A Very Special Note From The Road: Roswell to Little Rock (via Jesus Country, TX)

It's so special that I'm not going to put this NFTR entry in its customary italics.

My new Melbournian bus buddy (I've completely forgotten his name, in fact I forgot it the moment we got off the bus, how slack is that? It was some typical white boy name - Andrew? Matt? Oh goddamnit.) and I went roaring off into the New Mexican wasteland. At this stage in my trip, I was only too grateful for the prospect of conversation as the journey to Amarillo would take the vast majority of the daylight hours and I had yet another 14+ hr bus trip to look forward to after my dinnertime stopover. The other plus about having a Melbournian around was that I finally got to speak to someone whose first words to me weren't "So, are you British?"

I was on my way to Little Rock, AK and he was on a non-stop trip heading over to a college in South Carolina for an exchange term. We spoke of our respective travels, life (he was wary about leaving his girlfriend for six months), AFL and the docudrama Supervolcano. Thankfully that was the only drama worth a mention on that bus trip, which remains a clear favourite in my memory banks.

Once you hit Texas, you know darn well you've hit Texas. The landscape is a long stretch of flat green void replacing the dust of New Mexico and the humidity goes up by 50% the second you're over the state line. The Southwest well and truly becomes the South here, with white church steeples and corn fields dotting the landscape, people sitting on their porches with a shotgun in one hand, an iced tea and the sweet sound of honky tonk permeating the air*. There are an inordinate amount of pick-up trucks and corn silos on the side of the roads. We pulled into Amarillo around 5, I farewelled the Aussie and began my epic Texan mission.

You see folks, I had all kinds of plans for this cowpoke town. Amarillo is the epicenter from which all the waves of tacky emanate across America and I couldn't wait to make the most of my all too few hours here. I jumped in a cab and demanded to be taken to the Cadillac Ranch. This being Texas, my cabbie was listening to a Christian radio station. To be fair, Texas may not actually have any other type of radio station outside of Austin. After a few excruciating minutes of Jesus warbling, we pulled up outside a paddock.

"That's them over there ma'am"
".....I'm sorry, where?"

Squinting into the distance I could make out ten shadowy blots on the paddock landscape. Caddy Ranch is so difficult to see from the I-40, I'm willing to bet that all first time visitors have to drive past twice before they find it. I told my driver to keep the meter running and sprinted across the cowpats. I know I've mentioned it before in this blog, but let me explain Cadillac Ranch once more. There are ten Cadillac cars buried halfway into the ground at the same angle as the Cheops pyramid, because the Cadillac is apparently the only American contribution to engineering significant enough to rival the Pyramids. The site is the brainchild of an eccentric millionaire (aren't they all?) by the name of Stan Marsh 3 (no, the three is not a typo and I don't know if he has any relation to the South Park character) who has erected all these weird pieces of 'art' all over Amarillo. After you're done at the Ranch, go see his giant pair of legs or perhaps the 'floating' mesa. Oh by the way, a small correction from one of my previous posts - as it turns out, the largest cross in North America (perhaps the world) isn't in Amarillo, it's even further out in the backwaters of the I-40 in a place called Groom.

So anyway, the Ranch. That photo at the top of the post is how they looked the day I arrived and every so often they get repainted, either for a theme, a cause (they were painted pink for Breast Cancer Awareness month) or they're blanked so that a new mob of graffiti artists can add their own personal layer of colourful rubbish. I forgot to bring spray paint, but a kind family travelling home to Oklahoma let me borrow theirs. After I spent a few minutes marvelling at my handiwork, I sprinted back across the paddock, jumped into my cab and directed the driver to The Big Texan.


Oh. My. God.

Absolutely nothing...not the rumours, not the bloggers, not even their own website can fully prepare you for the sensory explosion that is the Big Texan Eatin' Joint. It's not just an assault on the tastebuds either, from the second you arrive you are blinded by the garish blue and yellow paint job, the giant cow statue and the home-on-the-range country porch swing. Then you go *inside* and you're confronted by the faux-gunshot boom coming from the shooting gallery and the chatter from the main dining room. The air is thick with the smell of grilling cow. If you weren't blinded by the exterior decorating scheme, you'll be done in by the interior, which is mostly comprised of various stuffed animal heads adorning the bannisters all the way around both floors of the dining room**. As far as Texas is concerned, animal rights activists can fuck right off. They have two wandering minstrel cowboys who come around to every table with their guitar and fiddle in order to take song requests. I thought I'd go for the classic:

Me: "Can you play Stairway to Heaven?"
Cowboys: *blank look* Sorry ma'am.
Me: "Right. Hmm. How about some blues?"
Cowboys: *more blank looks*
Me: "You only play country, don't you?"
Cowboys: "That's right ma'am"

I requested The Yellow Rose of Texas and oh boy, they sure knew how to play that, you're darn tootin'. As they're going around the outside, your attention is frequently diverted to the centre, which is where most of the real action happens. You see, the Big Texan is home to the oft-imitiated, never equalled 72oz. Steak Challenge where suicidal people can undertake the challenge of eating a big fuckoff slab of meat, a baked potato and a side salad in an hour and get it all for free. For my metric people, 72oz is just over 2 kilograms of cow. Gross. There's a platform erected to these brave souls in the middle of the dining hall and there's even a webcam for those of you who want to watch people massacre their insides with steak from the privacy of your own home. I got to watch three idiots take the challenge. One succeeded. You'd expect the victor to be a fat bastard but he was surprisingly, if you'll pardon the pun, beefy.

