New York to Seattle to Austin
...just one of the many great country and western songs that should have been a hit!
So, did you miss me while I was away in the badlands of the USA over the last four weeks? Hmmnn, maybe not. I can't quite believe I've been in the States for nearly a month now and have managed to see both coasts AND drive half way across the country to Texas.
I arrived in New York from Rio at the beginning of March to find that winter still had a fierce grip on this part of the world. It quickly took a fierce grip on me as I realised that flying in just my vest and Speedos wasn't the best travel fashion choice ever.
I'd been to New York a couple of times before (both times in the winter) but that couldn't detract from the exhilaration of being back once again. I stayed for six nights but you could spend a month there and still only scratch the surface of things to do and see. Imagine my excitement though when I discovered that Sting was playing three gigs at a relatively small theatre during the time I was planning to stay. The shows were all advertised as being sold out but I was supremely confident of getting a ticket from somewhere, especially since I'd missed him doing an impromptu show at a hotel in Hong Kong during the first week of this trip. This time there would be no hiccups!
New York is the best walking city in the world, I think. Around every corner lies some iconic landmark, whether it's the famous skyscrapers, the Fifth Avenue department stores or the neon lights of Times Square. For me though, it's all the smaller, simpler nuances that makes it so appealing and real; the steam leaking out of the pavements from the subway, the yellow taxi cabs, the hot dog sellers, the madness of trying to order a lunchtime sandwich in a deli (now THAT'S pressure), strolling through Central Park on a weekday when it's quiet and deserted or just encountering some normal guy walking along singing Frank Sinatra tunes loudly to himself and everyone else. I really saw that happen and no, it wasn't me.
Before arriving, I was fascinated to find out whether America would embrace the backpacking community in the same way that the rest of the world does so easily. On a hostels website, I found a very attractive looking place situated in a historical brownstone building on the Upper West Side, just two blocks from Central Park. See, just saying a sentence like that makes you feel like you should be in the middle of a Woody Allen movie or fighting crime on NYPD Blue.
The only problem with the hostel though was the fact that it's the International Student Centre and they have a MAXIMUM age limit of 30! I'd lost a bit of weight in South America and I considered lying and saying I was a (very) mature student but the lines and bags around my eyes would have given me away in a second. Thankfully, a begging e-mail got me through the door. Where else in New York can you stay for twenty bucks a night!
I was keen to see some of the sights I hadn't seen before so was very pleased when Helen flew over to join me for a few days and agreed that shoe shopping would not be on the agenda. We took a trip to Ellis Island, a fascinating place located close to the Statue of Liberty, which has been turned into a museum showing what immigrants had to go through when arriving in America during the first half of the last century.
We also saw a fantastic Broadway show, "Moving Out" featuring the songs of Billy Joel and gained some intriguing cultural insights about the city during an evening at a comedy club. For example, there's a popular chain of restaurants in America called "Hooters" (isn't there Bruce?), famous for it's scantily clad waitresses who all have big... eh.... well, take a wild guess. Anyway, apparently Hooters now do Take Out food - who the hell is that for? Can you picture a potential customer thinking, "Yeah, I really love the sh#tty fried food but I don't care much for the service"? No, me neither.
Despite the mainly freezing weather, New York was a delight. It's big, bustling, safe and easy to get around and judging by the number of British accents in evidence, has become a real Mecca for those looking for a reasonably inexpensive long weekend break. Must come back and see it in the sunshine sometime though.
When I originally booked my round the world ticket, I had a romantic notion that I'd just be handed a bunch of airline tickets and I'd make up my itinerary as I went along. Unfortunately, I had to identify all my destinations at the outset, which was a bit of a problem because having been to the States last year, I had no real plan as to what to do or where to go this year.
"So after New York, where next?" said the nice girl in Trailfinders in Sauchiehall Street last October. I scanned the map on her desk aimlessly and just pointed to the other coast. "Might as well go to Seattle; never been there before."
Everyone told me that Seattle gets the highest rainfall in America and that I would definitely get wet but it ended up being five days of unbroken sunshine. The biggest city in the evergreen state of Washington was just gorgeous... however, my hostel, the interestingly named 'Green Tortoise', was not.
Despite being smack in the centre of downtown Seattle, it wasn't in the most pleasant of areas. The local needle exchange was right next door and just a block down the street at the Lusty Lady cinema, Tolkien fans could enjoy "The Return Of The Schwing". Have to say that I thought the plot in the book was a lot better - nice scenery though!
