Completion For Completions Sake

I recently discovered that I had drafted this blog entry but I never got around to posting it, so for those of you keen to know the rest of the story, I encourage you to press on.

After Washington I headed back to New York the night before I was meant to fly back home. It actually turned out to be my best night there. I got back at about 5pm and headed into Times Square with the eye for seeing a show or something interesting. I ended up going to a little comedy club just off Broadway. It was a mix of professionals and amateurs, even the waitress got up and entertained us with her Texan style observational comedy. The pros were really good, the millage varied with the amateurs, but two Long Island Ice Teas smoothed over the rough patches.

After the comedy show I headed over to Rockerfella Plazza and bought myself a ticket to the observation deck. It was a pretty spectacular view at night. Blogging about it is really a waste of time, just check out the photos on my Facebook.

The next morning I caught the subway to JFK airport for my 12 midday flight. I left at 8:40am and two hours and twenty minutes later I arrived just in time for check in at 11am.

As I waited for take off on the plane I realized that the elderly couple in front of me were also Australian. A stewardess was placing a rather large suitcase in one of the overhead lockers for another passenger. I laughed to myself when the couple pulled her aside and said "He'd never get away with that back home".

When I got to Los Angles I realized that I seemed to have developed an allergic reaction to a new pair of jeans I had bought a few days earlier in Philly. I reading my blog about a rash I developed on a international flight is off putting, you'll have some appreciation for how I felt for the following 18 hours.

When I got back to Bris Vegas International Airport I was pretty glad to be home(ish). The final leg back home to Townsville was typical. Regular folks seemed to disappear and suddenly I was surrounded by bogans and hick folk.

Coming back to Townsville was nostalgic at first. I met up with Garth and Zane for drinks at Cactus Jacks the day after I got back. I did my best to segue into a travel story even when it didn't appear relevant because I know they like that sort of thing.

Mr Xabregas Goes To Washington...

New York was really awesome. Unexpectedly it was really safe no matter where you went. Nothing like those 80's films. I guess Giuliani did some good after all. The subway system is probably the best in the world, even better then London's. I've realised that I tend to judge a city primarily based on it's public transport. I guess it just pisses me off when I find it hard to get around a place.

My first day I went to the Rockefeller Center where the NBC studio's are. That was a small thrill due to my nerdy love of 30 Rock. I booked a ticket to do the NBC studio tour which was kind of interesting. I didn't really get to see as much as I thought I, but I got to see the Conan O'Brien set which is surprisingly small. Actually we were told that everything on the set, like the couches and the desk, are purposely built smaller so that visiting celebrities look bigger. Obviously they had Tom Cruise in mind.

I then checked out Times Square which is pretty cool but is ultimately just a lot of lights and really bright advertisements. Sometime in the afternoon Simon gave me a call (he was staying at a different hostel to me and had headed off to New York a few days earlier). He suggested that we meet up at the World Trade Center site which turned out to be a really bad idea because the place was massive and was full of people. The fact that Simon didn't have a working mobile phone also complicated matters and we never ended up finding each other.

After I gave up looking for Simon I realised I was unexpectedly doing the Nicholas Cage: National Treasure tour of New York. I found myself at the Trinity Church at the beginning of Wall Street, that was the site of buried treasure in the aforementioned movie. There was a church service on at the time so this hindered my own attempts at hunting for treasure.

As the day wore on, I walked uptown to Moby's vegan restaurant, Teany's. I realised it was called Teany's because it was laterally the size of my bedroom. Moby wasn't there but I had dinner anyway. I had a vegan Chicken BLT (a contradiction in terms surely) , which tasted nothing like chicken but was still really good.

Over the next couple of days I also checked out a lot of other shit that I can only be bothered writing about in cryptic point form:

• Museum of Natural History: The Squid and The Whale, Night at The Museum.
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• Madison Square Garden to watch The Verve play: Bittersweet Symphony payed off after 90 minutes of psychedelic posturing.
• Central Park

Probably the weirdest experience occurred on Sunday night when they played Cloverfield at the hostel in their theatre (they had a big projector). I thought it must be kind of surreal if you're a New Yorker to see your city trashed and pulverised in all those Hollywood films. It's kind of strange when you've actually been to the places that they are destroying on screen.