To be honest, I think the challenge would be a doddle if the quality of the food is anything to go by. I didn't partake in any of the steaks but the broiled salmon was almost as delicious as the waiter who delivered it to my table. Seeing as this is Texas, you get a choice of two sides with every meal and it all arrives on a plate big enough to feed a small family. The service is as good as the food - I know that in a tourist hotspot you'd expect the waitstaff to be the picture of servitude in order to score tips, yet a lot of the time you'll have horrific service and they'll still expect a tip from you at the end. Not so at the Texan - I've never experienced hospitality as warm as it was in the South.

With a heavy stomach and a full heart, I cabbed it back to the bus terminal (I had toyed with the idea of staying the night, or better yet, taking a free limo back to the terminal but they only offered hotel transfers). That's when I found that my bus was delayed. By two hours. Gollygosh, darn and gee whiz y'all I was none too pleased about that. I attempted to read, but the guy behind the desk kept thwarting me with his incessant flirting. So I thought "What the hell, I'll flirt back." I needed the practice and it made the wait for the bus go a lot faster.

The bus to Little Rock was a long-ass trip through Texas in the dead of night with a transfer in Dallas at some godawful hour of the morning. Now there's an experience I hope never to repeat. I was sitting around in the Dallas terminal caught between listening to the televangelist on the overhead screen or listening to some scrag on army leave discuss her views on Bush, Southern food and how she was 'goin' on home' to a place called 'Leezyana' (where ever that is) with anyone in the terminal who would care to listen. I like to judge a city by the amount of dodgy people hanging around their Greyhound and based on that criterion alone I can tell that Dallas, like LA and Vegas before it, is a total shithole. When I wasn't irritated by the preaching, I was terrified/hopeful that someone was going to pull out and handgun and shoot up the place/the Louisianan. Another two hours of torture later, my bus for Little Rock arrived. I can sum up that leg of the trip with a conversation that might have taken place after they'd drawn up the official state borders down south:

Vernon: Hey Jim ya varmit, we're at the border of Texas and Arkansas and we're thinkin' we might set up camp here, even though it's a lil' groty. What d'ya wanna call this place?

Jim: Well gee Vernon, I dunno. How about Texarkana***?

Oh Texas, you crazy state. Despite the fact that you're obsessed with size, your people are mildly retarded and the air compostion is roughly 75% methane, I'd love to come back and do you properly one day. I'm not happy about missing Austin (especially with the curse of hindsight) and I'm dying to see just how crazy you get down Mexico way.


* I may be lying here.
** I am not lying here.
*** Seriously, that's what it's called.

New Mexico Part 3: There's Something A Bit Weird About Roswell

Roswell in a nutshell.

I was on the bus from Albuquerque after narrowly avoiding an abduction by my cabbie, heading to the place where the Dusty Southwest meets the Dirty South. I believe that the true South begins on Interstate 380 in New Mexico. Any place south of Soccorro in New Mexico or Arizona is cause for concern, although once you've travelled as far east as the Texas/Oklahoma border, it doesn't matter how far north you are, you're still in the South, a territory ruled by a fearsome entity known only as the Lord-ah Jeezurhs. I knew we were in trouble when I looked at the New Mexico map and saw towns with names such as 'Truth or Consequences', 'Carlsbad' and 'Loving'.

There's not much to say about the actual bus ride, seeing as I was unconscious for the vast majority of it. A nearly-empty bus of mostly Hispanic guys with a few white boys scattered in the seats meant that I didn't have to share, and the view outside the window was dusty, flat and dull - much like the foreheadless parts of Arizona. So I resumed my epic quest to find the most comfortable sleeping position on two Greyhound seats and I think I've got it. Armrest up, window seat slightly back, as many jackets/scarves/soft bags as you can squish against the window to use as a pillow, legs diagonal across the two seats so you can stretch out as close to the aisle as you can get, arms curled up to your neck, head facing the window. It's not the Ritz, but with this method you don't wake up with your extremities flopping retardedly about, deprived of proper circulation. Of course, the best spot is right up the back near the W.C. - gross if you've got an upchucker riding with you, but most Greyhounds have *three* seats in the back, so you can lie straight across them.

We hit Roswell in the late afternoon and as we were pulling into town, I thanked my lucky stars that I was only here overnight. All I saw out the window were streets with no footpaths, a military academy and fast food chains everywhere. On the main road near my hotel there was quite literally a KFC next to an Arby's next to a Wendy's next to a Sonic, next to a Dairy Queen near the McDonald's. I may have buggered up the exact order but I can guarantee that they are all in walking distance of one another. There was also a small strip mall nearby with a drive thru Starbucks across the parking lot from a drive thru pharmacy, with a drive thru ATM around the corner. I am not joking when I say that I saw a guy in a pickup drive across a fricking parking lot to get from the drive thru (I am getting so sick of writing the not-word 'thru' all the time) 'bucks to the pharmacy. Sigh.

