Nah We Got Plenty of Time...

So. Funny story.

A good friend of mine and fellow traveler was flown home from Malta recently by good old Tulare County to testify against the guys who kidnapped her and stole her car last December. But that's another story.

The point is the county offered to pay for my gas if I'd pick her up from SFO, and seeing how I love San Francisco I told them "Well I guess I could..."

So I left Fresno last Friday with one of her best friends to pick her up from the airport at 8.

I knew we were in for an adventure when I inadvertently took the wrong freeway west across the valley. I'm not sure who decided to randomly include a freeway exit in the left lane but obviously I was not consulted.

Lucky for my passenger and I everything eventually meets up with the I-5 here in California, and I do mean everything, so all was not lost.

Just north of the junction with the 5 there is a massive facility of some kind surrounded by gigantic, 25-30 ft fence.... except for the north side of the complex.

I'm just as curious as you are.

Pushing onwards me and my compatriot got to SF without much further incident, if you don't count the ridiculous construction before the San Mateo bridge that is. Concrete barriers on each side of the lane and a 25 mph corkscrew of an on-ramp.

I felt like a hotwheels car.

In fact, as we got to the SFO exit on the 101 I noticed the clock on my dashboard reported we had made killer time, hour and a half to spare killer time.

With all that time on our hand we did what anyone would do, we hit the city.

Of course, we weren't entirely sure what we wanted to see, and we also seemed to be using Jack Sparrow's compass. If I was sure something was to our left then she was just as sure it was in the dead opposite direction.

So we wandered around the city like that until our bladders got the best of us and we parked near a Burger King to take care of business.

The Burger King on Market street has a bathroom guard. He's little and angry and holds the keys to relief. Not a good combination. Not a good combination at all.

Even after proving that we were indeed paying customers and had permission to use the restroom he had to be talked into it, and if you got that far he would still grumble about how much he hates letting people use it.

After solving all of the bathroom troll's riddles we returned to the car where I realized I had missed a phone call from south SF sometime during our wanderings.

Things I forgot to do:

1. Adjust my dashboard clock for daylight savings time.

Yup.

People whose flight got in early:

1. My friend.

Yup.

All told she waited about an hour in the airport while her deadbeat friends escaped from the city as fast as they could. Naturally we decided not to tell her why we had been late.

Naturally I was sold out as soon as we got to the curb.

The drive home was less eventful, we paid a visit to Donut Nation in Los Banos where the king requires a $5 minimum purchase if you wanna use a card and to Robertito's where they teach you how to fish your food out of a pool of delicious grease.

Finally rolled back home around 2 in AM and nobody even got kidnapped, so I deem the trip a success.

Cheers till next time,

The Wayward Hoover

Are You Rogue Enough?

Where can you find a partially nude ukulele player from South Africa? Why at the Rogue festival of course.

The Rogue is by far one of the coolest things to roll through this town and this year was no exception. In all I caught 6 1/2 shows, if you count the guys dancing behind the counter of Tower Dogs. Which you should.

Speaking of, Tower Dogs are delicious.

It's hard to pick a favorite with each show being so different but it's hard to go wrong with Songs 4 Pints and their Irish antics. With a show revolving around singing in exchange for pints of Guinness things quickly dissolved from a formal concert into the giggly singing of pub songs with new friends.

There is a Disco Fever street gang wandering around the tower district in shiny gold shirts and massive sideburns.

The aforementioned Ukulele player had a banjolele. AND a resonator ukulele. Needless to say the venue manager was not happy with all the drool on the floor where I was sitting.

Since I've shaved my head I've become increasingly appreciative of the giant propane powered heat stands that the Rogue set up in its out door venues.

The Rogue Festival is said to be the biggest fringe festival west of the Mississippi, organizers decided against calling it the "Fresno Fringe" because "rogue" just feels so much cooler to say.

Go ahead. Say it.

Rogue.

It makes you want to wear a bandanna.


EDIT:: Don't forget to keep voting! http://worldtravelerinternship.com/member/andrew-hoover/

VROOM!

Well it looks like being a travel intern isn't such a pipe dream after all, so I've decided to dust off the old blog-o-rooni here and fire her up for new visitors and new adventures!!

To start things off I think I'll talk about my latest adventure, which actually turns out to be applying for the STA World Traveler Internship (that's a lot to type so from now on it's just going to be STA. Or intern. Or whatever I feel like calling it at the time)! I'm going to take you back.... baaack.... to a time loooooong agooooooo.... like last Tuesday.

Specifically, the Tuesday 3 days before the STA submission deadline.

I was deeply engrossed in my studies (read: goofing off on the internet) when my sister sent me a link to the STA intern homepage and informed me that if I didn't apply she would hate me.

Now me and dear ol' sis have had our differences ever since the Great Noogie Incident of '92 but I'm not down for hate, so I hit the link and was immediately hooked.

What followed was a marathon even in video production. I spent the rest of the day brainstorming ideas, studying the competition and writing. by 10 in the PM I had a working script and was scrambling to find a femme fatale for my opening sequence.

After a delightfully hilarious/awkward conversation I had an actress and a location and started filming 11 PM. 4 hours of giggling and hip wiggling later I had my footage and started the editing.

Editing (in all of its riveting detail) went on from 3am until 9pm with a short break to go to work at the trusty library (also riveting). and by 10 Wednesday night I had a video and an application up and ready to be voted on.

Ah voting. It took me all of 20 minutes to get banned from Facebook Chat for spamming my friends.

I think that deserves an award.

By the numbers I directly contacted over 600 friends, over 2,500 guests of the "Help Andrew Hoover" event, over 6,700 fans of a recently cancelled radio show and unknown thousands of hapless MCJ students via the campus listserve (thank you prof. Hayes!). After about 24 hours I had broken into the top 50 with a meager 2400 votes.

Then I did a stupid thing.

I went and told all of those people that if I could break 15,000 votes by the submission deadline, I would shave my head.

I picked 15,000 because it was obviously unattainable.

I am a fool.

Over the course of 9 hours, my vote count skyrocketed to hit over 18,000 votes before finally slowing down, by midnight I was squarely in the 20,000s. So fast that it prompted some to even to pose as STA administration and accuse me of cheating.

Which was hurtful.

But no matter.

I made it to the top 50! Which is awesome in at least 7 different ways.

and on that happy note I'm off to check out the Fresno Rogue Festival

In the mean time, go vote for me on my intern page!!

http://worldtravelerinternship.com/member/andrew-hoover/

Cheers,

The Wayward Hoover