Mootpoint: Travel

This one will be an extremely brief update, as I’m about to hop on the subway to head out to JFK International Airport, ending what has turned out to be an incredibly short three weeks in the USA.

I’ve a half written post on Syracuse sitting here, and another one about New York floating around my head, but turns out that I can’t even blog without putting aside considerable time to mull things over before I write them down (ie it’s not just academic writing I get writer’s block from). Hopefully I’ll sneak a day somewhere in Toulouse before starting the trail to write everything down.

Suffice to say, it’s been an amazing three weeks, and thanks to all who put me up and put up with me for the duration, new friends and old.

And now, hopefully (long story), to London.

So I bought my ticket from San Francisco to DC thinking that it would be a good idea to catch an overnight flight, arriving on the East Coast early in the morning, and then embarking on a day of sightseeing refreshed and relaxed after a good sleep on the plane. One word sums up this hoped for outcome: Fail.

Turns out that the flight is only four and a half hours long, and after two or so of those hours, turbulence (especially one bump in particular, which woke everyone up and caused quite a lot of loud blaspheming in the cabin) kept me awake right up until touch down at Dulles airport (which, I might add, is a really crap airport, notable only for it’s quasi-futuristic buses-on-elevators that take you from one terminal to another). So instead of arriving in DC refreshed and ready for a day of touristastic action, I arrived sans sleep and mildly traumatised.

However, one bonus of being kept awake was watching the lights of the various towns, cities and freeways criss-cross the landscape below as we flew towards the sunrise. It was quite pretty, so I can’t complain too much about it all.

Once at the airport, Claire arrived and whisked me away to Wheaton (a suburb on the outskirts of DC, just beyond the beltway) from which we caught the train into the heart of downtown. This was an extremely cunning move, as it meant that when we came to leave the city, we didn’t have to fight our way through the commuter traffic, training out beyond the worst of it, and escaping to the nearest highway as quickly as possible. Nice work Claire on that one.

We arrived in downtown DC early (7.30ish) and found a city that seemed to be in the process of having all of its footpaths scrubbed clean. It was quite nice to wander around a big city during the freshness of the morning just after it itself had been freshened up, although finding a cafe that served a decent breakfast proved difficult, and the coffee I eventually found was perhaps the worst espresso I have had in my entire life (so burnt, so tasting like marzipan, so wrong). The first hour or so was spent in search of food, and found us wandering around the bit with the big buildings and the hotels and the standard “we’re downtown in a big city” type stuff. But after we were fed and watered, we made out way to the National Mall…

…which is awesome. Say what you will about Americans (and Claire frequently does so, loudly), but they build an excellent monument.

The next six or seven or more hours were spent wandering up and down this thin strip of land. In that time we walked past or through: the Washington Monument (which dominates everything - it really is huge); the World War II Memorial; the Lincoln Memorial (best bit, IMHO); the Vietnam War Memorial; and two Smithsonian, the Air and Space, and the Natural History, Museums. Plus there were a couple of cafes in there as well. I didn’t take any photos of those, although I think it was agreed by both of us that the free entry into the Natural History museum was somewhat undermined by the phenomenal price of the food inside them. More fool us, I guess.

We failed to make it to Capitol Hill, which was a bit sucky, but you could seriously lose several days just on the Mall without even trying, so I reckon we did ok in the end with the one we had.

On the way back though, we did make a point of standing in front of the Whitehouse for the ultimate tourist photograph. My life is now complete. No, wait…

After negotiating the public transport back to the car (which hadn’t been stolen, thankfully), we headed out to Claire’s family friend’s house in Ellicott City, Maryland, which turned out to be a freakin’ huge place with many, many rooms. Wayne works for the NZ government in DC, so I guess that particular night’s accommodation was provided to us by your tax dollars. Nice work everyone. Once there, we headed out to dinner in the old part of the City, and afterwards on to a pub to sample the local beer. I have to say that my trip so far has disabused me of the notion that American beer is crap, it just appears that they export the crap stuff (kind of like us and Steinlager, I guess). We ended up trying many different types of really excellent beers in a range of different styles, and as many of them were also quite strong, and I hadn’t really slept for nearing on 34 hours by that stage, by the time the night drew to a close I was well toasted.

