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Three weeks in the United States
I was recently lucky enough to spend three weeks in Harrisonburg VA. The first thing I noticed when I stepped off the plane is that cigarettes are $3.20 per packet rather than the $15.70 they are in Australia.
This was enough to initiate a real resentment of my home country. After eating at Waffle House, my resentment was complete.
Things I loved about the United States:
Waffle House
Snow
Lucas, Ina, April & Mandy Maria and Tom
Cigarette Prices
Wendy's
Harrisonburg
Sheetz™
George Washington Forest
Half & Half
Finnigans Bar
San Francisco Shops
Denny's tangy chicken
Walmart
Things I did not love about the United States:
Tamra
Bathroom Taps
Deer meat
Cracker Barrel
The Artful Dodger
One dollar notes
The beer
Resenting Adelaide
The coffee
United Airlines
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Sydney Airport
Sydney Airport incorporates an astonishingly clever luggage trolley system called Smartecarte. Basically, you pay $4 and load up the trolley then enter the terminal. At this stage you have to go up an escalator that does not fit trolleys. Luckily, after removing your luggage and journeying to the top of the escalator, there is another set of trolleys you can pay $4 to use. You can then use the trolly for a few minutes until you reach the international terminal transfer train that does not allow trolleys onboard. Once the train reaches the international terminal, you pay $4 for a trolley which will enable you to take your luggage around a corner where there is an escalator that does not fit trolleys but has further trolleys at the top for $4 so that you can transport your luggage around two corners before reaching an escalator that does not fit trolleys. Having exhausted both your budget and patience, you carry your bags the rest of the way. Luckily the crowds part for you, due partly to you dripping in sweat, but mainly due to your 'I will stab you' expression, so that you can arrive at the check in counter and pay $230 in excess baggage weight fees.
United Airlines
Many years ago, during a traditional family Christmas gathering, the family dog, named Gus, gained access to and consumed a 1Kg tub of butter that had been left out of the refrigerator. He then proceded to vomit the entire 1Kg up under the table (along with his prior meal of dog food and pieces of Christmas turkey). The similarity to the gelatine egg porridge I was served on board the United Airlines flight from Sydney to San Francisco was disturbing. Thankfully, my meal included a plastic cup of water so using the power of imagination and a plastic spork, I pretended it was a thin soup and made it last for over an hour.
Although hungry and bored, I was lucky enough to have an overweight American girl sitting in front of me with her seat reclined for the entire fourteen hours, thus allowing close inspection of her dandruff. As her hair was very dark, by blurring my eyes I was able to pretend I was looking out of the window at a star filled night and at one point made out the Big Dipper.
Travelex
The Travelex lady is smiling due to the fact that my eight hundred Australian dollars just became around sixteen dollars American. When I questioned her as to the small amount, she replied "No speak English."
Waffle House
Famished after spending a total of thirty six hours on flying buses and waiting in flying bus stations, salvation presented itself in the form of what is, without question, America's finest restaurant chain. If I were a food critic being asked to write about the meal and experience at Waffle House, I would provide a drawing of two happy fat people giving each other a high five.The only negative aspect of the meal was that our waitress, Shauna, hung around and kept going on about her dying child and the cost of cancer medicine in the hope of a large tip but seeing through this ploy, we snuck out without paying and stole a Waffle House coffee mug in the process.
Snow
I had never seen snow before visiting the US and while those around me complained about their vehicles sliding off the road and not being able to get out the front door, I secretly hoped the snow fall would reach several feet and trap me there for months.
My first snowball throw ever was a head shot and, taking into account the excellent degree of distance and trajectory analysis, I would have thought my girlfriend Holly would be impressed rather than driving off. Faced with the prospect of spending the night outdoors many miles from civilisation, I built a snowman to ward off wolves while I started work on an igloo. After two hours of work resulting in a pile of snow with a hollowed out cave large enough only for my head, I had to hide my relief when Holly came back, proclaiming to her that I would have been fine due to having read the novel My Side of the Mountain and that I was not crying, it was just a bug or dust or something in my eye.