The city itself is a curious mixture of Conservative affluence, liberal minded rock and roll culture and some quite stark poverty. I'd never seen so many homeless people begging in the streets of any other Western city. It's the home of Microsoft and mega airline builder Boeing and you get the feeling that it's striving to be like San Francisco but just can't loosen up enough. However, it does have the most coffee shops I've ever seen and it's the home of Starbucks so I felt like I'd finally found the mother ship and I gorged the stuff copiously... and nearly made myself sick!
Seattle is surrounded by some dazzling scenery including mountainous Olympic National Park across the bay to the west, active, snow capped volcanoes to the south and the beautiful Cascade Mountains to the east. If you ever watched "Twin Peaks" or "Northern Exposure" (two of my all time favourite shows) back in the early 90's then this is where they were filmed and it was a big thrill to be able to visit a couple of the actual locations.
The one striking landmark in Seattle is the Space Needle, a sort of needle-shaped tower with a space ship shaped restaurant thingy on the top. It took centre stage at the 1962 World's Fair and to get to it, you take a thrilling 90-second ride on a monorail from downtown which is really quite something... if you're making the ride in 1962! Now it's just quaint.
Luckily nearby is the Experience Music Project a marvellous museum showing excellent exhibitions of The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and Bruce Springsteen among others, and displaying memorabilia from the last fifty plus years of popular music. There's even a whole floor of interactive instruments where you can batter drums or unleash some face-melting guitar solos to your heart's content. You can even turn the bass up to 11 Donald! Disappointingly, it was packed with hundreds of pesky, would-be Kurt Cobains so I didn't get a shot, the wee b#stards!
I didn't have a flight booked out of Seattle and my next destination was over 2,000 miles away in Austin, Texas where Keith lives. I decided I would try and drive there using the same driveaway company I discovered last summer. Basically, they're a company who transport cars around the country for people who have moved house and they're always looking for prospective drivers to deliver the vehicles. It's rare that they actually have a car available for the exact place you want to go but the Seattle office had one that needed to go to Phoenix in Arizona so I snapped it up right away.
Accompanying me again was my friend Meredith who was along to make up for her woeful lack of driving support in New Zealand but in truth, it was great to sit back in the passenger seat at times and soak up all the road trip Americana that the journey had to offer. Titanic, 18 wheel trucks thundering by, tumbleweeds tumbling, roadrunners running, skunk smells wafting, motel signs flashing, all very Thelma & Louise.
Our route took us southeast from Seattle through the Cascade Mountains and then the barren fields of east Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Crossing south into Utah, the landscape picked up again and the views close to Salt Lake City were splendid with the mountains on one side and the... eh... Great Salt Lake on the other.
I was keen to stop for a meal here to see if I could see any Mormon men dining with one, or preferably all of their wives. There's a great debate raging at the moment around the issue of same sex marriages and George Bush is pushing for the Constitution to be amended to define marriage as the union of "a man and a woman". Where that leaves the Mormons, I don't know but it would be amusing if some two million of the Republican votes disappeared because the marriages here were declared illegal.
Anyway, enough politics. Utah's big appeal is that it contains some of the best National Parks in the country. I'd been to Zion in the south last summer so this time I went to Arches in the east, a great sprawl of rocks and cliffs that have been eroded by the elements over the centuries to form huge, natural stone archways.
Very impressive. South from there, I got to revisit my favourite National Park, Monument Valley, again arriving at sunset and it was every bit as awesome as last year. Didn't have time though to stay over for the "traditional Navajo St. Patrick's day dance"! And you thought he was Irish!
After driving 1,589 miles of the 1,590 mile trip I narrowly avoided wrecking the car at one of the stupid four-way intersections they have everywhere here and managed to deliver it safely round the corner in one piece whilst fighting to conceal my quivering, after-shock limbs.
From Phoenix, we rented a jeep for the two-day, 1,000 mile trip to Austin. Driving almost directly east on one, endless straight road is a surreal experience. I finally worked out how to operate the cruise control but was a bit let down when I was told that this meant I couldn't then just crawl into the back seat for a snooze and let the car cruise along by itself. I don't see why not. It's not like there're any bends in the road. Actually there were one or two bends in the road and it became the source of frenzied excitement when I realised that I would get to move my arms slightly left or slightly right.
On the way, we stopped in at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in the bottom corner of New Mexico. My admiration for the people who first crossed this country in horse drawn wagons grew by the minute because how this place was discovered is beyond me. It's hundreds of miles from anywhere. How on earth did the pioneers survive without diners and tacky souvenir stores selling stripper shot glasses and 'real' rattlesnake jawbones?
The caverns were deep and dark and a bit spooky with thousands of bats sleeping close by in the imaginatively named 'Bat Cave'. The huge stalactites and stalagmites are striking though, subtly lit and mutli-coloured.
