We emerged, blinking, ready to face the world in the only way that a pack of young Australian’s can – with a beer in hand. This seemed ideal. Davy Crockett hats, a light breakfast fire, and beer. The park ranger decided to pay us a visit at that very moment. We were rabbits caught in a spotlight. The beer was incriminating, accessory to a murder.

“Who is the responsible adult here?” he asked – the very figure of authority you see, covered in badges and a hefty, sculpted moustache.
We all put our hands up, all at once.
He cleared his throat.
“Whose name is the booking in?”

Zoom in to my face. See the sweat beads retract in to their pores. See my brow unfurl. My rippled skin slowly smooths out as my muscles relax. My pupils pan out. My nose hairs no longer stand on end.

“Mine,” says Hendo.

Indeed, this fine park ranger picked to intervene in one of maybe only two accommodations that weren’t in my name. I had dodged a bullet.

They retreated behind Ramona for a stern talking to. The noise was unacceptable. We all agreed. If it happened again, we would be kicked out. We all knew it to be true, we all knew it to be fair. No more fire crackers, we exclaimed.

Hendo relayed all this to us, of course. He then said, “and you,” pointing to Angus Kiley, “you need to shut the fuck up, he said.”
Angus Kiley was the culprit of the firecrackers the night before – the fire had burnt his hand.
“Me?!” he yelped, “Me!”
“You,” said Hendo.
He then cracked up, and we knew he was bullshitting.

I was extremely excited about this day. Fishing was on the cards. I like fishing, a lot. We were to rent a dinghy in the morning. We were to take it on the lake and paddle around for a while, and then return for a while, and then set out once again on a charter further on the lake.

We grabbed our rods from the store by the water, rented the boats from the boat rental by the water (the old ladies found our hats very amusing) and we set out. Hendo and I took one boat. The paddle out of the bay took a long time. We passed under the bay bridge, and were rocked about by a motorboat passing. A lady going the other way looked at us and shook her head in sympathy.

There were three boats on the water. I believe Ryan and Tom were in one, and Kiley, Owen and Ben were in the other. Such a display of bumbling incompetence I’ve not seen for many years. Tom and Ryan’s boat spun in circles, it’s oars flailing about as if they were the arms of a man being chased a wasp. The others rowed about ten metres past the jetty and hunkered down.

Hendo did the heavy lifting – I had grown fat on hamburgers. We rowed to the edge of our range, as allotted by the old ladies at the rental. It was a shallow, sandy point picketed by dead pine trunks. The banks of the lake were steep and covered with thick, green pines. Hendo and I wielded our fishing rods. Go time – so we would say. But something would turn out to be very, very wrong.

Our rods were left handed. Yes – it was like we had awoken in a universe where our born-to-privilege had fallen right through our fingers. We were at the mercy of lefties. I soon fixed the problem – unscrewed the reels and affixed them in correct alignment – but we would soon learn that we had unwittingly plunged in to a nationwide conspiracy.

Conspiracy – a powerful word. At the mention of it -CRACK- we heard a gunshot. On the lake? What the hell? Our boat rocked with anxiety. We started to row back, fishless, to avoid the overtime fee. As we rounded the bend of the point, we saw the others floating in their tiny boat. Kiley sat there, lighting crackers and dropping them in the water, or launching them high in to the air. How he gets away with this shit, I never know.

We made it back in time to catch our charter. A couple of families were jumping on theirs at the same time. In the face of left handed rod conspiracies, help comes from unlikely places.

Our charter maiden was Laney – the lady who had given us a sympathy shake earlier in the day. She was an interesting woman, one with a plethora of talents, and I immediately disliked her.

I did like her motor power, however. The boat effortlessly cruised the route we had taken earlier in the day. We blazed past it. What had seemed a trial was nothing more than a drop of oil in its engine. I imagine someone in a Space Cruiser 5000 on their way to Alpha Centauri will see our pitiful shuttle like that one day.

The boat swam its way across the lake, to its very far side, passing a small burnt out island on the way. Every tree on it was a black stump, as if the props section of 2001: A Space Odyssey had set itself down in the wilderness. A lightning strike was the likely cause, and they were thankful it had hit an isolated island. They tend to let nature run its course in the park.

We pulled up on the far bank. It sat on a pretty deep drop off, with a scattering of logs and driftwood hanging by the edge, making it fairly dangerous for lure work but a nice setting nonetheless.

I have a fairly remarkable talent for a half-deaf man. If I meet you, and I like the sound of your voice, I can hear it through the most vicious of hubbubs. If it grates on me, or I take a disliking to you, I’ll not pay an ounce of attention, not if you were the one voice in a void. Laney set me off.

“Alright guys, here’s the rules for the charter,” she started.
I picked up a rod – noticed it was another bloody left-handed monstrosity.
“Why are all your rods left handed here?” I asked.
“They’re not left handed,” she replied.
“They are,” I said. It was the truth!
“Uh, no, everyone fishes like that.”

Hoo, boy! That was it! In a single moment, the scientists in my brain had discovered atomic theory, split them, weaponised them – and let free the world’s arsenal in my head. Man, nothing gets me going more than someone telling me something is true that I know is not. Worse, in a condescending tone! Look, love! I’ve fished before! I’ve fished in many seas! I’ve plumbed the depths, so to speak! I know a thing or two about the art of hooking sea-life! I’ve caught sharks! Turtles (sorry turtle, I felt bad about that)! Squid! Crabs! I should be put in prison for the war crimes I’ve committed against water-dwelling organisms. I know what I’m talking about!

I stopped listening to her. Just blocked her out. Bam. Put up an aural dam. No sound in or out. She started harping on to the others about how to cast while I grinded my teeth down to paste. She finished, I cast over my shoulder, a perfect drop, nicely placed.

“HEY!” she yelled.
I turned around, stunned.
“I said no casting over the boat! Weren’t you listening?!” she yelled, every word grating my face like cheese.
“Oh, sorry,” I said, “I didn’t hear you. My apologies,” I replied.
My friends jumped in, “Yeah, sorry, he’s half deaf so sometimes he misses stuff like that.”

I smiled grimly to myself – Hah! Damn you and your infernal rules! I’ll catch more fish than you’ve ever seen caught!

I caught no fish. It was an abysmal trip. The others hooked on to them, but every one caught was a Cutthroat trout, which is a native and hence must be released. The only ones for taking are the pesty Lake Trout, which taste delicious so no one minds much. They use unbarbed hooks as well, which makes much harder. There are a number of tributaries where one can fish for Rainbow Trout, some that are reserved for fly fishing (if only we had time), and others which are populated by other species of trout, though I don’t remember which. Brown, perhaps.

On the way in, Hendo and Ben were being real dickheads. We locked them in the front hold. They were fighting down there. When they realised we’d locked them in, they wailed. Eventually they gave up, as we gazed upon the marvelous ancient, flooded caldera that forms the lake and its surrounds. We filled a bucket of water and tossed it in the hold. Commence a second round of yelling. Surely there was nothing more we could do to the poor souls. Laney redeemed herself by doing a wide, fast donut on the drive back in. We could hear them rattling about like so much tackle.

No fish – it sunk in what that meant. No dinner. We’d bet everything on it. We couldn’t take many more weiners. I really want to make a joke right now, but the fact we were seven grown men sleeping in a tent together, who enjoyed snuggling somewhat… well, it would write itself. And there’s no joy in absence of a challenge.

