USA

The British are coming, the British are coming

We woke before 6am and TC took the opportunity to go for a scout around the hotel. He was tempted to find an open hotdog vendor but arrived back at the hotel with a large Starbucks latte – bless. After the packing, we ventured across the road to the Amtrak Station to collect our tix – a pain free process that’s as easy as printing a Qantas boarding pass and strolled up the street to find a diner. We settled on the bread company (or something similar) and paid less than five dollars for eggs, bacon and toast. Sure it wasn’t beautifully presented – it came on a plastic plate and the knives and forks were plastic -and sure you had to wait at the counter while they cooked it but it was quick and under $5. That’s what Australia needs. Half the time when I eat out it is to avoid having to cook and do the dishes. I’m not looking for attentive service and an extensive wine list. Maybe there’s a business idea ion that – a diner that serves simple home-cooked food, cheaply.

In contrast to the airport, boarding the train was relatively painless – just a quick ticket and ID check and then get on. Business class (which was a little more expensive is really quite comfortable – with power at your seat, quite a few seats with tables for the laptop and easy to use luggage racks. I’m with the Man in Seat 61 – take the train and you get to see things on the way this trip has taken us through upstate New York through Providence, Rhode Island and into Massachusetts. It was quite cold in NY – Canberra winter cold rather than Helsinki cold but the thermal leggings rock – they have become a feature of not just my travel wardrobe but also make for quite serviceable weekend wear at home. (Sweater – Weser – this really is a wintry weekend song – as much for the music as the lyrics – speaking of which I have yet to get used to the strange US words for things – on the flight they asked if I wanted my tea with cream and sugar, which freaked me out).

The woodland through the north east is the kind of place you expect there to be fog in winter and to find the bodies of serial killers, people the mob didn’t like or aliens. It’s easy to see why people want to drive through here in the autumn. On the cusp of spring, the ground is still littered with crisp brown leaves. The houses are a cross between Scandinavian architecture and that all American weatherboard two story. It certainly is a picturesque part of the country, which in some ways stills looks like you imagine it did when Paul Revere took his infamous ride. Apparently there have been a lot of floods in the past few days but we are blessed with a clear sunny day as we head toward Boston. (Gaetti – The first Belly song I ever heard. It got me listening to new music again in the early 90s. My sister-in-law asked to borrow it this morning to educate my niece –  Belly has that sound of spring trying to break through from a cold snowy winter, a lot like trees of New England which makes it an appropriate tune as we head north through New England))

All the way to the US of A

Next morning we woke early, enjoyed the magnificent brekky buffet at the Hilton – the little shot glasses of bircher muesli rocked – and set out for the airport three hours before checkin as required. Now we thought this would give us ample time to just wander about and do some duty free window shopping. Don’t be fooled – the new security measures for US flights are quite incredible. Let’s face it – it’s not as if Australian authorities just let you wander onto a plane. You have to show your passport when you check in. You have to fill out an immigration form to leave the country (even if you’re a citizen), then a Customs official checks that and your boarding pass. After that you have to have your bag screened through an x-ray machine. At the screening point, all liquids and laptops are checked separately and you then walk through a metal detector, without your belt and more often than not barefoot. That’s not all if you’re going to the states. Now all the gates for US travel are enclosed. You have to have your passport and boarding pass rechecked and the bag that just went through an x-ray machine is hand searched, you have to take off your shoes so they can also search them and every passenger is frisked. Once you are in, you’re stuck because if you leave, you have to go through the whole procedure again.

Points to Delta for the flight – we left on time and actually arrived early. The food was pretty good – a mix of Australian and American treats – New York cheesecake as well as Tim Tams. The drinks cart with water came around often and in big American sized glasses – not super-sized but larger than the really small cups Qantas uses. We both had the beef casserole with potatoes and vege, which was surprisingly good – as were the blueberry pancakes for brick. The entertainment system also rocked. We had initially intended to watch True blood on the flight but decided not to bother with the Delta on Demand stuff – basically anything on HBO – as there was a hefty catalogue of free stuff from vintage Murphy Brown to a plethora of movies. I finally watched the hangover and Inglorious Basterds and revisited the recent Star Trek movie – the one where you can’t quite recognise the villain is Eric Bana. (Longview – Green Day – this marked the return of punk to mainstream culture and rends me of furniture building. I listened to this and NOFX while sanding back my – still unfinished- bedside table – also kind of appropriate for describing the next part of the trip – as Green Day are from the east bay area of California).

