So the American road trip ended a bit over two weeks ago. There simply was no way I could update this blog on the run, and I've been putting off posting anything since I got back because I had no idea where to start. So, instead I'll try for something a bit different. I might just post up a bunch of random anecdotes from the trip in no particular order as I remember them. Facts may be exaggerated, or censored to protect the guilty.

I watched Zombieland the other day, which was actually pretty awesome. It's pretty much your standard jewish kid in a zombie apocalypse slash romantic comedy slash buddy film. You know the type. However, having traversed the continental United States, it got me thinking. If you had a choice of which country to be in when the influenza zombie apocalypse comes, it'd have to be the States.

Obviously, health care might be an issue at least in the initial outbreak. Without access to any health care, there are obviously going to be a disproportionate number of Mexican illegal immigrant zombies. So, you'd probably want to avoid San Diego. Actually, most of SoCal.

On the plus side, would be the availability of ridiculously large vehicles and weaponry. This is really where the States leads the world in zombie apocalypse preparedness. Just about every car is a few bars of box steel and some welding away from the ultimate zombie horde fighting vehicle. Seriously, an F250 is a medium sized car in the States. Weld up a zombie plow, maybe some sort of cage to protect the occupants from zombie Miquels and Enriques. Though in all honesty, roll your average Toyota Tundra off the show room floor and no undead will stand a chance. I feel for the Prius drivers, because they will be the first to die. And die horribly at that. Actually, no I don't feel for them at all.

Then compare that to Australian vehicles. You're pretty much going to be stuck with mid-90s Hyundai Excel. Possibly the twin cam if you are lucky. Regardless, you are going to get fucked on the first time you encounter the walking dead.

Then there are the weapons. In the states your average Walmart is going to be stocking AR15s and pump-action shotguns and all the ammunition you can possibly fit into the tray of your (as previously noted, enourmous) pick-up. Might as well get a chainsaw, hedge trimmer, one of those autohammers, not for any real reason, just because they are awesome. You aren't just going to be safe, you're going to have a blast. It'll almost be unfair to the undead.

Back here in Australia though, you're going to be lucky to find a butter knife to defend yourself with. If you are in a nightclub, you are in even more trouble. You'll have nothing but a plastic cup and some colourful language with which to defend yourself. That 2am lockout isn't going to stop the horde from getting in, either.

Really, as an Australian, you might as well just forget the flu shots and join the horde as soon as possible. It'll just be easier that way.

Anyway, enough of that nonsense. The road trip.

The very first day was also the very longest. Our flight left Brisbane at 11am Friday, 13 hours later it touched down in Los Angeles. At 7am Friday. That's kinda disorientating in itself, but in addition none of us got any sleep at all on the flight. They schedule the flights so as to make them as conducive to getting in sync with the time at your destination. They serve dinner just a few hours into the flight, and turn off all the lights at what would be 8pm Brisbane time. It doesn't really work, though. Not even Charlie and Boots could put me to sleep. So we landed at LAX, navigated customs and immigration surprisingly easily and found ourselves in a taxi. Immediately we were in trouble, as the taxi driver had apparently been in the country less time that we had, and hadn't the faintest grasp of what we were calling English. It'd didn't help that we walked straight by the sign that said to wait for the taxi attendant to find you a taxi, and found ourselves one.

This confused the taxi driver, and despite his taxi being the only one large enough for all our luggage, he wouldn't accept our destination until we lied that we had been told to get in his cab by the attendant. Giving directions was even more of a problem because even though we only had to drive less than a mile, and the destination was literally just around the corner, he couldn't do so without satellite navigation. The incompetence of our taxi driver was a refreshing dose of familiarity.

Surprisingly, we managed to get to the car rental place even though he had taken us the wrong way, and I paid him (a tip even) and walked off quickly pretending I didn't understand his questions about taxi attendants. Maybe the taxi attendant had a friend in immigration or something.