Anyway, I originally planned to stay in New York until my flight back to Australia. That plan was kicked in the rear when I found out that pretty much all the cheap accommodation in New York had been booked up for my final weekend here due to some sort of cycling event. So I decided to go on to a road trip for a few days to Philadelphia and Washington Dance City.

Philly is notable for being the city where the Deceleration of Independence was signed and it's also the location of the Liberty Bell. The Liberty Bell is kind of like the Mona Lisa of bells. It's small and ultimately disappointing. Everyone's initial reaction is "I thought it was bigger".

Philadelphia is also where the Rocky movies were set. I wouldn't mention this if it didn't seem to be such a big deal to the tourism industry in Philly. I walked into a gift shop near the tourist information centre and found that Rocky T-shirts were more abundant then Benjamin Franklin figurines.

*CAUTION RANT*

I cringed every time I read anything that said Benjamin Franklin "invented" electricity. Get it right people! He discovered electricity, he didn't invent it! If he could summon fireballs of electrons with his bare hands fighting the British probably would have been a lot easier.

*END RANT*

I met some cool people at the hostel in Philly despite the fact that the place was run by a pair of fem-Nazi's who looked like the frumpy one out of Scobby Doo. The place had a lock out between 10:30am and 4:30pm. I arrived at 3pm and had to sit around for an hour and a half before I could dump my stuff. I realised I may not have finished ranting...

Anyhow, my highlight of Philadelphia was making my way to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which is where Sylvester Stallone ran up the steps in the famous Rocky montage. It seems like every wanker and his dog was running up the steps and doing the Rocky thing so I joined in. I got a couple of photos.

I realized it must really piss off the people who work at the museum that all the people who loiter outside are only there to do the Rocky jog instead of visiting the museum. Did I mention there is a bronze statue of Rocky out the front?

After Philladelphia I went to Washington D.C. The monuments are aces.

Where in the world is James Xabregas?

Since my last post far too much has happened. I'm in New York now. I will be home in 10 days. Kind of looking forward to it.

San Diego was actually quite cool. I was ready to write off California as good for nothing before I got to San Diego. On the bus trip from Vegas, a fat smelly homeless guy kept running up and down the isle and getting in everyone's face. This was pretty much my last straw with the State of California. I was ready to go to Arnie's mansion and punch his dog. But San Diego turned out to be the complete antithesis of Los Angeles. It was trendy, laid back and easy to get around. And it wasn't sleazy the wasy San Francisco was. Stay classy San Diego.

Mexico was kind of crazy. I loved it. You can get Carona's for 50 cents. If you pay more then $9 for a bottle of tequila you've paid too much and you can get a fish bowl Margarita for five bucks. I flew into Puerto Vallarta with Simon and we caught a taxi to our hostel. I looked for a seat belt and when I couldn't find one I realised that I was in a slightly different world.

Our reasoning for going to Mexico was to meet up with a bunch of friends we knew from Big White. Well actually, the real reason was because I was chasing a girl.

James Xabregas: International Stalker.

I'll spoil the ending. Nothing happened. To the best of my reasoning I think I was cock blocked by another girl. Is that even possible? I don't know. I guess it should really be called beaver blocking. Dam*.

The first couple of days we hung out in Puerto Vallarta and ate plenty of tacos. The food in Mexico is brilliant. All attempts to recreate Mexican food outside of the country don't do it justice. We also met a couple of others staying at the hostel who were involved in some sort of volunteer work and travel program. There was a Dutch and a German guy, Alex and Dan, who were pretty cool. Alex kept insisting that I needed to check out a beach about 2 hours south of Cancun that was tourist free. It sounded cool but it was on the other side of the country. There was also a helpful American girl named Kelly who seemed to know a crap load about Mexico. At some point we all went down to Starbucks and had a frappacino. Did I mention PV is a tourist trap?

After two days a couple from the group had shooted off back to reality, and our possy was then comprised of 6 girls to 2 guys (however I have grave doubts over Simon's sexuality after witnessing his dance moves so the ratio could accurately be described as 7:1).

Question: If a man is in Mexico and there is no woman around to hear him, is he still wrong?
Answer: Yes.

