2 Aussie Nomads

Last night we stayed at Emily’s AirBnB in Millbrook just outside of Montgomery Alabama.

Emily is a 911 dispatcher and has a really nice little 2 bedroom house in the ‘burbs.

There wasn’t a great deal that we wanted to do in Montgomery AL, so we had a bit of a lazy start, loaded up The Don II, pointed him south towards the Montgomery City Centre, and headed off.

The one thing that we did want to do was visit the National Memorial for Peace and Justice (a civil rights memorial). Noting that it is Sunday here, the place was pretty quiet in the city.

It was very sobering to walk around the memorial and understand the ways that whites tortured and killed black African Americans, up to as late as 1950 … and for the most menial of “crimes”.

The memorial has a plaque representing each county of each state, listing the names of each African American who was killed (they call it racial terrorism) that can be proven. There were obviously many, many more …

In some cases it is obvious that whole families were wiped out …

… and sometimes the names were simply not known …

… and sometimes there were simply so many killed that it was not possible to record their details …

… all for trivial crimes …

After the memorial, we wandered into the city to have a look around and discovered it was Rosa Parks day. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat for a while woman on 1 December 1955 and she was arrested and convicted, resulting in Dr Martin Luther King coming to prominence and a boycott of the Montgomery buses for over one year – the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement.

We didn’t realise it at the time, but Rosa Parks day was today (1 December 2019) and they were in the process of closing down the city and unveiling a statue in her honour.

We then went for a walk down towards the river (the Alabama River). There is a great deal of history in Montgomery and they do not hide their history, even though much of it is very sad.

After browsing around Montgomery, we got back onto the Interstate and headed for our next destination – Atlanta Georgia.

We deliberately tried to stay off the interstate as much as we could so that we could experience some of the rural Alabama and Georgia countryside.

The roads and surroundings are absolutely beautiful at the moment with the leaves all changing colour and falling to the ground.

We stopped in LaGrange GA for lunch, not long after crossing the Georgia State Line, and feasted on fried chicken and salad.

Tonight we went in search of BBQ 🙂

Here’s a fun fact – in the USA they refer to the main meal as the entree, unlike in Australia where an entree is a starter.

Here is another fun fact – an entree is big enough for both of us, so we normally only buy one meal serve.

Now I know that I’ve previously had a rant about the drivers, speed and interstates generally … one thing that I have noticed is that everyone drives very respectfully, making space for drivers merging onto the interstate and (generally) pulling over to the right if another driver wants to get past you.

Another thing that I have noticed is that drivers seem to drive quite close behind you on the interstate – even at 80-90mph – on the assumption that you will not be stopping.

On our way into Atlanta this afternoon, I was in the fast lane with another car on my back bumper and the cars in front of me stopped quite suddenly … so I stopped quite suddenly. I think that the driver behind me must have been texting or checking his phone because I could see the whites of his eyes when he frantically hit the brakes.

We were really lucky not to be in a nose-to-tail 🙁

I’ve also discussed previously how you can merge from one motorway to another, without slowing down from 80mph. Some of the motorways and interchanges look like a bowl of spaghetti!

As we were coming in to Atlanta today, we were presented with this on the GPS …

… which looks like this on Google Maps …

… and then turns into this …

Overall, our trip today looked something like this (below) – 225mi or approx 360km. A pretty lazy day.

Tonight we are staying at Marietta, just outside Atlanta Georgia. We’ve really scored the jackpot tonight because we have a fully equipped in-laws apartment in a beautiful suburb – I’ll give you some pictures tomorrow.

While the weather was beautiful in Louisiana and Mississippi, it has been steadily getting colder as we go further north, and tomorrow’s forecast for Marietta is going to be cold.

Yep, a maximum of 6 degrees Celsius. Cold enough to freeze the you-know-what’s off a brass monkey.

All of the houses here are centrally heated, so while you can walk around inside in a tee-shirt and jeans, you are not prepared for how cold it is outside.

Me thinks we may need to look out our thermals for tomorrow …

Today was a 23 hour day thanks to the magic of crossing into another time zone, but I’m sure that I’ll get that hour back somewhere around Nashville Tennessee after we have been through the Smokey Mountains … but that’s not for a few more days yet.

We continue to have a blast. Loved Alabama and loving Georgia … particularly when we can get off the interstate and travel through the beautiful countryside.

Tomorrow we head towards Charlotte North Carolina.

We really love to hear from you, so don’t hesitate to leave a comment. We will even take requests … want more photos of BBQ, fried chicken ….?

Thanks for tracking along with us.

Today’s song is Georgia (Willie Nelson). Enjoy!

Ciao

#G&KTAKEUSA2019

Today was something of a multi-state epic journey that the founding fathers would have been proud of … we travelled from Louisiana through Mississippi and up into Alabama.

If we had taken a short detour – or got lost – we could have picked up Florida also because it wasn’t that far from where we were in Mississippi … but getting lost was never an option because of the magic of Google Maps.

We had an early start today … well, earlier than normal. We woke to the alarm at about 6.45am. I made myself beautiful (about 5 minutes), and while MBW made herself beautiful (>5 minutes) I loaded the suitcases into the back of The Don II.

Just as we were getting ready to lock up 3041 Burgundy St, New Orleans LA and hit the road, Danny popped over to say goodbye.

The house is essentially what I would call a duplex, but in Louisiana they call it a ”double shotgun”, so Danny lives in the other half of 3041 Burgundy Street.

Now I am no fashion expert, but while Danny was resplendent in a fluffy red bathrobe, I thought that it clashed with his pink toenails. Anyhow, I’m not one to judge …

We had a nice chat with Danny about his house, living in New Orleans, his job (he is a bartender and makes 20 different flavours of Bloody Marys I believe), and also discussed the ghost that lives in his house … she steals spoons and unplugs appliances apparently. I’m probably glad that we had that discussion as we were checking out and not checking in …

So today’s final destination was Montgomery Alabama and while we were always destined to go through Mississippi, we elected to take the scenic route.

