Today I’m going to have a break from talking about the Married Guy, if you want to read more, you can jump over to SwimmerBoyz.com.

Kip has just gotten back from California, I mentioned it to you guys here a month or so ago, he was out there for a wedding and had a bit of a road trip.  We were talking this morning on Skype.  Normally we just text, we can both type faster than we can talk and generally we do talk every day even if it isn’t ‘work’ related.  Today Kip video called me because he wanted to show off his speedo tan from his trip out to California.

He said the water was cool but swimable, he was in Santa Barbara.  But the real work on his speedo tan was done hanging out at the pool while his hosts were at work.

Kip has survived a long winter in Colorado and he is stoked to get his speedo tan working.

I’m up early this Monday after a fun weekend, although my Brisbane Lions were spanked by the Sydney Swans (Aussie Rules Football) last night.

Just talking to Kip and he is heading out to California in June and wanted me to ask you guys some advice on beaches and places that might be speedo friendly.  He is heading out there for a family wedding and will be staying somewhere near Thousand Oaks, he’ll have a car and will be looking forward to working on his speedo tan after a long Colorado winter.

Anyone live out there or traveled out there and have any ideas on pools or quiet beaches that he would enjoy?

I’d love to go and join him…. maybe I’ll see if there are any cheap flights into LA.

I’ve got a good friend of mine who lives in San Fran with his wife and I stayed with them for a couple of weeks after the 2008 election when ‘Proposition 8’ was on the California ticket.  My mate is anti-gay and voted to make gay marriage illegal, his wife voted the other way – it made for some great discussions.  

In summary Prop 8, if it was passed it, would make gay marriage illegal in California.

It was voted in with 52% of the vote and over 7,000,000 Californian’s saying that they wanted gay marriage to be illegal.

On Wednesday, Chief US District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that Proposition 8 violated constitutional rights and I suppose by default gay marriage is now legal in California.

All the usual gay friendly folks are out praising the decision and I can’t understand why anyone would want to stop anyone from getting married.

One line of thought that I haven’t heard is what about those 7,000,000 – or more than half of Californian’s who don’t want gay people to get married?  I believe in gay marriage but above that I believe in the will of the people which has been overruled here.  I’m not 100% that I’m comfortable with that although in this case I am happy with the result.

What if it was the other way around and a majority of the electorate voted in favour of gay marriage and some stuffy judge made it illegal?

Just a thought – a good day overall though!!!

Even old Arnie said that ruling “affirms the full legal protections and safeguards I believe everyone deserves”.

I love San Francisco!!!

For so many reasons as well – the city is beautiful, it has a huge gay influence/community, it is open minded and I have a very good friend who lives there with his wife.

Sometimes I do get judgemental about people – people who marry to young and I’m not sure that is always right, people who say they are flaming homosexuals when they are 17yo and I’m not sure that isn’t right either. Visiting San Francisco and living in the Lower Haite neighbourhood for 2 weeks I have this feeling of being ‘fresh’, open minded a little more than I was (and you guys know I’ve pretty open minded).

I’m not sure if I am articulating this as best I could (perhaps I can blame the jetlag) but I feel open to new ideas, I feel my own predjudices have been watered down and I really feel alive after living in the big city for 2 weeks.

It really is a wonderful place and I’d like to share with you guys some photos that I took while I was there – there are some more which my mate will hopefully send through in the next couple of days and I’ll just add them to this post.

My first bike ride was a 16 mile round trip, down to Golden Gate park. I think this is the head engineer.

After a tourista photo pose we rode over the bridge on the ocean (eastern) side which opens to cyclists ONLY at 3:30pm.  This was an eye opener for me and it was pretty awesome to have the entire bridge to just cyclists!!!

Another day I was taken on a walk to my favourite restaurant – it was nearly an hour walk along the coast line where my host and I played some chess and had a dozen oysters…..  Can anyone name the restaurant we were walking towards?