Two Week’s Worth of Weak and Wandering Travelogue
Warning: Way too long-Winded
So I flew back to Australia last Friday after a couple weeks gallivanting about the United States. Traveling with a friend from work, I covered some 2800 miles of highway, mainly in California – with just a little side trip to visit Las Vegas and to see the Grand Canyon.
Thanks again to all you Dopers who provided me with such great advice to what to visit and see (and how to deal with that oddball custom, tipping!)
Our trip was of course too brief – aren’t they always? – but sufficient to generate at least 10 Weird and Wonderful Experiences in the USA…
10. People in LA Really Aren’t So Bad After All
I’ve read all sorts of bad things about Nasty And Depraved people who inhabit the city of Los Angeles, but cruising the freeways of LA (by the way, is there actually a city hidden somewhere amongst all those freeways?), I could have been in Politeville, West Mannerstown. Having a serious driving disability – (i) I was in an foreign city; (ii) I was piloting an unfamiliar hire car on its maiden voyage; and (iii) I was driving on the freaking wrong side of the road! – I half-expected a road rage incident of Mad Max-esque proportions to occur, but everyone was just lovely. Frex, I indicated right to move into a crowded exit lane, and the cars politely made room. I indicated left to enter the fast lane, and the slower cars moved out of the way. I slowed down because I had trouble finding the gear stick (we ended up with a manual car – and the stick was on the wrong side!) and kept mistaking the windscreen wipers for the indicator stalk (also on the wrong side of the car) – and LA drivers made kindly room to escape our lurching, stalling, windscreen wiper-crazy vehicle.
Perhaps it had something to do with the way our car was bunny-hopping all over the road.
Perhaps people were simply afraid of us crashing into their shiny vehicles, all kamikaze-like.
Perhaps it had something to do with the erratic path we traced, down Sepulveda Blvd, through LAX, down Sepulveda Blvd, up Sepulveda Blvd, through the LAX again, onto the freeway…
… but in any event, I thought the drivers in LA were just lovely.
9. Donuts for Breakfast!
Our first night in LA was at some chain hotel in Hollywood. We planned to drive to San Francisco in the morning anyway, so we figured we’d be tight-arses and spent the night in a cheap chain hotel, which, all things considered, was just fine…
… until the morning when we were greeted with the horror that is “Continental Breakfast”! Argh!
My lily-livered traveling companion managed to scrounge the last of what appeared to be raisin bran – weak! – leaving me (and a few confused German tourists) with what appeared to be a choice of Froot Loops and donuts for brekkie! (I helpfully explained to the Germans that it’s “Froot” because “Fruit” would be false advertising.) Nonetheless, figuring I’d try to fit in in our new surroundings, I scarfed three donuts (with icing!) and three cups of coffee – before retiring to the privacy of our room to discover that a fibre-less breakfast does not an easy passage make… if you get my drift.
8. Highway One Sure is Purty
Taking some good advice, we decided to drive the coastal highway up to San Francisco, instead of the boring ol’ freeway which runs inland. It did take us until 9:30 PM or so to reach San Fran (after “Continental” breakfast-induced, uhh, setbacks, we didn’t leave Los Angeles until 11:30 AM or so), but it sure was worth the extra time: big winding coast, big ocean views, big beautiful cliffs…
… and big cars! Wow, now I have some background to all those SUV threads that perennially crop up in the Pit. We have plenty of SUVs in Australia (although we called them 4WDs), but all of them would be positively dwarfed next to some of the behemoths we drove next to. A few of them even had four wheels on the rear axle, as if two wheels would be insufficient to support the immense load carried in the back (although, strangely, I never saw one carrying a load of any description…)
Did I mention our hire car was a puny Hyundai Accent? (Promptly christened “Victor”, for luck.) At times, we had trouble seeing out of Victor, being hemmed on all sides by overgrown Tonka trucks.
You might even say we had trouble seeing the forest for the SUVs…
(Ouch! Don’t hurt me!)
7. Having Fun With Accents!
I thought most Americans would be able to pick out an Australian accent, but it appears years of “The Crocodile Hunter”, “Kangaroo Jack” and “Crocodile Dundee”, have given y’all (hee! I love saying “y’all”!) entirely the wrong impression of what we really sound like.