The scenic route started with a stop at Walmart about 20km outside of New Orleans because we had no milk, so we’d had no breakfast and no coffee. And while we can function OK with no breakfast, we don’t function well with no coffee.

Shopping in Walmart in Louisiana is an adventure on its own … the shop carries everything from fresh fruit and vegetables, sandwiches, all the usual tins, bottles, jars and packets of stuff you’d expect to find in a supermarket, through to clothing, shoes, toys, pharmacy and …

… guns!

While we were there we decided to buy a cooler bag to carry our cold stuff … but they have never heard of a “cooler bag” in Louisiana so we needed to go through all other possible word combinations to come up with something that described what we wanted (an ice chest, but a soft bag, not a hard container).

That game of charades led us to the sporting equipment department (yep, it’s a mystery to me too) … which led us to the discovery of guns.

Anyhow, we bought our guns … err, sorry … we bought our milk and yoghurt and fruit and cooler bag, and headed off to have breakfast and coffee in the Walmart car park.

Then we went into a service station to top up The Don II for the trip … that was another adventure, this whole pre-paying for fuel before you pump fuel when the pump won’t accept your Australian Visa Debit card so you have to go in and explain your plight to the attendant, who can’t understand a word that you say … Sigh 🙁

Jack Reacher has a list of rules that he lives by (known as Reacher’s Rules), and one of them is to eat/sleep when you can.

I have a similar rule – pee when you can, because once you get onto the interstate you may not get another chance, and at 80mph you need the least number of distractions possible!

What was unusual about our trip today is that it involved a couple of times where we were crossing large bodies of water via a very long bridge. This happened for the first time just out of New Orleans LA.

What I found most intriguing was the GPS’s advice to “stay on the I-10 East” … like I had any other option! It was that or swim.

In this particular case we were crossing Lake Pontchartrain.

The scenic route Involved getting OFF the I-10 as soon as we could and getting back onto the 90, which took us into Mississippi …

… along the beach road …

… through Biloxi …

… where we saw some stunning houses across the road from the beach …

… and on to Pascagoula where we stopped for lunch.

Lunch included crab claws, shrimp (prawns), oysters, fish, hush puppies (I can’t describe them), chips and coleslaw.

The beaches in this part of Mississippi are beautiful white sandy beaches and the weather was stunning … although there was nobody in swimming so I assume that the water was cold.

We were told that these beaches were all man-made.

So I’m just putting it out there, but if Queensland Rail wanted to open up an ICT Delivery office in Biloxi MS, I’d be happy to move there and run it for you Alison 🙂

After lunch we hopped back onto the I-65 (that’s the interstate heading north) and crossed over into Alabama.

Alabama highways have a totally different feel about them from other states – lots of wide open spaces and leaves turning brown (although to be fair, the leaves always turn brown at this time of the year).

There were indications from Google Maps that there was a bad accident up ahead on the I-65, and we were keen to see more of the Alabama countryside, so we hooked off the I-65 and onto the I-31 North and went through rural Alabama.

Wide open spaces, land that goes on forever, skies as blue as … a millionaire’s swimming pool.

The speed limits are a bit slower that than the interstate (55mph Vs 75mph), but it was all worth slowing down to get a good look at it.

Incidentally, if QR wanted to open an office in Alabama, I’d be OK with that too …

All up we clocked up about 346 miles (550km) today, arriving at Emily’s AirBnB in Millbrook Alabama (on the outskirts of Montgomery AL).

The other day I mentioned the number of RVs that we have seen getting dragged around the USA. This one (below) is not the biggest we have seen – we have seen them with three axles – but it is still pretty big!

The other funny thing that we have seen is RVs that are the size of a bus towing a vehicle behind it. Now I know that you sometimes see this in Australia, but in the USA, everything is bigger – RVs don’t tow a little toy car behind them, they tow a full-size Jeep or Ford Ranger equivalent.

Tomorrow we are heading over to Atlanta Georgia, so it will be a pretty slow day – only a couple of hours driving.

Today’s song and the title of today’s post was a no-brainer – Sweet Home Alabama (Lynard Skynard). Turn it up!

Ciao

#G&KTAKEUSA2019

Last night I got the memo with my first warning. To be honest, I’ve been expecting it so it didn’t come as a surprise.

I had been working through the reasons why I shouldn’t shave, but none of them really stacked up.

“Going for the Miami Vice look“ … except we are not going to Miami.

“Going for the Hawaii 5-0 look” … except we are not going to Hawaii either.

In the end the conversation went like this:

MBW: “It’s time you shaved”

Me: “As you wish.”

Now I’m sure that many of you have been worried sick about The Don II – there has been no mention of him for the last few days. I can assure you that The Don II is safe and well, waiting patiently outside 3041 Burgundy Street, Bywater, New Orleans, Louisiana.

This morning was planned to start in the usual way: ablutions, dressed, breakfast, and out the door for the short walk to the French Quarter to catch a New Orleans tour.

While MBW completed her ablutions, I noticed that our host – Danny – has a thing for farmyard animals. There are pictures of them all over the house.

So as we left the house to walk to the French Quarter, the front door at the other side of the duplex opened, and a man came out and introduced himself: “Hi, I’m Danny, your host”.

To say that Danny is … unusual … would be an understatement. While he was dressed in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, his beautifully painted pink fingernails and toenails were a little confusing.

In the interests of full disclosure, below is a copy of Danny’s AirBnB profile photo.

That possibly explains a few things. Or maybe it just raises more questions?

So we had a lovely chat with Danny, and excused ourselves to get to the French Quarter to catch our tour bus. Somehow our booking got lost and we were unable to get in touch with the tour company … I mean, why would you bother answering your phones or returning calls on what is probably the busiest weekend of the year?

So we went to “Plan B” and instead bought tickets on the HOHO (hop on, hop off) bus. The bus does a big loop around and through the city including the French Quarter, Garden District, Financial District, and the Central Business District. Some of the sights that we saw include:

… and lots of other things that I just wasn’t quick enough to capture for posterity.