It didn't take long before I proved my intelligence was at the same level as your average alien encountering Joe. I got off the bus, called a cab from the public phone, told them the address of the hotel and waited. Now, the Greyhound station in Roswell is even smaller than the one in Santa Fe, it is quite literally a tiny tin shed in the middle of nowhere with three people (myself, a Hispanic guy and one of the white guys from my bus) sitting around waiting for transport and two others behind the counter. It was in this tiny tin shed in the middle of nowhere that I experienced one of those strange, serendipitous occurrences (that only ever seem to happen in the most innocuous of places). Three women and two men enter and take a seat in the station. One of the women opens her mouth and this brazen, rough yet oh so familiar accent comes tumbling out. She's an Australian. All four of her companions are Aussies as well, from Queensland. They're going in the opposite direction to myself with their final destination being Las Vegas. We share travel experiences and remark how odd it is to find Australians in Roswell of all places. Their bus arrives after about fifteen minutes, we all wish each other luck on our travels and they depart.

I'm still waiting on my cab to arrive, getting agitated when I notice that the public phone is ringing. Being the last one to use it, I pick it up and it's the cab company. They'd been calling for fifteen minutes because they couldn't find the hotel I had named in town. After some confusion, they decide to send someone around in five minutes. My cabbie arrives and she has no idea where the Springhill Suites are. I go digging about in my luggage trying to find my hotel confirmation and upon locating it, discover that I'd given them the name of my Memphis hotel instead of my Roswell hotel. What's even better is that from outside the bus station, I can see my hotel. It's 200 metres away. My wonderful cab driver realises that I've had a bitch of a day and sympathetically offers me a ride to the hotel, free of charge ("So you won't have to drag your heavy bags over"). I arrive at my hotel less than a minute later wearing my very best Dunce cap and dragging my tail between my legs. Sighh.

After the cab debacle I walked everywhere in Roswell. I was the only one who did so, even though the centre of town was only a mile away from everywhere else. The very centre of town is where all the alien-related garbage lies (all three blocks of it in the main st). You'll find the Cover-Up Cafe, the Crash Down cafe (yes shitty television fans, it really exists), the UFO Museum and Research Centre, a McDonald's that looks like a flying saucer and tackiest of all, alien shaped street lamps that glow green at night. Sighhh.

Unfortunately everything was shut as it was past 5 p.m, and the combination of not eating much on the bus and walking around Roswell in the heat made me realise I was starving. Roswell has no restaurants in the downtown that are open for dinner and if they do, then I clearly missed them. So I walked back towards my hotel with people harrassing me from inside the cars, curious as to why I was using my legs for walking (such a novel concept in this part of the world). One of the few restaurants in town was a bar and grill a few blocks in the opposite direction, devoid of gourmet delights but at least it was better than a Sonic cheeseburger deal. At about 10pm I was nowhere near sleep, so I decided to do as the Roswellians did and tried the Seppo version of Wendy's for the first time. As repulsed as I am by American fast food chains I have to say, Wendy's Chocolate Frosties are amazing.

The next morning I went back to the tin shed in order to board my bus for Texas. As I'm waiting, I hear another eerily familiar accent addressing me "Hey, excuse me...you're Australian right?" Wouldn't you know it, it's one of the white boys from my Albuquerque bus the day before. He was also the same white boy (his name sadly escapes me) who was inside the bus terminal when the other five Australians appeared, had overheard our conversation and was about to get on the same bus, as we were both heading towards Amarillo.

So there were no real aliens in Roswell, but on one bizarre afternoon in a tiny tin shed in the Middle of Nowhere there were seven (little) Australians. Yeah. There's something a bit weird about Roswell.

A Note From The Road - Vegas to Albuquerque

There's a woman and her two brats in front of me in the queue at the gates to get the hell out of Hell. The daughter is fairly undisturbed, despite the fact that she is toddler age, but I can already tell that the son is going to make my next twelve hours on the bus my penance for not giving in to the various temptations of Sin City. He will not stop moving around. My patience is wearing thinner than usual, as not only am I still trying to gather my ramshackle shreds of sanity together after my experiences of Vegas, but there's a tell-tale catch in my throat and I know something is festering in my chest cavity. It's not a good situation from the outset.

And wouldn't you know it, it gets worse.

I'm somewhere in the backdeserts of Nowhere, Arizona en route to Flagstaff. The bastard spawn is sitting directly in front of me. The girl, quiet though she was at the beginning, has been screaming at random intervals throughout the trip and the boy is giving his long-suffering mother grief by hassling the yelling girl. That catch has developed into a full blown sore throat, I'm red hot from fever and white hot with rage. Worse still, we've picked up a drunk. He's been hollering from the back of the bus since Henderson, NV and the bus driver's protests do nothing, because he doesn't speak a work of English and the driver isn't fluent in imbecile. We get held up as he gets kicked off the bus. That's my favourite part of Greyhound's policy - you cause trouble, you get packed off at the next stop and left there to sober up and wait for the next form of transport to shoot through and rescue you. The stop the drunk is stranded at won't see a bus for the next TEN HOURS and there's nothing around except for tumbleweed and skin cancer.

At the next stop, a guy gets on the bus and he has NO FOREHEAD. A huge chunk is missing from the top of his head. It's concave. His nose is grizzled, his hair is barely hanging onto his tightly-skinned skull and oh my god, if this was a film I'd be dead in an hour's time after he hijacks the bus and drives it off a cliff. And he's one of the more attractive patrons.