Walmart
The first time I went to Walmart, I showered, shaved, dressed nicely and did my hair to the bemusement of those with me. The second time, I went unwashed, in my pyjamas, at 3am to buy a gun. In Australia, we have a nationwide ban on anything even remotely gun shaped.
When I was about ten years old, there was an elderly man living across the road named Mr Anderson, that I (innocently) drove insane through a sequence of events over twelve months which included painting his windows black believing he would wake up and think it was still night time, tying his lawnmower to the back of his car so he drove off with it and putting several packets of raspberry Jello crystals in his fish pond. The day I dipped tennis balls in paint and threw them at his house broke him and he came out screaming and waving a rifle before being arrested. I did not see Mr Anderson after that but I am sure everything turned out fine and that he looks back on those times with fond memories.
Guns
Having purchased a heavy gauge shotgun and armour piercing rounds from Walmart for the equivalent price of a carton of cigarettes in Australia, I befriended a local farm boy named Chuck by making up aboriginal words and telling lies about Australian fauna (it is now a fact in Virginia that Koalas, known as Boogawigs in the native aboriginal language, communicate with each other through song and weave themselves jackets from gum leaves during winter).
Chuck drove us in his red pickup to George Washington Forest to drink beer and kill something. Four drink bottles and a cinder block lost their lives that afternoon before a deer walked into the clearing and was shot in the leg. As the humane thing to do is never leave an animal wounded, and having run out of ammunition, we clubbed it to death with the butt of our rifles, which took about an hour, then tied it to the bonnet of the pickup truck and drove home listening to John Denver while yelling 'Whooo' at pedestrians.
Chuck wanted to ritualise my first kill by dipping his finger in the blood and wiping it on my face but as he had done a poo in the forest, without access to hand washing facilities, I told him that as a vegetarian this would not be appropriate.
Philadelphia
Made the long journey from Harrisonburg to Philadelphia for the sole purpose of visiting the famous Love Park. My girlfriend and I fought just hours before due to me stating that I would rather go see the Space Shuttle than visit her family but apparently there is no Pissed Off At David Park. We then drove home during a blizzard using a TomTom GPS system stuck on bicycle mode.
George Washington Forest
Shown here with her favourite piece of wood, Holly stated that it looked like both the letter U and a smile, "The two best things in the world."
The Space Shuttle
Prior to this trip, the only reason I had ever considered visiting the US was because it has the Space Shuttle. Like a priest carrying home their first computer after hearing about child pornography on the internet, I was practically foaming at the mouth in anticipation during the drive to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum.
I have stood in front of masterpieces in art museums that did not raise an inkling of the emotion I felt at seeing the Space Shuttle. It was at that moment I realised the high horse on which I had laughed at Trekkies from had sidled away in shame. On the way out, after spending the rest of our trip allowance at the museum shop buying plastic products made in China, I pulled my pants high up around my waist, gave my lunch money to a bigger boy and considered going over to Windows®.
The flight back to Australia
During the flight back to Australia, a small Jewish man, with a hat similar to those given out at Disneyland minus the ears, sat in front of me. There is no noticeable Jewish community in Adelaide and this was the first Jewish man I had ever seen. I had also never met a black man before visiting the US and the first was a baggage handler at San Francisco airport who I asked to pose for photos with me to mark the occasion but was told that he was very busy and to stop blocking the aisle.
Having little time for religions and assuming, like a clown and a clown carrying an umbrella, they are all pretty much the same thing, I watched carefully as the Jewish man collected his bag, went to the toilet and emerged a lengthy time later covered in sweat and breathing heavily. Thinking that if I stopped him from setting off a bomb I would be on the news for being brave, I was vaguely disappointed when I noticed through the crack between the seats, a copy of Hustler peeking out the top of his bag.
Following research upon returning to Australia, it would seem that Jewish people are not generally known for blowing up planes as they are too busy slashing cows throats, dancing badly and not buying each other Christmas gifts.
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- Copyright © David Thorne 2010 All rights reserved.
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