It was quickly decided that Puerto Vallarta was boring and we went on an unplanned road trip. I had gotten kind of used to researching everything I needed to know about transportation and accommodation on the Interweb but it turns on the Mexican business aren't that turned on that yet. So at 3 o'clock in the afternoon one day we packed up all our stuff and the eight of us jumped onto a bus without any idea of where we were going, how we were getting there or where we were going to stay.

We ended up in Manzanillo, a big city on the coast, about five hours south of Puerto Vallarta. We actually over shot our mark. We were trying to get to a little beach town called Melaque. We ended up there the next day. It was quite a nice spot. It was a very small town of a couple of thousand residents. We got a bungalow on the beach for $10 a person.

Melaque was the type of place Mexican tourists visited. It was pretty much a prefect way to experience Mexico. For the next 5 days we drank Carona's and Tequila on the beach.

Simon left Mexico to head back home before I did, so when I got on the bus to go back to PV I was on my own. It was kind of sad to leave the group because I realised I was probably never going to these people again. I fell asleep while the bus played Cold Mountain.

About 4 hours into the trip, the bus was stopped by border police (there are police at all the state boarders). I was still half asleep so it scarred the shit out of me when a bunch of cops with sub machine guns boarded the bus and started ripping panels off the bus ceiling looking for drugs. They searched everybody's bags. Then they picked on me and a Dutch woman to go through our checked luggage under the bus. While we were doing that, one of the other cops was going through the stuff we had carried onto the bus. They completely mugged the Dutch woman. They took all her money. From what she told me later I think she had a fairly large amount of cash. I luckily got away without having anything taken. I kept all my valuables in my pocket. By this point I only had $80 in cash anyway so it probably wouldn't have mattered much anyhow. I figured they probably didn't want to steal my sandwich.

When I returned to Puerto Vallarta I found out that Alex, the Dutch guy that we had meet at the hostel, had jumped off the fourth story balcony and killed himself the day we left for Manzanillo. I instantly thought that was exactly like the movie The Beach and realised that I am a complete nerd.

I ended up sharing a taxi with Dan, Alex's friend, to airport. He had been trying to get a flight back for the last two days but they kept cancelling it on him. He was flying back home so he could meet Alex's parents and attend the funeral.

Dan told me the whole story while we waited for a respective flights. He was pretty much distraught. Alex died in his arms while the ambulance officer was making a cup of coffee, no joke. He showed me a copy of the newspaper which had printed the police photos of the scene. Surprise surprise, it's not hard to bribe the cops in Mexico. Dan was kind of pissed off because one of the papers had printed his full name and home address and had also said that the death was a murder and that he was the killer.

After a long silence I turned the conversation and tried to get his mind off the topic. I found out that Dan was a sound engineer for Ramstien. Apparently they use a team of about 100 engineers for their live shows. Crazy.

Eventaully we parted and said goodbye and I got on my plane to New York City.

*Spot the bad pun.

The week in review

The last week has been hectic so I haven't really had a chance for an update lately. In the mean time I've been to San Francisco, Yosemite Park, Las Vegas and The Grand Canyon. I've only got a couple of minutes to lay this all down so I'll come back latter and give you a better account of my adventures.

Las Vegas smells like the fabric conditioner that they use on my car after I've taken it for a service. I believe Showgirls to be an accurate portrayal of Las Vegas in the 90's. I saw a show called The Blue Man Group which was awesome. It's hard to explain but if a Daft Punk video clip was a 2 hour stage show then this would be it. The Grand Canyon would be pretty nice if it wasn't filled with fucking Japanese tourists and the bastard Indians weren't trying to take you for a ride. Think Cairns except desolate and shittier. San Francisco is a really beautiful city marred by Oriental "massage parlours" every 100 meters and a plague of homelessness. I cycled across the Golden Gate bridge (you can hire bikes) and I randomly met a cool German girl who was staying at the same hostel as me in the process. Yosemite National Park is really awesome. I went there on a day trip bus tour and I really wish I had done an overnight stay.

I'm going to San Diego tomorrow.

Portland: Land of Ports

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Seattle to Portland

On my second day at Seattle we met up with Caleb and Rob, to Aussie guys I knew from Big White who came down to Seattle so they could get a cheaper flight to New York.