So we picked up the Dodge Charger (and thoughtfully a GPS) and headed off to find the hotel. Given it was peakhour and LA is (supposedly) notorious for its traffic we were there before we knew it. In fact regarding traffic, Brisbane is worse. In fact, during the whole trip "Brisbane is worse" became a bit of a catchphrase when encountering things that cities were apparently known for.

After updating Facebook statuses (13 hours in the air is plenty of time to come up with something witty), crashing out for a few hours and getting Chinese for dinner (our hotel was bang in the middle of Chinatown, maybe 2 miles from the centre of downtown LA), we decided to find something local to drink at.

We went with what googlemaps recommended. The bar was just down the road, maybe a quarter mile in fact. Oddly, for Chinatown, it was a reggae club. Even more oddly, for a reggae club, in California, there wasn't even a hint of ganja in the air. The place was packed. And it was the night before Halloween so EVERYONE was in costume, except of course, the group of Aussies.

Regardless, we got into some serious drinking.

"Jim Beam and Coke, thanks."
*sip*
*pause*
*involuntary shake of the head*
"Oh, Jesus. This is strong..."

In the States, they don't measure drinks, they free-pours spirits. And generally quite generously.

We did a couple of rounds each, and on my third the bartender pulled me aside. She was dressed as Chun Li, half-asian and wearing librarian glasses. For someone, somewhere, every check-box on their fetish request list was ticked. (The other waitress at this bar was dressed as Cammy, or rather as undressed as Cammy. Essentially she was in just a leotard and boots. I think there might have been a beret, I didn't really notice. Her head, I mean.)

"Why aren't you guys tipping tonight?"
"Uhh... Ohhhhhhh, yeaah. Tips..."
"Is there something wrong with your drinks?"
"Yeah, no sorry. We totally forgot we had to."

So, I explained that we had only been in the country for about 15 hours at that stage and hadn't actually got the hang of tipping yet. I threw her some cash to make up for all the tips we had missed. When the next round arrived, I kinda regretted that I had, because the drinks were even stronger. A couple of tipped rounds later and things were starting to get a bit crazy. Amongst doing the worst and most offensive sell of Queensland tourism since the "Yo, way to go" ads (in fact, I just rubbished the country in general), I started talking to a girl dressed as Lady Gaga.

Anyway, with probably 18 hours of getting up to speed with this new culture, I figured I'd go classy.

"So how complete is your Lady Gaga costume?"
"I don't know, I've got leggings, the sunglasses, the wig..."
"Oh I can see that, but are you packing?"
"I'm sorry?"
"I mean it's a Lady Gaga costume... have you gone the whole... package?"
"I don't understand what you are talking about, where are you from?"
"Oh I'm Australian, but you know Lady Gaga, right... she's apparently carrying a bit more in her tights than most Ladies..."

At around this point, I've noticed a very unamused pair of eyes staring me down from the bar. I gave a half-wave, half-salute to him, and he came over to "introduce" himself. Incidentally, he was her fiancee. So, not prepared to let a good joke go to waste I tried to explain it to him. It didn't really go down so well with him either, so I quickly steered the conversation elsewhere. The frisking I received at the door was reassuring me at this point, but I deftly moved onto other topics than his wife-to-be's penis, such as clubs they might recommend in Los Angeles and drink-tipping etiquette.

Other classic conversations I had during the night included a conversation at the urinals with a Mexican bloke about the height of said urinals (they were about 3 inches off the ground). The joke in that case being the bar used to be a Chinese restaurant (so he said) and that Asians tend to be short (so I said). We did rounds of tequila with Chun Li. Later after closing time (outside the bar) we struck up a conversation with an apparently part-time pot dealer which mostly discussed how difficult it would be for him to procure weed if he were to travel to Australia for a holiday. For the first time, we actually had something good to say about Queensland to an American. Anna Bligh would have been proud.

The rest of the night went like this. Someone getting thrown into the hedges of a Bank of America branch (write your own puns there), a servo run for hotdogs with that hilarious liquid cheese in a bottle and the painting of the toilet with said hotdogs. Almost a standard night out back home, really.

So anyway... that was day one.

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