Some many hours later, I've managed to get a good two hours worth of rest and I'm gradually feeling worse as the minutes progress. The kid in front of me keeps looking back in my direction and every so often he shoots me a cheeky look, but there's also a note of concern in his eyes. As the sunlight fades and we near Albuquerque, his mother and sister fast asleep nearby, he works his tiny hand through the gap so that it reaches beyond the head rest and over into my side where my hand is resting against the window and the little fucker grabs hold. He looks about as tired as I feel, and we sit holding hands on and off for the rest of the bus ride. To this day it remains one of the most heart-warming and innocent gestures I've ever received from another human being.

Damn kids.

As we step off the bus a storm erupts around us, the stifling heat from the day erased by the downpour. The air instantly felt fresher. I waved goodbye to my little buddy and mouthed a thank you. I don't think he understood.

Las Vegas - July 30th - August 4th: The Inferno

Isn't Vegas photogenic!?! Mm. Good. Now that I've said something kind and loving and Christian, let's get down to the nasty stuff.

Attention: Potential Terrorists (if you're reading this) - stop attacking London, Glasgow & Tanzania and go for Las Vegas instead. You'll be doing myself, God and Darwin a favour by wiping out a huge chunk of stupid from the gene pool.

Attention: CIA/ASIO/etc agents (if you're reading this) - I don't condone terrorism nor am I plotting anything, I'm simply a humble would-be despot, waiting for her little revolution to begin. There will be no need for any water boarding here, thanks.

Looking back over a year on from my time in Vegas and having read the entire Divine Comedy since then, I can't help but compare myself to Dante. The both of us have been to Hell and back. This is the story of how I suffered through the circles of Hell in The City of Sin (irrelevant circles have been omitted for the sake of my fingers and your sanity).

THE FIRST CIRCLE: LIMBO

From the outset I have to say that Vegas, despite it being a godforsaken dust bowl that only a bunch of morons and Mormons would call home (that was something of a tautology wasn't it...) , has a few not-horrible elements to it. Take that photo up there for example. That's a shot of the water show outside the Bellagio hotel where they've a rigged series of fountains to go off in time with music (the word music is here used in its loosest possible definition, seeing as one of the 'tunes' used in the fountain show was 'God Bless The U.S.A). The Bellagio Cafe is also the only place in Vegas where you can get a decent meal without needing to tart yourself up in your best D&G or suffer the horrors of the fried chicken buffets. It's also home to this stunning ceiling artwork in the lobby. The other not-horrible casino is The Mirage/Treasure Island, purely because they've managed to cover the stench of cigarette smoke by filling the entire place with the scent of coconut oil and frangipani. That being said, I still wouldn't want to be shipwrecked there, especially seeing as this is supposed to be paradise, but there are worse places you could be stuck in, such as...


THE SECOND CIRCLE: LUST

On my first day in town, bewildered by the scorching 40+ heat in the desert outside and the masses of people inside my hotel the Sahara, I somehow stumbled into a near-empty (for no place in Vegas is completely devoid of people) alley way. A couple pulled over in a convertible next to me and the 'gentleman' driver called out "Do you swing? She wants to know!" I'd been in Vegas for two hours at this point and the fun did not stop there.

Of course I was expecting Vegas to be rife with opportunities to indulge in the sins of the flesh and I am by no means a prude, but come on Vegas. Try and have some class. Is it really necessary to replace ALL of your legit newspaper boxes with row upon row of call girl catalogues? Must there be filthy looking proles giving out burlesque show leaflets to every single guy that walks past every single casino? In regards to the porn proles, I couldn't help but admire their tact - I must have passed over 150 of them (no, that's not an exaggerated figure...if anything it's a conservative estimate) in my three evenings out on the town and I was not given a single leaflet. The married couples were similarly spared. They also advertise burlesque production on huge billboards outside each casino and around town. All this, and the jury's still out on whether you're legally allowed to see completely unclothed tits.

That's right. Prostitution is illegal in Vegas (although I get the feeling it's illegal in the same sense that pot is technically illegal in Vancouver) and if I recall my U.S law correctly, you're only allowed to see nipple tasseled bosom in strip joints (please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). The state of Nevada may be exempt from this, but knowing Vegas and its 'tease and please without actually delivering' culture, I would not be surprised. For the record, you're allowed to see tits in Portland (heaven knows I saw a lot more than that) and they've got a more subtle way of going about it.

The Third Circle containing the Gluttons has been omitted because you already know about the buffets. Yes, there are some fat people in Vegas. No one should be surprised there.


THE FOURTH CIRCLE: AVARICE

This one should be obvious. The goal of most visitors to Hell is to amass as much cash as possible by feeding great wads of the stuff into a blinking machine's mouth. I'm not going to discuss gambling here, mostly because I'm not stupid enough to partake in the activity. Unfortunately I was stupid enough to fall for some of the other tricks and pitfalls that Vegas employs in order to rob you blind.

