Saturday 20th December 2003, Day 98/273 - Woodside, California to San Francisco, California.

In the morning Amanda gave us the grand tour around Woodside. It's a lovely little town exactly how you would expect an old American town set in the mountains to be. We had a trip around the Stanford University Campus, which is one of the US's leading university's, and then a trip up the mountains through the Redwood trees. I'm sure it would have been a beautiful view, but unfortunately today was a little cloudy. We ended the tour with lunch in the small local deli. They had trouble understanding our brand of English. "We don't get folks from outta town very often."

Having said our goodbyes we drove to the airport to pick my parents up. The last time I picked them up from an airport was at Gatwick in September 2002 when they had just returned from a 2 week holiday. Whilst on the holiday Nikki and I had separated and decided to divorce. It came as quite a shock to them as Nikki had dropped them off at the airport and nothing was wrong at that time. Their first question upon their return that time was "Where's Nikki?" Today my Dad's first question was "What was the Fleet score?" Finally someone I can relate to. Unfortunately my response was at least as disappointing as it has been on the previous occasion. We got beat 1-0 by King's Lynn. I think they were at least happy to see that I hadn't wilted away.

With all the luggage it was lucky that we had an American small car. I managed to navigate my way into the Holiday Inn Select @ 750 Kearney Avenue and then went to drop the car back off at the rental place. Total cost was $335 for 4 days rental having driven 604 miles.

Back at the hotel I caught up on all the Fleet news and my parents finally confessed to breaking my cat (Bloo's) leg and she's had to have it pinned and put into cat traction. Bloo's okay so i can't really complain, also it meant my Dad missed the Rugby World Cup Final and it cost them a fortune. I don't think I'll ever get my cats back.