Liberty of Conviction

America was pretty much how I expected it to be. Big, ridiculous, stinky and full of terrible food, beer, wine & coffee (all my loves in life). with an exception or two (San Fran mainly). NYC was the epitome of my expectations, especially the stinky part. Managed to see a gig headlined by “The Greenhorns” and fell in love with a little bottle I like to call Sailor Jerry (spiced rum – amazing stuff RRP $20 in USA, $79.99 in AUS. Needless to say it’ll be a fond memory). I rode a bull at a bar in NYC too which was pretty cool. Showed the rest of those city slickers how it was done.  

With some local knowledge & guidance from a friend and ex colleague, I managed to find my way around to some great Mexican, the best sausage and pickle I’ve ever eaten and great beer in San Fran. Managed to do a bit of riding there too which was awesome. I needed to, as I put on about 5kg in three weeks over in the obesity capital. Hired a car in San Fran to drive to Vegas and managed to smash it in the first hour of driving abroad whilst reverse parallel parking. Turns out sitting on the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of the road is a little more challenging than I gave credit. Cornelius Thorn, ex-marine and the driver of a gold Lincoln, was far from impressed.

New Orleans was amazing I must admit. The music was second to none and we were there during Southern Decadence (a gay mardigras). Needless to say I donned my gayest outfit, formed a posy with all the lads and hit the streets. We had an awesome time.

Bourbon St

in New Orleans is party town 24/7!!!

Frenchman St

is a close second. Live jazz bars all the way along a mile stretch. I saw the best drummer I’ve seen play at a sweet little bar called “the Spotted Cat”. The albino alligator at the swamp was pretty cool and there’s nothing quite like seeing a larger than life redneck almost get eaten by a 13foot alligator whilst trying to feed it marsh mellows!

Vegas was a joke.. The highlight for me was playing with a little friend I like to call “Desert Eagle”, unfortunately not the .50, but the .44 was hard enough to handle on the gun range. There’s nothing like a shop that you can just rock up to and point out a gun and they’ll give you ammo and a range to shoot it in no questions asked. No ID check, no blood alcohol/drug check, it’s just here you go, have fun! Went VIP to a club in Vegas too which was apparently a good experience. I say apparently as I had a date with Sailor Jerry’s good pal Captain Morgan and that left me passed out in my hotel room before long. I woke to a scene not too different from the hangover after that night and my quote for the day after that I stole from “The Hangover”, “we don’t remember anything, remember!”. The day following I ate the most disgustingly, filthy meal of the trip and the locals call it the mac & steak sub. I’ll let you guys put two and two together. The only thing more heart attack inducing than that was the cajun bloody mary I sent back to the bar on a Mississippi river cruise in New Orleans. It tasted like a cup of olive brine, tomato paste and pepper, maybe something like you’d make as a dare when you were a kid unsupervised in an all you can eat restaurant.

LA….. Well that to me was just a giant stink hole. I gave Disneyland a miss after sporting one of the worst hangover’s of the trip after visiting the Trubadour for an Omar Rodriguez Lopez concert. Only two of our group of 13 went to see this gig and we managed to sneak into the band after party post-gig by posing as roadies. I took a happy snap of my partner in crime with Omar not long before we met each other again out the front of the venue not realizing that we’d both managed to sneak into the after party. Ah, well, win some, lose some. Stoned from the passive smoke and drunk as a couple of skunks, I’m not really sure how we managed to find our way back to our accommodation considering we had no idea what the address was.

I almost forgot to mention the haunted hotel we stayed in at Pismo Beach. Weird things happened in that place! I thought I was going crazy! I woke up dead on 530am to the sound of an old rusty sprung mattress being jumped on, when I looked at the end of my bed there was a dark shadow that jumped off the end. I thought I was probably dreaming so I got up, washed my face and went back to bed. Just before I fell asleep again there was the sound of tapping finger nails on my bed head. Needless to say there wasn’t a whole lot more sleep that morning. Thank god it was only a stop-over location on our road trip. I figured the rest of my crew would think I was nuts if I mentioned it, so I kept my experience to myself, well until I get from my room to the elevator anyway. I merely commented “I think this place is haunted” to one of the lasses I was travelling with who instantly thought I was taking the piss (how unlike me). She asked her man if he’d mentioned anything to me to check if I was serious and when she realized I wasn’t making a joke she told me everyone had seen strange things in the night.

To sum it up, it was an experience. I don’t think I’m in any hurry to get back to America but I think everyone would have to do it once in a lifetime. If I lived in NYC I’d be on the cover of a Fat Admirers magazine, if I lived in Vegas I’d probably buy a desert eagle and shortly after be thrown in prison for gunning down one of those schleps in bright t-shirts flicking and handing out cards for female escorts, if I lived in New Orleans my liver would die in a week after a few too many “Hurricanes” and if I lived in LA I’d buy myself a leather pilots hat and goggles and drive like a kamikaze from one side of the city to the other and die a horrible death taking many with me. San Fran, well I could probably live there forever but I think that’d be done in vain as I think I’ve got most of the bases covered here in Melbourne. If I open a Sausage store like Rosamunde Sausage Grill in Melbourne that sells cool T-shirts and is next to a sweet Mexican Restaurant called Pancho Villas I think I’ll have it all.