We left the boat, empty handed. But we would soon meet our saviours – as I mentioned, in an unlikely place. The family that had left at the same time as us had quite a haul. A bag full of lovely lake trout. We gazed upon it with envy, and respect. The American people soon proved their worth once more. Without prompting, they offered us – us, the noisy crew that had more than likely kept them up all night – they offered us their biggest fish. We were speechless, and thankful. Our polite protests soon wore off when faced with the prospect of a weiner repeat. We took their fish, shook every one of their hands, likely bowed to them, and made our way back to camp. Even now I look back on moments of kindness like that and it makes me a little wobbly. It wasn’t the first, or the last, but perhaps it was the one I treasure most of all. It made our day, and our night.

Tom and Ryan, I think, had sat the charter out, for numbers reasons. They had gone on a long walk, over the bridge which we had travelled under. I don’t know what they saw – though they told us, I can’t remember. We rejoined them, envious of their beer in hand, though not for long. I set about preparing our fish on the table. My whole life had prepared me for it. I’d spent many nights perfecting my recipe on Rainbow Trout up at Carey Gully. I’d emptied a whole dam of hundreds of fish in pursuit of it. It is not hard, in truth – and there I suppose preparing fish has in it a moment of zen, for the simplest thing is the best. I don’t remember exactly what I did, because it depends somewhat on what we have on hand. I typically lay it down on foil, cover both sides, and especially the cavity, in pepper and salt, citrus juice – I prefer lime to lemon, and I prefer oranges to both, I think – and then stuff slices of it in the cavity. If you have any bourbon or whisky on hand, drizzle that in there too. We did, luckily. In fact, we’d been sucking on it for the whole charter. Laney was cooler than I mentioned, really. I’d mellowed out. You put some herbs on there – again, whatever you have on hand, though dill is best, and you wrap it all up. It should already be juicy, and after stuffing it under coals (or in an oven) for a while, you can take it out and dig in.

It really is my favourite fish to eat, trout. And Lake Trout proved to be exceptional – bigger than any others I’d had, and quite fatty, which is good on a cold night in the middle of wilderness. When you get it just right, you can peel the skin right off the meat. You can eat that too, if you like. And then, once you know the right angle, you can pull the meat right from the bone. The best part is the cheek, and the lower tail. It’s all delicious though. We tore in to it – a feast – it fed us all, though we had other food to enjoy as well. I think there were even weiners, though they didn’t seem so bad as a component of a spread, rather than the main attraction.

We went to bed, quiet and content. Not noisy this time. Just happy. Happy with life, where we were, who we were with and what we’d done.

We had a stop in Cody, a little way west, to pick up our camping gear at Walmart. Most of us had largely unused sleeping bags but nothing else. We had to get a tent, cooking gear, food – just about everything. This was out first time in Walmart. It’s an experience, certainly. I’d heard tales of the Walmartians; those lost few who wander the aisles dressed in pyjamas or banana suits, looking for some gracious bargain to fulfill them for a time. The camping section was far inside the store. We grabbed an eight man tent (luxurious – gluttonous, even! There were only seven of us, after all), a little shaded gazebo (this was a mistake, as you’ll soon learn), some pans and whatever else we felt we needed.

To my dismay, the firearms aisle was one over from the camping gear. I should have known! Hendo and Kiley cracked on to it instantly. They wanted to buy a gun! Of all things! I normally love firearms. Shooting ranges, setting up targets, all of it. But in a foreign country, in a camping ground – hell, I didn’t know how populated it would be. I didn’t know if they even let such thunderous tools in there! What use could they possibly have for a gun? ‘It would be fucking awesome’ was the general answer. Typically I’d agree with them, but I was in responsible mode. Absolutely not! They already had two BB guns after all. This debate raged back and forth for longer than I care to say. Eventually, the compromise of an arm-braced slingshot was reluctantly agreed to (A prohibited weapon in Australia, for those reading). We swept through the store and grabbed an awful lot of chocolate and other food. We didn’t really know what the facilities were like, or if we were allowed a fire or what, so we went in with mostly snacks. The reasoning of course, is that Bears prefer steak to M&Ms, and we don’t like Bears enough to share our dinner.

We drove north for a while and entered the far end of the park. The Greybull Cabineer (is a Cabineer a thing? It is now) had insisted it would barely add an hour or two to the trip – in truth, it took four. But it’s hard to say that it wasn’t worth it. The road in was bordered by countless conifers, boxed in, rolling over small bumps. Only the sky gave a hint to that vast country we were about to enter. I’d had dreams of it before, thinking about the trip. My excitement, I think, had spilled over to my sleep. I pictured wide, flat, green plains, broken by wide lakes and jarring cliff faces. Animals had roamed about. We rounded the corner and I was presented with this very scene – only my dream now seemed like a poorly built theatre set, cardboard bison falling over in a slight draught and the paint peeling from a matte background, all set on some cheap astroturf. The real thing was like nothing else. It was an expanse, and the horizon was far. We clamoured over each other in the car to see it.

Moments earlier, on that winding, pined road, we’d spotted a bison not far off our course and pulled over to look at it. Wow! A bison! A real life bison! We weren’t the only to be impressed – there were other cars pulled up with people taking photos and chatting excitedly about the wildlife. Of course, we rounded the corner, looked upon the plain, and saw that herds of literally thousands of bison were placed upon it.

Ramona spent a long time working her way across the wide plain, and saw some incredible sights along the way. Valleys, fissures, and mountains. It makes you feel very small. Our campsite was Bridge Bay, on the banks of Yellowstone Lake. We saw the lake quite early. It is large, but not attractive. It was overcast by this point, and the light was dull, so maybe in the morning or under fog it looks quite impressive. At the time it seemed like a grey, small, stirred up sea. It is, after all, basically a large volcanic crater that’s filled up with water over time. This part of Yellowstone is basically flattened out, a wide plateau, so the topography isn’t particularly inspiring.

We pulled in to the campsite – it was packed out, in truth. We were lucky to find a place. We had a fairly nice site in the middle loop of the grounds, close enough to the lake, and with a bit of room between the sites around us. The grass was thick and lush. We had a bench and table, as well as a firepit and grill. More than we could have hoped! We set about erecting the tent. I will not describe the pain that ensued, for everyone has had such an experience. It is common human knowledge, by this point, that tent erecting is a cruelty inflicted upon us and our simple minds. At first it seemed to go well, but it got out of hand. Parts were forgotten and progress was lost. Pegs were jettisoned under pressure out of the ground. And then we had to set up the Fly! Woe.

There were intense regulations on food storage in the park due to the bears. You can’t leave any in the tent or near it, because bears will sniff it out and tear apart the park to get to it. You have to leave it in the car – because better the car than yourself, right? It seemed that the car caught a break eventually. In Yosemite, you had to leave all your food inside the house, lest the bears tear apart the car. Black bears are fairly common in Yellowstone, though we didn’t see one. Grizzlies were the dangerous few, numbering only about a hundred and fifty in an area bigger than most US states. We saw 2% of the population by the end of our stay. Cleanups were extensive, in any case. They had huge metal bins to put rubbish in. Our tent felt dangerously thin!

There was a little ranger hut at the entrance of the grounds, where they sold firewood and gave advice. A little further down the road, past a small carpark, was Bridge Bay itself. A fairly small bay, but nice, it housed a tiny marina with an assortment of small charter boats and dinghies. It was balloon shaped, with a small outlet to the lake, over which a roadbridge spanned. The whole area was bordered by thick pines, the ground covered in slippery needles. It was a wonderful place – shades of green and brown, set against the tepid blue of the bay at sunset. There was a store by the water which sold most everything we needed.

On the way, if I remember, we’d spotted a kid with a Davy Crockett hat (The furry one with a raccoon tail on the end). A legend was about to be born. We had to have them. We had not to look far. The store, which supplied staples such as bacon, hotdogs and lots of beer, had an abundance of Davy Crockett hats. We all got one. The Western Seven, somehow, felt more complete. They barely left our heads for an hour in the time we spent there. I still wear mine most nights. By the end of our stay in the campsite, most all of the kids were wearing them as well. We tried to wear them differently – maybe the tail hung left, or right, straight back, maybe it sat on the shoulder. We looked rad.

