Adventure and Apple Pie - Part I

A friend of mine on a second date with her new man went hot air ballooning recently.


“What for?” I asked incredulous that that was the way this bloke was trying to woo her. “He’s dumped for sure, isn’t he? Idiot.” I said scoffing.


“No, it was great.”


“Uh huh. What?”


What is that about? Ten million feet above terra firma in a basket held up by the most flammable fabric on the planet with intermittent bursts of fire shooting up through the middle of it. Hmmm, there’s a great idea.


“It was, what’s the word?”


“Dim-witted”


“No, invigorating.”


The thesaurus will tell you that daring means bold, brave, courageous, audacious and heroic. A crossword puzzle will tell you it’s nerve. In my dictionary it’s stupidity.


“It was romantic and we had champagne after,” she told me. I would have had a jeroboam of the stuff and three Valium prior to climbing in that small picnic basket I can assure you.


“Celebrate living did you? Celebrate not dropping like a stone from 5,000 feet?”


She thought it was wonderful.


I have the same trouble understanding people who like extreme adventure sports like jumping out of a plane with a parachute. I grill people about this so I can come to some sort of understanding about why this is a good idea. It’s just not natural jumping out of a plane. And for some reason they believe that a tandem jump reduces the risk factor by a thousand percent. It just doesn’t. It is still jumping out of a plane with a big hanky over your head that may or may not open and that you hope will unfurl at the right moment if it does unwrap. It is hard enough to get through life in one piece without injury and death let alone inviting it into your life.


“It’s okay I’m jumping with someone else,” they say.


“Oh goody fucking gumdrops sister. Two dead bodies.”


And the other thing, they pay huge dollars to do it. I would rather pay the same money and get on and off a plane in two different cities, or countries for that matter. There should be nothing in between except airline muffins and coffee.


It’s also not an attractive thing to do and they video it. People think it is great having footage of their faces flopping around in mid air.


“And I got a video of the whole thing,” they say overjoyed.


“Yay, you can relive it whenever you want.”


“I’m going to do it again.”


“Jesus, why?” I shout. “What’s wrong with you? Watch the freakin’ video.”


But people do the most amazing things. They climb very high cliffs and mountains with narrow ropes and little hooks. I don’t get this at all because not only is it dangerous and really mindless but it’s tiring. It is actual work and exercise and it is so very,very high. I get vertigo on a small ladder. I can barely watch TV shows of people climbing up these cliff faces without shuddering uncontrollably. It’s spooky.


The other daring adventure people indulge in that I don’t appreciate or comprehend at all is swimming with sharks. Sharks kill people just to snack. That’s why we have lifeguards; shark planes that circle over the sea when a shark is spotted, and alarms at major beaches. Didn’t people see Jaws? I’m from Adelaide and I know sharks can eat boats and surfboards and people.


“Sharks are my friends,” someone said on the Discovery channel. Who wants to see this dude’s enemies? My definition of a friend is a little different. It’s a buddy and companion, an ally. Not someone who wants to devour you at will while you bleed to death. I mean it’s a fish with very sharp fucking teeth.


Base-jumping is one more bizarre sport to me and seems that it can get a bit reckless and dangerous for others when people dive off of buildings or tall objects in major cities. I just don’t see the thrill in it when doing it from anywhere though. But I am a chicken in anything to do with heights so I’m possibly really biased. I know it’s all about the adrenalin and cheating death but it’s just such a long way down. The zipper at the show freaks me out. Stuff the zipper, looking down from an upper storey shopping centre paralyses me with fear.


While I’m not keen on risky adventure sports I don’t mind doing things of risky nature when I travel, like flying into New York with American Airlines on the 11th of February, sitting in row 11. That’s a risk I don’t mind taking. You see apparently the number 11 has been linked to mystery and power since the earliest of times. All forms of number research and studies, including numerology, the ancient science of Gematria, and the secret wisdom of Kabbalah, all give momentous significance to 11, and 11 derivatives, for example - 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77, 88, and 99.