It was a good trip, allowing us to get our bearings, see the city in a couple of hours, and learn a good deal about the history of the city.

After the HOHO bus tour, we got off and wandered back into the French Quarter for a morning snack and coffee.

I have three favourite new words … Cafe du Monde – home of the beignet and chicory coffee. Unfortunately – like yesterday – the queues to get into Cafe du Monde for either “to go” (takeaway) or table service were out of control, so we went to a nearby Cafe Beignet instead. Coffee and beignets were just as good!

We were scheduled to do a “Free Food Tour by Foot” this afternoon just after lunch, so we went back to the French Markets to grab a quick bite of lunch before the tour started. To keep in the beignet theme, we had crawfish beignets and they were gooood!

We met up with Kayla (our FFTBF guide) and she recommended another food outlet before we headed off, so – because we haven’t eaten enough food, glorious food over the last few days – we got another snack for the road … boudin balls.

Yes, I know what you are thinking and no, I’m pretty sure that they are not. They were a bit like rice balls (or arancini balls MBW tells me) – spicy and served with a wholegrain mustard dressing.

We met up with Kayla again and started the tour – once again learning lots about the history of New Orleans, the meaning and origin of Cajun and Creole food, the architecture, other food history, places to eat, and we had a few more taste tests.

Kayla is the one in the green tee-shirt. Old Mate in the grey tee-shirt wouldn’t take the hint and move!

Antoine’s Restaurant can seat 700+ people twice a day. Waiters have to do an internship, and when people book to eat at Antoine’s, you don’t book a table, you book a waiter. Go figure! Crazy Americans!

After the tour – and because we hadn’t yet eaten enough – MBW and I went on a search for Po’boy and etoufee (like stew with rice in it).

The po’boy was shrimp and soooo gooood! Rice is a staple here, so you have it with everything.

On the way back towards home, we stopped in at the Roosevelt Hotel to look at the Christmas light display …

… stood and marvelled at the mighty Mississippi River …

… walked up Canal Street, which was the original dividing line between French and American settlers in New Orleans …

… and wandered back to the French Quarter.

We were getting pretty tired by this time (6.00pm) after having walked close to 18,000 steps again today, so we contributed to the local ride share economy here once again and caught a Lyft home for coffee, and to pack ready for another big drive day tomorrow.

So tomorrow we head out early to try and beat the Thanksgiving weekend crowds, the Bayou Classic crowds (a football game between two top-rated teams) and the Thanksgiving Day parade crowds … and we head up towards Montgomery Alabama.

Bring it on!

We have absolutely loved the atmosphere, culture, vibe, food and people here in Louisiana and wish we could have stayed longer.

While we had heard that the city is very dirty (it is), there are lots of beggars (there are), and crime levels are very high (we had no issues), we felt completely safe and had a wonderful time.

Shame though that we couldn’t understand most of what the locals said 🙁 … y’all. (If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard someone say y’all …)

Today’s song and post title is Food Glorious Food (from the musical Oliver!).

Ciao

G&KTAKEUSA2019

MBW and I took a walk on the wild side today in New Orleans, Louisiana. It’s Thanksgiving here today, and the place was insane.

We started the day by having a sleep-in. We got up at around 8.00am after a good night sleep catching up on a couple of long days driving the last couple of days.

When I say “we had a good night sleep”, I actually mean that I had a great night sleep. MBW not so much.

I had heard that it can be quite noisy around where we are staying with reports of all the usual suburban noises, plus a train nearby. I often keep earplugs with me as I am not normally a good sleeper and easily disturbed, and so I put them in when going to bed last night, put my head on the pillow, and slipped straight into that coma I forecast.

The very next thing that I knew, it was morning and time to get up. MBW reported not sleeping very well because of “that train” – which it turns out runs along at the end of our street, and the driver (engineer?) likes to honk his horn at every level crossing. Long, loud blasts that I didn’t hear.

That plus all of the expected creaks and groans of a house that must be >100 years old, and the fact that the house is actually a duplex, so we hear the noise of the neighbours coming and going as well.

Anyway, we got up, did the usual ablutions, had some breakfast and coffee, and set off down to the French Quarter.

We walked down through narrow, quiet suburban streets that contain houses that are colourful and quirky.

Now I may have mentioned previously that it is only about a 20 minute walk from where we are staying to the French Quarter, so we got there by about 9.30am. A bit cooler again today so we were back into our long-sleeved tee-shirts.

The first thing that we found was the French Markets (typical!) …

… but MBW was particularly keen to get down to Cafe du Monde to try a beignet and coffee. They have been serving chicory coffee and beignets since 1862, and if I understand correctly, that’s all that they sell.

So we got to Cafe du Monde and found the queue of people waiting to get a seat …

… and it was like that all day long.

I mentioned Thanksgiving Day earlier – unfortunately that meant that many shops were closed today, but Cafe du Monde was open and popular.

We had a couple of things lined up for today, specifically a Food tour by foot and the Thanksgiving Day parade. Both were scheduled for the afternoon so plenty of time to kill in the French Quarter.

Beautiful architecture but everything was pretty dirty as we had been warned.

We had (or rather, we thought we had) a Food tour by foot just after lunch, so we had a quick snack on a ‘Gator sausage (don’t ask, because I don’t know … but it was tasty) before waiting for our tour guide …

…who never turned up. It turns out we had mis-read her instructions and the tour is for tomorrow (spoiler alert!!!), so we decided to try again for the coffee and beignet before the Thanksgiving Day parade at 3.30pm.

Success! The queues were short and we got a table in a flash, and before we knew it we were feasting on coffee and beignets.

We headed down towards the Bourbon Street part of the French Quarter and noticed how few people were waiting around for the Thanksgiving Day parade. We asked Siri to ask Google for some advice … and found that the parade is not held on Thanksgiving Day, but rather on Saturday (who would have guessed???) … so we missed that one also 🙁

So we headed further down into the French Quarter towards Bourbon Street, with a stop on Canal Street.

