Volume 5: Pete in the USA Part 3. A young balding mans journey through 20 something states and back
Day 5 – Las Vegas to The Grand Canyon
Today’s lunch stop was to be pretty much what every other lunch stop on tour was to be like. Park the bus out the front of a Walmart store (in some cases a “super store”) and then choose between which nationwide franchised fast food restaurant to eat from. That was the thing about America, you could be forgiven for thinking you were driving in circles as pretty much each shopping centre was the same, with just subtle differences like the words “Super Store” attached/removed from the end of the new Walmart you were visiting and the “Denny’s” might be replaced by a “Wendy’s” restaurant. In Europe, ancient city’s like Avignon deliberately made the city as confusing as possible as a defence strategy to confuse any attackers who managed to get through the city’s walls, I figured America must have been embarking on a similar strategy in it’s “War on Terror” by trying to make each shopping centre look exactly the same.
Walmart is a great store. It has all your needs from food to baby wear to guns. There had been recent talks in America about potential new gun laws which meant you could get your gun in 20 minutes, as opposed to 6 days, by simply having the store make a call to the FBI. Which I thought was a great initiative as I usually forget what was making me so angry after 6 days, but I’m still filled with murderous rage after 20 minutes. Today’s lunch was spent in KFC. I was wearing my Hofbrauhuas t-shirt with “München” written on it. The girl serving me noticed that and replied by telling me my change in German. After I said “excuse me” with a blank look on my face, she informed me she thought I was German and as she had been learning to speak German this would be an excellent opportunity to use her newly acquired language skills. I then informed her I was Australian. I then went on to confuse the situation more my saying “danke sehr” when she handed me my food. After lunch Gav and I picked up a $19 stereo and $15 of beer (that translates into 30 cans to those who have beer as their second liquor).
Today’s destination was the Grand Canyon. Essentially a giant hole that attracts thousands of tourists each year, unlike the Western Suburbs of Melbourne which is just a giant hole. The first European to view the Grand Canyon was a bloke called Captain Garcia Lopez de Cardenas (simply known to his mates as “skipper”?) in 1540. He was sent by another bloke called Francisco Vasquez de Coronado to look for the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola (Gold), and he was also asked to stop by the 7-11 on the way back as Coronado had the munchies from smoking so much hash that he thought there were Seven Cities of gold. Anyway, “skipper” got to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, spent 3 days trying to find a way to get down to the river, and then just thought “bugger it, too hard” and placed his report back to his boss in the too hard basket. It wasn’t until 1869 before another European had a crack at trying to conquer the Canyon. He was a bloke named Major John Wesley Powell, a civil war veteran with 1 arm, which he compensated for by growing a huge beard. He was the first person to successfully go through the Canyon on a raft, a great feat considering “old lefty” would have spent most of the time paddling in circles.
As for the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, sometimes referred to as the “other Grand Canyon”, it isn’t visited as much as the South rim due to its’ remoteness (over a 200 mile drive). This gives you an idea of the size of the Grand Canyon. Looking after the North Rim and South Rim would be a big job. In fact, such a big job it’s safe to say I would never want to do the Rim job. Apparently hunting used to be very popular at the North Rim, with the most famous hunter probably being Teddy Roosevelt. After discovering he had enough Mule Deer heads to go up in his poolroom, Teddy convinced the US Congress to protect the area by declaring it a national park in 1919. In return, the US Congress made it law for all future hand crafted woollen bears to be named in his honour (okay, made that bear thing up).
Our first stop inside the park was a tour optional to go watch an IMAX movie about “old lefty” and how he conquered the Canyon in a raft. As I knew how it ended, I decided to not see it. Which turned out to be a bad decision because apparently the person they got to play “old lefty” was some sh*t scared old homeless bum who spends much of the movie conveying the fear of death and the thought “I wish I’d learned to swim” through his eyes.
JP, in the only good suggestion he had all tour, offered us the chance to walk up to the Canyon with our eyes shut, so that when we opened our eyes the enormity of the Canyon would seem all the more amazing. So there we were, 40 something people walking in a human chain with our eyes shut, led by JP to the edge of the Canyon. The late night news could’ve been very interesting that night if JP got his directions wrong, with the lead off story being “40 young people die in bizarre mass suicide by jumping off Grand Canyon”.
Dinner that night was spent at the tremendous Arizona Steak House. As the hotel had mixed up our rooms, they made the nice gesture of picking up the tab. Which made for a special night, as before dinner Gav, Big Sam, and I each grabbed a couple of beers and watched the sunset over the Canyon.
After Dinner there was duelling room parties. As I really hadn’t met many people on the bus yet, I spent much of the night bouncing between the 2. That was until 1 deteriorated into talk about death and cancer, while the other party was full of attractive women and drunken madness. Can you guess which party I ended up at?