The 11th number is considered a master number according to some, an example is, the first Great War, World War 1 which, ended on the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month. In Tolkein's, The Lord of the Rings, the number 11 is depicted as an inquisitive number, and getting to your 111th birthday is a huge event, it’s also a bloody miracle. Apparently the USA missed series of numbers on the Apollo moon missions to make certain it was Apollo 11 that landed on the moon. In Egypt, King Tutankhamen's tomb had combinations of 11 in the jewellery he wore, and he had 11 oars placed on the floor surrounding his tomb.


So there you go. I did a risky thing when I flew into New York on that day and that is as far as I will go.


I love travelling and have been to lots of places. Now that I have a partner I love to bits, I want to go back to all the places I’ve ever been and see it through their eyes as well as my own again, let’s be fair. So recently in February we went to the US of A. America, home of the free. I don’t think America is necessarily free any longer as much as they declare and remind themselves that they are.


I have been there three times and have discovered that that is still not enough. I have seen about 10 of the 50 states and no more than that because on my second and third go, I could not get past New York City. I am obsessed and completely fixated on New York. I have always been passionate about it, even before I went. I love everything about it. The architecture, the energy, the size, the bagels, the hot dog stands, central park, the buildings and the vigour of the place is indescribable. I have been there in the middle of summer and the middle of winter and loved both equally. I love it so much that I have applied for a green card in a lottery so that we can live there for a year or two if we want to.

Americans are an odd yet also lovely race in my opinion. Loud, over patriotic (so much so I think that they lose sight of reality), friendly, ignorant, (does Australia have wind, what state is Australia in?, you Australians are from England aren’t you?) and they can seem rude at times yet I am not sure whether that is really their intent or whether they simply come across as being bad-mannered. I wonder these days too if it really and honestly has something to do with 9/11. The day that changed the world most definitely changed America most of all and I think it seeps out of the people there in atypical ways. 

Go Adventure!

Lonelyplanet usa

Adventure and Apple Pie - Part II

This year when we were in San Francisco I witnessed a cable car driver yell at some poor tourist telling him that “just because he is a tourist doesn’t mean he can do whatever the fuck he wanted”. The poor bloke was trying to quickly move out of the way of all the millions of people clambering onto the cable car and climbed out over the wooden seat on the side of the car. The reason he was doing it in the first place was because the cable car driver was shouting at all of us to move aside. I thought that was rude.




We went to a bar in San Francisco later that night and were only served one drink. The bar guy completely ignored us to watch the TV in the corner. We were the only two people in the bar and got the hell out. Later we were told by the next bartender Tommy, that the best advice we could take from him was to pay up (a tip) to the bar person after every round. We were shocked, firstly why didn’t the first guy just tell us that and secondly, what the fuck? After every round? We learned to get a tab quick and tip at the very end or else drinking in the States would have been an exorbitantly expensive course of action for us. This same bar guy had his own business card that had him on the front with a black background with him lighting a cigarette. He thought he was just Uber cool. He was a tosser. He told us there was no point in him travelling. Why would he waste his money on going anywhere else when everybody else came to him? It is all about them sometimes.


When ordering a beer at anytime it always seemed that they had whatever we wanted in ‘lite’ beers but not in heavies. Lite beer is so very common in America on both coasts and in the middle bit. I asked the barman once assuming it was because of drinking safety and drink driving and guess in hindsight should not have been shocked at all by the reply. “It’s lower in calories”. We were told as if we were idiots.


Wow, we were blown away. Huge consumption of fast food, chips and nuts to snack on in the bars while drinking, but at least the beer is lite. Seems a little peculiar to me.


The nature in which Americans say things is astounding to hear. I got such a shock on an occasion when in a restaurant in America, waiting patiently for service, to hear American’s yelling out “Right here, waiter right here.” The waiters would toddle over and take their orders immediately. It was so weird. They certainly have some interesting ways of putting things. When in Carl’s Jnr (a burger place) I heard customers say to staff,


“Now, I need to get me a cheese burger, and I need to get me some fries to go with that and I need a Dr Pepper, oh and I really need you to super size that?”