We finally made it to Bourbon Street to check out the sights and sounds.

We hadn’t had lunch, so we stopped in at the Hard Rock Cafe New Orleans for a traditional Thanksgiving Day meal (turkey, cranberry sauce, vegetables, mash, stuffing … and ended it with pumpkin pie.

By this time it was getting cooler and darker, so we did a final lap of Bourbon Street to watch the madness.

Lots of buskers around, lots of jazz bands all playing in competition with each other, some dude in a Star Wars costume doing a dance routine to music that was ear-splittingly loud, and lots and lots of beggars on the street.

New Orleans is one of those places where you can consume alcohol on the street, so it makes for an interesting atmosphere … jazz, kids playing drums on upside-down buckets, noise, people everywhere … a really fun, party atmosphere.

Buskers even take over the street so that cars have to wait until the performance is over. Below is a video of some kids playing drums on Bourbon Steet.

We headed back towards the top end of the French Quarter and booked a Lyft back home.

Tomorrow we have a bus tour of the city followed by a food tour on foot.

Today’s vital statistics are not measured in miles, but rather steps – almost 18,000 steps each today.

The title of today’s post, and today’s song is Walk on the Wild Side (Lou Reed). Not exactly about New Orleans, but appropriate just the same.

Ciao

G&KTAKEUSA2019

Welcome to New Orleans (or as they say here, N’Yorlens).

Yesterday I was telling you about how The Don (that’s The Don I) was taken back and exchanged for The Don II. When we took him back to the rental company, the attendant moved him over to another location to make it easier for us to move our luggage, while we went and did the paperwork.

When we went to do the changeover, he had written on the back driver’s side window “Rattle under dashboard” which accurately reflected my complaint.

Underneath that was written “CHECK BRAKES!!!”. I wasn’t specifically aware of an issue with the brakes, but experience tells me that if you spend your day doing 80mph on the interstate, you are likely to need brakes at some point – and potentially in a hurry.

So that was a good outcome. The new owners of The Don I will get him sans rattle and with working brakes. And we got The Don II that started out sans rattle and (I assume) working brakes. Win win.

Now I should also point out that The Don II is not without his own problems.

The Chrysler 300S comes with a mirror dimming feature … essentially the rear view mirror can be set to dim either automatically or on demand by using the handy dandy touch screen on the dashboard.

Unfortunately the rear view mirror in The Don II was permanently stuck to dim. We tried all combinations of button pressing, cussed at it, Googled it … hey, we even read the instruction manual in the glovebox … all to no avail. Permanently dim 🙁

Then about 24 hours after we had picked up The Don II we had a realisation. It wasn’t the mirror that was the problem. The rear window of The Don II was tinted black – much blacker than is legally allowed in Australia.

Now who’s dim?

Yesterday – and in fact for several days now – I’ve commented on the complexity of the interstate system here in the US.

It’s not unusual to get an instruction like “In 300 metres, be in any of the left four lanes to take the exit to SH-23 East and then merge onto the FM1724” … and then be presented with a picture like the one below.

A lot of information to process while making sure you are in the correct lane, otherwise … Alabama, here we come …

So this morning we woke up at Bernadette’s house in Lafayette Louisiana …

… and it was pouring rain!

So we loaded up The Don II, and had a couple of cups of coffee (hazelnut coffee – not my favourite) with Bernadette while she alternately ducked outside for another cigarette and coughed up a lung. I’m pretty sure that those two events were somehow related.

When she wasn’t smoking or coughing, she was colouring in her colouring book. I hear that it is very therapeutic … colouring in, that is.

When our caffeine tanks were full, we headed off towards New Orleans but not before getting a picture at the Lafayette sign in town. Apparently it is the MOST photographed sign in Lafayette.

By the time we had taken photos, the rain had cleared and the day had turned into another beautifully warm and sunny Louisiana morning.

Yesterday we had spent all day in the Interstate, so today – rather than take the interstate again – we decided to “take the 90” from Lafayette to New Orleans.

Just as a matter of interest, The Don II got almost 30mpg on the trip from San Antonio to Lafayette which is a bit under 8 litres/100km in the new money. But now that I know how cheap fuel is, I’m not monitoring fuel economy so closely. I’ve even taken the fuel economy display off the dash and replaced it with something else.

So we hopped on the 90 and had a relatively leisurely cruise down to New Orleans through rural Louisiana. Maximum speeds of only 75mph today, so it felt like we were just puddling along.

We stopped for a late breakfast somewhere near Franklin LA (very rural Louisiana) and then got back onto the 90 again to continue our journey.

The trip was as uneventful as the roads were straight and predictable. Nothing to see here but a constant stream of traffic in both directions, and a whole lot of rural agricultural activity going on.

One thing that we have seen a lot of is people hauling caravans around the country-side – and they are big vans. Imagine the biggest vans that you see in Australia – these are at least half as long again. Many have three axles.

I’m telling you, everything is bigger in the USA!

There are a few things that we have seen none of though:

• Road rage – everyone seems to be very accommodating and plays nicely on the road;
• Vehicle accidents – maybe they move them very quickly, but we have yet to see any evidence of accidents;
• Road kill – despite travelling hundreds of miles/km so far, we have seen very little road kill alongside the interstates. We have certainly not seen any dead kangaroos!

We arrived safely in New Orleans around 1.30pm and went straight on a swamp tour.

We saw lots of turtles, bald eagle, egrets … and of course some ‘gators.

After the swamp tour, we went to our AirBnB (Danny’s place this time on Burgundy Street, New Orleans) and unloaded the car. Our AirBnB is about 2km from the French Quarter, so a nice easy walk each day (or about an $8.50 Uber ride).

It’s a really quaint, historic little place.

Tonight we caught an Uber (actually it was a Lyft) into the French Quarter to do a cruise down the mighty Mississippi River on the Creole Queen Paddle Wheeler, including a buffet dinner.