The best bit about the night though, was the band playing in the corner of the pub. They were ok, not super flash, and had been playing a lot of mid-1990s classics for most of the evening, but then they launched into a Damien Rice song, followed by another (after some urging by Claire), and then another. Which was excellent, even if a little scratchy in places. It’ll come as no surprise that I thought this was pretty neat, but then they asked whether anyone had heard of Flight of the Concords, and proceeded to belt out an excellent cover of Business Time. This proved to be the perfect end to a long day, so we shook their hands, and staggered off home to sleep.

The following day, we hopped in the car, and with the help of essential navigational aids (Mapquest is seriously the bomb), we set out to go from Ellicott City, Maryland, to Truro, Cape Cod, Massachusetts - a trip of 500 miles through seven different US states. Basically, we were planning on driving the same distance that I’ll be walking on the trail in Spain over the course of a month or more, in a day.

And we almost did it, too.

In the end, we made it as far as Bourne, Massachusetts, rolling into a camping ground 15 minutes before they closed, pitching the tent in the dark, and collapsing into it after a gin or two. The camp site was pretty much deserted, and if you looked in one direction it seemed like we were camped in a forest way out in the middle of nowhere. But, if you looked in the other direction, it turned out we were about 100 metres away from the State Highway 6. I didn’t sleep very well, but after ten hours driving, Claire was asleep in about a second.

The next day, we headed out to Cape Cod so Claire could dip her toes in the Atlantic (cold, apparently) and we could visit Newcomb Hollow Beach. There was a wreck of a 19th century schooner that had been washed up onto the beach near where we stopped which was also very cool. Cape Cod is really quite lovely, even though we were there on quite a dull and cloudy day, especially all the cool little towns that dot its length.

From there, we headed to Plymouth to see the rock. Chalk this up as another fail, as they’re busy repairing the pavilion that stands above it, hiding the rock from view in the process. So we gave up on that, and headed up to Boston.

Boston has an air of permanence I haven’t encountered anywhere before. The buildings are solid and brick, the architecture is impressive and at times crenellated. We drove into the city, thinking we’d do the old DC trick park on the outskirts, and train into the place we were staying. Turns out parking in Boston is a complete nightmare, and after an hour or more of fruitless driving about the place (Beacon Street. Seriously, it appears you can navigate Boston as long as you know where this street is), we ended up giving in and purchasing a ticket to go park in one of the visitor parking lots dotted about the city. This meant we arrived quite late into the city, and failed to get to MIT or Harvard, which had been the original plan. It was also raining, so exploring meant getting wet and cold, and we decided we weren’t up for it.

But we were up for a huge steak dinner at an Irish Bar in Boston. And it was good.

We stayed at the daughter of one of Claire’s supervisors’ apartment, not to far from the centre of town. Their place was lovely, and while we thought we were in for an early night, it turned out that Cate and Larry (her husband) were keen to talk and drink the night away. Much whisky, bourbon and rye (which I hadn’t tried before, and rather enjoyed) were sampled by myself and Larry, and it turned out Claire and I were the first New Zealander’s either of them had met before. Hopefully we left a good impression, we certainly didn’t leave much alcohol.

The next day, with a surprisingly small hangover (thanks, I suspect, to the huge steak dinner), we headed down to the Boston Common and watched the squirrels play, ate bagels and looked at more memorials. While the day before had been rainy and cold, the day on the Common was warm and sunny, was a shame to leave.

But we did, as we needed to make it back to Syracuse by that evening. Which we did, through what would appear to be one continuous forest from Boston to Syracuse, and now we’re here, eating savouries heated in the oven, and watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

I used to read news reports such as this one, and wonder how a country can “lose” this much money. I mean how? But after a week or so (ie this is really just a first impression, which will undoubtedly change), I’m beginning to get the sense of there being a general ambiguity towards money and paying for things that exists throughout the society, not just in the vast military-industrial complex itself where, I assume, losing the money is entirely the point.

For example, I think I’ve only paid the advertised price for anything twice during my stay - once at the SFMoMA (which is a very cool place indeed), and once on a Muni train (the SF public transport system is not particularly wonderful at all, and I understand I’ve only been on the good bits). In all other places, prices are advertised sans sales tax (seems to be about 10% or so), and then when you add in the added complication of the tipping calculation, which certain establishments will add for you onto the bill automatically (which somewhat defeats the supposed purpose, no?), then it all becomes a little confusing as to what you’ll end up paying for anything when all’s said, done, eaten and drunk.