The nights were timeless, in their way. The stars could have spiralled and exploded, or stopped entirely, and I would not have noticed nor cared. I could not help but think of the simple, hard lives of some ancient incarnations of humankind that roamed the land about us many yeard before. Lives full of simply joys and tragedies that we too still enjoy and endure; for the years are terribly short, and not so much time has passed between us as it easy to think or assume. I was taken back to the dream of mine – to the wide plains and roaming bison. I looked at us sitting around our fire, or wandering about the grassland, and I knew that nothing much has changed. A few of us can read books, or write them. We can turn on lights or invent them; it’s really just collective knowledge that we have the ability to draw on, structures that we drop ourselves in to and enjoy. We’re not much removed from monkeys, in truth, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I was glad to be there with my friends – more glad than anything, before or since.

We cooked up an awful lot of bacon and wieners for dinner, and we drank an awful lot. We were terribly loud. Kiley had the wonderful idea of launching crackers from his slingshot in to the air like fireworks. We did not think it was so great – well, not after the first couple. We were way out of quiet hours and causing a horrible racket. After a few we made him stop. The last he timed rather badly – it went up in the air, but came down on the ground next to a neighbours tent before exploding. Game over! The seven retired to the tent and got snuggled up. It was a tight fit, because we opted to sleep all in one long line rather than two rows like the tent suggested, but it was comfortable. Suddenly, it was the funniest thing in the world. We were excited as hell. We looked at each other, all in the same sleeping bags, all in the same furry hats, and absolutely lost it. You could have heard us laughing on the other side of the lake. At first I tried to calm everyone down so we didn’t get kicked out of the camp – but it was too much. Soon I was rolling all over the tent with them. It was like a herd of raving, furry caterpillars had gone mad. It was awful fun.

It all calmed down, and I managed to find a rather snug angle to sleep at. The ground wasn’t bad, though I’m not sure anyone else agreed.

Merry Christmas guys! From both the Western Seven, and The Beatlab.

If you’ve not heard of us, well, fair enough. We’re pretty underground. But The Freshness and The Flavour want to share some Christmas spirit with you. Enjoy this latest video we’ve made.

It was a short detour on the unending road to Yellowstone, so we took it. It’s nestled in the near-centre of Black Hills National Forest, South Dakota. This was odd to me, as Mount Rushmore is something of an icon – a place in itself, and so I never thought that it was a place inside a place. I thought it was somewhere you just went, you just visited, you just appeared in! Rather than a place that one travelled to over a distance. You can see that I tear myself up with this meta-physical bullshit when I’m cooped up in a car. What I’m trying to say is that these icons or places are simply locations in your mind, ideas, I suppose, a mere synapse away. But when you visit them, it kind of cements them in to the world, gives them a place, which is cool. The drive was fairly long, in truth, through long winding hills covered in conifers. In my memory it appears slightly more barren, more rocky than the rest of the parks we visited, but my memory is a fickle thing.

The Mount is, of course, a huge tourist destination. We paid an amount that made the car guffaw – we were kind of loathe to do it, but coming all that way and turning around because of a pricey ticket is a cop out. We drove in to a massive carpark and walked the long path to the base of the mount. It’s meticulously designed – as all national monuments are. It’s not the scale of D.C., obviously, but you walk up a long incline, through multiple gates, past small memorials and around plaques, plenty of flags and busts, and then through another gate like structure which opens to a huge deck of sorts, on which to look upon the faces of dead presidents.

They’re all tricks stolen from the ancient Greeks. Inclines, largeness, gates, lining things up with one another. But it works, so it’s a good reason to steal such ideas. The Mount is still quite distant from the platform, and you can see tiny people hiking around the base. There are people selling shirts and mugs and things, and countless people trying to squeeze along the railings to take a picture. Someone is giving a talk about the place, which I idly listen to for a while. It’s always a small victory when you manage to follow a paid tour around somewhere! I usually snicker to myself in my head and think about what a bunch of suckers they are, before walking away and forgetting everything that had been said. We lingered around for a while, took some photos and made some silly Western Seven videos. You can see a few of them on our Midwest video. Just search ‘video’ in the top right search bar and it should come up. ‘Hi, I’m Nicolas Cage, and welcome to the Western Seven dot com,’ etc. etc. We bought a Mount Rushmore sticker for the car as we left, and added it on to our meagrely adorned back windshield. Our failure in finding stickers for every state had become obvious by this point. Truth is, I loved collecting those stickers. Kiley and I have often mentioned, now we’re back, that we should have bought doubles of all of them, to put on our cars back here.

We got back on the road and experienced a raging storm as we entered Wyoming. The country side here was quite beautiful. It was closed in, like driving through a series of patchwork bowls. The road crested and dipped, and the hills around the car covered the horizon, so it felt like the world wasn’t more than ten acres square. A funny feeling, being a tiny world like that. The storm hit though, and it might as well not have existed. Zero visibility. I think we pulled over for a while, it was that bad. We went through some heavy weather shit on our way across the States, and this was one of the worst. Luckily it was a long but thin storm, and we cut through the shortest possible part of it, but it continued to stalk us through the rest of the drive, and we’d occassionally be flooded out. This was some of the first real cold weather we had on the trip, and man was I glad. I can’t stand the summery sun.

We started up a mountain. Ramona was not happy. She could power across a straight plane, and rolled down hills like nobody’s business. As soon as you introduce some slight vertical rise though, damn. She struggled. So would you, with seven guys and over a hundred kilos of gear on your back. Man, was it beautiful though. I can honestly say that Wyoming was the most beautiful state we passed through. It appealed to me. Rolling hills, green grass, lush trees. I think we were driving through the Bighorn National Forest at this point. After an hour or so of uphill driving, and about a tank of gas, we reached the main lookout. It was incredible, and again (I hate to keep using this word), vast. You can see a bit of it in our Midwest video as well – when we’re all standing by the side of the road talking about Mount Everest. It was quite a spot though. The elevation would have been over seven thousand feet at this point, and we could see pretty for miles. The storm we’d passed through, the little bowl hills, the highway that seemed infinitely long at times, just laid out, like a school kid’s diorama.

Greybull itself was a nice spot, too. We had the pick of the place though, the Antler Inn. May I once again point you to our Midwest video. It was basically a set of cabins set aside for hunters. It was probably the best value of our entire trip. Two bunk beds per cabin, two cabins, and I think it was probably less than ten bucks each for the night. I went and got us checked in. There was an old guy behind the counter, very welcoming. He was obviously in to taxidermy. There were a bunch of fox pelts, and a taxidermised wild cat sitting on a branch in his cramped office. Ben walks in, takes a look around – the guy takes a look over him, of course – pokes the cat with a bit of disgust, puts on his stupid Russell Brand / Mighty Boosh english accent and says ‘Nice display of… stuffed… animal… cat things you have in here’. Cue awkward silence. I give the diplomatic laugh, where I try to side with both sides but probably fail miserably, and Ben walked off, not bothered at all.

The guy was a champ anyway. He gave us a walk around and showed everything going on. Most of the people staying there – who had big utes full of gun racks and camo – were friendly and waved or said hi as we went about our business. The W7 was a little out of place, it has to be said. We walked a hundred metres down the road or so to do some laundry and get some dinner at A&W, which is basically a fast food place with hotdogs and burgers. This one was all outside though, sitting around benches. It reminded me of those old American movies with waitresses on rollerskates, except this was less glamorous, or perhaps the same thing, run down and fifty years older. We took our time eating, because we had to wait for our laundry (The furious scrambling for quarters that accompanies seven people’s washing is not an attractive sight). Some guys took off in a ute (pick up truck, for the Americans), screeched on to the road and yelled something at us like ‘look at these bitches’ or ‘fags’, can’t remember which. It was really the one instance I can remember getting a hard time about anything. I didn’t really hear them say anything, but that’s not anything new.

