Ryan Hellyer's website

There’s some great views of Alcatraz from the shore in San Francisco and from on the Golden Gate bridge.

The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is a site worth seeing, particularly around sunset. I skated the full length of it which took a lot longer than I expected.

What an awesome place! People everywhere, nice weather, lots of stuff to see and lots of stuff to do. I could totally live here Although I suspect the cost of living would be astronomical unless you lived way out in the wop wops.

There’s some seriously steep hills in San Francisco. The photo above is of me standing on the steepest one. They’re still a little shy of the gradient of our mighty Baldwin St in Dunedin though.

They do have the worlds crookedest street in San Francisco though. People have skated down it before, I considered trying, but there was too much traffic and surface was made up of horrible knobbly cobble stones.

The weather was overcast. I had a nice meal at a restaurant recommended by Mike Boyle, tried the local brew (can’t remember what it was called and it tasted like dog poop anyway), visited the water front then headed off to the Space Needle. Seattle … been seen and done in three hours I suspect it’s a nice place to live in, but not somewhere I’d recommend making a short visit to.

And the prize for my worst first impression of a city ever goes to … Los Angeles. The stench of smog at the airport was simply foul. The following photos I took from the plane show the yucky smog quite nicely.