Finally, we rolled into Austin, groovy state capital of Texas and for the last week or so I've been doing pretty much nothing but playing golf, putting back on all the weight I lost in the last four months and then playing some more golf. Long may it continue.
And finally, did I get a ticket to see Sting in New York? Well, yes I did. Paid an embarrassing amount of money to a large, African/American gentleman outside the venue and ran excitedly to the theatre door only to be turned away because the ticket was fake. I guess Sting and me are just not meant to be. By way of consolation, I did appear in front of millions of people a few nights later on David Letterman's Late Show when he picked me out of the audience to take part in his weekly quiz so I suppose that made up for it!
Anyway, now that I'm in Texas, I've turned to the sweet, poignant comfort of country music so here in full are the rest of those classic tunes that should have been hits.
Till next time (whenever that may be), have a real nice day now y'all.
Love, Neil x
1. Drop Kick Me, Jesus, Through The Goalposts Of Life
2. Get Your Biscuits In The Oven And Your Buns In The Bed
3. Get Your Tongue Outta My Mouth 'Cause I'm Kissing You Goodbye
4. Her Teeth Were Stained, But Her Heart Was Pure
5. How Can I Miss You If You Won't Go Away?
6. How Can You Believe Me When I Say I Love You When You Know I've Been A Liar All My Life?
7. I Don't Know Whether To Kill Myself Or Go Bowling
8. I Flushed You From The Toilets Of My Heart.
9. I Would Have Wrote You A Letter, But I Couldn't Spell Yuck!
10. If I Had Shot You When I Wanted To, I'd Be Out By Now
11. I've Been Flushed From The Bathroom Of Your Heart
12. If My Nose Were Full of Nickels, I'd Blow It All On You
13. If You Leave Me, Can I Come Too?
14. Mama Get The Hammer (There's A Fly On Papa's Head)
15. My Wife Ran Off With My Best Friend, And I Sure Do Miss Him
16. I Still Miss You Baby, But My Aim's Gettin' Better
17. Oh, I've Got Hair Oil On My Ears And My Glasses Are Slipping Down, But Baby I Can See Through You
18. You Were Only A Splinter As I Slid Down The Bannister Of Life
19. I Hate Every Bone In Your Body Except For Mine
20. I Want A Beer As Cold As My Lover's Heart
...just one of the many great country and western songs that should have been a hit!
So, did you miss me while I was away in the badlands of the USA over the last four weeks? Hmmnn, maybe not. I can't quite believe I've been in the States for nearly a month now and have managed to see both coasts AND drive half way across the country to Texas.
I arrived in New York from Rio at the beginning of March to find that winter still had a fierce grip on this part of the world. It quickly took a fierce grip on me as I realised that flying in just my vest and Speedos wasn't the best travel fashion choice ever.
I'd been to New York a couple of times before (both times in the winter) but that couldn't detract from the exhilaration of being back once again. I stayed for six nights but you could spend a month there and still only scratch the surface of things to do and see. Imagine my excitement though when I discovered that Sting was playing three gigs at a relatively small theatre during the time I was planning to stay. The shows were all advertised as being sold out but I was supremely confident of getting a ticket from somewhere, especially since I'd missed him doing an impromptu show at a hotel in Hong Kong during the first week of this trip. This time there would be no hiccups!
New York is the best walking city in the world, I think. Around every corner lies some iconic landmark, whether it's the famous skyscrapers, the Fifth Avenue department stores or the neon lights of Times Square. For me though, it's all the smaller, simpler nuances that makes it so appealing and real; the steam leaking out of the pavements from the subway, the yellow taxi cabs, the hot dog sellers, the madness of trying to order a lunchtime sandwich in a deli (now THAT'S pressure), strolling through Central Park on a weekday when it's quiet and deserted or just encountering some normal guy walking along singing Frank Sinatra tunes loudly to himself and everyone else. I really saw that happen and no, it wasn't me.
Before arriving, I was fascinated to find out whether America would embrace the backpacking community in the same way that the rest of the world does so easily. On a hostels website, I found a very attractive looking place situated in a historical brownstone building on the Upper West Side, just two blocks from Central Park. See, just saying a sentence like that makes you feel like you should be in the middle of a Woody Allen movie or fighting crime on NYPD Blue.
The only problem with the hostel though was the fact that it's the International Student Centre and they have a MAXIMUM age limit of 30! I'd lost a bit of weight in South America and I considered lying and saying I was a (very) mature student but the lines and bags around my eyes would have given me away in a second. Thankfully, a begging e-mail got me through the door. Where else in New York can you stay for twenty bucks a night!