This confusion even extends to the money itself, as the notes are all the same colour and all the same size, and the coins come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes and denominations, but only really seem to be good for giving to homeless people in the streets or tipping people taking your order at cafes. This of course wouldn’t be a problem, if anyone over here had ever heard of EFTPOS. In my experience, bars tend to only take cash, but they also all seem to have mini ATMs in the corner inside the bar in order to get said cash, for a small withdrawal fee of course (even the electronic machines require tips), which seems to defeat the purpose of only being a cash-only bar somewhat.

So I’ve been wondering whether importing a kiwi-style, no-tipping restaurant would work here, with full prices, inclusive of tax, displayed at the point of order. Although I’m not actually sure whether it’d catch on, I think the ambiguity is half the fun.

Not that I’m complaining about being in San Francisco, it’s been amazing (just don’t get me started on the plethora of different intersection types they have around here…)

On the actual “Stuff What I’ve Done” front, over the last few days I’ve been going to restaurants, hanging out at bars, watching movies, discussing said movies over wine and chocolate, meeting a whole heap of new people (Lis has some very cool friends over here), exploring the city, realising I’m pretty bad at remembering to take photos when I’m exploring on my own, then over compensating with way too many pictures of Alcatraz (!)… the usual.

Saturday saw Lis and I head out for a drive to the north of the city, first down past Golden Gate Park, then back up around the Great Highway, stopping at a lookout point to view the harbour back up to Golden Gate Bridge. That thing is immense, impressive, beautiful…. definitely a sense of hugeness about it from miles away, and when you’re actually on it, after navigating some confusing street arrangements… awesome. From there, we headed north to Sausolito for lunch on the waterfront, and then from there almost directly West to Muir (pronounced “Mir”) Beach. The landscape on the drive over to the beach is extremely Banks Peninsular-esque, and the beach itself could easily be a little bay tucked between Okains and Le Bons Bays, complete with the Pacific Ocean rolling in.

After spending a while sitting and chatting on the beach, we retreated from the combined onslaught of sand and wind and headed back to town for Lis’ birthday dinner out at a cool little Italian restaurant, followed by Lis’ birthday drinks at a couple of bars in town which weren’t quite as cool as the restaurant. So much so that as we left the bar, I discovered a couple of days later, one of the group was hassled by a “friend” of the bar-girl for not tipping enough in what sounded like quite an aggressive manner! Maybe the ambiguity isn’t quite so much fun at times.

I’m off to catch my flight to DC soon to start the East Coast part of this trip, so I’ll have to save more stories another day. One last thing to say though, and that’s a huge thank you to Lissie and her flatmates Hal and Inbal for letting me crash on their couch and take over their front lounge for the last week. It’s been, and this is the word of the trip so far in more ways than one, awesome.

So, I’ve arrived and the travel has officially begun. Wonder who won/lost all those bets on whether I’d ever leave? Not that, I note, anyone came to make sure I actually got on the damn plane!

Monday was a mammoth day of travel, not helped by some poor connecting flight booking action which saw me spend a good seven or so hours in the international Terminal at Auckland Airport. Not the most exciting place on earth, but perhaps one of the few (as Tim has also noticed) that doesn’t sell chewing gum. Now you know.

The trip up from Christchurch was actually pretty smooth, and included a bonus stopover at Wellington (awesome flight booking skillz, seriously) which gave just enough time for a hurried coffee and goodbye with Will. At Auckland, a rather less hurried coffee and goodbye was had with Ben, Jude, Mark and Daz, who were all nice enough to drive me between terminals (avoiding the sun-shower, or sun-rain, or whatever we decided it was in the end) and keep me company for a bit.

But the real highlight of the day had to be the thirteen hour flight from Auckland to San Francisco. Ooo yeah, I’d forgotten how much fun sitting in a seat for that long can be. Luckily, there wasn’t anyone sitting between me and some old guy from San Diego who lost interest in any conversation before the plane had left the tarmac, so the trip was a lot more comfortable than it might otherwise have been, physically and socially. The food was nice, the movies were cool, and I managed to snatch about three hours sleep in total.