For starters, good luck getting cheap internet access, much less FREE internet access on the Strip. You can't even hack into someone else's Wi-Fi network. Unlike most hotels/cities the nearest cheap internet in Vegas is a good five miles out of town, in the arse end of nowhere. Secondly, don't take a cab if you're heading off the Strip. In my quest for teh internets I handed over a decent portion of my cherished green trying to get to the internet cafe out in the Styx, thus eradicating any savings I thought I'd make by not using the Sahara's internet. I walked the five miles back that night and got hopelessly lost after realising that the main road into town doesn't have a footpath for a large chunk of the drag. This is southern America, people. Nobody walks here. I almost missed my scheduled Cirque Du Soleil performance but thankfully a wandering hobo helped me find my way back into town.

Now just what in the hell is the deal with Cirque Du Soleil? I saw the Love show because I felt like I should experience at least one major Vegas event and when it comes to these kinds of shows I'll take the Beatles over a stock standard wank circus, a vaguely gothic take on life in an Ewok village, and tits, tits and more tits. It's a decent enough diversion for one evening - there were a couple of cute little effects and tricks. That being said, the ticket price is ridiculous, the soundtrack doesn't include Across The Universe (my mind boggles at the exclusion of the most lyrically stunning track the Fab Four ever produced) and GOOD LORD ABSOLUTELY NOTHING MAKES A LICK OF SENSE. Why is there a drag queen tottering around the stage dressed as the bastard child of Elizabeth I and the talking wardrobe from Beauty and the Beast?!
I cannae understand it.

In conclusion: next time I think I'll opt for the titties titties titties.

THE FIFTH CIRCLE: WRATH/SLOTH

By the third morning of Vegas, I was ready to make a break for Purgatory. Unfortunately, I'd prepaid my room at the Sahara in advance so I decided to say fuck it all and barricaded myself in my room, with my pay-per-view movies and my room service and my steadily growing collection of novels as my means of survival. The night after Cirque Du Soleil, I watched Knocked Up for the first time and dear lord, I very nearly killed myself laughing when I realised what I was missing from my Vegas experience (scroll to the bottom of the interview).

I'm omitting the Sixth Circle of Heretics because I've already mentioned the huge Mormon population there and if you want some Latter Day Vitrol, go see my Utah entry.


THE SEVENTH CIRCLE: THE VIOLENT

It's hard not to be a lazy bitch in Vegas, seeing as your alternative is to walk around in the hot, sandy desert all the live long day/night. It's even harder to be a woman out on your own in a place like Vegas because this place really does take all kinds. If you are dumb enough to go off the Strip, ladies, I implore you to never go alone. On the Strip you're relatively ok simply because there are millions of people outside at all hours and most are too dumb/drunk/busy trying to pick up the dumb drunkards to bother hassling you. The second you go off the strip, however, is when the crazies begin to swoop and Las Vegas becomes frightening.

For the record, I am dumb enough.

I spotted a gigantic Vintage store out the window of my cab on my first day in Vegas, so I made a mental note to go and check it out before I left town. The Attic Vintage Store is one and a half miles away from the Sahara, so not that far to walk and it's not even that far off the Strip. I walked down Main St and was about three quarters of the way to my destination when I crossed in front of a white van at one of the blocks. It takes me three more blocks before I realise that I'm walking in front of the same white van every single time I hit a street corner and that's when the hair on the back of my neck starts to rise. That's also when the driver picks up on the fact that I've picked up on the fact that he wants to pick me up and begins motioning for me to get in the van. I'm not that dumb, so I keep walking. After another block, he starts driving down Main St at my walking speed, repeatedly motioning for me to get in the car before he starts to hit the brakes harder. That's the moment when I discover that I'm right near the Attic, so I bolt inside and spend the next half hour examining tatty old showgirl costumes and contracting rabies from the resident cat. The creepy driver is not stupid enough to follow me inside.

THE EIGHTH CIRCLE: THE FRAUDULENT

Let us go straight to Bolgia #10 which in the Inferno contains The Falsifiers. I'd like to throw a whole heap of the people who recommended Vegas to me straight into that pit. Before I left, a bunch of people inquired as to whether I was going to Vegas and when I stated that I wasn't quite sure, people were aghast. "WHAT? YOU DON'T WANT TO GO TO VEGAS? YOU HAVE TO DUDE, IT'S LIKE ONE OF THE MAIN PLACES TO SEE IN AMERICA, EVERYONE GOES THERE".

The next time I hear that come out of someone's mouth, I'll have two words for them. Fuck. Off. The most popular parts of America (I'm thinking LA, Vegas, NYC, D.C. here) are also the worst. Don't let anyone try and tell you different. The best thing to do in Vegas is leave - stay longer than a day and the city, like the ring of the Falsifiers, will make you sick. If you're really that desperate to see the place, search for the Strip on Google Maps and try and look at it during their daytime. You're in for a shock.

Contrary to what's in the rest of this blog, the worst element of Vegas isn't the gambling or the titties. It's the environment. Outside it's hot enough to boil the buttocks of a thousand ice monkeys and if the heat doesn't get you, the dust blown around from the construction sites will. Inside the casinos it is freezing. The constant blinking, buzzing and glowing from the slot machines envelopes your senses. The confusing aromas of perfume, food, boozehounds and cigarettes permeate the air. Everything is made to distract your mind from reality and a result, you end up in a state of stimuli overkill. I developed my pulsing headache on my second night, which all the Nurofen in the world could not kill off. As a novelty, I even tried one of the oxygen bars that are all over the Strip and while it dulled the ache enough for me to last another hour of wandering, my head was still bitching when I went to bed and it only got worse from there.