Dinner was amazing – Seafood Pasta, Jambalaya, Gumbo, Brisket, vegetables, Corn, Chicken, Caesar salad, Corn Bread …

It was sooo goood, and despite having eaten too much BBQ every day for the last few days, I still vowed that I was going to eat until I needed CPR – and I very nearly succeeded.

Now I know that the picture above doesn’t look like much, but it was my third helping 🙁

For a warm day, it was surprisingly clear and cold on the deck as we came back into New Orleans at the end of the cruise – about 9.00pm.

So that about wraps it up for the day. I need to go and slip into something comfortable – like a coma – while I digest the way too much food that I ate tonight.

I’ve been looking forward to trying jambalaya and gumbo for some time. They were really hot and spicy – so I could be in trouble in a couple of days – but they didn’t disappoint 🙂

Loved Texas, and loving Louisiana!

Tomorrow we head down to the French Quarter and soak up some Thanksgiving Day atmosphere.

You don’t really need to be a genius to work out the significance of today’s song and the title of today’s post – jambalaya! A classic Cajun dish!

I thought that yesterday’s song with CW McCall was a treat, but wait until you see tonight’s song … there’s not a lot of groups that can wear matching cowboy shirts and get away with it: Jambalaya (Roy Clark).

I would have preferred to give you the Hank Williams version, but I don’t think they made music videos back then …

Ciao

#G&KTAKEUSA2019

In my haste to get yesterday’s post published, I forgot to give you yesterday’s vital statistics.

Yesterday we travelled from Waco down through Austin and onwards to San Antonio, covering about 228 miles (370km). Not particularly astonishing, but we had expected it to be a relatively short driving day.

I mentioned yesterday that we went down to the river walk last night. What I forgot to mention was that we “happened” to end up in Macy’s department store with time for a look around before heading home for a light dinner.

All of the stores here have their “Black Friday” sales on (the day after Thanksgiving) and Macy’s were getting ready for it.

I found a nice jacket – $75 with 40% off – but MBW said it didn’t suit me 🙁

Last night we stayed at Lisa’s AirBnB in San Antonio. It is in a unit complex quite near the hospital so it was a bit noisier than usual for us. Because Lisa is working afternoon shift, she only got in very early this morning so we didn’t get to meet her.

Today started a little warmer – a balmy 16 deg C – so it was short sleeves today.

I went out to load up the car to find two things: it was very foggy, and The Don was covered in autumn leaves. Covered is a relative term.

Now the more observant of you may have noticed something about The Don … he’s a different colour to The Don I introduced you to a couple of days ago. You can look here to see the original Don.

So here is the story. The Don had a bad rattle under the dash. We rented a luxury car for a 3 week trip around the Deep South and we thought it reasonable that The Don wouldn’t rattle – and believe me it was playing havoc with my OCD.

So we called the rental company and had a discussion about it, and I am now pleased to introduce you to Don The Second AKA The Don II. I am extremely pleased to advise that The Don II does not have a rattle and my OCD is intact.

So today we got an early start by heading down to see The Alamo (as in “Remember the Alamo”). It was the site of an historic battle and is quite unusual in that it is right in the middle of the city of San Antonio.

After we left the Alamo, we headed off towards Lafayette LA – tonight’s stop.

Now I may have mentioned in previous posts how confusing it can be on the interstates when presented with multiple exits and multiple lanes.

Notwithstanding all of that, we had a pretty good run on the interstates today and I continue to be impressed with their road/transport infrastructure.

Hence the significance of today’s song title – we felt like we were in a convoy of trucks all day sitting at around 80mph for hours on end.

I’m not sure what CB handle that MBW would give to me, but I’d have to say – given that we are driving around in The Don II – that hers would be “The Godmother”, or just “The GM” for short. (You may need to listed to today’s song to understand the significance of that …)

Somewhere around 1.00pm we were getting peckish and MBW identified that there was a good place in Houston to stop for lunch – The Turkey Hut – so we detoured off the interstate and found our way to Houston TX downtown and TTH.

By the time we got to The Turkey Hut it was about 1.30pm and a late lunch … but that didn’t stop all of the locals from still waiting in line for a feed.

20 minutes to get a table, another 10 minutes to get served … how long should it take to get a feed? About an hour later, lunch turned up.

Vegetarians look away!

Yes i know – another display of a lack of control! Smoked turkey leg with sauce, spinach, shrimp, and red onion in a bowl and the waffle fries can’t be seen. We did share though … and it was gooood 🙂

You know that you are in Texas when you see signs like this posted at a restaurant…

After lunch we got The Don II back on the I-10 pointed east, and back up to 80mph.

They say that age is just a number, and I’d argue that the speed limit is just a number too. At one point overtaking a truck, I think that The Don II hit a top speed of about 91mph … I’m not sure if MBW noticed, but she didn’t say anything …

We had a short break to stretch our legs, use the facilities and top up our caffeine at the Chambers County Safety Rest Area.

I have to say that they were the cleanest public facilities I have ever seen and fully air-conditioned. They put Australian facilities to shame!

So back to today’s song and the title of the post. This one is an absolute classic trucking song and one that you will simply have to add to your Spotify playlist … enjoy … Convoy (CW McCall)

Ciao

#G&KTAKEUSA2019

Yesterday’s post had a warning for vegetarians. Unfortunately today’s is no better – in fact if you are a vegetarian you are possibly better off going elsewhere. There are going to be at least a couple of “beef” references today.

I had intended to give you some vital statistics about our trip but I keep forgetting.

Day 1 we travelled about 14,000km although I admit that it was mostly at around 40,000 feet and I watched movies and tried to nap most of the time.

Day 2 we had The Don and we travelled from Fort Worth to Waco, and travelled about 120 miles.

Today started as a beautiful clear day under glorious blue Texan skies in Waco. We stayed at the Knights Bridge Suites – probably the only night on our trip that we are not staying at an AirBnB … mainly because of the TV show “Fixer Upper”.

Chip and Joanna Gaines run several businesses in Waco and they have a show flipping houses for people. While they have done lots of good things for the local economy and tourism in Waco, unfortunately it seems that everyone that has had a house flipped has it listed on AirBnB for exorbitant prices – hence the motel.