There’s no denying it – 14 hours on a plane is excruciating. The advantage of flying to Europe, although longer, is that you get to stop half way. We were looking forward to spending a while walking around the airport before our connection. We arrived in LAX at dawn with the lights of LA sprawling out into the desert out the plane window. We had almost two and a half hours before our flight to NYC and it took every minute to get through the airport. First up we had to collect our luggage and clear Customs – two forms to fill out (which we did on the plane), then a passport check – which didn’t involve them looking at or x-raying the luggage we just collected. Then we dumped the luggage and headed toward the security check point, which they’ve apparently added an extra step to. We had to queue for what felt like about an hour to have our passport and boarding pass checked before we walked upstairs to have them checked again and have our carry-on bags x-rayed. Strangely I have never seen anyone do an explosives test anywhere and have only ever been selected myself at Canberra airport. None in the US either. The five-hour trip to NYC was a killer. TC and I had to sit behind each other in middle seats. Apparently the storms in the north-east were so bad on Sunday that all the flights were cancelled. Our flight was overbooked so we are probably lucky to have arrived at all. I sat next to a lady from LA who berated me slightly for not spending time in her own terrific city. She said she had a cousin in Australia who had retired and was travelling around Australia – she thought this a strange thing to do. I told her they were called grey nomads and that he was in good company. (The Ship Song – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – now that’s a song for a wedding waltz if you like that kind of thing).

Wave of mutilation

After a painless hop to Sydney, we checked in at the newly refurbished Sydney Hilton. The beds are a pretty standard luxury king with a pillowtopper. The bathrooms though are sensational. Going the same way as a number of hotels and domestic bathrooms, the folks at the Hilton decided nobody much uses the bathtub anymore and have installed a shower on the tub footprint. Aside from the broad shower head, there was an additional large rain shower head hanging from the ceiling and TC was quite taken with the in-shower telly – although we didn’t manage to get it to work. (Debaser – probably my fave Pixies track – a perfect balance between the vocal extremes of Black Francis and Kim Deal)

The Pixies show was definitely the right way to kick off a US holiday. One of the reasons my collection of ticket stubs from live shows is bigger than my CD collection is the way you can completely lose yourself and your mind in the music at a live show. Standing in a sea of people who were there for the music – many of whom had more grey hair than I imagine I would if I threw out the dye bottle. Most of us were reminded of our age and the age of the Doolittle album when Kim announced ‘we’re coming to the end of side 1’. For anyone under 30 – yes back in ye olden days, we actually had to walk to the record player and turn the album over half way through. They were, as expected, mesmerising, and they played a number of tracks only really hardcore fans would have recognised – you know the type – ‘I just have to have the limited edition, US release of the single – I’ve only got the three Australian on two UK versions so far’. Even Kim Deal admitted they had never played some of the songs live before. And as suggested, the show was about the Dooloittle album, largely played in order, interspersed by b-sides. The encore began with the second, quieter, version of Wave of Mutilation and ended with Gigantic which while not strictly off the Doolittle album, certainly made for a huge finish (Gigantic- The Pixies, predictably – again heavy on the Kim Deal vocals – Kim is my indie music heroine – one of the few that is so much more about the music than fame).

Leaving home

Travel tip number one: try to avoid one too many capiroskas the night before you leave for an overseas holiday – not because travelling with a hangover is that hard, although it is, but because you never get up quite as early as you had intended. So Sunday began with a mighty agenda and panicked excitement. There was no time to finalise a packing list but as with my last trip, the main contents of my backpack had been sitting on my bed for some time waiting to be supplemented as the washing occurred. Feeling incredibly seedy, I managed to get everything done, including fixing the strap on my backpack.
Then it was off to collect my travelling companion (TC), which resulted in true panic. Now it is well known that I managed to achieve most possible travel disasters on my last trip within days of arriving in Finland. Well TC outdid me, losing his wallet before we even left town. Disaster averted and said wallet relocated, we arrived home just in time for the arrival of our airport lift service. Delivered safely to Canberra airport in the family wagon, I received a call while standing in the checkin queue – NYC hotel no. 2 was the same place our highly efficient and very friendly airport drivers had stayed. what are the chances? (Into my arms – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – one of the most emotionally stirring songs ever written – maybe because of the piano – and rivaled only by Jeff Buckley’s Grace.)