Like Memphis, only not as warm..

As yet the only place to have rivaled Memphis in the 'BPSM'* index is the city of San Francisco. As well as that though the city offered us a hotel more dubious than Pope Benedict's views on atheism and more fog than you can shake a stick at.

Having taken big hits to the body soul and wallet we all to a man felt the time was right to do something a bit more fresh-airy, with this in mind we trundled off to the Yosemite National Park. We saw a salt lake with more flies on it than made for a nice photo and some really big trees that were disappointingly not redwoods. Still no bears on the horizon. We stopped in a gateway town called Big Pine se saw nothing big nor very many pines. The one restaurant open sold me a pizza that lasted through 5 meals and 3 days.

After Yosemite we stayed a night in Stockton, a town reminiscent of the nicer parts of absolutely nowhere. We range from 60 to 99 percent sure there were gunshots as we drove into town and a trip to the local Denny's left Reid, Mecz and Faloyin more than a little shell-shocked. Owen hid in the room and watched cable televison.

Finally we reach San Francisco and check in to the ricketiest hotel yet complete with a very out of date lift with real iron gates and a door that opens while the whole thing is moving between floors. We check out a couple of parks while we're in SF and the first, the Presido, is the sight of the now infamous Deparkle.

Nobody is saying parallel parking is easy, and not a soul would dare claim that doing it in a hulking great chevrolet makes things any easier, so when TCJ Reid scraped the paint off a parked car outside the Palace of the Fine Arts it was only a surprise that it didnt happen sooner. What followed was a lengthy discussion with a man known only to us as Mr Escobar (no relation) about the relative prices of car bumper repairs on either side of the atlantic that ended - eventually - in a $125 bribe and a "lets say no more about this" handshake.

Click Here For Deparkle Photos

We also went to see the Oakland Raiders playing their special brand of American Football. Described elsewhere as "the compost heap of the NFL" - they're as close as you can get in the colonies to Millwall FC but here hitting the other team is heartily encouraged.

On the last day I visited the San Francisco city library where there were more homeless people washing in the toilets than there were people reading books and a man using a public computer in a bank of 12 freely perusing the content of a number of adult websites. Whilst I was pursuing these high intellectual pleasures L T and D were taking part in a piece of capitalism so finely tuned it makes the Large Hadron Collider look like a toilet tube with lightbulb sellotaped to it, a scheme so Machiavellian it makes Kim Tate look like Zac Dingle. And what is the dastardly tax levied against the trusting nature of the common man on his holidays? Hiring a bike and cycling over the Golden Gate Bridge. All the extortion of an 1920's gangster movie but none of the scenery - because of the bloody fog!

Also in SF - great noodle soup in a thai place near union square, Chinese food in Chinatown (not as good as Manchester's), and an extended argument with a car park attendant over a receipt.
"You never gave us a receipt"
"Yeah you definitely didn't give us a receipt"
"No sir, I gave you a receipt"
Repeat
"Oh wait, does it look like this?"

*Bums Per Square Mile

The car quotes quiz!

So here is the most eagerly awaited set of questions and answers since the Soham police got hold of that rascally Ian Huntley;

Who said these things?

1. Whilst parking...
"get out of my way you dirty, rancid little man"
A. Tom Reid B. Emily Davenport C. Elizabeth Mecz

2. On the road out of Austin...
"I don't want any sympathy, I just want a pain killer"
A. Tom Reid B. Dipo Faloyin C. Emily Davenport

3. On the panoramic scenery of the United States...
"awww! Look at the horse/cow/pony/bunny"
A. Tom Reid B. Elizabeth Mecz C. Emily Davenport

4. On planning a road trip...
"it's all about options guys"
A. Tom Reid B. Emily Davenport C. Dipo Faloyin

5. On the indigenous population...
"I don't know if he was homeless, he was just pretty dirty"
A. Tom Reid B. Dipo Faloyin C. Emily Davenport

6. On other road users...
"stop scratching your bloody head you dickhead
A. Tom Reid B. Thomas Charles Owen C. Elizabeth Mecz

7. On international travel...
"guys, I think I left my passport in Vegas"
A. Tom Reid B. Dipo Faloyin C. Thomas Charles Owen



1.a

Une histoire de Vegas

To borrow a joke from the Simpsons, the chronology of our time in Vegas goes something like this;

Check in to hooters
- scenes missing -
Check in to bellagio
- scenes missing -
Leave Vegas

Somewhere in there featured magicians, topless pools and go-go dancers. Cirque du soleil and Tony the oldest blackjack dealer in the world. $65 losses in poker and $130 rolls at the roulette table. We drank huge quantities of margaritas and formidably strong gin and tonics. We saw the venetian, the rio, the mirage, treasure island and spent a lot of money in bill's gambling hall. We met up with Joe Ridgley and a girl he kidnapped from the camp he worked at and spent 15 minutes in the same room as a man in cap purporting to be Michael Phelps. We didn't ride the New York, New York roller coaster or the thing at the top of the stratosphere. We saw Thai brides and millionaires as well as a healthy collection of pimps and hookers.Nobody got married.

