The Cross-Country Chronicles: Don't Mess With Texas

When Molly and I were planning our cross-country adventure, driving through the middle of Arizona and New Mexico sounded like a great idea.

But the desert is called the desert for a reason. It's deserted. There's NOTHING to look at.

The mind and butt-numbing five hour drive from Flagstaff to Albequerque, New Mexico was one of shortest drives on our trip but was by far, one of the most painful. If it weren't for the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows audio book, we might have stopped to drive cactus spines into our eyes just so we wouldn't have to look out on any more desert.

With the Arizona fires still raging and having burnt a hole the size of Chicago across the state's landscape, its next door neighbour of New Mexico was suffering the smokey after effects. The beautiful watermelon mountains which frame the New Mexico skyline couldn't be seen through the eerie yellow haze that hovered over the city and turned the sun blood red.

Instead, we stayed indoors with our Albequerque host, Carolyn - a close friend of Molly's - and her three, oh-so-adorable kittens. Vegging out on the couch watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall was a welcome refrain from the road. Especially when we had an epic 12-hour drive to Austin, Texas ahead of us.

But with Harry Potter plugged in and a brief, but memorable lunch time stop in Sudan, Texas (where, just in case of confusion, a sign states - America lives here) the drive wasn't half bad. If you can deal with the Vote Out Obama propoganda, of course. We were definitly in root-tooting, gun-shooting Texas.

After a couple of nervous days of waiting, we were able to find a last-minute couch to surf and in doing so, made two new Texan friends in our hosts, Jason and Tyler (both who weren't actually from Texas, but still qualify as Texans in my eyes).

With the boys both working during the day, Molly and I were left up to our own devices on our day off and took up a couple of Jason's local recommendations. We had breakfast tacos (and one of the best creations known to man - bacon, egg, tortilla - thank you, Mexico), swam and sunbaked at Barton Springs - a freshwater spring in the middle of Austin that has been turned into a local swimming hole and an after-swim bevvie at the Daily Juice - a local smoothie institution.

With all the Longhorn cattle wandering around Texas, there's only one thing worth eating for dinner. Meat. So, as a thankyou to our couch hosts, we took them out for what boys like best.

Barbeque.

The small suburb of Lockhart, on the skirts of Austin, is the BBQ town of Texas and definitely lived up to its reputation. We drank, we ate and we polished off every last delicious, saucy square inch of meat. Then we did what you would naturally do after eating two pounds of beef.

We went to the Lockart Elementary School carnival.

Riding The Zipper, a large ride full of twisting, turning carriages which flip upside down and inside out, probably isn't everybody's cup of tea after eating half a cow, but somehow Tyler and I made it through without losing our dinner. Although, he did lose his sunglasses as we were hanging upside down on The Kamikaze. If there was anything that made my stomach turn, it was the sight of the wirey, toothless carnies who were locking me into each death-trap.

After prying through every inch of Tyler's record collection, we threw Creedence Cleartwater Revival on the turntable, cracked open some beers and played Jungle Speed - a fast-paced, card game that involves matching shapes and colours and grabbing a totem pole. Not so great if you've had a few beers and suffer from mild dyslexia.

Molly and I were both a bit sad to leave Austin and our new friends, but with New Orleans on the horizon, we knew the bayous were beckoning.

Ciao for now. xo

Flip Flip Flipadelphia

Having been on the road for the last month, moving consistently from place to place every couple of days, it was a relief to get back to good ol’ comfortable Philly. Having seen most of the tourist sites when I visited the city during camp, I didn’t feel the accountability to get out and see as much as I could every day. Having come from Canton where it was a similar story, I felt like I had checked myself into roadtrip rehab. Rather than getting up at the crack of sparrows every day, armed with my Lonely Planet and a metro card, I slept in, watched cable and ventured outside only when the fancy (or my appetite) demanded so.


Continuing to tread on the kindness of the Carmeny family, Tim again welcomed me into his home in Philly, which he shares with another Appel Farm friend, Julie. Parked on the couch directly in front of the cable, it was hard to tear myself away from marathons of America’s Next Top Model, especially with the fall weather rearing its ugly head outside. I continue to be followed by a literal black cloud, unable to escape the rain no matter where I go.