Lis met me at the airport, and we drove in to San Francisco (after I figured out how to use, or at least avoid the panic reaction induced by, the electronic seat belts WTF? I mean really…) to meet her flatmate (Inbal) and go check out the place we’re house-sitting for the next few days. It’s very, very cool - everything there is definitely in its right place. Wine drinking, chatting, listening to and swapping music, and general laying around was the order of the day until we finally realised we were hungry, and a late (c.1 am) dinner was had. Turns out that as Lis had just got back from Mexico, and I’d just flown in from New Zealand, the power of our jet lags combined meant our bodies thought it should probably be about 2 in the afternoon next Thursday.

All up it meant my travel day was about 36 hours long with about six hours of sleep at most sprinkled throughout. I’ve since decided to get over the jet lag by completely ignoring all signals my body is sending me. Seems to be working so far.

Yesterday was the first real day in the city, and it involved breakfast with friends (David and Valentin), and many, many hours of walking through (what I assume are) typical San Francisco neighbourhoods. The houses are very cool, especially the wrought iron gates to the little entrance ways/courtyards just off the street (which I’ll get some photos of before I go), but I guess the most surprising thing was the sheer number of New Zealand native plants dotted throughout. The streets are literally lined with pohutukawa and cabbage trees, in darker corners there are pungas, and the occasional broadleaf can be found in gardens as you walk past. It’s quite weird, but also kind of excellent, to see what I’ve always considered “native” in a context that renders it “exotic”. Fellow travelers in this whole overseas expedition thing I’ve gone and signed myself up for, easing me into being away from home.

The walk took us up to Upper Haight (pronounced “Hate”), through a variety of used clothing stores, past some fantastic houses and beautiful parks and into at least one cool little coffee shop. The latter is just one reason why I’ve been very quickly disabused of the “You won’t be able to find decent coffee in the States” notion I was primed with before I left - espresso is everywhere, and its been pretty good so far… you just have to make sure you ask for espresso specifically, cos if you ask for coffee, it comes in a pot.

Ha ha! Filtered.

The evening involved another bottle of wine, more music, and more new people to meet (Uriel). Cool conversation commenced, and only occasionally veered into incomprehensible linguistic territory, during which I made myself useful, foraging for food and cleaning kitchens and the like. Speaking of being incomprehensible, it turns out I speak differently to Kiwis than to non-Kiwis, such that when I spoke to Lis, my accent and style of speaking changed to the point that Uriel (an Israeli with excellent English), who could understand me perfectly when I talked directly to him, could barely understand a word I was saying. Not all that surprising, but definitely interesting to have it pointed out while in the company of linguists.

Anyway, the upshot of all this talking was that it’s been decided that I will become Lis’ life coach, for a nominal fee plus airfares out to wherever she might be in future. Although keeping up with her jet-setting ways may prove somewhat tiring, one suspects.

Today we’ve come out to Stanford so I can explore (which I’ve largely failed at, hence this blog and a string of emails some of you may have received) yet another campus. My impressions of it are that it is big, and rich, and quite pretty, in an incredible standardised, stylised, almost sterile kind of way (I’m going to wander a bit more later, and take some pictures, and find some distinctive coolness about the place to try and combat this impression). I’ve also noticed that regardless of how it looks on the outside, inside it would seem to be just another university, with that same university corridor feel, and that same university smell. I’m beginning to think campuses (campi? I don’t know if this word exists, but it’s much cooler, and as Tyra suggested, does sound like it should involve sauteeing in butter. Which would undeniably make university a tastier, more fattening, place to be. But I digress…) are my natural environment. I’ve yet to decide quite how sad this is, given I don’t really want to be an academic.

I’ve also decided to start taking photos of those blue and red US teen movie party cups. I’ve already seen a few lying about the place, and I think finding these in their natural environs will be a much more satisfying form of photographic essay than simply taking pictures of monuments and the like. So hopefully I’ll find a few more on my travels over the next few weeks, otherwise my cunning plan will be for nought.

Oh, and in case people haven’t clicked on any of the links above, photos from here and other parts of the trip can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/masonnic/, a site which will almost certainly be updated more often than this blog, as I’m way more paranoid about losing my photos than forgetting to write screeds about the daily minutiae of traveling from campus to campus around the globe.

Update: So, it would appear that cabbage trees and pohutukawa are in fact considered invasive species in many places around the world now. Seems only fair, given the number of invasive plant species New Zealand has to deal with.