I was keen to see some of the sights I hadn't seen before so was very pleased when Helen flew over to join me for a few days and agreed that shoe shopping would not be on the agenda. We took a trip to Ellis Island, a fascinating place located close to the Statue of Liberty, which has been turned into a museum showing what immigrants had to go through when arriving in America during the first half of the last century.We also saw a fantastic Broadway show, "Moving Out" featuring the songs of Billy Joel and gained some intriguing cultural insights about the city during an evening at a comedy club. For example, there's a popular chain of restaurants in America called "Hooters" (isn't there Bruce?), famous for it's scantily clad waitresses who all have big... eh.... well, take a wild guess. Anyway, apparently Hooters now do Take Out food - who the hell is that for? Can you picture a potential customer thinking, "Yeah, I really love the sh#tty fried food but I don't care much for the service"? No, me neither.
Despite the mainly freezing weather, New York was a delight. It's big, bustling, safe and easy to get around and judging by the number of British accents in evidence, has become a real Mecca for those looking for a reasonably inexpensive long weekend break. Must come back and see it in the sunshine sometime though.
When I originally booked my round the world ticket, I had a romantic notion that I'd just be handed a bunch of airline tickets and I'd make up my itinerary as I went along. Unfortunately, I had to identify all my destinations at the outset, which was a bit of a problem because having been to the States last year, I had no real plan as to what to do or where to go this year.
"So after New York, where next?" said the nice girl in Trailfinders in Sauchiehall Street last October. I scanned the map on her desk aimlessly and just pointed to the other coast. "Might as well go to Seattle; never been there before."
Everyone told me that Seattle gets the highest rainfall in America and that I would definitely get wet but it ended up being five days of unbroken sunshine. The biggest city in the evergreen state of Washington was just gorgeous... however, my hostel, the interestingly named 'Green Tortoise', was not.
Despite being smack in the centre of downtown Seattle, it wasn't in the most pleasant of areas. The local needle exchange was right next door and just a block down the street at the Lusty Lady cinema, Tolkien fans could enjoy "The Return Of The Schwing". Have to say that I thought the plot in the book was a lot better - nice scenery though!
The city itself is a curious mixture of Conservative affluence, liberal minded rock and roll culture and some quite stark poverty. I'd never seen so many homeless people begging in the streets of any other Western city. It's the home of Microsoft and mega airline builder Boeing and you get the feeling that it's striving to be like San Francisco but just can't loosen up enough. However, it does have the most coffee shops I've ever seen and it's the home of Starbucks so I felt like I'd finally found the mother ship and I gorged the stuff copiously... and nearly made myself sick!
Seattle is surrounded by some dazzling scenery including mountainous Olympic National Park across the bay to the west, active, snow capped volcanoes to the south and the beautiful Cascade Mountains to the east. If you ever watched "Twin Peaks" or "Northern Exposure" (two of my all time favourite shows) back in the early 90's then this is where they were filmed and it was a big thrill to be able to visit a couple of the actual locations.The one striking landmark in Seattle is the Space Needle, a sort of needle-shaped tower with a space ship shaped restaurant thingy on the top. It took centre stage at the 1962 World's Fair and to get to it, you take a thrilling 90-second ride on a monorail from downtown which is really quite something... if you're making the ride in 1962! Now it's just quaint.
Luckily nearby is the Experience Music Project a marvellous museum showing excellent exhibitions of The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and Bruce Springsteen among others, and displaying memorabilia from the last fifty plus years of popular music. There's even a whole floor of interactive instruments where you can batter drums or unleash some face-melting guitar solos to your heart's content. You can even turn the bass up to 11 Donald! Disappointingly, it was packed with hundreds of pesky, would-be Kurt Cobains so I didn't get a shot, the wee b#stards!
I didn't have a flight booked out of Seattle and my next destination was over 2,000 miles away in Austin, Texas where Keith lives. I decided I would try and drive there using the same driveaway company I discovered last summer. Basically, they're a company who transport cars around the country for people who have moved house and they're always looking for prospective drivers to deliver the vehicles. It's rare that they actually have a car available for the exact place you want to go but the Seattle office had one that needed to go to Phoenix in Arizona so I snapped it up right away.
Accompanying me again was my friend Meredith who was along to make up for her woeful lack of driving support in New Zealand but in truth, it was great to sit back in the passenger seat at times and soak up all the road trip Americana that the journey had to offer. Titanic, 18 wheel trucks thundering by, tumbleweeds tumbling, roadrunners running, skunk smells wafting, motel signs flashing, all very Thelma & Louise.