But that didn’t stop me from grabbing my umbrella and going out looking for food, usually with Tim in tow. We did bagels on South Street, margaritas on Passyunk Ave, coffee on 4th and pizza on 2nd. Not to mention mid-night snacks as we stayed up watching the Top 100 Hits of the 90s on VH1. We burned off the carbohydrates by playing Frisbee in the park where we attempted to teach an uncoordinated five year old how to toss a Frisbee without decapitating our fellow park-goers.

I even managed to turn down a morning with the Gilmore Girls to go and get my haircut – an indulgent necessity I have been battling with for the last two months. My hairdresser – bless her – tried her best to recreate the brilliance of Sydney’s Neil Moody, but alas, cut my hair an inch too short. However, as annoying as this is for the time being, does mean I can tack another few weeks onto the time period before my Rapunzel-like hair once again grows out of shape.

As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one treading on Tim and Julie’s kindness. While I couch surfed, a mouse had also decided to make itself at home in the living room. Each evening as I tried to sleep, I would be awoken to what sounded like something the size of a gorilla building a nuclear warhead. Despite our joint attempts to catch the mouse by blocking its exits and buying sticky traps, the mouse continued to remain evasive - stealing both cereal and my precious sleeping hours.

But before I could say “Out damned mouse”, I was once again packing my bags and boarding a train, bound for Elizabethtown where another greatly-missed Appel Farm face awaited me.

Ciao for now. xo

Meet Me in St Louis (A Couch Surfer's Experience)

I survived another thrilling six hour adventure on the Greyhound to make it to St. Louis, Missouri (this time, there was a baby that didn’t stop crying from the moment it boarded the bus. You know the type of crying I’m talking about, the one that sounds like a death metal fanatic at a Metallica concert).

St. Louis is a cute type of city, much like a teenager that missed that part of puberty when they were supposed to get a growth spurt. This is in fact the story of St. Louis. Once upon a time, it was a booming metropolis, also referred to as the Gateway to the West. In honour of this namesake, St Louis erected the first largest freestanding structure called The Arch – a large semi-circle of steel which is situated between the city and the banks of the Mississippi. Apart from its historical reference to the city, The Arch looks like just that, a giant arch.

Anyway, St Louis began to lose popularity to larger cities around it – Chicago, Philadelphia, New York – and soon the population dwindled considerably. This is partly due to the political and governmental organisation of the city wherein St Louis and St Louis County exist as two completely different entities, meaning that each smaller suburb is responsible for itself and are able to streamline the caste system with their own governments to control taxes.

All this I learnt from my hosts, Hannah and Tony, in my first ever couch surfing experience.

Definition of Couch Surfing: Where a poor backpacker takes advantage of the kindness of strangers and sleeps on the couch or spare bedroom of people he/she has never met before.

Couch Surfing is not such an uncommon way to travel anymore and while at first I had my reservations, friends who had surfed and survived with little to no horror stories, recommended it as a worthwhile experience. So I joined the online community Couch Surfing.com and found myself a cute couple, Hannah and Tony, who lived with their three cats on the outskirts of St Louis.

While most couch surfers do just that – surf/sleep on a couch – I was lucky enough to get my own room at Hannah and Tony’s. They were very welcoming and went to great lengths to make me feel as safe and at home as possible. While both studied (you guessed it, politics), I was left up to my own devices during the day.
As discussed, St Louis is a geographically divided city, with each of the suburbs almost like a different city unto itself. After visiting The Arch and taking a million shameless photos, I made my way to the City Museum, the main reason I had come to St Louis in the first place. The City Museum is a playground for children and adults alike, made completely out of recycled materials (tin cans, train carriages, yellow school buses etc). But I got there to find that, between Labour weekend and March, it’s shut Monday and Tuesday. And what two days was I in St Louis for? Yah – Monday and Tuesday.

So I put my disappointed butt back on the train and headed out to Maplewood and The Loop for a spot of retail therapy. The Loop is known as one of the 10 Most Famous Shopping Strips in America and is a retail playground of vintage thrift stores, boutiques and independent handy-crafts. And you know how I can’t deny a good handy-craft...

After breakfast with Hannah this morning where we talked more politics, I spent a few enjoyable hours lazing around the house watching cable and playing with the cats. Then, for what felt like the thirtieth time, I squeezed my belongings and fresh purchases into a bag that I swear has the magical powers of Mary Poppins – I continue to procure and it continues to somehow accommodate.

And I boarded the Amtrak train and was left wondering what I’d been missing out all of these weeks, schlepping it out on the dirty bus when such heaven existed on the railway tracks.

Ciao for now. xo