Why do they need it? Want it? Yes, need? I don’t think so. And the super sized meals they sell there are inconceivable. I watched children drink what they call sodas from two litre containers for breakfast and eat fries from a bucket, prior to a burger. One word comes to mind, obesity and Australia is there too, it’s hideous. We are the baby brother copying everything America does.


In the small Californian coastal town of Morro Bay, I inquired from a lady about whether or not the information kiosk she worked at had postage stamps. The lady looked at me and said genially like she’d popped a few Valium’s that morning,


“We surely do not.”


What? ‘They surely do not’, and wasn’t she in high spirits about that.


Sometimes when asking for something in what you believe to be easy to understand, clear as crystal English and get that blank stare and complete misinterpretation is when it gets not only frustrating but incredibly astonishing. It is all English yet simple words and phrases do not get through, like coffee and banana. Like New York suddenly becoming the capital of Iceland, Reykjavik. You have to develop an American accent to be understood or else you could end up anywhere with anything. I was so frustrated by it once that I asked the person on the phone when inquiring about flights from New York to Washington DC and was given Iceland as my destination when she read it back, “Am I not speaking English to you?” I had to hang up immediately or else that was a very smashed up telephone I was paying for on check out. I could suddenly see where Russel Crowe was coming from.


I’ve never seen so many walkie-talkies as in America, in restaurants. Explains part of the obesity problem I guess. Staff do not have to walk through a section of a restaurant to talk to other staff. They each stand in their corner and report the stage of each table, which gets back to the cashier who is ushering people into the restaurant when given the green light.


“Table four’s on dessert that’d be a quick change in five I imagine unless the old gal goes in for another piece of pie.”


“Victor Charlie hotel, that’d be a big 9-0. Keep me posted and I’ll send the next lard arses in.”


“Roger that.”


And this occurs even though there are empty tables. It happens even when there are only five people in the place. What is the raison d'être please? I am confused.


The meal sizes absolutely blow me away when I am there. Almost all of them are preceded with soup and crackers, bread rolls and a salad with numerous choices in dressing. Now the tricky thing is that you have to eat the salad first. If you don’t, you will wait forever for your main meal because in America, the salad comes and is eaten before the meal and it is huge. If you ask for anything additional you will get triple the amount expected and the meals come with fries and have every ‘extra’ known to man and all the condiments ever manufactured. You almost need a table for six for two, just to fit the condiments on it. There is the tomato ketchup, the mustards, the sugars - white, brown, caster, raw, sweet and low, salt and pepper, maple syrup, Tabasco sauce, butter and margarine, chilli sauce, jelly’s (jams) and BBQ sauce, just to start with.


Ordering the food can take half an hour even for a simple sandwich. For example if I simply wanted to order the easiest thing out, a ham and cheese sandwich it would go like this,


“I’d (need to get me) like a ham and cheese sandwich please.”


“Hi. Sure. What kind of bread would you like?”


“Just bread. Any bread.”


“We have wholemeal, rye, light rye, dark rye, white, soy and linseed, multi grain and pumpernickel.”


“Umm white.”


“Sure. Thick slice, regular or thin sliced?”


“Regular”


“Sure. Would you like butter, margarine, non dairy or no spread?”


“Butter?”


“Sure Madam, it’s your sandwich. What ham would you like?”


“Ham?”


“You wanted ham and cheese?”


“Yes, I did.”


“We have Virginia, shoulder, leg, round, smoked, lite, honeyed, champagne, ham spread.”


“Virginian.”


“Now Madam your cheese selection what would that be today?”


“Just plain cheese would be great.”


“We have American, cheddar, Swiss, mild, Philadelphian, Dutch smoked, cream cheese, tasty, lite, blue vein, old smoky…”


“I’ll have American cheese please.”


“Sure and any condiments with that we’ve got mayonnai..”


“Mayonnaise would be super.”


“To go?”


“God, yes.”


“Fries with that?”


“No, on its own thank you?”


“Now on your salad? We have ranch dressing, thousand Isl..”


“No, just the sanga.”


