after decades of decline which followed the opening of the Golden Gate and Bay bridges in the late 1930's. Next a visit to the SF Museum of Modern Art which was superb. It had a really brilliant photography exhbition and a show "Calder to Worhol".

I'm now at San Francisco Airport waiting for my plane to Sydney

As you may recall, Albuquerque is the place Bugs Bunny should have turned left. I last visited Albuquerque in February 2009. In contrast to waking up to snow, it was fine and hot. My friends Brian and Kathleen live in the mountains about 30 minutes to the east.

I paid a visit to the National Museum of Nucleear Science which was closed on my last visit. New Mexico was the main site for the Manhattan Project which developed the atomic bomb. There was an excellent history of the Manhattan project which was massive eg, it consumed 10% of all electricity generated in the United States. There was some wonderful stuff on the Cold War including the rather amusing film "Duck and Cover". The museum also had a great collection of old aircraft (including a B52) and missiles.

My retail therapy in Albuquerque consisted of a  visit to Dan's Boots and Saddles for a pair of boots and assorted other cowboy clothing. 

The next day Brian took me for a flight in his Cessna to the Very Large Array, a colelction of lots of radio telescope dishes in the middle of the New Mexican desert. It was about an hour there and back over some great desert scenery.

Later in the day we took the "Railrunner" to Santa Fe. This is a commuter train that connects Albuquerque to Santa Fe. One of the reasons for its existance is that many people who work in Santa Fe can't afford to live there. An amusing touch is that the doors closing buzzer makes Roadrunner beep beep sounds!

I had been to Santa Fe before so had done the main tourist things so this time we concentrated on the galleries -  think more than half the shops in Santa Fe are galleries. There is a huge amount of art produced in Santa Fe.

In the "only in America" depaartment. I ordered a beer when I went out to dinner with Brian and Katleen. Before I could get the beer, I had to show ID. Many ststes including New Mexico and Illinois require ID before alcohol sales irrespective oa age. Well, after a week in Chicago and after having had a beer with lunch in Albuquerque, this was rthe first time I was ID'd. Maybe it had something to do with the Sheriff's officers sittting at the next table.

I bought a copy of the "Santa Fe New Mexican" which included a catalog for the local community college. In addition to the usual flower arranging etc ourses where courses in hand guns for the beginner and how to qualify to carry a concealed handgun (legal in New Mexico if you've completed an approporiate course)

Next and final stop is San Francisco.

The hot humid weather continued for my last day in Chicago. I headed first to the Chicago History Museum, which was very good. There is a Chicago - New York rivalry, like Sydney and Melbourne, except that Chicago happily admits it is number 2 city. Chicago's growth has been different from New York. Chicago's growth was largely due to being a tranportation hub and market town for agricultural products as well as being a big industrial city. The museum, like most of the museums I visited, had a number of summer camp groups going through who were rather noisy.

After the museum I took a walk along the beachfront. It looked just like a "normal"  beach - golden sand and water to te horizon but being on Lake Michigan, no waves adn no smell of salt; the latter felt very odd.

I headed for Midaway Airport in the evening for my flight to Albuquerque to meet my friends Brian and Kathleen. I shared a room with Brian on a South American trip in 2004 and we've stayed in touch since. I again flew Southwest on a Boeing 737-700.