I'm in Carmel, by the sea.

Having arrived back from LA to SFO it was time to get ready for Cousin Gregs wedding to Sarah. This was set to happen in the town of Carmel-By-The-Sea which is famous because Clint Eastwood used to be the mayor, or something, and it is incredibly posh and well to do - every second shop sells antiques or overpriced bric-a-brac and it is truely a sight to behold. Boring as bat shit if you are poor and still relativley young, but I managed to find some fun in the situation.

Cousin Stephanie and I shared the 2 hour drive from San Fran to Carmel, running about an hour late for the wedding rehearsal which was just finishing as we rocked up, and out lateness was slightly controvertial because it meant Stephanie missed the rehearsal for her part of the wedding ceremony, which was to open the door for the bride. If our excuse counts for anything: we had to run a few errands in Palo Alto before we left including going to Best Buy and In & Out burger for provisions. Not to mention an hour or so faffing around on the Internet.

After the wedding rehearsal was a dinner where the two families came together and met each other, which was cool because Sarah has a cool All American Family and the dynamic was interesting considering my family is All Australian and fairly lazy and we are not the kind of people who indulge in too much ceremony, but will go along with it if there is ample food and wine involved, and this place had a Buffet.

My family was well and truely exhausted having just arrived from Australia and while Sarah's family included people such as Airline Pilots and a Super Mom, my family is so spread out that when we do catch up, we have a lot of catching up to do. My family had people from Japan, New York City, Sydney and Melbourne and all of our weird and wonderful eccentricities, loyalties and all that other family stuff needed to be re-established.

Cousin Stephanie and I amused ourselves using Cousin Anna's Fiance Tomo's Japanese Translator thing to look up rude words. This ended up being double fun because we did not anticipate that as well as giving the japanese equivalent curse word, it also provided a Queens English dictionary definition of the curse. Another thing we did not anticipate was that the translator had a back button allowing the next user (more than likely Fiance Tomo) to go through the list of words we had translated and wonder what the hell he was marrying into.

The "bouf-ay" was quite nice, tho not up to the high standard set by places like Sizzler - they only had about 4 dishes on offer including one for fruit and one for baked vegetables - but I digress - judge not a gathering by its buffet but by the quality of its people. Speaking of Quality, at one point it was noted by guests on the grooms side (including but not limited to my family) that we had run dry on cigarettes, so being relativley sober (having had only 1 glass of wine) I set about finding some more with incredibly drunk Cousin Jeff as navigator.

Carmel is a funny little town in that it is built on a grid on the side of a hill and rather than having round-a-bouts or traffic lights at every intersection, it has these 4 way stop signs, which actually work quite well, but are full on scary the first few times. Under the drunken guidance of Cousin Jeff I was able to learn and execute the "California Roll" - slowing down on approach to a stop sign, then a gentle roll through the intersection, given that it is safe to do so. That it has a widely accepted name "The California Roll" says to me that not coming to a complete stop is not an offense, altho my parents would (and did) argue otherwise.

We discovered that Carmel is not like any other place on earth - there are no 7/11's. We came close to aborting the mission as we California Rolled around the smallish town looking for a place that would sell smokes, and when Cousin Stephanie, who forgot that I had asked for the car keys earlier, had called Cousin Jeff to report that her car had been stolen, it all became too much.

Once it had been established that the car had in fact not been stolen, that I was "sober" and that we were out doing a smoke run, we received another request, this time for Cigars, for the groom himself. So now our mission was even more complex, but in the end we found a store that sold smokes and the incredibly helpful checkout chick was able to point out the place next door where we could buy cigars. Hooray!

We made it back to the dinner and when we did the whole place went up in smoke, at least outside did and when my mum worked out what was going on, she said she was pretty sure I had something to do with this, as I do any kind of suspicious activity. When I said "I drove" she was unimpressed but I can hardly say she was surprised. This was the first of many indiscretions which I believe make my parents think that maybe me living in Melbourne is a good thing after all.