“I beg your pardon Madam. Was there something else?”


Jesus no. “Just the sandwich no salad, thank you.”


Do you see my point and that poor bitch hadn’t even started asking about a beverage because even when you order water, it comes with four or five choices because it’s bottled and it’s fizzy and there are brands and it’s everything else.

Do not start me on coffee.

Mmm Yankee diet!

Adventure and Apple Pie - Final

The bathrooms or loos (as we say) in America were an experience to behold. You never really ever needed to use your hands. There is a push button at hip height to get in and after using the toilet and standing, the toilet flushes on its own. The next step is hand washing, no need to touch taps; a small sensor triggers tepid water. Same goes for soap. The paper towel flows out of a plastic box after triggering yet another sensor. It’s high tech.


We drove a fair way in America. I think it was about 3,000 kilometres in the end. I really enjoyed driving although LA was a bit hairy and very easy to get lost in. On every car except perhaps one, were magnets representing large ribbons saying ‘Support our Troops’. We wondered if they had been given out for free at service stations because there were so many of them adhered to the backs of cars but I have a feeling every car owner paid for one themselves. I just can’t imagine Australians being so patriotic about anything like this, I don’t know if I’m glad or annoyed at that. It seems a bit over the top to me though and a bit contrived. But that is my opinion.


The number of fast food restaurants in the US is staggering. I will list merely a few. Burger King, Pizza Hut, checkers, Hardees, White Castle, KFC, Arby’s, Carls Jnr, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, Dominos, Roy Rodgers, Burger King, Big Boy, Subway, Qdoba Mexican grill, Chick – Fil – A, Donut King, Krispy Kreme, Mel’s diners, A&W Restaurants’, INS and OUTS, Starbucks, Denny’s, Long John Silver’s, Dairy Queen, Sonic Drive In, Hard Rock Cafes and of course on every corner and in every field, McDonalds. It is fat heaven. It is also a cheaper option and an endless variety. You can’t ask for more than that. What isn’t a cheaper option is ordering a pot of tea from a casino hotel room in Las Vegas at $11.00 a pop and have it arrive cold.


The tipping and the taxes drive you a bit mad after a while and in the end when we weren’t as keyed up any more and people were rude to us we just didn’t tip much at all. We did not mind tipping well if people were courteous but why should we pay them a gratuity for fucking impoliteness. It’s wrong. Taxes are unavoidable but we had some power when it came to tipping. Piss us off, very small tip, nice to us, great tip. We kept a collection of smaller notes in our pockets constantly because we would forget to keep smaller bills and then it was embarrassing when you had a few quarters and dimes to tip and that was all. We just couldn’t afford to tip $20 notes. It was hard to work out how much to tip sometimes and math is not a strong point for either of us, at all. The very last day we were there (typically) we discovered the easy way to work it out. Just double the tax.


Since 9/11, security has become exceptionally stringent and thanks to God for it. On arrival in the States we had our fingerprints scanned and our retina’s photographed. I was glad to do it. We frequently had to remove belts and shoes and have our backpacks checked in airports, buildings, shops and museums with and without special gadgets that picked up explosive dust or something. It became an automatic practice to kick off shoes and pull belts from pants upon entering any of the above without being asked. I found myself very aware this trip of the low flying planes or anything seeming odd. I didn’t expect to react that way at all not having been back since 1989 but the world is different and I think America will always be a mark for that shit.


The West and East coasts are very different from each other and each of the cities I have visited really has different and interesting characteristics of their own. Los Angeles, city of Angels is a seedy place with a great feel though. It’s warm and ‘out there’. I probably liked it more this time than any other time and when I’m there I think I probably won’t ever return to LA but whenever I leave I know I will. It pulls you to it. I guess I have my own agenda with an interest in Hollywood and the movies but it does feel comfortable to me.