They went and checked out the Space Needle (that big tower in all the photos of Seattle) and all the other things Simon and I had done the day before. We went walking up to Capitol Hill. Our destination was Volunteer Park where Bruce Lee is purportedly buried. On the way we found a lot of cool stores with old and random books and just the most random things that I want to buy and horde. If I had a magical suitcase that could weigh nothing no matter how much I put into it, I would probably go to town on my credit card.

We kept walking up to the point where I realised that we were well and truly lost. After some nifty directions from some helpful locals we eventually found the cemetery. When we got there it began to rain, as it usually does in Seattle. I realised that the place was an Asian cemetery and as such one in four of the people buried there were named Lee. Simon wanted to press ahead for the search but by this point I was cold and wet and well over Simon's search for some dead dude's grave. I also realised quite quickly that Simon's general sense of direction sucks the balls so I took charge and we eventually found a bus stop that took us about 2 blocks from our door.

That night we hung out with Caleb and Rob, and we watched a few episodes of Flight of the Conchords on Caleb's laptop.

The next day we all went down to the Pike Place Market across the road from the hostel. It was a pretty cool market. There was a rib cook off going on and it smelt pretty good. I also got my photo taken outside of the very first Starbucks (there really is one on every corner). We then went down to the Seattle Aquarium where I got some fun photos, which I someday hope to post up on the Ineterweb.

The next day, Simon and I parted ways with Caleb and Rob and we caught our bus to Portland. About 20 minutes into the trip the bus got rear ended by a mini-van and we were delayed by an hour and a half while we waited for the cops. I'm not sure what the big deal was because when I saw the damage it was only a fender bender, but the bus driver was fretting.

We finally arrived in Portland at abut 4:30pm. Simon wanted to walk to the hostel with our backpacks despite the fact we had no idea where we were or where the hostel was. I put I stop to his foolish notions and we caught a taxi for five dollars.

Road Trip

On Thursday I left Big White once and for all and said goodbye to all the friends I had made there. The good news is that I'm meeting up with about a dozen of them down in Pourta Vallarta in Mexico in three weeks time.

I'm working my way down the west coast with Simon, an English guy I met at Big White. We're pretty much traveling together for the next month. On Thursday morning we caught the shopping shuttle from Big White down to Kelowna and got dropped off at the Greyhound bus station. The ticket woman at Greyhound was a real cunt. I won't go into details.

The bus trip to Seattle was 14 hours. I reckon long haul bus trips are worse then flights. You can't sleep very well on a bus and there's always that one lone drifter sitting at the back of the bus, clutching a bottle in a brown paper bag.

Simon and I finally got to Seattle at 11pm. We checked into the Green Tortoise Hostel, which seems to be a really good hostel. They have free internet access and free breakfast. It's also across the road from a Subway which does $5 footlongs.

The next day I went on a mission to get my ski bag sent back to Townsville by post. I had to fork out $300 in postage but it's a lot better then hauling around 50 pounds (that's right I broke out the empirical measurements) of skis, boots and winter clothes.

Once I got that sorted out I could relax and explore Seattle; home of Boeing, Microsoft, Starbucks, Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana. First we went down to the Space Needle tower and checked out the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. I saw Captain Kirk's chair. I was disappointed that I couldn't sit in it and do William Shatner impersonations. It's behind a glass case. It really defeats the point. We then checked out the Experience Music Project which charts a history of American music and is full of hands on exhibits. It was pretty cool.

As nightfall came we brushed up on the Three B's; Basketball, Burlesque and Bitching good times. We went to nearby Key Arena and saw the Seattle Supersonics play the Charlotte Bobcats. We got seats in the nosebleed section but we moved closer after the first quarter when we realised that half the stadium was empty. It was a pretty scrappy game but it got close towards the end. The Bobcats won 98 - 94.

We then went to a little place across the road from the hostel where they were playing a live burlesque show. Form what I understand, the west coast has embraced ye olde burlesque as an art form and now it's considered classy. The place was a restaurant where you could have a sit down meal. The show was also pretty hot.

I thought Seattle was going to be a boring stop on my way down the coast but it seems this place really has quite a lot to do. It seems that off-beat and non-mainstream culture is the mainstream here. There is an anime convention going on at the moment and I've seen tons of people walking through the streets dressed as everything from Jedis to Vulcans.