Despite all the false information relayed to me about Vegas, no outright acts of betrayal occured, so the Ninth Circle is not included.

As the sun was setting on my last day in Hell I boarded my Greyhound bus to the heart of New Mexico . We may have been travelling through the darkness, but I felt that I was finally making my way back to the Light.

Discography:

Surprisingly, not that many songs remind me of Vegas but special mention goes to Luscious Jackson's Sexy Hypnotist (yes, I did hum it constantly as I wandered around) and Tom Jones' It's Not Unusual because it always reminds me of that scene in Fear and Loathing.

A Note From The Road: San Francisco To Vegas

If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, then it is walled with posters for bad conventions. All along Interstate 15 the view out the window is nothing but visual pollution (Lance Burton, one of these days I will hunt you down and take a scythe to your testicles...I had to see reproductions of your bastard, ugly mug no less than seventeen times down that endless stretch of desert and by the end I was praying that I would be given the opportunity to make you and your boyband-chic bangs magically disappear) and bat country. No, I did not get to pull over to the side of the road and utter that line from Fear & Loathing. Yes, I thought about running to the front of the bus and ordering the driver to hit the brakes, but the bus was packed and I figured such an act would be considered poor form.

This is not where our story begins.

Our story begins, as always, in a Greyhound station...and in this case it's L.A. I've been in Los Angeles for approximately forty five minutes and thirty seven seconds waiting to change buses and I'm already desperate to leave, mostly because it's getting hotter every minute and uglier every second. We were given a small tour of the city before we reached the main depot, even briefly pulling into North Hollywood and the only remotely interesting sight out the window was the sign for Mullholland Drive. Yes, I squealed. Inwardly. As for the rest of the place? If you're unfamiliar with the sights and smells of Los Angeles, well, think of everything negative you've ever heard about it. It's all true. Think of everything positive you've ever heard about it. Right. I'm going to assume they were talking about Disneyland which, for the record, is in Anaheim. Not L.A.

Twenty two minutes and sixty three seconds later, the line for the Vegas bus gets moving and we're off into the desert. I have found the secret to scoring your own seat on a Greyhound bus. If the bus is packed to the rafters, you have no chance whatesoever, suck it up and spray some perfume so you don't have to choke on the aroma of stale rum wafting over from the drunk next to you. If there's only one seat left and you want to be the lucky bastard who gets to sleep horizontal, nay, the bastard who gets to sleep period, then here's what you do:

1. Gather up all your hand luggage (you will need at least two items) and pile it on the empty seat next to you.
2. Assume the position: scowl on face, arms crossed over your chest, knees up near your hand luggage on the seat next to you.
3. As soon as passengers start boarding, cough up a lung. As loudly as possible. Hack up some phlegm if you wish. Your chances are doubled if you mutter to yourself afterwards.

It never fails. I should know - I've taken over fifteen Greyhound trips and I've only had to suffer the company of strangers four times. I got lucky on the LA - Vegas bus, the people you get on this route are all the American weekenders with dreams of cash windfalls that are the size of their triple-stacked, cheese-laden Louisiana fried chicken buffet platters. Unlike everyone else on the bus, I didn't have to spend the next few hours with my cheeks pressed against the window and someone else's cheeks spilling over onto my thigh.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the boredom began to take hold. You know you're in trouble when this is the sight that greets you out the window. I loathe to think of what the road is like beyond Vegas if the next place of note is Salt Lake City, christ. We scored a lunch break in the delightful dustbowl that is Barstow. The blast of air that floated upwards as we all exited the bus was furnace hot and through the haze and face-melting I could spot little more than a Starbucks, a Macca's and...well...I think you're starting to get the picture. I'm considering my options for instant heart failure when a stray black kitten pops up from behind a rock under the bus station, spys me, freaks and crosses my path in order to get away. I'm not usually one for superstition, dear readers, but you can and should look upon that event as foreshadowing.

The only other real town on the desert road is Baker and all I've got to say about Baker is that I witnessed the towering structure that is World's Largest Thermometer as we flew past and I now feel that my life is complete. Sleep overcame me, and I woke up just in time to see a giant pyramid. And a castle, which looks inflatable and would probably be a lot more entertaining if that were true. And a rollercoaster circling the landmarks of New York City. There is only one place in the universe pathetic enough to contain all three of these complexes. I had arrived.

Six Days in San Francisco - July 23rd - 30th

I was expecting a lot from San Francisco, having been immersed in its pop culture ever since I was knee high to a grasshopper. At any moment I was expecting to see John Stamos, Bob Saget and the whole Full House gang (except for Joey who, in my universe, died from cancer shortly after the show went off the air) walking around Golden Gate Park holding hands with a miniskirted Margaret Cho and Harold Perrineau dressed in a sequinned frock and suspenders.

Imagine. They'd be the Tranners!

Instead picture this scene: It's 11 a.m and I'm arguing with a chick with blue dreadlocks over the fact that she won't let me check into my hostel, despite my bringing the pity party and relaying my story of the nightmare bus trip from Portland. I've just had a 'white knuckle, knee buckle' cab trip because people in the Bay City don't drive, they drag (*boom tish*), and the taxi drivers are the worst.

