United Arse'oles

Don't fly United. They are, apparently "The Friendly Skies®" but they charged me $100 as my bag was 9lbs over weight. $11 per lb. $25 per kilo! OK I know it's a bit over but here's my issue:

When you travel on international flights you are allowed one bag that weighs up to 32 Kg. When you get to America you are allowed two bags, but each must weigh no more than 23 kg. So I need to have my luggage in one big bag and two small bags at the same time. What really pissed me off with the payment issue was that I am not ACTUALLY over the weight allowed on the 'plane, which by my maths is 46 kgs. It just seems like a way to extract money from their passengers. United Airlines is very good at this, you pay for luggage, you pay to check in extra bags, you pay to eat on the plane, you pay for headphones on the longer flights etc. etc.

Needless to say tomorrow I'm going bag shopping.

Carol decided to come to Seattle with me, so she came into SF yesterday and managed to book herself into a hotel in the Tenderloin. If you don't know what this is I'll just say that this morning the homeless were queueing at the soup kitchen on the corner of her block and if you want heroin, this is the place to go. The Tenderloin that is not Carol. She survived though which was good. It was actually an evening of derring-do as the two girls who Carol had been on camp with were travelling to LA on the Greyhound. Overnight. This is what is known as a near death experience. A Coastguard we met in the pub was absolutely stunned that two girls would travel on the Greyhound on their own at all, let alone at night. He pretty much offered to drive them to LA so they wouldn't be killed in their sleep. They did make it though as we got a message this morning. 

Anyhow I left San Francisco this morning after watching a very bizarre breakfast show featuring drag queens. It was just like Mel and Kochie, even down to the weather and traffic, but with drag queens. Only in San Francisco I suppose. Carol flew Alaskan Airways and had a loveley trip, I came United - see above.

Seattle seems to be a beautiful place, we sat at a restaurant overlooking Elliott Bay drinking booze and eating seafood. All very civilised.

I'm glad to get out of SF as I seemed to be attracting religious nutters. I was quite surprised there are that many to be honest. One evening I was on the tram and a guy with two bibles came and sat next to me. That's two bibles, as one is never enough. He was pretty harmless though, unlike the guy who came to sit by me in Union Square on Sunday. I was sitting there minding my own business, having a coffee and watching the world go by when another bible toting nutter came by and started reading aloud. Unfortunately he was really bad at reading. Mumbling, then spouting some random words, then loosing his place and starting at another verse. My favourite was "The lord sent his son ..mumble..he was..mumble..called Mary". 

I must have missed that part of the story at sunday school.