It was dark by this point. We spent some time typing up our travels – probably one of the last I wrote on the road – had some beers… okay, a lot of beers, and tucked in for the night. It was actually one of the worst sleeps I had, though I can’t figure out why. Maybe I was excited. Tomorrow, we were headed for Yellowstone. I’d been waiting for that part of the trip, looking forward to it more than any other. I could see us, camped out, seven of the best damn friends in the world, sitting around a fire and just enjoying the shit out of life. I couldn’t wait.

So, Mitchell. It was basically a road, perpendicular to the highway. It was an ‘exit-town’. I do not recall what number the exit was, or what it advertised. It led to Mitchell. It was a stretch of motels and family restaurants. We arrived in the afternoon, checked in to our little rooms in the motel, and immediately started drinking beer. It’s all we felt like. They had a little pool there – it was the first and only time I went swimming on that trip, I believe. There was a family there with some kids in the pool, and a big sign saying ‘No Drinking In Pool’. They were very disapproving at first, especially having kids and all, but I think they realised we were tired and harmless, and we were shouting their kids on when they were attempting bombs in the pool. It’s an advantage of ours – we look like a ‘bunch of dickheads’, but we are generally agreeable, and don’t seek to cause trouble. Not to people who don’t deserve it, anyway! The accents might help in all of this.

We swam, and it was awesome. I shrivelled up like a grape. By the time we cleaned up and headed out to dinner, it was much too late. Everything – almost everything, was closed. We found some old diner and stopped in. Late hours! Great. It turned out to be a chain, as we spotted another further down the road, but who cares. The food was decent enough. We were cooperatively served by an older lady, and a younger girl. The girl wanted so badly to be friends with us. I can only imagine it would be stifling, living in a city like that, even for a kid with half a mind. She seemed nice. She stopped by our table far too often. She’d break the ice with a question about our meal – at the exact moment that all of us had a mouthful of it – and then she’d ask us about what we were doing, where we’d been, what Australia was like. I suppose we would be very interesting to her. It kind of reminds me of Lord of the Rings – sorry to nerd out on you, but when Frodo and friends stop in at the bar in Bree, or maybe it’s the Green Dragon somewhere else? Anyway, they all look the same, but they’re treated as honoured guests. As foreigners, which we were, and then wringed out for tales of what they’ve done and what they’re doing. We were only happy too. Both women asked how long we were staying – just overnight.

‘You’re here to see the corn palace?!’ she asked.
Cue confusion – no one knew what she was on about. The only thing I knew of Mitchell was that it had a motel we could stay at, and that it was on the way to Yellowstone. It was a milestone, and nothing more.
Well, apparently, each year they build a corn palace. A house of corn. It’s apparently a big tourist draw. I can imagine a lot of the silver-haired American retirees in their RV’s, laden with handcrafted Native American weaving, stopping by the corn palace for a photo and a sticker. We didn’t have time, and honestly, the desire to go. But it’s sort of endeared the place to me, over time. One of the wonders of the internet – I posted on a website called reddit, where people are interested in anyone interesting. It was a month or two after we’d returned, and it was a pretty monumental trip in terms of distance. Within minutes some one asked for everywhere we’d been. I mentioned Mitchell. Minutes later, some one came out and said ‘The corn palace! Did you see it?’ Turns out they’d spent some time growing up in Mitchell. It’s funny how a line of text can kill a distance half the world around. I laughed out loud when some one else knew about the corn palace. A couple of other people came out of the woodwork too.

It was eventually time to leave – she hoped to talk with us more, or show us the corn palace even, but it wasn’t to be.

Some one had lost their chain in one of the drainage ditches off the side of the road, too. I think it was Ben. He was pretty distressed about it, but there was nothing to be done. They were big ditches, with thick, rough grass like the kind you find in North Queensland, and I think it was partly flooded at the time too.

We went back to the hotel – it was past midnight, I’m pretty sure.

A storm was rolling across the horizon. The most amazing I’ve ever seen. It was a thunderhead as big as the moon, it seemed, up close. I’ve talked about the vastness of the country countless times, but it was beyond description here. Most of the time the sky is an empty vessel – for once, it was filled with something bigger than life. It was turmoil, truly, yet peaceful because we could look on from a distance. Glinting forks of fire rolled across the sky and the ground. Countless and awesome shapes of energy shot about the sky. It was like a big, uncaring war, reaching out and touching whoever it pleased. It was awe-inspiring.

We spent the rest of the night throwing fire crackers in the carpark, drinking beer, watching the storm roll towards us. It passed over some time that night, a horrible racket, and we awoke to a beautiful morning.

Our driving days were often like that. But perhaps it wasn’t that time seemed to move so slowly, but rather that the whole twelve hour drive was melded in to a single moment. The distance between cities wasn’t measured in ours, but simply the longest second that anyone has ever lived through. In some ways we might as well have skipped right past the drives, because I didn’t take much from them. There was the sense of accomplishment that comes with distance, for sure. And there’s the open vistas, the sparseness that still floats past me in dreams and visions sometimes. There are the funny encounters on our stops, and the dread of thinking your car is about to break down. There’s an appreciation for the size of the country that lasts as long as you’re in the car, and an appreciation for what you can handle when you sail past dangerous situations, or you sit for an entire day in desert heat and don’t complain. I guess the best feeling was arriving at our destination – at the end of our worst trips, my legs were usually wobbly, my thinking not quite straight, and my vision had a thick line of movement through the middle where the highways went.

In truth though, it felt like we were photons, and the cities were distant stars (thanks for the line, Arcade Fire). Photons – well, according to my understanding of the physics, and in trying to convey it in a non-stupid way – Photons are light particles, basically (they can also be waves, I think, though that’s too Quantum for me), and they travel at the speed of light, basically. Einstein did a good job with his theory of relativity. The faster you go, relative to the speed of light, the slower you move in time. Photons move at the speed of light though, and so they are basically stuck at zero time – or absolute time, perhaps. Time is not a thing to them, really. They arrive at the exact same time they are emitted – to us, it seems like it takes time, but that’s because we’re fairly base creatures stuck in a universe far beyond our comprehension (Quantum, again). Photons leave and arrive in one long second, and time has passed around them, but not for them. That’s what it felt like for me.

(You know, you can approach the speed of light from the other side – faster, that is, and you can move backwards through time? Well, nothing ever has, though some guys, CERN, if I think, have recently been sending neutrinos underneath Europe and finding that they’re arriving before they should, which… well, if the results are accurate, it really ruins that whole ’cause and effect’ notion we have. This is completely irrelevant to my analogy by the way, I just find it cool)

Our days in the car were composed largely of sleeping. We picked it up wherever we could, so we didn’t need to so much when we actually arrived somewhere. The flow of the drives changed over the course of the overall journey as well. We slowly lost interest in countryside, or staying awake all the time. We’d all pass the time. I tried not to sleep much when I didn’t need to. I’d draw sometimes. I did a lot of watching. The others would take photos or videos, or talk about whatever crossed their minds. All sorts of shit – a lot of it terrible, I can assure you. We yelled at each a lot, but in stupid ways. People would be asleep or drifting and they’d get slapped. Or your seatbelt would get undone. Not the safest behaviour, sure, but it annoyed the shit out of the victim.

