In San Francisco for a 'free day' where we are allowed to do whatever we want. There are only two of these on this holiday (until I get to Hawaii) and this lack of freedom annoys me somewhat.

Speaking of Hawaii, Mother Earth was a bit previous in throwing a hurricane at it as I'm not there for a few days, so that'll count as a miss then.

In SF we seem to be staying in a fair rough part of town, there are a lot more homeless than I see in London - five or six on each street corner here. I'm guessing that this is the 'American Dream' that we hear so much about.

I also saw the the instance of emergency aid here. It started off with a huge fire truck racing through the streets - I then turned the corner and saw them treating someone at the site of a car crash. Well, I say 'car crash', but it wasn't even a fender-bender. There was a tiny mark on one of the bumpers of the cars, no damage to either vehicle.

But for some reason they had 'collared' the patient and was holding her head as if she had been in a 40 mph head-on collision. I didn't hang around to see if they were going to cut the top of the undamaged car off - I also thought that they wouldn't appreciate my advice, so I kept walking. It all seemed a bit of an over-kill although I don't know how the services work out here.

My guess would be that a 'proper' ambulance would turn up and take the collar off and walk the patient into the back of the ambulance, it's most likely what I'd do.

American TV news is also insane - the anchor's teeth eerily follow you around the room, and one of the main stories yesterday was about a dog with air conditioning in it's kennel. Thankfully I've been able to get onto the BBC news site. Sad news about the two year old stabbed to death on my patch. I am also hearing rumours about a local ambulance crew who saved a woman and child from a burning building - well done gentlemen, you deserve a commendation.

Alcatraz later today, which should be fun.