Volume 6: Pete in Canada Part 11. Beaver Las Canada. 1 Continent, 2 Blokes, Infinite Weird Sh*t
Day 23 – New Jersey
Today was to be a chill out day, just as soon as I could figure out the combination on the lock on my bag. I had decided to bring combination locks so as to avoid having to carry any keys with me through out the tour. This seems like a great idea as you don’t risk losing keys, but what you need to remember when opening a combination lock is to not swing the handle 180 degrees and push down as that resets the combination to whatever the numbers are on. Stuck in some sort of panic, I initially decided to just try each of the 1,000 combinations. After trying 130 combinations I finally put some thought into the process. I figured I must have only moved 1 of the numbers when I accidentally reset the combination. Turns out I was correct and found the solution on my 131st attempt. That’s why they pay me the big dollars.
After breakfast Danielle took us for a drive to see the sights of Sandy Hook and the twin lights of an old light tower. After that informative session, we went back to the house and picked up Lauren and headed to the beach for a day of simply kicking back. It was a nice relaxing day in which we enjoyed the ice cold waters of the Atlantic and equally cold beer. We got talking to some old Jersey broad who was the mother of one of Laurens friend. She wasn’t bashful, as proven by an exchange with some young Irish fellow who she’d just met walking past and asked if his pierced tongue made him a better lover. When he didn’t respond, she asked again, at about which time her daughter was on the verge of calling 911 for fear of dying of embarrassment.
The water wasn’t all together friendly that day to me as it dumped me on some pebbles as I tried to body surf on a wave. However, it was a lot friendlier for Danielle and Lauren serving as a hiding place as some cop on a 4-wheel motorbike tried to bust Brad and I for drinking on the beach. We played the roll of ignorant tourist to perfection saying we thought we could drink on the beach provided it wasn’t in glass containers (somewhat of a diversion from the truth as we were drinking our beers from blue plastic cups as that is what the locals told us to do to conceal the beer). He told us to empty our beers and let us off with a warning. We celebrated our good luck by opening another beer.
In a delightful display of goodwill, the old Jersey broad and her daughter invited us back to a BBQ dinner she was having for her birthday. We at first politely declined as we didn’t want to intrude on her birthday party, but she insisted we come, so we did. In fact, I think the novelty of having some Aussies at her party gave her a bit of a buck up as every time she introduced us she let the person know we were Aussies. God bless Paul Hogan and Steve Irwin for making Aussies look more exotic than we are. At the BBQ Lauren cooked up some fish, which didn’t quite seem natural given she had been talking about how she looked after fish like they were orphans. I suppose if anyone is going to know a lot about fish it’s a marine biologist. I just didn’t expect that knowledge to extend to knowing what makes them taste great.
After dinner we kicked on to a small bar that let you sit on a porch in rocking chairs. Unfortunately, you have to supply your own shotguns, so we moved onto another venue that had a bar on the beach. It was there I saw a bloke with a t-shirt of road sign that read “Welcome to New Jersey – Now get the hell out”. Apparently New Jersey folk are supposed to be hard, with an us against them attitude, but everyone I’ve every met from New Jersey has always been quite nice.
Not sure what time we finished at the bar, but it was either late enough or earlier enough to reheat some food from the Outback Steakhouse and watch half of Anchorman before falling asleep.
Day 24 – New Jersey and New York City
Today Danielle offered to be our tour guide and take us into Manhattan. The goal was to drive to the station and catch the New Jersey Transit train into NYC. As Danielle wasn’t overly familiar with the neighbourhood as she was only renting for the summer, this goal was planning to be more challenging than anticipated. At one stage we turned right onto a street, before somehow turning right again onto the same street we thought we were travelling on. With 3 confused people sitting in a car with no idea where we going, Danielle rolled down her window and asked some nice old man for directions. As he was an old man, with the necessary 70 years experience required to figure out these local streets which to the unlearned all seemed to be named the same, he gave us the necessary directions and we eventually found our way to the train station. Then to confuse the situation yet again, the trains were only operating on one track. Thankfully, there was announcement to indicate this and which platform to board the train to avoid the situation of spending numerous hours on a platform wondering why no trains seemed to be going our way. The train arrived just a few minutes after we arrived and we were on our way.