Sam's Tips for Surviving San Francisco #1 - Don't take taxis. Just don't. Walk from the airport if you need to, your chances of survival are greater and, with all those godforsaken hills, you'll be a few kgs lighter in a matter of days.

Needless to say, I lose the argument with Gonzo but she budges a millimetre and allows me to check my bags into storage. I decide to blow off the city for a day because I'm feeling completely shagged and even after I wash my face and attempt to shake off the bus-lag I still resemble the Creature From The Grease Lagoon. There's a huge screen TV in the lobby and free internets which means I'm set for the day, but the one thing I'm lacking in is food and I'm starving after wisely avoiding the 3 a.m Taco Bell pit stop. That warrants a wander to the nearest place with edibles. Unfortunately, the view from my cab was a building-tinged blur so I have no idea where I am or what I'm surrounded by. I discover just how unfortunate am I the second I step outside.

A woman in a raggy turban is muttering to herself and swatting away an unseen person. There's a man sitting huddled in a doorway. Another guy is surveying the street, eyes wide and bloodshot, as though he hasn't slept in weeks. There are unidentified suspicious substances all over the footpath. The street is devoid of well-dressed, sane individuals so in my present state I fit right in. My hostel is smack bang in the middle of the...quaint neighbourhood of San Fran known as the Tenderloin. Oh. Shit.

Welcome, my friends, to San Francisco.

Sam's Tips for Surviving The Bay City #2 - Whatever you do, if you're on the cheap accomodation-wise...DON'T, I REPEAT, DO NOT stay at the HI City Center. Stick with the HI Fisherman's Wharf which may be in the middle of Tackyland, USA (Fisherman's Wharf is like Darling Harbour except drenched in visual pollution, full of candy stores & bad tourist attractions and completely charmless) but at least you don't have to mess up your hair and put on a crazy face in order to avoid stalkers & drive-by shootings. YES IT IS THAT BAD.

I do have one good thing to say about the San Franciscan HI hostels and it is that they offer great walking tours of the city. I went on the trip to the Museum of Modern Art (great for Warhol but the rest of the collection was quite wanky) and got to meet a few people but the guy from the hostel we had as our tour guide creeped me out.

So, back to my finding eats. After some average pancakes at the nearest place I could find that looked relatively safe and drug hustler free, I scooted back to the hostel as quickly as possible to glare at Gonzo and settle down to a nice afternoon watching...the Sci Fi channel. What is it with hostellers and sci-fi shows? Is it because some of the people who frequent hostels resemble creature people usually found only on Star Trek? Or is it just a general rule that the most social of living arrangements end up attracting the most antisocial of inhabitants (eg: prison, hostels, comic conventions)? As I enter, there's a guy sitting on one of the couches who, without warning, hacks up a great glob of phlegm and spits it into his cup. I make it my business to slide along my couch to be as far away from him as possible. Come now, my fellow tera'ngans*, let's try and show a little decency, there's a lady present...

Two things happen which save me from my first day in The Hades Hostel. 1. Hugh Jackman's left bicep appears on screen. 2. Hugh Jackman's right bicep appears on screen. Yeah. X-Men 2 comes on and this is how I meet Meika. She comes into the TV room and since she is normal and hasn't run screaming from the room at the sight of unwashed Sam we do the awkward 'Who is going to say something first' dance, she wins, and we chat.

Approximately four hours later I'm in Jazz at Pearl's with Meika and her equally lovely sister listening to some big band numbers after a meal of average Italian with far too much cheese, some cheap beer and amateur palm reading. This is a hell of a lot better than the original night I had in mind. What amazes me on this first night in San Francisco and continues to amaze me all throughout this trip is the variety of people I've managed to come across and even, dare I say, appreciate as members of the human race. There were and are a lot of people who inspire the opposite emotion, but let's not discuss them just yet. Over the course of the next six days I meet Emma, a chick from New Zealand via the States with the most confused accent I've ever heard, two more Kiwi girls who are my roommates for a brief period of time, one who snores like the running engine of a Mack Truck and doesn't look much better, but they're both out for a good party and they're good people so I like them and then there was the most exciting meeting of all.

Picture this next scene: I've been trekking up and down the fucking San Franciscan hills all day and I'm in need of a break. I'm wandering around The Cannery near the Waterfront area, snacking on two huge scoops of Norman's delicious Gelato. That's when the most beautiful music begins and I realise that it's two buskers, a man and a woman of the usual opera build performing 'O Sole Mio', the one opera piece that I'm familiar with. I'm intrigued, so I grab a pew. Unfortunately the performance ends, the small crowd disperses and it's just me and the opera duo. That's when the woman pulls out a copy of Harry Potter 7, smiles at me and we get talking. Her name is Litz Plummer, but some may know her as the Opera Lady of San Francisco and you can listen to her here. Myspace does not do the great lady justice. The gentleman's name is Robert Close, he's performed as Piangi in the Broadway production of Phantom and he is hilarious.

Robert: (this was after extensive conversation) You know what I like about you? The fact that you're from Australia, which is famous for all the sun and beaches and yet...*lifts trouser leg* you're about as pale as I am.

(For the record, I managed to tan slightly after a week or two in the Nevadan/New Mexican/Texan sun but then I moved to the West Coast of Canada for the winter and any hope I had of retaining my slightly less translucent colouring was shot to shit).