Our route took us southeast from Seattle through the Cascade Mountains and then the barren fields of east Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Crossing south into Utah, the landscape picked up again and the views close to Salt Lake City were splendid with the mountains on one side and the... eh... Great Salt Lake on the other.
I was keen to stop for a meal here to see if I could see any Mormon men dining with one, or preferably all of their wives. There's a great debate raging at the moment around the issue of same sex marriages and George Bush is pushing for the Constitution to be amended to define marriage as the union of "a man and a woman". Where that leaves the Mormons, I don't know but it would be amusing if some two million of the Republican votes disappeared because the marriages here were declared illegal.
Anyway, enough politics. Utah's big appeal is that it contains some of the best National Parks in the country. I'd been to Zion in the south last summer so this time I went to Arches in the east, a great sprawl of rocks and cliffs that have been eroded by the elements over the centuries to form huge, natural stone archways.Very impressive. South from there, I got to revisit my favourite National Park, Monument Valley, again arriving at sunset and it was every bit as awesome as last year. Didn't have time though to stay over for the "traditional Navajo St. Patrick's day dance"! And you thought he was Irish!
After driving 1,589 miles of the 1,590 mile trip I narrowly avoided wrecking the car at one of the stupid four-way intersections they have everywhere here and managed to deliver it safely round the corner in one piece whilst fighting to conceal my quivering, after-shock limbs.
From Phoenix, we rented a jeep for the two-day, 1,000 mile trip to Austin. Driving almost directly east on one, endless straight road is a surreal experience. I finally worked out how to operate the cruise control but was a bit let down when I was told that this meant I couldn't then just crawl into the back seat for a snooze and let the car cruise along by itself. I don't see why not. It's not like there're any bends in the road. Actually there were one or two bends in the road and it became the source of frenzied excitement when I realised that I would get to move my arms slightly left or slightly right.
On the way, we stopped in at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in the bottom corner of New Mexico. My admiration for the people who first crossed this country in horse drawn wagons grew by the minute because how this place was discovered is beyond me. It's hundreds of miles from anywhere. How on earth did the pioneers survive without diners and tacky souvenir stores selling stripper shot glasses and 'real' rattlesnake jawbones?The caverns were deep and dark and a bit spooky with thousands of bats sleeping close by in the imaginatively named 'Bat Cave'. The huge stalactites and stalagmites are striking though, subtly lit and mutli-coloured.
Finally, we rolled into Austin, groovy state capital of Texas and for the last week or so I've been doing pretty much nothing but playing golf, putting back on all the weight I lost in the last four months and then playing some more golf. Long may it continue.
And finally, did I get a ticket to see Sting in New York? Well, yes I did. Paid an embarrassing amount of money to a large, African/American gentleman outside the venue and ran excitedly to the theatre door only to be turned away because the ticket was fake. I guess Sting and me are just not meant to be. By way of consolation, I did appear in front of millions of people a few nights later on David Letterman's Late Show when he picked me out of the audience to take part in his weekly quiz so I suppose that made up for it!
Anyway, now that I'm in Texas, I've turned to the sweet, poignant comfort of country music so here in full are the rest of those classic tunes that should have been hits.
Till next time (whenever that may be), have a real nice day now y'all.
Love, Neil x
1. Drop Kick Me, Jesus, Through The Goalposts Of Life
2. Get Your Biscuits In The Oven And Your Buns In The Bed
3. Get Your Tongue Outta My Mouth 'Cause I'm Kissing You Goodbye
4. Her Teeth Were Stained, But Her Heart Was Pure
5. How Can I Miss You If You Won't Go Away?
6. How Can You Believe Me When I Say I Love You When You Know I've Been A Liar All My Life?
7. I Don't Know Whether To Kill Myself Or Go Bowling
8. I Flushed You From The Toilets Of My Heart.
9. I Would Have Wrote You A Letter, But I Couldn't Spell Yuck!
10. If I Had Shot You When I Wanted To, I'd Be Out By Now
11. I've Been Flushed From The Bathroom Of Your Heart
12. If My Nose Were Full of Nickels, I'd Blow It All On You
13. If You Leave Me, Can I Come Too?
14. Mama Get The Hammer (There's A Fly On Papa's Head)
15. My Wife Ran Off With My Best Friend, And I Sure Do Miss Him
16. I Still Miss You Baby, But My Aim's Gettin' Better
17. Oh, I've Got Hair Oil On My Ears And My Glasses Are Slipping Down, But Baby I Can See Through You
18. You Were Only A Splinter As I Slid Down The Bannister Of Life
19. I Hate Every Bone In Your Body Except For Mine
20. I Want A Beer As Cold As My Lover's Heart
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