And in the midst of all this we seem to have lost Emily...

Vegas day one

Group Losses - $210.

Would have been $110 but reidy was suckered into playing a hundred dollar spin in the high rollers lounge of Caesars.

couple

Tom Reid loses another piece of identity

We leave Santa Fe bright and early, ready for the 8 hour drive up the country. In the words of Jack Kerouac, we cease to travel East to West and instead - Mystic North. The trip up is relatively uneventful until night falls when, like something from a Robert Browning poem, a bloody great deer jumps in the way of the car. The lumbering mass of the Chevvy comes to a halt just inches from the stupid creature before it gasses it off into the brush from whence it came.

We arrive an hour or so later after a hearty evening meal of pizza hut in a little town called Silverthorne, its like Luton but with mountains. And no airport. We go sleepily and happily to bed.

In the morning we go into town to look at the delightful little town of Steamboat Springs. We see all the same tourist tat rebranded with "Steamboat" instead of Memphis/Nashville/Santa Fe. One thing that strikes us as new though is a collection of paintings on sale in a local gallery window. They depict all the Republican presidents of the 20th century standing around laughing and playing pool, there hasn't been such a disturbing image of the true face of evil committed to canvas since William Blake painted scenes from Dante's Inferno. Except maybe this.

After some light touristing we drive up the side of a mountain to look at the truly stunning Fish Creek Falls, where some absolute fresher has broken her leg and ruins picture taking time for the rest of the visitors. After she of little brain is winched unceremoniously onto the back of a quad bike and shuttled up the hill we go back to enjoying our lunch and the beautiful views.

And now the main event. That evening we spend a night at the rodeo. Words can not express the pure unbridled joy, the mesmerising skill, or the dumbfounding oddness of what we saw. So here's a video.



And as The Great Salad Eating of August 2010 still reverberates around the shared consciousness and the crunch of lettuce leaf is still reverberating in the ears of the world, another hammer blow is struck to Tom Reid's carefully sculpted public image. And the facet of Tara's persona that falls away this time? Whatever bit it is that stops you placing hand on heart and singing the Yank national anthem just because a man in a Stetson tells you to, thats which bit.

Nu Mehico

Santa Fe in New Mexico is probably the most unique and most picturesque of the places we've visited. You could walk down the street and feel as though you're in Greece or Spain but for the Adobe buildings that make up 90% of the city's architecture - they seem to sprawl upwards and outwards as if they were added to time and again over the centuries. They also look like theyre made of fudge. There is a beautiful plaza where a temporary stage has been erected as part of the Indian Arts Festival taking place in the city at the same time as our momentous visit.

It is while sitting in the plaza and enjoying one of the bands on the stage that we experience the most colourful of Santa Fe's residents. A drunk mexican man lying at the foot of one of the trees lining the square is using a plastic crate for a head rest so that he can do two things - pour more booze into his face and maintain a vigilant watch on the goings on in the square. In between tracks he offers constructive criticism to those on the stage. Key themes included,

"GO HOME!"
"Nobody wants you here"
"Hey, You. On the stage. Go HOME!"
"Fucking Tourists, Nobody wants you here!"

Combine any of these in any order and you have a fairly good representation of his rhetoric.

Aside from this our time in Santa Fe is uneventful; we buy some very expensive tapas, visit a very old church and see some very crusty hippies.

Oooooooo-klahoma!

We travel to Oklahoma city via Fort Worth, a former cowboy town that still has a cattle drive twice a day for the tourists. Everything in the stock yard district is cute, wooden, and cowboy-y. Oklahoma city is, like Manchester, a place that has benefitted greatly from having the shit blown out of it. They have a nice downtown area and a really cool old district called Brick Town. We go there for dinner/drinks. We find a brewery where they sell their own brews for 1.75 a pint, dollars, we contemplate staying there all night but instead decide to see more of brick town. We make it 10 yards across the road and into 'The Spaghetti Warehouse'.

After copious amounts of spaghetti and lots of cheap beer 'refills' we stumble out to look at the second rate Oklahoma baseball team's first rate stadium. They also have a big statue dedicated to a bloke who never actually played for oklahoma but did do ok for the Yankees. Afterwards the girls went on a water taxi and we went to Hooters.

Hooters is weird, its a little bit uncomfortable, the girls whilst amply supplied in the chest department are not similarly endowed in the cranial. They seem to be required to chat to us for a certain amount of time per ten minutes, the conversation is as far from scintillating as Dubai is from Dukinfield. 'Our' Hooters Girl is named Carebear. She says,

"Hi my name is Carebear and I'll be your Hooters Girls this evening"

After some more of Carebear and Krysta's chat the girls arrive back from their ride and very quickly make their feelings known about not only this Hooters, but also the Hooters Hotel Casino and the undemocratic way that it was selected as accommodation for our trip. Cue first 5 way argument of the trip. Tomo sulks for most of the night after this.