We ate and drank a lot. I loaded up on beef jerky and drinks at just about every gas station we stopped at. We eventually found an eski… sorry, ice box, at one of the gas stations and attempted to keep it constantly iced up. It did a good job, served honourably, and was eventually broken by some one sitting on it or kicking it. It really was a life saver though, to have cold things in hot places. I took a particular fancy to those litre cans of iced tea that went for 99 cents. Easy on the wallet, bad for the blood sugar. Jerky is pretty much a third of the price, or less, than it is here, which makes my heart feel all fuzzy.

We’d listen to music nearly all the time. The car had an awesome sound system. I devised a plan that whoever was driving got to pick the music, in the hope that Ben never got to pick the music, but such rigidity was never going to hold up in the fluid heat of a car full of criminals. They like to break rules, see. So… yeah. What ended up happening, way more often, was that the co-pilot spent his entire time picking the music. The driver could put in requests. Tom and I have similar taste, so that was good. Hendo usually went with the gangsta mix, which was fine by me because I would usually tread the middle line. Ben was in fact more than respectful, and dropped ‘beats’ that he knew most people would enjoy. Sure, there was metal, but we’re a mixed crew and you have to learn to live with that. Like a microcosm of multiculturalism, even. World: take note. People can get along, even if they annoy the shit out of each other.

We had certain songs that would signal certain things. Pretty quickly in to the trip, Ben realised that Fleetwood Mac – Go Your Own Way, was the best way to start a day of driving, and I have to agree. We’d be getting up at six or seven, which are horrible hours for a night owl like me to be getting up, but he’d chuck that on as soon as we were pulling on to our first high way, and it made my days bright as anything. It filled me with hope, really, and made me look forward to what was about to happen. Corny as shit, sure, but it’s true. Fleetwood Mac probably would have been amongst our top three artists played. They seemed appropriate, for some reason, as we’ve barely played them since any of us arrived home. The Lonely Island was played endlessly. They’re a fake rap group basically, and make terribly funny songs. They just had a new album which took us a while to dive in to, but it was basically on repeat and would get played end to end at least five times on each drive. I have barely listened to them since I got back, since I am so sick of it. There’s still a cold kernel inside me that smiles whenever one of their songs play. Finally, and most importantly – the songs I would put on a throne above all – is Outkast.

Damn! We had days when we were down as anything. Down as Debbie Downer. Not even sad, just tired and hating the endless drives. And then we’d put on Outkast – Roses was our favourite, by far, and everyone would be dancing in their seats and yelling along to it. Man, it was good. Hey Ya got a fair thrashing, as did B.O.B., which is just a few minutes of the maddest flows you’ll ever hear. Roses also usually became the cap-end of a driving trip, in the same Go Your Own Way typically started one. Everyone would be tired and bored, but we’d pull in to a city and crank Roses, and we’d bound out of the car like kids on cordial. One of my finest memories is pulling off Burbank Boulevard in Los Angeles, on to Aldea Avenue, and the quick right on to Wish Avenue at the end of the trip. Roses was cranking in the car. We were all singing, going nuts, and I was thinking to myself, ‘we’ve done it! Goddamnit, we’ve done it!’ Smiles all around. I’m smiling right now.

I made a playlist after we got back. A few months, actually. It had all the songs that we listened to on the trip. It’s good to listen to, but the zeitgeist is gone and so is some of the specialness – trying to transplant that experience in to a different time and world. It’s like trying to use a magic wand in a non-magical world. It fizzes out, though it still looks cool.

Near the end of the trip, and I think mainly on the drive from Yellowstone to Yosemite, we ran out of music. We’d ran out of music weeks ago, actually, but we had no charged devices on which to play it on. So commenced one of my favourite drives of the trip. The scenery was beyond stunning, of course (for the most part – there are dustbowls in every state if you look hard enough. We looked quite hard). But we didn’t sleep much, and we didn’t have any music blaring. We just talked, and we played games and it was stupid and fun. We started off with eye-spy (Wait… is it I-spy? I’ve always thought of it as eye-spy, for some reason), but that tires out very quickly with us. So we started making it interesting. We enacted games that became classic on early roadtrips to Ballarat back in Australia.

Games like meta-physical I-spy (Inconsistency? What inconsistency?). This is my favourite. You basically come up with some bullshit scientific term or theory, something really Quantum. By bullshit, I don’t mean bullshit, I mean an extremely hard or obscure one – impossible to guess. These rounds can go for hours. The theory of relativity came up. The gap between two worlds is a good one. Mathematical ideas – even things like ‘Parallel’, which is really hard to guess. We’d even guessed it on that classic Ballarat trip, but the same one stumped us for an hour or so here. Gravity, black holes, anti-matter, dark-matter, string theory. Even just obscure concepts like ‘Perspective’ or something. It’s the best version, because it warps your mind and puts it in to tiny knots, and everyone spends the whole time trying to furiously think of the next super hard idea at the same time. This drive was a monster as well, one of the longest we’d had in ages, so it was good. We also played a game called ‘Hey Cow’, where you lean out of your window and yell ‘Hey Cow’ at cows, when you pass them.

So that’s driving, as well as I can put it to you. There was a lot of inactivity, a lot of ‘antics’, a lot of contemplating. I actually liked driving more than anything because it gave me something to do. It filled the hours, and I enjoy driving, so it was good. You got the best view in the car too, I thought, though you can’t really look around. I’d usually try and do two or three shifts a day, just to give me something to do. Two was the standard, of a few hours each.

This brings us to Mitchell, in South Dakota. You didn’t think I’d leave you in that eternal second of photon-driving-travelling, did you? Never. Not I.

Well, I lied. I’m splitting it in to a new post, because this is already an essay. Forgive me, dear readers.

I’m not saying that I didn’t like it, but it didn’t particularly take my fancy. Our trip fatigue set in about here – that time when you’ve been up and at it early every morning, seeing everything, doing everything – and you see an opportunity to settle down for a day or two and do absolutely nothing but eat and lounge and that’s damn well what you end up doing! It’s necessary, at times. Chicago presented us with that opportunity.

We drove in at dusk and it was actually really beautiful – and one of the few times that we did any driving at night, which was somehow conveniently at odds with our schedule. The whole place took on that lovely gradient starting with white-blue and ending in the deep midnight light of the stars. Outlined against all this were the silheouttes of overgrown factories and smoke stacks. It seemed designed. By a designer, I mean. Some art school kid who discovers gradients and silheouttes, and just paints the same objects at different distances against a plain backdrop – and yeah, it looks cool, if not entirely original. Scatter some pools of what would be fetid water by day but turn in to lovely reflections at sunset, and it really sets a mood. A [i]mood[/i], you know.

This all came after a stressful border crossing, I should add. I feel like I’ve written about this before, but evidently not. When I left you – back in Toronto, months ago (but a mere day in the strange space time of The Western Seven – I blame it on Quantum) – we were having the time of our lives and I was, frankly, full of regret in having to leave that place. But we were placed back on the road – with its monotony of action but endless basket of awe inspiring scenery – and we had to plough through another border crossing.

Gods, do I get nervous at border crossings. And not for any real reason either – it’s the same reason I feel guilty when a cop walks past. Their presence implies guilt. For me, because I will never know customs laws inside out (because I have no desire to, you see), I will always suspect that I’ve missed some crucial thing, or my boots are covered in the seed of an exotic pest which they will smell on me and I’ll be locked up for ruining a continent’s agriculture or something. I suppose I’m overly dramatic – in fact, I know I am – but in the playground of my mind, no crime is too great! I feel like I’ve committed them all when I arrive at a border.

On the way in to Canada, the man was rather courteous and simply asked if we were bringing anything with us – ‘laptops!’ I said, jovially, and he jovially waved me through. America though… oh dear. Let me recount some aspects of the conversation.