Like most motels around the USA, the Knights Bridge Suites offers a complimentary continental breakfast, so we decided to partake.

You would expect that the fact there was nobody else in the dining room should have sounded the first warning alarm … but we boldly went ahead anyway.

I had a bowl of raisin bran (yum, fibre!) and MBW had a bowl of instant oats … and then we looked at the coffee machine … and then we looked at the packets of preservatives cleverly shaped like muffins and wrapped in plastic … and we decided to head over to Magnolia for coffee instead.

We packed up The Don and headed over nice and early to beat the crowds … sigh.

The first warning alarm should have been the fact that we were ushered into queue lines and entry was being granted by a Magnolia team member, just a few people at a time.

Now I know how cattle feel when they are being herded onto a truck!

MBW purchased the obligatory cupcake and then we went over to the coffee shop.

More queue lines 🙁

But the coffee was good, my choc chip cookie was delicious AND the size of a dinner plate, and we had a nice chat with Courtney whose house appeared in Season 1 of Fixer Upper. (I’m actually unsure of the significance of having a house in Season 1 and happening to be in the coffee shop, but I sense it is somehow a badge of honour …?)

By the time we’d had coffee, the silo gift shop was open and we thought we’d have a look before the crowds turned up.

They have a special on at Magnolia at the moment where if you spend $75 in one transaction, you get a free coffee mug. We got two coffee mugs and if we had been a little more careful about how we divided up our purchases into lots of $75, we probably could have got a third.

Enough said.

After spending a small fortune contributing to the Chip and Joanna Gaines empire, we thought it was only proper that we use their rest rooms and enjoy their outdoors area.

By this time we were ready to head down to San Antonio via Austin … so we got on the interstate, pointed The Don south, wound him up to 80mph and I set the cruise control.

I know that I had a bit of a rant yesterday about the roads and drivers here, but the interstates are really quite amazing. The entrances and exits are designed in such a way that you rarely need to drop below 80mph to enter, exit, and merge across various roads.

One of the challenges though is that you are often presented with a wide number of lane options, and the GPS instructions are long and confusing … leaving you with not a great deal of time to make an important decision about what lane to be in, when you are doing 80mph and surrounded by other vehicles going much faster than you are …

… so we ended up on an exit that we didn’t want to be on, and in a lane that we didn’t want to be in, and not really sure where we were going. The GPS was having trouble recalculating the route fast enough as we lurched from exit to exit to freeway entrance again …

So I stopped, counted to 5, and did a U-turn to try again.

Remember yesterday I told you about having a dirty big Chevy badge attached to a dirty big radiator grill in my rear view mirror? Well I had exactly the same experience again today … except that the Chevy badge and radiator grill were not in my rear view mirror, but rather right in front of me.

It seems that one of us was going the wrong way up a one-way freeway entrance … and I suspect that it was me because I was the one that seemed to be going a different direction to everyone else 🙁

The GPS was strangely silent on instructions, as I suspect that she knew I was doing something seriously wrong but was not programmed to know what to do about it!

We finally made it to Austin in time for a super-late lunch. The place to have BBQ lunch in Austin TX is Terry Black’s BBQ, and it was goooood!

Now I know what you are thinking – that is a disgusting display of gluttony, and I’d normally agree with you … except it was soooo gooood!

On the plate is brisket, pork ribs, ‘slaw, potato salad, and cornbread. Yum!

I have never seen so much smoked meat being carved up in my life. Seriously, they must smoke that beef by the herd!

We finished lunch, put ourselves back into The Don and started heading onwards to San Antonio. We had a brief stop at Starbucks for caffeine to offset the effects of eating too much, and continued on our way.

I know that I keep banging on about the interstates, but I cannot express enough how unsettling it is to be sitting on the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of the road, doing 80mph with trucks beside you (see above), and the GPS giving really complex instructions like “stay in the middle two lanes” when you are on a three lane interstate. Which are the middle two of three lanes?

I know that I also keep banging on about how fast the other cars go. There was one time today on our way between Austin TX and San Antonio TX where I was in the fast lane sitting behind a Ford Mustang and stuck in some slower traffic – we were only doing about 75mph …. when the traffic in front of the Mustang dispersed and he (I assume it was a he) put his foot down and the Mustang took off like it was rocket propelled, and he simply disappeared like a fart in a fan factory.

So anyway we made it to San Antonio and checked into our AirBnB and then went off in search of the river walk in downtown.

I thought that it might be good if we tried talking like Texans to try and blend in more. It’s not that hard, you just keep saying “y’all”, like “are y’all having a good time?”

I thought it was a great idea, but MBW not so much. In fact I think that her exact words were “stop talking like that, you sound stupid.”

Me: “Hey, I’m sorry y’all”.

Anyhow I need to wrap this up as we have a long drive tomorrow from San Antonio TX to Lafayette Louisiana so we have an early start.

Google Maps reckons that’s about a 6.5 hour drive … but I think I can get that down a bit if I get The Don up to 120mph …

Today’s song is an oldie but a goodie and really needs no explanation.

The video clip is not so much a music video, but rather a part of a movie for your enjoyment: Deep in the Heart of Texas (Gene Autry & Smilie Burnette – from Heart of the Rio Grande – 1942)

Ciao

#G&KTAKEUSA2019

Welcome to Texas! It is indeed a beautiful Texas Sunday morning, albeit only 4 degrees C. Warm inside the house, but a bit chilly outside.

Last night we slept at Ben and Amy’s AirBnB in Fort Worth. They weren’t there when we arrived, and we’d crashed by the time they got home, so we finally met Ben this morning as we were getting ready to go.

It’s amazing what 10 plus hours of sleep does for you when you are jet-lagged. We felt almost normal again today.

Yesterday I started to tell you about our hire car. We had ordered a luxury car and when we arrived at the rental place we had the option of four (4) Chrysler 300S vehicles – black, dark grey, silver and maroon.