We decided today to go check out the big green chick who looks like she’s about to put on some underarm deodorant, the Statue of Liberty. In 1886, the French government presented Frederic-Auguste Batholdi’s sculpture to the US as a sign of goodwill, and in exchange the US government agreed to let the French remain smelly and ungrateful should the US save the French in any major world conflict. While your initial impression of the statue is “I’d thought it would be bigger”, I could see how powerful an image it would have served for immigrants coming into the harbour looking to start a new life. Of course, tour life is all about education so this is what I learnt whilst on Liberty Island:
The broken chain at her ankle represents liberty (from the kitchen sink. She was a feminist ahead of her time)
The 7 points on her crown represent the 7 seas and 7 continents (also useful to head butt someone when defending your freedom)
The 9mm concealed in the small of her back represents the constitutional right for US citizens to bare arms (okay, made that one up)The stone tablet on her left arm is inscribed with the date of independence in roman numerals (and therefore should not be confused as being a pizza box with the cost of the pizza on it)
The island was originally used as a fort, with the unusual 11 pointed star design (assuming architects used to get paid by the point in the old days)
Essentially she was built as a giant jigsaw puzzle, with the steal framework going up first with giant pieces of copper wrapped around the outside (assuming the box she came in said for ages 25+)
After checking her out, we headed to Wall street where I became consumed by trying to find some bull statue that Danielle had mentioned. We never did find it, so I said Danielle could kiss goodbye to her tip as tour guide for the day.
From there we headed to Ground Zero. After 4 years it is still a moving place and still hard to comprehend that over 2000 people never made it home from work that day. It bought back memories of how I felt walking into work the days after the great tragedy and the feelings of emptiness and how this was going to be the end of the world after the Americans launched a counter strike. In a further testament to how fucked up people are, there are street hawkers selling crappy World Trade Center merchandise near the sight. Apparently the statute of limitations on taking advantage of a massive tragedy is 4 years. There are official signs up asking you not to purchase stuff from these people, but I didn’t need a sign to tell me not to purchase from these bottom dwelling scum.
As it had been a warm day with plenty of walking, we headed into TGI Fridays at about 6pm to get some liquid amber refreshment. From there we headed up to Times Square for dinner at the Hard Rock Café. Not surprisingly the cost of dinner at this location was far greater than anything else we’d spent all tour. To make you feel happy about the cost of the beer they served it in a “free glass”, which is the equivalent of me selling the carpet in my house for $300,000 and saying it comes with a free house. Brad and I chipped in and covered the bill for Danielle, which was a lazy $105, plus tax plus gratuity. It was without doubt the most we’d ever spent on a woman for dinner without expecting sex in exchange.
It was dark when we left the Hard Rock, we took some pictures of Time square before heading to Penn Station to catch the train back to New Jersey. It had been a long day so we were all fairly quiet, so I amused myself by watching some old bloke walking down the stairs to the platform and trying to figure out if he was drunk or disabled. As he fell asleep as soon as he got on the train, the good money was on him being drunk.
Day 25 – New Jersey and New York City
Today Danielle left Brad and I to fend for ourselves in the big city as she had some work commitments she had to see to. We caught the ferry into Manhattan, which was quicker and a far more pleasant experience as we toasted the great city with some beers on the top deck.
Our first activity for the day was to go for a stroll through Central Park. We walked through some less populated parts of the park and all I could think about was the episode of Seinfeld where Kramer got mugged in Central Park while trying to take a dump. I somehow remembered where strawberry fields was and the hotel location where John Lennon had been shot, which was quite impressive given the number of assassination sites I’d been to in the US. Assassination sites I have visited in the US:
Dr Martin Luther King (Memphis)
JFK (Dallas)
Abraham Lincoln (Washington)
Unknown victims from a sniper attack (car park in Washington)
John Lennon (NYC)
God bless the right to bear arms and the swift and uncompromising way it helps solve domestic issues.