With three nights to wile away in San Francisco, we had plenty of time to have fun with this. At times I put on a BBC-type accent and haughtily went about my business. At others, I attempted a German accent – inspired by our Froot Loop-loving friends back in Hollywood – all the while insisting I was a true blue Australian. Take that, Steve Irwin!
I came unstuck, however, trying to order pizza over the phone – in my normal, genuine Australian accent:
“We’re in room 324.”
“Pardon, sir?”
“324.”
“Sorry sir, you’ll have to repeat yourself.”
“Three-24.”
“Sorry, what-24?”
“Threeeeee-toooooo-forrrrr!”
“…”
“… I’m very sorry sir, could you repeat that?”
“Ahh fuckit, I’ll just meet you in the lobby!”
Oh, what else about San Francisco? Hmm, we went to a nightclub in Soma (much like clubs here at home), visited Golden Gate Park (kinda grotty), rode the cable cars (crowded, but great fun), ate Mexican food in the Mission (cheap but tasty), hung out in the Castro (very clean and friendly, plus I got my nipple pierced) and briefly joined the throngs of tourists at Fisherman’s Wharf (much like any tourist trap in any city). I was a little shocked at the number of homeless people begging for change – you just don’t see that kind of thing were I come from – but that’s a story for another day.
6. "Paper Or Plastic, Sir?"
Our last day in San Francisco, we cruised over the Golden Gate bridge and headed into Marin County. Our weekend had been fine and sunny, but the characteristic fog rolled in on the morning of the last day, which made for some interesting photos of the great honking red bridge itself.
Muir Woods was very pretty. We were warned about the crowds, but really there weren’t too many people about.
Eating lunch in Sausalito, something which had been niggling at the back of my mind cemented itself as a realisation at the front of my small monkey brain.
People had been calling me sir!
You don’t get that in Australia. Shop assistants will call you mate, love, darl or hun, but there’s none of this sir/ma’am business. At first it felt a little odd having people twice my age address me by such a formal (to my ear, anyway) title, and I never really got used to it.
Speaking of people twice my age, it was also odd seeing middle-aged people working behind the counter at fast food outlets or bagging groceries. Also, having someone to bag one’s purchases – at home, you have to fend for yourself – was also a bit of a novelty.
The next day, we continued driving up into the Sonoma Valley. We visited a couple wineries – discovering California reds appear to be much sweeter than our Australia reds, which are typically quite dry – and bummed about in Santa Rosa before driving south inland to Sonora.
5. Yosemite – Yowzers!
At first I planned to travel through Yosemite National Park simply because it was (approximately) on the way to Las Vegas. I figured Yosemite would be pretty much like any other national park I’ve seen – and there’s plenty of them where I live – which is to say, nothing out of the ordinary.
Man was I wrong! I think my jaw dropped even before we entered the park proper and remained somewhere close to the car mats long after we’d reached the other side of the Sierra Nevada. I even ended having to buy an extra memory card for my digicam (once we reached a city), but it was worth it.
Perhaps it would help to explain that my corner of Australia is almost entirely flat. There’s forests and rivers and beaches and near limitless wilderness, but nary a mountain worth mentioning. (Embarrassing confession: we’re so used to flat terrain that we excitedly took photos of the little foothills surrounding Los Angeles as we were leaving the city). Needless to say, glacier-carved territory was pretty staggering to my eyes.
West of the mountains, we spent the night at Mammoth Lakes, a ski resort in winter, and a delightfully twee town in summer.
4. Death Valley
Death Valley. Death Valley. I still enjoy saying it, hissing and drawing out the first word: Deaaaathhh! Valley! Cool name.
Actually, the Valley itself wasn’t so cool. Or deathly, even. Kinda hot though. Did I mention Victor-our-valiant-hire-car was somewhat lacking in the cooling department? That is, it was missing an air-conditioner. Oh, and that Victor was painted a nice, non-reflective BLACK?
Fortunately, we had a spray bottle which we filled it with water and used to cool down for the journey. (Actually, truth be told, we bought the spray bottle chiefly because it had a delightfully kitsch title, “PRETTY NEAT!” on its side, which we thought was, well, pretty neat.)