Now I particularly wanted the black one but it had Florida plates and we won’t be going to Florida, so that just didn’t work for me – that and the fact that the Florida number plate is this flowery design that just didn’t look right on a 300S.

No self-respecting mobster would be seen dead in something with those plates on it – you’d be beaten up by the other gangsters!

We could have chosen the maroon one for obvious reasons, but went with the dark grey one instead – and it has Texas number plates!

It’s the closest thing to a mafia car that I’ve ever had and so it will henceforth be referred to as “The Don”.

Now I know that I discussed this issue in last year’s blog, but driving a left-hand vehicle is not as easy as it seems … and The Don has challenges of its own. For one thing, The Don doesn’t have a gear selector – it has a little knob on the dash that selects the gears and because I’m sitting on the wrong side of the car, the knob turns in the opposite way to what my brain expects it to.

Notwithstanding that you are driving on the wrong side of the road and you actually have to think through what a left-hand turn means (and what lane you are aiming for), your mind starts to play tricks on you because you believe that everything is back-to-front. So when MBW says “turn left in 300m, your brain interprets that as “turn right in 300m” – because you know that everything is the opposite.

The biggest problem is when you pull out of a side street or driveway and every fibre of your being tells you to look right, but you actually look left first.

Don’t even get me started on the road rules! Turn right on red, the four-way stop sign rule where you have to mentally keep track of what order all vehicles arrived at the intersection so that you all depart in the right order. Yikes! And all of this happening while MBW is screaming at me that I’m drifting off the right-hand side of the road!

So we started the morning looking for coffee. While many AirBnB’s will make a Keurig coffee machine available, American’s all seem to like drinking their coffee black, so they don’t provide milk. So we packed the car and went in search of coffee.

Given that it was our first night in the USA and the fact that we were pretty disorganised (= “exhausted”), we had nothing available for breakfast, so I had a few cleansing glasses of cold water instead and we packed the car and set off.

Our quest for coffee was (initially) unsuccessful because we found the Fort Worth Water Gardens first. They are a beautiful little oasis in the middle of the city with a number of different pools and water features.

Now all of the cascading water plus 4 degrees C plus a few glasses of cleansing water PLUS a set of over-achieving kidneys meant that I needed to … well, you know. So we set off in search of The Fort Worth Stockyards – “where the West begins.” They take their cowboy stuff pretty seriously here in Fort Worth TX!

If you’re not wearing cowboy boots (spurs optional), a cowboy hat, and a belt with a big buckle, then you are obviously a tourist.

Just a word of caution to any vegetarians reading along today – it might be time to look away for a while …

The main draw card of The Stockyards is the Texas Longhorn cattle drive. A bunch of cowboys drive a herd of cattle – that would be best served dry-rubbed and smoked IMHO – up the main street of the complex.

You’d want to stay well clear of those horns, as I’d imagine that they could cause you a nasty injury!

MBW also made friends with a cowboy with enviable facial hair …

… then got to sit on a Texas Longhorn (for USD$5.00).

After seeing all of the beef go past, we bought a few souvenirs and decided it was time for lunch. MBW went for the beef brisket stew with cornbread, and me – always the king of the poor choices – had the steak sandwich and fries, not realising that the steak was actually deep-fried.

C’est la vie – I’m just that one step closer to a claim on my trauma insurance 🙁

We needed to get to Waco TX this afternoon, so we found The Don where we had left him, loaded up our purchases and headed off south.

Through a series of skilful manoeuvres supported by Google Maps, we eventually found ourselves on the I-35W South and thought that we had inadvertently become caught up in an attempt by other drivers to break the land speed record.

Seriously, the speed limit on the interstate is 75mph – about 120kph – and there were cars going past me in the fast lane that were at risk of breaking the sound barrier!

I made the mistake at one point of moving left into the fast lane to overtake some ”slower” vehicles, neglecting to check my rear-view mirror for a short period of time – and I looked up to see a dirty big Chevy badge, attached to a dirty big radiator grill, and the whites of the eyes of an unfriendly-looking chap who was sitting right up on my clacker … and I was already doing 80mph!

Which all reminds me of something else – it seems that the Americans have still not discovered imperial measurements despite my comments in last year’s blog.

I discovered that The Don does not have very good fuel economy. It’s only a 3.6l V6 and despite my very best attempts at conserving fuel and being a responsible citizen, the economy kept going up and up – at one point reporting that I was getting better than 80mpg when coasting downhill – and I decided that the on-board computer must be broken.

Then one of the voices inside my head reminded me that when you measure fuel economy in l/100km you are looking for a small number, but in mpg, the bigger the number the better!

We made it safely to Waco TX getting excellent fuel economy after all, and checked into what is probably the only hotel/motel in our travels. All other nights we are staying at AirBnBs.

We then went off exploring Waco, and specifically on a quest to find Magnolia (you need to watch Fixer Upper to understand the significance).

Jetlag started to kick in at around 4.30, so we ducked into Walmart to pick up a few things.

Everything is so cheap at Walmart. How am I supposed to be good with a dozen glazed donuts for $3.42?

That’s about it for the day! We are absolutely loving Texas and heading off to Magnolia Silos in the morning and then down to San Antonio via Austin after that.

One last thing though – just down the road from where we are staying, there is a gun shop (“Fun Guns”) and a taxidermist in a row of shops. Hopefully we will be able to go to the gun shop tomorrow so that I can get some protection … after all it is my constitutional right to bear arms (or is that arm bears … ?)

In any case, if MBW gets angry with me and tells me to go and get stuffed, at least I know where to go …

Finally, for your viewing pleasure here is a link to today’s featured song: Is this the way to Amarillo (Tony Christie).

That version was recorded when Tony Christie was older and wiser. If you really want a chuckle, take a look at the original version 🙂

PS: We are not going to Amarillo (it’s in the opposite direction), and there is no Marie waiting for me there … just to avoid any confusion.

Ciao

#G&KTAKEUSA2019

Welcome to day 1 of our trip to the USA … or more correctly , welcome to daaay 1.

Winston Churchill once said that “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it”.