The entire family was staying at the Embassy Suites Hotel (aka "the family compound") in the suburb of Seaside which is about 10 minutes drive from Carmel and about 5 minutes from Monterrey, another gorgeous picture perfect town near by. Seaside felt a little bit like Penrith but with a sea breeze, but it was still alright. It evoked Middle America with the big hair, big malls and big parking lots and all the non descript housing. It was definitely nicer experiencing Middle America in Seaside, rather than actually going to Middle America, or flying over it.

It was one of the most enjoyable things ever having the entire family holed up together in the one hotel, bumping into relatives from far and wide and making chit chat in the lift about various plans we had; "what time is the wedding?", "who are you going with?", "do you know anyone who will be able to drive home from the reception?" etc.

It was also one of the most insane things ever having the entire family holed up together in the one hotel and having to deal with the idiosyncracies of everyone at the same time. All in all it was very funny and I will say this: my family is not as crazy as the fabled Spears, Lohans or more locally, the Newtons - but we are definitely up there!

I decided to drive across the road to the Starbucks where i got drive thru star bucks which took about 15 minutes all up - it would have been so much quicker to either walk (literally across the road) or park, get out and order, or use the starbucks plunger in the foyer. It was a truely cultural experience getting drive thru coffee and was made all the more better when they spilt mine inside the drive thru window and made me another one, with a voucher for a complimentary coffee because my star bucks experience was not the greatest, or whatever marketing want me to think. Whatever - free coffee!

Drive Thru is truely embraced in the USA to the point of stupidity - one night I felt like a midnight snack from McDonalds (next door to star bucks) and feeling rather foolish for the 15 minute drive thru coffee experience earlier in the day, I decided to walk. more fool me!! Apparently the restaurant had shut, but the drive thru remained open.

I remembered this was the case from last time I was in the USA and me and several of my family members tried unsuccessfully to go through the drive thru in a super market trolley which resulted in no big macs, but the cops being called. So i walked back, got the keys, drove to the McDonalds, and got the drive thru. When oil costs $10 a gallon, it will signal the death of the drive thru, which will kind of suck because its a convenience in life I could totally get used to.

We also "previewed" the hotels porn offerings, which involved watching movies for less than 5 minutes and calling up reception to have it taken off our bill "as its not to our liking". This is what happens when I get drunk and bored and want a laugh. We previewed "Even Ugly Gals Need Loving Too" (so bad its good, you won't confuse these older and unattractive ladies with your average porn star") and Bisexual Threeways. When we called to have Bisexual Threeways removed from the bill, it wouldn't go off the TV and we kept calling the front desk and eventually the guy at front desk asked if we were dressed, and came up and showed us how to turn it off. SO embarrassing - and of course we were fully dressed.

The wedding itself was gorgeous - straight to the point, delightful singing and reading and lots of Amen'ing and standing up and sitting down to the point of utter confusion, but my immediate family took their queue from the more religious among the congregation and didn't stand out too badly. Sarah looked absolutely gorgeous and seeing my two cousins up there as Groom and Grooms Man (or whatever they are called) was pretty cool. The wedding was in a church called, i think, "The Mission" and was one of the first spanish missions in California, so was shrouded in history and some really awesome architecture. Sarah's parents had been married there, as had some random elderly lady I had started talking to in the street, who mentioned she was married there, "but of course, divorced now". Given that Sarah's parents are still happily together, I did not take the old bats sage wisdom as a bad omen for Greg and Sarah.

The Reception was again, gorgeous- it was held at a near by country club. We arrived to some kind of pomegranite and champaigne cocktails and absolutely divine canapes - and an absolutely divine waiter. To cut a long story short, I don't really remember much about the wedding except that the aforementioned waiter was very open to many suggestions, one of which that he keep a bottle of champaigne at our table, which included Cousin Stephanie, Piano Man, Wes and myself - otherwise known as "trouble". At one point Piano man and Wes went on a mission to try and score some harder booze which at first was unsuccessful but upon finding the back bar and a bartender who was very open to suggestion, we secured Gin and later on, Cointreau.