3. God Bless this Gas Station!
Strangely, gas stations appear – to this stranger, at least – to be the most patriotic institutions in the US. It seemed nearly every one had a giant funpark-sized stars-and-stripes adorning the parking lot, sometimes with a nearby billboard proclaiming, “God Bless America!” Lots of people also adorn their cars with national flags, something only the Prime Minister, Governors and Governor-General does in Australia. (I won’t mention the “No Dune Coons” stickers in Nevada – even our PM doesn’t have one of them on his official vehicle…)
Oh, Nevada. Sweaty and stinky from Death Valley, we crossed the border and sprinted to Las Vegas in time for the Labor Day long weekend. Figuring we’d try to stay in the tackiest, most over-the-top hotel on the Strip – hey, no-one goes to Vegas for class, right? – we managed to get rooms at the Luxor (that big-ass, black glass pyramid at the south end). To my delight, the hotel had “inclinators” instead of elevators: passenger cars which followed the inside angle of the pyramid instead of going straight up and down. This caused some confusion to newer hotel guests who weren’t prepared for the sudden sideways-and-upwards movement; I got to meet a Las Vegas bride (in her white gown and veil) as she unexpectedly flew across the lift and collided with my suitcase.
(I could easily have caught the bouquet, but figured I wasn’t ready to get married any time soon.)
2. Yard-long Margaritas! – and Street Drinking!
I expected Vegas to be over-the-top, artificial, hot, superficial, tacky… and it was all that and more. It was just grrrr-reat!, for want of a better word.
We soon discovered that the aforementioned margaritas could be purchased from our hotel and then carried out onto the streets. No one seemed to mind the missing glassware (perhaps each hotel receives an similar influx of glasses belonging to other hotels, so that the net glassware effect is zero). Street drinking is illegal where I come from, so it was quite the novelty to walk down the Strip chugging beers or margaritas or what have you. Funnily enough, most of the people on the street were in a great, festive mood.
The end result of walking with beer, however, is that one must occasionally stop at a casino to utilise the toilet (sorry, “restroom” or “baaaa-throom”). Deep in thought during one such pit-stop, one huge difference between a great cultures of the United States and Australia occurred to me.
It wasn’t the availability of firearms.
It wasn’t the different levels of media saturation.
It definitely wasn’t the cultural differences that flow from having a figurehead Head of State and distinct office of Head of Government, versus a system where the two roles are intertwined.
It wasn’t the spirit of free-wheeling enterprise and individual achievement, versus the culture of mateship and ideal of common achievement of goals. (Well, not entirely.)
It was the fact that Australian men pee together, but Americans pee separately.
You see back home, the great majority of our urinals are big, stainless steel troughs, not dainty, individual porcelain bowls. In this country, when the Urge calls, one answers it by proudly marching to stand side by side with one’s fellow Australians, together enjoying the great manly fellowship that is the Shared Ability to Pee While Standing Up!
In America, men shuffle in meekly to huddle at individual porcelain urinals, isolated from each other by the Privacy Walls of Chipboard. There’s no idle chatter at the urinal; there’s no polite shuffling up and down to make room for newcomers; there’s no shared experience of relief!
To my racing mind, America’s individual urinals represented that single-minded American pursuit of individual happiness, that culture of free thinking and selfishness where societal goals are second to individualistic aspirations and individualistic gains. The Privacy Walls of Chipboard represent America’s peculiar Puritan ways: that strange juxtaposition of enormous individual freedoms and loony right wing religious tendencies, the positioning of enormous excess and immorality against public posturing on narrow-minded conservative social stances…
… but then I finished peeing and dismissed all such wild, crazy thoughts from my mind.
(Personally, I think American men are just pee shy.
Alternatively, us Australian men enjoying the sight of each other’s penises…)
1. To Escape LAX, One Must Remove One’s Shoes and Belt
The last leg of our journey took in a not-so-quick trip to the (aptly-named) Grand Canyon and a final night in Vegas. On our last day, we drove back to LA and bummed about in Santa Monica for the evening, before heading to LAX.
Sheesh, LAX. During our four hour wait to get through immigration on arrival in LA, I composed a little ditty to capture the experience. I sung it to my fellow queue dwellers to pass the time:
“LAX is a shithole
It’s the shittiest place on earth”
Well it doesn’t rhyme too well, but hey my mood was too dark for me to compose great verse.
Our departure experience at LAX lived up to expectations. I won’t talk about the horror that it was, but let’s just say it removing my shoes and socks and having my backpack swabbed down in a search for drugs to get through customs was a small price to pay. 19 hours of flying, plus 8 hours of stopovers we were home.
And that was that!
Glad you had fun; hurry back, mate. 
Not many people get to do that.