While at the better party, which was making a considerable amount of noise, some big angry white American put his head out his hotel door and the following exchange took place:
Angry White Male: “You’re on your first warning!”
Big Sam: “Sorry, I thought I was on holiday”
Angry White Male: “So am I sir”
Which of course led to discussion in the room party about just how many warnings he was going to give us. I figured we didn’t want to find out when you get a bloke willing to take on 10 people and he lives in a country that tells him it’s his constitutional right to bear firearms.
I went to bed shortly after at 2am. When the alarm in our room went off at 4am, and that I’d notice Gav playing around with it earlier in the night, I informed him I wasn’t impressed. When the alarm went off 10 minutes later because he’d only hit the snooze button, I informed him in no uncertain terms that it was in the best interest of his life, and his rectum, that he unplug the alarm from the wall. Needless to say, the alarm did not go off again that night.
Day 6 – Grand Canyon
Today we woke early to take a helicopter ride over the Canyon. One of the five on my helicopter was Lauren. She was quite a large lass, say the size of Europa or any other of the moons that orbit Jupiter, and I feared if the chopper went too fast combined with her large mass might mean we could rip a hole in the space time continuum and create a vortex through to a parallel universe. Then again, it was a tribute to man’s engineering capabilities that he could build a machine that could carry that much weight (yes, fat jokes are cheap and hurtful, but if I had to setup Lauren with one of my mates I wouldn’t even have said “but she’s got a great personality”. She might have been as heavy as a dinosaur, but that didn’t give her the right to walk around tour like she was as awesome and mighty as one). Somehow the chopper got off the ground, and we headed for the Canyon. The pilot put on “Flight of the Valkyries” just before we crossed over the Canyon to add to the awe-inspiring effect. It was also around that time I was about to take my first picture of the day just as we got over the lip of the Canyon. It was also around that time I discovered the batteries in my camera had given up living. COULDN’T HAVE HAPPENED THE NIGHT BEFORE! FUCK NO! Anyway, I accepted it and just decided to take in the view as the best shots would still be in my head until the day I died, or got alzheimer's or dementia.
After the chopper ride we went back to the hotel where I decided it would be wise to let my body have some sleep. I hadn’t really had a chance for a good sleep after I’d got off the plane, so I figured a few good hours would help me survive the rest of the tour. What I got was about 30 minutes before I decided I needed another beer and to meet some more people from the tour.
At night Gav and I headed closer down to the Canyon and to the “Sports Bar”. Given there was no sporting paraphernalia on the walls and no sport on the TV, I was struggling to come to terms with how they justified the “Sports” bit on the sign, but just put it down to a cultural difference and ordered another beer. In the “Sports Bar” we got to talking to a married couple from San Diego who were in the “Sports Bar” with their kids. After the pleasantries, and informing their children that we rode kangaroos into work each day, the talk naturally moved onto Foreign Policy again. Given the bloke we were talking to worked in the Navy, I didn’t want to bad mouth the war in Iraq in the event he somehow ended up serving there. Which turned out to be a great feat, especially when his wife said “We should follow our President wherever he takes us”. The control it took me to not fire back with “Yeah, they had a similar policy in Germany back in the 1930’s” was nothing short of awesome. A few more people from tour eventually made their way down to the “Sports Bar” and we shared some drinks for a few hours before heading back to the hotel.
It was on our way back to the hotel we wished we’d left a trail of breadcrumbs. When you’re in the forest with next to no lighting it’s remarkably easy to get lost. We’d caught the bus back to within 500 metres of our hotel, but even with satellite navigation equipment I still reckon it would have been next to impossible to find the hotel. We accidentally stumbled across the wrong hotel at least twice, before realising we needed to take the 2nd right off the road, not the 1st. When we did eventually get back we were happy to discover a big multi-room party happening. The night went on to involve us covering the bus in toilet paper, tearing Aaron out of his bed and putting ice in it, and some shady bloke trying to sell Big Sam some weed. It was at a similar time that the cops came and killed the party. Gav, for some reason being someone never to respect anyone in a uniform and carrying a firearm, got on the front foot and the following battle of wits took place:
Gav: “Chill out, just tell us to go back to our rooms and we will”
Sergeant Smarty McSmarts: “No. If any ones gonna tell any one to do anything, it’s gonna be me. Now go to your rooms”
Given they were essentially agreeing, I’m still confused as to how they got into a verbal stoush which eventually saw Gav having to show his passport and Big Sam convincing the cop Gav was a good guy who would just go to bed if you asked him. Eventually the cops left, and we got some much-needed sleep.
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