We rolled up to the customs man’s window and I rolled down my window. I was always over-prepared for this sort of thing – had every passport in my hand, handily opened on to the portrait page.

Him: ‘Where are you guys from?’
Me: ‘Australia’ – imagine this in a squeaky voice. For some reason my first word with customs is always in an strangled tone.
Him: ‘Whose car is this?’
Me: ‘It’s in my brother in law’s name, and mine, sir.’ There was honey dripping off that last sir. No chances, none!
Him: ‘Where does your mother in law live?’
Me: ‘Brother in law. California, sir.’
Him: ‘Well, which is it?’
Me: ‘Brother sir! You misheard me, sorry.’ Overly apologetic. Damn right I know what the power ratio in this conversation is. I have no rights, and he can flush me down the drain if he wants!
He walks around the side of the car and we open the doors up. He scans every passport and asks who it belongs to. The others are cool as cucumbers, like usual, but this time we really just screw it up.

Him: ‘Do you guys work? Where do you work?’
Me: ‘Student.’
Owen: ‘Student.’
Ryan: ‘Uhhh… uhhh… like, a supermarket.’
Hendo: ‘I work at a cheese shop.’
Him: ‘What about you… uhhh… Tom.’
Tom: ‘Ummmm… Ummm… Ugh…. I work at… Ummmm…’ Now, Tom, at the time, worked at the Beach House, which was like a kids entertainment thing. Bumper cars, arcade machines, waterslides. Now, I’m not sure what I’d call it off the top of my head either. A mini-theme-park? An entertainment center? A place called the Beach House? Tom came up with something, and I don’t remember the exact term he used to describe it, but he came up with something that made him look like a criminal, if only for the size of his beard at this point. Also, that thirty second pause didn’t work. ‘I work at a children’s fun care centre,’ he said, or something along those lines. It sounded prison-worthy, anyway.

Him: ‘And what about you… Angus Kiley.’ The fact that we had two Angus’ in the car made for no end of confusion. It also got the officers worked up trying to figure it out.
Kiley: ‘I work at the Australian equivalent of Jamba.’ What he is referring to here is Jamba Juice – a smoothie outlet. They put fruit in blenders and then give it to you in a cup. Here, it’s called Boost Juice – not the same company but much the same idea. Kiley’s first mistake is assuming that a man on the border of the US and Canada has any fucking clue what ‘Jamba Juice’ is, let alone ‘Jamba.’
Him: ‘Jamba? What is that?’ He sounded kind of annoyed. Now, keep in mind that we only ever saw Jamba Juice in California and Texas, I believe.
Kiley: ‘BOOST!’ he says, getting exasperated that the guy doesn’t understand.
The officer looks around the car, incredulously. Looking for help, is the way I’d say it.
Him: ‘What is boost? What’s Jamba?’
Kiley: ‘Like, Jamba! Boost! You know!’
Us: ‘Kiley! JUICE! You work at a juice bar.’
The guy looks relieved that he’s figured it out.
Kiley: ‘Well, yeah.’

He then asked us about when we first arrived. That was fine. We all answered ‘June Xth’ (I don’t remember the date – we were all on the same flight). We were all on the same flight… except Owen. Oh god.
Him: ‘What? Why did you arrive later?’
Owen: ‘I had exams and all that.’
This was how it started, but it turned in to a convoluted conversation the depths of which I do not wish to dwell, tonight. It took much explaining, a hell of a lot of misunderstandings and oodles of questions to finish that line off.

Him: ‘I’m not going to find any drugs when I search your car, am I?’ Notice the word ‘when’. Emphasis on that. He will search our car – and man, is there a lot to search.
Good thing we didn’t have any in there, in any case.
Us: ‘No!’
Him: ‘Do you guys take drugs?’
Us: ‘No!’
Him: ‘Have you guys ever taken drugs?’
Me: ‘No!’
Everyone else: *slight pause* ‘No!’
Him: ‘Bunch of fucking choir boys!’
And with that, he sent us on our way.

But this was a story of Chicago, and I have barely mentioned the place. By the time we got in, it was late.

Wait, wait, wait!

I’VE ALREADY WRITTEN ABOUT THIS! I KNEW IT!

I thought I was up to our thrilling tale of Mitchell, South Dakota. I felt like I’d written about Chicago, but I couldn’t find the post anywhere. It was under the heading ‘The Dave Matthews Caravan Crosses the Border.’ Obscure, right? So I put my mistake down to that. Tom even had a look on the website for it. I had several looks.

Well, that makes me look silly. But I feel this was a pretty good post up until then, even if I was repeating myself, so you’re stuck with it. I went in to more detail this time too, because I don’t care about time, right now!

Onwards – to Driving Days!

Hey guys,
Some fellow Western Seveners and I are doing a 24 hour charity marathon for Westmead Children’s Hospital in Sydney. We’ll be streaming the whole thing online, so you can tune in and chat with us if you like. Any support is welcome! It’s hard to stay awake for that long.

Donate here, if you wish to support us!

http://www.extra-life.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.team&eventID=501&teamID=5523

Thanks kids,
Jack B

I was too young at the time to understand what was happening, and why. America too, was a distant entity, and something of little interest or import to me. I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that my only concern at the time was the cancellation of my morning cartoons. The world has changed though, and we’ve changed with it. America has taken its place in my life as a substantial force. I have family there, an ever increasing amount, and they play an ever increasing role. Its people have welcomed my friends and I, and gifted us with unlimited kindness. I won’t say that this will be a commemoration, but rather an illustration of what it has been like to spend the more significant half of life, as an outsider, in the wake of 9-11.

Everything happens because of everything else. I’d always seen the world, in its current state, as an echo of the Cold War, itself born, by and large, from the Second World War. It has become increasingly clear though that so many of the major events, whether they be political or militaristic, are due to the events that unfolded in New York a decade ago.

Indeed, it was a great tragedy. Too often people try and compare the nature of these things by their scale. The truth is, the amount of destruction and death that occurs in a tragedy does not dictate the measure of it. The simple fact is that thousands of people were working their day jobs or catching routine plane flights, and a moment later their lives was suddenly and terribly ended. Tens of thousands of survivors and witnesses had their lives changed in an instant as well. I can’t and won’t try to imagine what was going through their heads at that time. A lot of people struggle to figure out why 9-11 attracts such attention when huge natural disasters and wars continue to pillage other parts of the earth. But it pays to remember that this was a symbolic attack wilfully carried out by a group of people against other people, civilians in this case, in the world’s most influential city.

Of course, that doesn’t justify everything that happened in its wake. The United States had to respond. The country was sent on a dragon hunt as it were. But in this case the enemy was too vague, and a lot of people have suffered as a result. Rhetoric is part to blame, as is the media’s narrative. I struggle with how much damage Fox News has done to that country. News outlets like that turned the situation into ‘us and them’.

The media and entertainment have created and fostered a sort of atmosphere, a set of images that brings to mind the last decade. When I reflect on it, and when I look at the news, and watch movies and play games and read books I see this set of pictures, repeated endlessly. Ruthless government agents, pursuing terrorist sects across the Earth, ending with an empty chair in a dank room lit by a naked bulb, and walled by unpainted cement. Lone FOB’s, located high on the sole feature adorning some sparse Middle Eastern landscape, manned by armoured, digital camouflaged soldiers, gripping M4 assault rifles, gazing on the expanse below. It brings to mind endless highways, forever leading to Baghdad, or some other citadel, the same grounds fought over by soldiers hundreds and thousands of years ago, only this time viewed in the lurid green of night vision. And lately it has been the view out of the back of a Chinook helicopter.