It was noted by both families that we ("trouble") had our own bottle of champaigne at all times, not waiting for the waiters to top us up; we helped ourselves. I heard on the grapevine that Wes ended up taking a golf cart for a joy ride and Piano Man hooked up with someone from the bridal party, and i'm much more comfortable revealing that about the night rather than my antics, which mum and I agreed would not be discussed - at least not on here.

The DJ was not as receptive to our suggestions as the waiter or the bartender, but the absolute funniest moment was watching the "old" people, including my parents, getting down to "My Humps" by Fergie - we wondered if they had any idea what it was about, but I believe that Sarah's Super Mom had a quick word to the DJ who all of a sudden became receptive to suggestion, and he stuck to old classics from there. You just can't hear enough "Come On Eileen" at a wedding reception.

The whole night is a bit of a blur really, but its a good blur, and I really enjoyed running amok and celebrating the wedding and I am certainly happy that everyone had such a great night. Except Cousin Greg, whose expensive sunglasses were, allegedly, in the care of Cousin Stephanie, and could not be found in the morning.

Debates ensued as to who was ultimatley responsible for the glasses, and at 8am when Cousin Jeff received an urgent request by Piano Man to be picked up (the bridal party had sobered up) the shit really hit the fan and we all paid for our indiscretions with the champaigne/gin/contreau. It was exactly like that scene in Absolutely Fabulous where Saffron takes the wrong tape in for her Genetics and Ethics presentation and everyone is running around without any central co-ordination except we were not trying to locate pornography (we'd had enough the night before) we were trying to find glasses, camera's and tiny shreds of our dignity. I was reluctant to show my face but felt much more at peace when I had learned that others had disgraced themselves far more than I had, and the case of the missing glasses had consumed collective thought to the point that I was the good one, through a bit of denial and by default (I repeat, I had no involvement with the lost glasses)

Most of the family left the Embassy Suites after that - Kerry and Barry off to Philadelphia to see Barry's grandkids; Anna and Tomo back to Japan; Michael and Jessica back to New York City and the San Franciscan Ludvik's went back to their home to recoup. This left Kathy, my parents and me to hold fort. Kathy was quickly out of there as she had secured some fuddy duddy old worlde accommodation in Carmel which was great because she likes the finer things in life and her new accommodation was definitely that.

My parents, Kathy and I took a drive down Route 1 to see Big Sur and the AMAZING Californian coastline, which is a definite 'must see' and is even more fun to drive as its like an obstacle course with each twist in the road accompanied by a massive drop down to the ocean. I insisted on driving which was good because i learnt the ability to take corners slowly, something I had not quite mastered yet, and I am sure my parents hearts have been strengthened and they will have a few more good years in them yet - or their hearts are on the verge of stopping in which case, oops - but it was great fun anyway.

I drove most of the way back to San Francisco in the Rav 4 and insisted on listening to Country Music as nothing beats driving on the interstate with country music blaring, but when we ran out of signal (the Rav 4 was not Sirius Satellite Enabled - dammit) we went back to the old favourites of silence peppered with me cursing other cars on the road and at one point going 140km/h cause I was "overtaking".

Back in San Francisco I was sorta in the area of a drive by shooting, which was totally whack. I heard the gun shots, the tram I was on skidded to a halt and a few people hit the floor - I wasn't sure what to do but when I heard wheels screach and a car hooning off, I was pretty sure that trouble had passed. One lady started lamenting that her tax dollars pay for this and that they should put "them" all on an island with guns if that is what they want to do. It was very confronting and I ended up getting off the tram, walking a block or two in the opposite direction and jumping on a bus. I felt safer being away from the situation, and not having to deal with the cops who had arrived really quickly and were trying to establish what had happened. When I went past on the tram a few hours later, they were still trying to sort it out - so I am glad that I got out of there.

The USA is many things but one thing it is not is boring.

Next Stop: Mexico City.

The party goes up in smoke.


Aunty Kathy and I


Bride and Groom


The reception + The waiter


California Coastline