For the rest of the day we decided it would be a good idea to spend a number of hours in a queue (sorry, I’m in North America, in a line) and if there was any spare time left over, get to the top of the Empire State Building. At the Empire State Building there was a line to go through security, a line to buy tickets, a line to catch the elevator to the 80th floor, a line to catch the elevator to the 86th floor. Along the way every last attempt was made to squeeze the last dollar out of the patrons. On the 80th floor Brad and I succumbed and went halves in an audio tour. We avoided the purchase of a picture taken of us on the 80th floor by a professional photographer as they only took 1 picture before asking us to move on. I was offended that they didn’t even ask us to take off our tops or pose for some tasteful nudes, I felt so dirty and used, as if I was just an object in their production line. Once we finally made it to the top Brad and I took it in turns to listen to the audio presentation. It was narrated by some old New York bloke who’d reached the point in his life we’re he embraced his senility and just waffled on, going off at random tangents. In some story he banged on about how when he was a kid some Jewish lady used to pay him 10 cents to turn on her radio on on Saturdays as Jews aren’t supposed to seek entertainment on a Saturday, but it was okay if she just happened to overhear a radio that had been turned on. The old codger did, however, find time to give information that was relevant. He talked about how the building had gone up in just over a year, before banging on about “density”. I initially thought he was then going to talk about the American voting public and how the fuck did George W get a second term (well, he didn’t really win his first term) but instead he went on to talk about the dense population of sky scrapers in Manhattan. I’m assuming the ratio of skyscrapers to men with small penises is roughly 1 to 1. One such example is the Chrysler Building which was going head to head with a rival building to become the tallest building in Manhattan. The rival building thought they’d got the title until in the last days of construction the Chrysler Building produced a large protruding rod out the top. The old codger also told of how the top of the Empire State Building was going to be used as a docking port for Zeppelins, but it turned out to be too windy. I only really got pissed off with old codger when the recording turned into a subtle piece of propaganda. He began talking about 9/11 and how some Fire fighter seen searching for something was interviewed on the day was asked what he was looking for. He’s alleged response was “I’m looking for my freedom”. With all due respect: Bull-fucking-shit! Who the fuck would ever have said that prior to or in the days just after the attack on the World Trade Center? The over use of the word “freedom” by Americans in the post 9/11 world is something that quite frankly shits me to death. To say that on the recording was to me as low and as exploitive as those bottom dwelling scum buckets selling merchandise at Ground Zero. It’s an absolute disgrace that a tragic event such as 9/11 can be used by fuckwits like George W to justify the war in Iraq as “defending the freedom” of Americans. Good work dickhead! Take an event that killed a few thousand innocent people and use it as an excuse to kill a few thousand more innocent people in a far off country. Oh sorry, you were removing WMDs from Iraq. Oh sorry, there are no WMDs, okay so we’re attacking Iraq because of links to Al Qaeda. Oops, sorry no links to Al Qaeda, okay we’re attacking because…liberating the people of Iraq from a dictator to give them their freedom. That fucking word again! Freedom. If only the masses in the US showed some freedom of thought before blindly following their president into an illegal war, like that stupid woman I met in the Grand Canyon in 2003 that said “I think we should follow our president wherever he takes us”.
Once I got off my political soapbox , we had a short search for FAO Schwarz to find a gift for Danielle, before deciding on the safer option of buying her alcohol. We also went into an internet café to check our emails and give Brad a chance to email his future wife, the chick he’d met in Quebec City. It was towards the end of writing his email that he gave what was to become a customary cry at many internet cafes on this tour; the shouting of “Oh s*#t!”. So many times Brad would leave sending an email too late, with the time expiring with him losing the entire message, meaning I had to wait for him to compose another 10 minute masterpiece.
As we walked back to the ferry, made all the more longer because we couldn’t remember where it boarded, I noticed that jay walking was something bred into New Yorkers. Pedestrian lights were as useful as roman numerals. What surprised me most was the lack of attractive women in NYC. Maybe the density of skyscrapers meaning an equally large number of small penised men had scared them off.
We finally found the port to catch the ferry, now the only problem was we didn’t know which ferry to catch. We asked some fat angry black woman working at a counter, before moving away apologising for causing her the inconvenience of asking her to do her job. We ended up asking someone in line. They thankfully gave us a response that was useful and also in a manner that didn’t suggest they wished we were dead, unlike the fat angry black woman.
Back in New Jersey Brad and I went into a local pub and ordered some beers. In a seen reminiscent of a western movie, everyone turned around and went quiet when they heard Brad’s accent as he ordered the beer. Thankfully, no one shot at us or confronted us with “we don’t take too kindly to your folk ‘round here” so we enjoyed the beers and penned a little thank you letter to Danielle and Lauren. We finished the beers, bought some vodka for a present and went back to Danielle’s place. We presented her with the vodka, a “mystery box” (gotta watch Family Guy to get the relevance), and the dog which Brad had won at the theme park in Toronto which by a massive coincidence happened to be Brian from Family Guy. In the mystery box I included my “free glass” from the Hard Rock and included a note along the lines of:
“Australia gives you this glass of liberty, much like the French gave you the statue, for providing tremendous hospitality to 2 of it’s citizens. We hope it provides you with the freedom to enjoy a beer at any time, whether that be on the tallest mountain, in the deepest valley or before you’re about to operate some heavy equipment”.
After that touching ceremony Brad and I headed back to the pub at around 1am to enjoy our last beers on New Jersey soil. By the time we left the natural affects of alcohol had kicked in. This inspired Brad to want to steal a flag. His first choice was a massive flag which must have been close to 10ft by 6ft in size, which had been nailed to someone’s house. I didn’t want to take something that big in a country that is told in their constitution it is their right to bear arms, so I convinced Brad to settle for a smaller flag standing in a flower pot. So he did and we ran.
No one got shot, so it was a good night.
Comments