When we leave Hooters we go 3 doors down to a club called Sky Bar, deciding not to partake of the pleasures available in the Coyote Ugly Bar next door after seeing the calibre of performer from the door outside. Rope-a-licious. We drink lots then go home.

Next day we drive back in to dear old texas. To Amarillo, to the Big Texan Steakhouse, a fantastically kitsch, tacky masterpiece where everyone wears a stetson and there is a designated horse hotel and Dawwgie Corral. We all eat steaks and two behemoths manage the full 72oz steak challenge as we watch on embarrassedly over our piddling 24oz-ers. We also get a chance to swim in a Texas-shaped pool and take pictures of an 8 foot tall plastic cow on the back of a trailer.

Coming soon, The Car Quotes Quick Quiz, available when we reach 20 quid of ad revenue.

Please Click The Adverts

Texas

Texas is bloody big. I will try to keep this short.

Houston Astros Baseball was great, it had everything, a double play, a home run, a fucking huge fat man for Reidy to get pissed and point out. We also went to the space center and touched a bit of the moon. Couple fight league also saw yet another flare up when Dipo (ALLEGEDLY) tried to turn left into oncoming traffic and Reidy suggested it was not a good idea.

We also met up with American Chris from Exeter, who when you're in America just becomes Chris. Chris said he'd show us some of the town before we came out but ended up getting lost with Dipo in the middle of downtown. In the end we went to some bars he'd never been to before and got a bit pissed and met the most disaffected ex-pat so far; a scouser who looked a lot like a shitfaced Hugh Laurie. The night ended with us drinking cans of light beer in the utility room at the end of our floor.

Austin is an incredible city full of cheap bars and towering, glittering sky-scrapers. The people seem a bit younger and prettier than elsewhere and we see a lot of gym-bunnies running, jumping and yogging about town. Despite being built on a curve of the Colorado river it still gets very hot, 100+ degrees at 6pm.

Day one we went to the capitol bulding and got some lunch in a food market. Here we all witnessed Reidy do something unprecedented - eat a salad as a main course. Apparently the endless diet of burgers fires and pizza led the poor chap to fancy something a bit healthier.

Saturday night out in Austin is great fun, there must be about 50 bars on 6th street running from east to west. We had tremendous fun trying to sample as many of these as possible. All the bars are free entry and all the drinks are dirt cheap. Needless to say we abuse this as true british people and end up in a heated argument with a grumpy bald welshman about the merits of his national rugby team.

Next day we go watch Arsenal Liverpoll in Fado's Irish pub at the table next to the same welshman. We accidentally walk out without paying for our full irish breakfasts or bloody mary's. We also went for a boat ride on the river and saw the Expendables.

Nawlins

Arriving in New orleans we go out for a peanut butter burger in a bar near our gay boutique hotel. We chat with the barmaid and the cook and some guy drinking at the end of the bar from texas. They talk about how dangerous they think the city is. Everyone carries a gun here and they dont mind shooting tourists, lonely planet is talking out of its arse. After having the fear of god and muggers put into us everybody goes to see some of the city. I panic and stay in the hotel and swim in our pool. We eat some dinner on Decatur street then go to 'historic' - meaning shabby - Frenchmen street to see some jazz.

The next day housekeeping bash on our door at about 9, everyone panics and throws bedding around the room before we calmly tell her to bugger off for an hour. Me and Tara decide to go to a nearby (hour drive) outlet mall to get new flip flops and whatnot. On the way we tangle with a demonic silver chrysler that chases us for ten miles when we refuse to be undertaken. Then we see a huge fucking train. Reid chucks out a couple of gems including this brief conversation;

"am I on the wrong side of the road?"
"YES!!!!"

After schopping we do more touristy shit and Reid gets a disappointingly decent haircut near Bourbon street. Then we go out in New Orleans, specifically on Bourbon Street the city's main drag, We see loads of music and pissed people and get hammered on Hand Grenades - New Orleans' most powerful drink. See a girl ride a mechanical bull topless. And go to a strip club. All in a night's work.

We leave without being mugged or shot. But it is still pretty ropey.

Addendum : We just crossed the 10 quid mark which means y'all get an excerpt from a conversation I like to call, 'Mr Reid meets the Locals'

Fundraising

As promised here are our beater marks.

Beater

When we get to £10 i'll post the audio from a conversation between Mr Tom Reid and a local, New Orleans bar-cook on the subject of gun control.