Of course many of these associations are things they have tried to move away from in recent years. The end result of these ruthless, stop-at-nothing agents has been torture, not as endearing as it the carnival violence found in Hollywood movies. It led to things like Guantanamo Bay, and other places blackened in the minds of many people. All of them acts that have led to a lessening of trust towards the Western nations. So they’ve tried to move away from these images; hence why you see Guantanamo inmates engaging in art classes and playing Gameboys. Nonetheless, the myth of Western infallibility has come to something of an end.

Without a doubt, the United States has become more insular in the years since 9-11. America has always been a patriotic country, but in some cases and places this has given rise now to an unhealthy nationalism. This based on the fact that an American is a white Christian. I sometimes wonder what our road trip would be like if we were another race or religion, identifiable at a glance.

Nothing will make me happier than the day that race as an issue is removed from the world altogether. And I’m not singling out the United States here. I’ve spent many politics lessons arguing it out with other students that the United States is much less racist than Australia. They’ll have nothing of it. The fact is that race, right now, is an unavoidable issue in America. You confront it every day. Most of the kids in my class of course had never seen a black person until the recent refugees from Sudan started moving in. They’re too quick to forget the events of the Cronulla riots. In Australia it takes its place as under the breath comments and jokes. My problem with this is that it seems to be all pervasive, and even my friends, whether they realise it or not, do it uncomfortably often.

In the end it boils down to ignorance. Race in itself has no scientific basis. It is a subjective view, when the world of facts is based off objective observation. But we all know that science doesn’t always have its way. The media and family traditions and culture mean that Muslims, or indeed any outsider that doesn’t look and act in the right way, have been singled out and continue to be so.

There are areas that have improved, and other areas that still need work. Social justice is part of it. Things like views on race and sexuality are by and large taken from parents. But of course there are issues that you have no prior knowledge of and that sort themselves out in the due course of life. Encountering people who are living their life at the whim of some faraway law and opinion is somewhat distressing. Gay marriage is a prominent example. Those who oppose it on the grounds of definition clearly haven’t looked at how much the dictionary changes from year to year. Religion is another matter. In fact, it receives such a tiny look-in within the covers of those holy books, it’s amazing anyone singled it out in the first place. I don’t understand how someone would think it devalues their own marriage, letting a same sex couple at it. To me, it’s something of a no brainer: the quality of countless lives is improved, and no one suffers as a result. Again, I think this is an issue that will be consigned to history. Recent events in New York seem to point to that, though the US may never see uniform measures on it.

It’s harrowing, certainly, to see the statistics showing how many people are still against interracial relationships and would prefer the Jim Crow laws be reinstated. These opinions seem to collect in the south though I must note that they aren’t exclusive to there, nor are they the exclusive opinion there. Certainly large outposts of forward thinking exist. Austin showed us that it’s easy to be both Texan and inclusive, even when a lot of the state seems to contradict that.

Politics in the United States has taken an odd twist. The Bush and Cheney years, if only for Bush’s seeming incompetence and blundering behaviour, were the beginning of the decay of the outside world’s opinion of the United States, and perhaps the beginning of the decay of their own fortune. That is why the day that Obama was elected was one of the happiest political moments of my life. For me and I suspect many other outsiders, Obama seem to be a confident and competent leader. He was someone you could respect. It was a historic day for many reasons, his race and background a big part of it.

Now, it seems, Obama’s efficacy has been lessened by the economic turmoils that the USA is embroiled in. I think he would be an unrivalled peace time leader, and he might still have the time to prove as much, though the bullheadedness of the Republicans is a hindrance to that. Many Democrat voters have been disenchanted by his failures, in part due to his own weaknesses or his party’s, in part due to the political ballgames being played by the GOP. The sheer stupidity going on in American politics right now blows my mind, and reminds you of why the Founding Fathers never wanted the US political system to be one based on parties. The fact that one party can stop every measure that a government puts forward, and then point to that government and say that they’re inactive and ineffective, and still be considered legitimate opposition – that’s bullshit.

The GOP aren’t focused on their country. They’re focused on making Obama a one term president, no matter the cost. And the second mind-blowing thing is that they’ll likely be voted in by the very people they’ve been shafting for the last so many years, and they’ll continue to shaft these people. Again, I blame Fox News and the perseverance of their idiotic rhetoric. Obama’s skill as an orator – perhaps one of the best spoken leaders for half a decade – is drowned out if you convince half the population that he’s a socialist, good-for-nothing, anti-Christ Muslim.
The GOP, the Tea Party, they don’t care about most Americans, in truth. They don’t want what’s best for them. They want to draw back benefits when people are most in need of them. Ex (Republican) President Eisenhower wrote to his brother, in 1954, and said this:

“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things… Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”

And yet, just over fifty years later, and we’re in this situation. People are looking for jobs, countless people, and they can’t get to them. And the GOP suggests cutting their support. These people, of course, get guaranteed pensions and substantial holidays per year. I’m not often so disaffected towards politics and politicians, but it is infuriating how this party works. You have people like Michele Bachmann – and I can’t believe she’s considered a legitimate candidate – decrying Obama’s latest job plans when she hadn’t even heard it. They are opposing him for the sake of opposition – to make him look ineffective. They use short, punchy language against Obama’s sweeping prose. They generalise, they go with gut-feelings, they blame things on the vague threat when it’s not one. They preach ignorance, and they’re setting the USA back, back a long time. No doubt they truly believe in what they’re doing, but if they come to power, they have the power themselves to turn the USA in to an illiterate nation. Never will it be a backwater as long as it stands united, for its economy is too large, and there will forever remain people with sense enough to keep its head above water. But it can certainly lose the throne, and it can, as any other nation, fall prey to corruption.

Obama, at least, has finally learnt the lesson that Republicans learnt a long time ago. Short and punchy, lest you lose people’s attention. His last speech is testament to that. It wasn’t “The Restoration of Employment Act”. It was “The American Jobs Act”. That’s language that Patriot Patrick can get behind. “You should pass it, right away.” Over and over – get the message in. He made it clear, at least, that he and his party aren’t to blame for the inaction in Washington.

Still, the USA needs to take better care of its people. The notion that Obamacare was some socialist threat to the nation needs to be dispelled, entirely. Fox, again, declared it as a threat to the country. That ‘death panels’ would decide whether your relatives live or die. It was another load of bullshit loaded, without protest, in to the minds of many. The simple truth is that Australia, many European nations and beyond enjoy cheap, subsidised healthcare. The people that need it most, get it most. They’re not perfect systems, certainly, but they’re better than what you have, America. And the socialist threat? Non-existent. I thought we were past these Cold-War threats, America. Please – take this at least – look after your people. Give them proper health care.

I feel strongly about all these things for a lot of reasons. Family, now, is a big part of it. I have a sister and her extended family of in-laws there, all of whom I now consider part of my own family. My brother is soon to move there for an indefinite period. It’s for all these reasons that I personally want to see America grow. It’s for all the people who looked after us and treated us well overseas as well. Rarely did we encounter an American who wasn’t a great help, who wasn’t generous towards us or treated us in anything but the highest manner. I have a great soft spot, now more than ever, for the country and the people. Undoubtedly it’s a beautiful landscape, varied and grand, impressive in its expansiveness.

It was a terrible event that happened a decade ago, and we’ve been living its shadow. It spawned two seemingly endless wars. It created a lot of hatred and a lot of sadness. In some ways, down the line, it’s responsible for the trouble that America now faces. There’s a threat on the outside, no doubt. But there’s one on the inside too. Americans can’t fall prey to their own prejudices. They can’t leave justice at the door. They can’t stop helping each other out, or forget about each other. They can’t choose their personal interests when that interest harms the country as a whole. They can’t give up on their country, nor can they simply rest on their laurels rather than continuing to better the country, to make it the best in the world. They can’t.