Those three viginettes basically sum up San Francisco. It's not so much a city as it is a collection of neighbourhoods smashed together - some are naughty, some are nice. If you've got no idea what you're meant to be doing when you get there, then my advice would be don't move, siddown kid and listen to me.

Sam's Tips For Surviving San Francisco #3 - Places To See & Places To Avoid Like The Plague

Consult this map and be wowed by my MS Paint skills. You may notice that there's a clear path you can take to get around San Francisco whilst still avoiding the sketchy areas.

You can't travel to San Francisco and not visit Haight/Ashbury as it is easily the greatest neighbourhood of them all, although I'm sorry to say you will be disappointed if you're wanting to recreate the '69 Summer of Love. Unfortunately, some of the hippies survived to see the 80's. As the haze of pot smoke began to fade, they discovered the joys of creating outfits made from the trashed remainder of their marijuana plants before selling them to hapless tourists at a mark-up rate of 800%. Fucking business hippies man, is there any greater contradiction? They and their love children invaded the area, ditched the 60's spirit, kept the rainbow decor and now it's an expensive shopping district full of decent vintage outlets and stores hawking pot/acid paraphenalia (even though all the users moved to British Columbia some decades ago. You want to see real hippies? Go to Saltspring Island, not San Francisco).

So I had a look around the Castro because we all know of my relentless fag-haggotry and again, I was disappointed. Yes, the area is gayer than a cluster of antique dealers at a Margaret Cho show, but so is Darlinghurst and that suburb is twice the size of the tiny Castro. I did enjoy the sight of the local public school and it's definitely worth a look if you can avoid going near the neighbouring Mission area, you're gay and you fancy going clubbing.

One of the neighbourhoods I had no preconceptions about is the Nihon Machi district. It's the more sterile, less tacky Chinatown and on the map, it's situated somewhere in the Western Addition area. Eat here, as there are a few decent hole-in-the-wall Japanese places and you're guaranteed to be served a meal that isn't covered in cheese for a change. Your other option for food is Haight/Ashbury where I would suggest the Ethiopian restaurant in the middle of the main strip for a similarly cheese-free and cheap meal. After you're done, go check out the Asian grocery with the Great Wall of Pocky. Yes. You now know where I made a significant portion of my spending money disappear...

The worst part of San Francisco, Tenderloin aside, has to be the South of Market area, which is full of sketchy run-down buildings and the only thing more run-down than the buildings are the people. I walked around this area (thankfully not for very long) and I found myself questioning how San Francisco manages to be regularly ranked as one of America's most liveable cities, (especially seeing as I'm inclined to agree with most of the of other selections on Places Rated, except Portland should be #1 with Pittsburgh as #2).

Another suggestion I'd make to visitors heading to California is...don't (you have no idea how badly I want to make a shirt that says "Fuck California...I'd rather be in Oregon") but if you must head to the Bay area, take a day out and roadtrip. Your options are to head to the Napa valley and/or Sausalito which I didn't get around to visiting but if I had the opportunity again I'd go there or alternatively, you can head down south to San Jose, if only for the sunshine, relative warmth and the opportunity to sing "Do You Know The Way To San Jose?" on the Greyhound. I checked out the Winchester Mystery House (which isn't exactly mysterious so much as it is gigantic and full of unnecessary rooms and doors that lead to nowhere), and wandered aimlessly around the strip malls. My one recommendation for San Jose goes to Lisa's Tea Treasures mostly because I found the funkiest pair of teapot earrings there (sadly I didn't get to sample the tea).

After six days, too many hills and not enough scoops of Norman's finest ice cream later I left my a shoe in my locker at the HI, packed my gear and prepared, with a heavy heart to start my journey eastwards to Las Vegas (the one place I wasn't looking forward to visiting) and beyond.

A Musical Guide To San Francisco:

Honeymoon - Phoenix: I didn't have many romantic moments in San Francisco but driving over the Bay Bridge at night, listening to this song felt like one of those perfect instances of universal timing where everything just fit. I suggest you try it.

O Sole Mio - for obvious reasons.

Do You Know The Way To San Jose - Dionne Warwick: Again, obvious but very funny if you're me and you're quietly humming to yourself on a crowded public coach.

Any of Margaret Cho's comedy albums are great for commentary while you're walking around, the best of the bunch being Notorious C.H.O.



* that would be the Klingon word for human. You have no idea of the shame I felt when I googled the words 'Klingon Dictionary'.

Visit Utah! We have Super Wal-Marts!

So, my accommodation is almost completely sorted out for my entire U.S.A trip. It's been a long, drawn-out process with moments of panic ("Christ, these crazy Elvis fans book well in advance don't they?"), moments of ecstasy ("That is the most awesome bed and breakfast I've ever seen!") moments of sadness ("Oh crap, it's in Arkansas") and moments...of disbelief.

That was in my confirmation email from the hostel in Salt Lake City, Utah. You know you're in trouble when you're visiting a city which has the library and a Super Wal-Mart listed as the main attractions. I love the sound of my hostel though (free internet is always a drawcard), on the reservation site it claims 'We take credit card holders only for a more select clientele' and 'Felons need NOT apply' (do parking tickets count?).

I think I'll tell them I dyed my hair red and black for a dare...