San Francisco is a scenic city with a beautiful harbour, famous bridge, hilly streets and a prison called ‘Alcatraz’ or ‘The Rock.’ I have always loved being there, the city not the prison of course. Las Vegas, God what can be said about this place of ‘Bright daytime lights at night’ and endless gambling? Gambling, cigs and booze, bad make up and Hawaiian shirts come to mind. Buffet meals, $1.00 beers, free cocktails while gambling and rooms filled with smoke and body odour from stale old gambling fuckers who never quit, not even to shower. The day you roll into town your eyes nearly bug out of your head. I swear we didn’t utter one word bar “fuck me” while driving through town. It is so full on and weird. It is dreamlike and bizarre and when the sun goes down it remains surreal and you love it because it is unlike anything you have ever seen in your life before. You love the fountains at the Bellagio, the colossal well lit billboards, all the rooms full of games and cheap meals in restaurants, seeing incredible casino’s like Luxor, Mandalay, New York New York, The Venetian, Caesars palace, Paris, MGM, Monte Carlo and Flamingo, just to name a few. Then a day or so later after getting married by Elvis and losing $50 bucks in a poke on a poker machine, you know you hate it with all you’ve got and you are coming down with something. You cannot look at that carpet on all those casino floors anymore because it looks like multi coloured throw up. And on your way out of Vegas, city of sin, heading for the desert, you swear you will never be back but you don’t know if that’s true or not.


Flying by small plane from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon National Park and then through the Grand Canyon itself via helicopter, cruising the Colorado River and heading to amazing look outs by way of a hummer with a native Indian was an extraordinary experience I will never forget.


Washington DC was the revelation of the trip we weren’t expecting. We loved it. We did not have enough time there because we didn’t want to cut any more days from New York but next time, we’re staying a week. It is a beautiful, historic metropolis that is very different from our own capital and the people there seem lovely. The memorials, statues and monuments are a sight to behold and are spread across the capital so that the whole city is worth venturing into. Then there are the Smithsonian museums that can occupy you for days. It is just so very interesting which is possibly what separates it from the rest of the cities we went to, irrespective of their own attractive features.


The thing with America is that we all know all of it so well. We see it in movies and on television daily and walking the streets in those places feels very, very familiar and almost natural even on a first visit. It is in our consciousness and it is in our history and as eccentric as it can seem I will always be drawn to it like a moth to a flame and I have no idea at all, why that is the case. My love affair started with the United States long before I went and the visits there have only consolidated it...not that I’d ever leave my country to live there for good.

Travel USA

Green Bags

Is the Woolworths green bag the new black? What is up with that sucker? It’s everywhere, it’s adaptable, it’s functional, it’s an environmental emancipator, it is a clear statement from those who ceremoniously tote them and have something to say about plastic bags but also enjoy its multipurpose. It’s loathsome to me simply in terms of the great number of them and the fact that they are green?? Eww. Apparently there are around 15 million at least, being hefted, hauled and ferried over arms and shoulders, up hills and down dales. That’s a lot of green. With a current population of 22,393,575, that works out to be 1.5 (close enough) each person, and I’m thinking probably not a lot of people under 16 would carry them. I mean, Come ON!!!




I dislike them because they are as everywhere as they can possibly be. I do not have an aversion to their purpose, merely the fact that they are now an accessory for each and every human being in this country. They are at the park, the football and the beach, they come with friends to my house brimming with children’s clothes, an odd bottle of wine, kitchen sink, small pet and snacks.


“So handy,” people mutter.


“Aren’t they? Mmm.”


I have to admit I have about 3,000 give or take, in the boot of my car because I always forget to take them in to Woollies. I think it’s a subconsciously deliberate and socially unacceptable move on my part even though I certainly don’t agree with the use of plastic and naturally approve of the saving of $173 mill to our national yearly shopping bill, yet I wonder does the average person know what they are made out of? Yes, they are used more than once meaning we are no longer using close to 11 billion plastic bags per annum but I also want to know where they are made. What grave yard will these end up in one day if they are not returned to the supermarkets that offer the recycle service and what then will happen to our environment? Are we just 'going to hell in a hand basket' or is the green going to save our bacon? These are things that keep me up at night. It’s not easy being green, it’s also not attractive.

Go green yes, but do it in another colour please!

Woolies Green Bags