At least a goddamn bee didn’t land on my arm this time. Nope, I pulled up nice and calm. The guy asks for all our passports – we’re veterans, so obviously we’ve got that shit ready to go. I drop it on him. Now, US borders aren’t like Canadian borders. Canada? Oh man, I’d cross the border for a holiday. That was easy. Fun, even. A simple question ‘what are you guys bringing in to the country?’, a simple answer, ‘just our luggage, sir,’ (which, really, could mean anything). Not here. Straight to the grilling. Youch!

Where were we from, what were we doing, whose car is it – pretty simple, but they jump on your answers. And they don’t always understand your accent. ‘The car is registered to me and my brother-in-law,’ I say.
‘Where does your mother-in-law live?’ I didn’t correct him, whatever. But here follows an account of the worst border crossing undertaken by anyone, ever. Normally, you see, my stressing out, my freezing up, is carried off by the chilled out attitude of the other guys in the back. But they just didn’t carry it this time.

‘What do you guys do for work?’
‘Student!’ I say, instantly.
‘Accountant!’ says Owen.
‘Uhh, supermarket,’ says Ryan.
‘Cheese shop,’ says Hendo.
‘Ummmmmm….’ says Tom, and continues to sit there for the longest minute of my life, with the border officer eyeballing him.
‘Ummmmmmmm…’ he continues.
‘Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…. A childrens centre?’ he finally unleashes.
In my mind I’m thinking something along the lines of this: ‘CHILDRENS CENTRE?! CHILDRENS CENTRE?! WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUUUU! FFFFUUUUUU!!!! I’M GOING TO JAIL SHIT OH SHIT, JAIL, GOODBYE FRIENDS, SEE YOU IN THE BIG HOUSE, SHITTTTTTTTTT!’
Only because, well, you see, Tom’s beard by this point was fast approaching Amish levels. I think they would put him on the sex offenders watch list until he had a shave. Not only that, but he took so long to answer, the guy was just puzzled and altogether suspicious. Were we harbouring a criminal? Well, yeah, I thought we might have been. He works at The Beachhouse by the way, that theme-parkish sort of thing where Magic Mountain (the giant glenelg poop) used to be. Children’s centre? What is that shit?

So, we’re in the clear, right? Nuh uh, still got Kiley to go.

‘I work at the Australian equivalent of Jamba,’ he says, referencing “Jamba juice”, who make smoothies. He works at “Boost juice”, who also make smoothies.
The officer looks at him for a moment. ‘I don’t know what that is.’
Kiley, looking exasperated, says ‘BOOST!’
‘Huh?’
All of us start a mini panic… ‘He makes juice! Juice, goddamnit!’
‘What?’
‘Smoothies and that!’
‘Oh. Right…’

What none of us knew at the time, was that ‘Jamba Juice’ is primarily located in the South and South West. They have two stores in the whole state of Illinois… I don’t think the guy had ever heard of it.
Now, Kiley might have had the right idea by referencing what seemed to be a popular brand at the time (I think we’d only seen three stores though, in California and Texas. Well!). But it might have helped if he mentioned the whole juice bit.

Done, right? Nawwww.

‘I’m gonna find stamps in all your passports, right?’
‘Yes, sir!’ replies an angelic choir of voices.
And then – ‘yeah maybe, I guess so, probably,’ says Ryan.
Oh god.
‘Probably?!’

‘You all came here on the same flight, right? When did you get in?’
‘June whatever!’ (I can’t remember!), sang the choir.
And then – ‘Nah, not me, I came over later,’ says Owen.
Oh god.
‘Why?!’

Well, we eventually got through. It was the longest crossing ever, but we made it. And they didn’t find our huge stash of drugs! Just kidding.

The drive in was pretty fantastic – that silheoutte time of night, and a whole multitude of factories and foundries working long in to the night all around the outskirts of town. Smoke plumes and swamps all mixing together.

Chicago. I don’t have a whole lot to say about it, other than a few altogether odd happenings.

One thing I’ve forgotten to mention is the fact our GPS tended not to work when we got in to the big cities. See, there’s too much interference from the big buildings all around us. So, we’d follow one straight road for 800 miles, and then as soon as it gets complicated, our navigation conks out. We should have learnt our lesson before we got out of New York, or Washington even, but we obviously didn’t. So we got lost again, and drove around in stressful traffic (any traffic was stressful in Ramona) till we found some workaround.

Our hotel was nice, one of the nicer ones we stayed in, but also more expensive than anything else. The bastards! We did get a free upgrade though. You know why? Do. You. Know. Why. Because Dave Matthews was in town. Now, Dave Matthews, to my knowledge, is not some benevolent leader who hands out free hotel room upgrades. Rather, he’s like a butterfly, who flaps his wings, and causes events to occur – not on the other side of the world, in this case, but in his immediate vicinity.

You see, one thing I never knew, is that the Dave Matthews Band has a contingent, nay, a phalanx of fans who follow him around the USA. They call themselves ‘The Dave Matthews Caravan’. And they book out hotels, swathes of them. So, since it was overbooked, they bumped us up. All good with me. But there followed many strange encounters. In the elevators, families would often ask us, ‘Are you guys in the Dave Matthews Caravan?’, to which we would curtly reply, ‘Hell no.’ Hotel staff would question us about Dave Matthews. Someone… was it Ben? Or Kiley? Or Ryan or Hendo? Well, they ended up having a long drinking session with some drugged out friend of a Dave Matthews Caravaner (Caravanier? Caravananner?) which was apparently quite enlightening. They also got the Hell Out Of There as soon as they the rest of us walking past.

What else in Chicago? Honestly, I didn’t have the grandest time in this city. It seemed a bit dead at times. We went to a baseball game, which was awesome. The White Sox against the Twins, neither of whom I know, but we ended up going for the White Sox and they won, which was good. I bought a hat for twenty dollars because I didn’t want to get sunburnt, and we immediately walked up the steps to the only shady spot in the arena. Damn. We drank a lot of beer though, that was good. It was Miller though, that was bad. Near the end of the game I was keen for a baseball hotdog. I went searching, but apparently all the places close up in the last couple of (innings?). I went to about five stalls asking for a hotdog, but they’d all closed. What was this shit! Eventually I got a ‘mini-hotdog’ of some sort from a stand. It was the last one, and had been sitting under the heatlamp all day, but it tasted alright.

We saw the big silver jellybean in Millenium Park. So now movies in Chicago seem more relevant. We also went to a place called Gino’s East, featured on Man V Food, that most reputable of shows. Gino’s specialises in deep dish pizzas, which basically taste like a tomato and meat stew in pastry. Tasty, but not entirely pizza. The place is covered in Graffiti as well. There was a fair wait, so we didn’t eat until late, but I took the opportunity to call my sister and catch her up on Western Seven happenings.

The last thing I really remember of Chicago was drinking at the only pub we could find nearby. It was some Irish joint, I think, and had a few nice beers floating around. We got some food (my first meatloaf!) and chowed down. Kiley came back a minute with some older british woman who was with her parents. She was too typical to describe – the teeth, the profile, very British. That lot chatted away, I munched away, and then Ben’s inability to endure plane rides came out. She’s like ‘don’t you take sleeping pills?’.
‘Yes!’ said Ben, ‘but they don’t really help.’
A minute later he’d managed to squeeze one off her, as she exclaimed ‘This is the strongest one I’ve got, prescription only, yeah, that’ll do you a right treat!’

Well, to my knowledge he never used it, he just got it off of her ‘to see if he could’, which is the explanation for an awful lot of behaviour when you’re away from home.

You know, I was going to talk about what we did in the car in this post? No actual locations? Well, that didn’t work out.