I’m not sure what we have failed to learn, but we have just been condemned to repeat Saturday 23 November 2019 … all thanks to that miracle that is the international date line.

We departed Brisbane International airport a little bit later than scheduled, getting airborne at around 11.40am on 23 November.

The flight to LAX was supposed to take about 13 hours, and we actually landed in Los Angeles smack on midnight Brisbane time … and hey presto, local time became 6.00am on 23 November and we started Saturday all over again … which was actually a shame because neither of us got any sleep on the flight over and we weren’t feeling particularly chipper about having to repeat it.

So Saturday 23 November 2019 is a 44 hour day for us. Yay for us!

Hence my reference above to it being daaay 1 … because it’s a long one 🙁

I wanted to start today’s post with a puzzle, but I now realise that I’ve written probably half of the post already, so instead I’m inserting the puzzle into the middle of the post: What do you get if you cross The Beatles with Bruce Springsteen?

I’ll give you the answer to that puzzle shortly.

The excitement for MBW and I all started about 12 hours before we left for the airport this morning (that’s the first time we did “this morning”, not the one we re-started in LA).

I’d had a busy week at work, and MBW had been running around at home all week getting the final washing, packing and cleaning done … and by the time we had quadruple-checked that we had all of the important papers packed, and sufficient underwear to get us through 4 weeks in the USA, we were both pretty knackered.

What to do for dinner?

We weren’t going to cook anything (too tired) and neither of us had the energy to get in the car and pick up some take-away, so we decided to get some Bang Bang Chicken from Birkdale via Uber Eats.

Now even though one of our boys is on first-name basis with the local UE drivers, we have never used the service ourselves … sad, I know. We need to live on the edge more often.

So I tapped the screen of my phone and food was magically delivered to our door. We ate (not exactly the wonderful experience I’d always imagined for our first time Uber Eating), went upstairs and basically collapsed into bed.

Unfortunately neither of us slept particularly well … for me, it felt like my heart was going bang bang all night long. I expect that it was partly the excitement of going on holidays the very next day, but it could equally have been something to do with the Bang Bang Chicken we’d eaten …

Anyhow, the flight from BNE to LAX was uneventful. I understand that the same flight the day prior was a little more exciting, as they lined up for takeoff and then returned to the gate to disembark all passengers due to “mechanical issues”. While inconvenient, it is still probably a better option than having the plane drop out of the sky from 40,000 feet – particularly when there isn’t a great deal of places to land between BNE and LAX – and all passengers were put up in motels for the night.

Friday’s mechanical issues meant that the knock on effect was that our flight was as full as a state school hat rack.

So essentially on the flight we had lunch, watched some movies, were made to have a nap at about 3.00pm Brisbane time, had breakfast at 10.30pm or 4.30am depending on which timezone your watch was set to, and landed uneventfully in LAX at midnight or 6.00am – again depending on how you look at it.

The only movie that I watched was “Yesterday” – the Beatles movie – which was ironic in its own right considering that today was a repeat of yesterday – 23 November.

There was one funny thing that happened on the flight while we were having breakfast though … I started up a more meaningful conversation with our neighbour in seat 23A (who was himself transferred from Friday’s flight to ours on Saturday) and the conversation went something like this:

Me: “So, where are you from?”

23A: “Minnesota. Pretty cold up there. Lots of snow.”

Me: “Pretty hot in Queensland at the moment. Lots of bushfires. What brings you to Queensland?”

23A: “Work. I work for a company than owns and operates grinding and profiling machinery.”

Me (trying to remain interested in the conversation – I was tired, and grinding and profiling aren’t in my top 10 fun conversations): “What sort of things do you grind and profile?”

23A: “Railway tracks. We’ve been working with Queensland Rail and Aurizon over the last two weeks.”

Seriously, what are the odds?

We landed uneventfully in LAX, went through the border security hoops, collected our suitcases, rechecked our suitcases, and then sat and waited for an hour or so until our next flight from LAX to DFW (Dallas/Fort Worth).

We managed to persuade the check-in people to put us in exit row seats, and so we boarded that flight at 9.15am LA time.

My neighbour for this flight – we will just call him 16C – could well have been Snoop Dogg based on his looks, the way that he walked, and how low his jeans were hanging off his backside.

16C then proceeded to claim my armrest and 50% of my legroom, which meant that it was shaping up for an unhappy flight.

Fortunately 16C wasn’t particularly bright, as he soon discovered he was actually 15A, so off he went to annoy someone else. The new Mr 16C was much more of a sharer when it came to armrests and legroom.

We landed at DFW around 2.30pm, collected our hire car (that’s a story for tomorrow), and headed to our AirBnB.

When I was in primary school, I remember learning that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. I thought that the same principle would have held for plane travel, so I’m not really sure what was going on with the flight into DFW (see below) when we went on a bit of a detour just south of Amarillo …

After deciding that we were hungry, we found a Texas BBQ joint, and ate ribs with a hot spicy rub on them. That should be fun in a few days as it works its way through my digestive system.

We felt a little out of place at the Railway BBQ place (have you noticed a railway theme in today’s post?) as we were the only ones not wearing boots, a big hat, and talking funny.

At least our fellow diners showed the courtesy not to bring their firearms into the restaurant.

So let me get back to the puzzle: What do you get if you cross The Beatles with Bruce Springsteen?

The Beatles gave us “Back in the USSR”, and Springsteen gave us “Born in the USA”, so I’m guessing that crossing the Beatles with Springsteen might give you “Back in the USA” … and that’s what we are – we’re back!

So let me summarise all of that for you … we did basically nothing important for the last 44 hours including getting any sleep, and that’s what we plan to do right now – let off a few ZZZZZs.

Here is a link to today’s song – sorry it was the best that I could find: “Back in the USSR” (Beatles).

BTW, and just for clarity, we:

• Didn’t fly in from Miami Beach
• Didn’t fly BOAC; but we also
• Didn’t get to bed last night 🙁

Ciao

#G&KTAKEUSA2019