Memphis

memphis is shit, don't go there. Everywhere is shabby, delapidated or just shut down except one street where there are a handful of blues bars scattered amongst dozens of touristy Elvis-shite-shops. The only art form that thrives in Memphis is that of the panhandler. There are a handful of museums that sit nestled in oases of manicured lawn and stainless steel but they are strewn, miles apart, amongst the urban sprawl and dereliction. There is a huge shopping mall housing nothing at all except for a victoria's secret. There isn't even a fucking McDonalds here and that says more about the destitution that has descended on the city than any comparison or simile. At one end of the city is a huge blue pyramid made of glass that lies empty, too expensive to keep open and too expensive to pull down. Hopefully there will be some huge cataclysm that sucks the whole place into the earth leaving only the tip of this monstrosity as a sad reminder of what happens when you base your whole economy around one fat redneck. Even the basketball team is shit.

Don't go to fucking Memphis.

Nashville, TN

Nashville
Arriving early in Nashville we head over to our motel to be told,
"check in is at 3"'
"can we check in early?"
"check in is at 3"
"can we leave our bags somewhere?"
"check in is at 3"
"ok do you know where we can go to eat some nice food?"
"check in is at 3"
"thank you, you've been very helpful"
"check in is at 3"

Eventually we find a tiny wooden hut full of cheery servers and old ladies having their Saturday lunch. I slam a chair into the ceiling fan at one point, swearing very loudly and drawing shocked looks from the other diners. Meat and three is pretty tasty but does give everyone some kind of digestional discomfort ranging from meat sweats to stomach cramps. Eventually we check in, at 3, and put our stuff in our room before driving over to the touristy part of Nashville.

Nashville is the home of country music. As such, it's main street is littered with honky tonk bars and tourist tat vendors in equal measure. We spend an hour checking out the main drag before returning to motel, showering pre lashing and trying to determine where to have dinner. The cheap Mexican restaurant nearby with huge beer glasses wins out in the end as it always will. We get smashed on huge beers and deceptively sweet daiquiris then go out boozing in Nashville.

We find a bar called legends corner where we have one drink before heading towards tootsies, a bar recommended by the lonely planet, or the guide book, or the Internet, or some bastard chimera manifest out of the malevolent energies of all three. Tootsies is great fun, girls dance on bars to earn free drinks, or just attention while the bands at either end compete over who gets the bigger crowd. An American guy tells Tara that he has no chance with the girl he has just approached, the girl is Lizzie. We move on, Tara and the girls go back to the motel while tomo and dipo go and check out 'one more' bar. We see a band playing the Doors covers then go and get a hot dog. We see a girl freely vomiting in her own lap apparently unnoticed by the staff before we go get a cab. The cabbie tells us that recently all this area was flooded,

"so how come it got flooded?"
"well, I guess there was just a lot of water"
"... So how come there was a lot of water?"
"I guess god did it."

Atlanta, home of the braves

North Carolina brought with it cool mountain air, incredible vistas and a conversation between a very southern policeman and mr Thomas Reid. What then were we to expect from the great state of Georgia? After a relatively uneventful trip into Atlanta, home of tooth decay, we found our hostel and decided to check out the botanical gardens as according to the map they were only a few blocks up and we could walk through piedmont park most of the way to get there. How wrong we were, the gardens looked amazing, but they cost $15 to look round, and we only found this out after traipsing about the park for 25 minutes. To commiserate we bought huge buckets of iced tea, which was also pretty horrible. We returned to our hostel, showered and called a cab to take us to a restaurant called fat matt's rib shack.

Fat Matt must be some kind of business Svengali because he has turned what is essentially a small aluminium box and 12 tables into a thriving BBQ and blues joint; food is cheap and tastes fantastic, music's played live by a band who look as though theyve been playing for hundreds of years and the restaurant was just built around them as an afterthought. After dinner we race over to virginia highlands looking for more blues music having now all decided that we are passionate blues aficionados. We find a great bar where a fat man in a captains hat joins the band onstage to sing an incredibly long and rambling song about the perfidy of women. Everyone agrees that all our problems started with Eve and have continued in the same vein ever since so we go home to bed.

In the morning we visit the CNN center (note the spelling) then see the aquarium and coke world. Highlights include crying children being terrified of the coca cola polar bear and Reid getting excited over every really big fish he sees and declaring this one to be his favorite. We also taste 64 coca cola products including a kind of non-alcoholic grappa. This world of taste sensations leaves the men bloated and nauseous and the women smug.

In other news, the iPad is so popular that as soon as someone finds a port big enough they will probably try and fuck it.

And I'm starting to get the hang of baseball...

P.s beater mark picture up this evening. Next boundary is $5 of ad revenue..

DC

The couple fight league table has grown even more congested as a new pairing entered the competition on tuesday night, emily and tomo disagreed over the formation of ideas and opinions whilst enjoying a couple of drinks round the corner from the US capitol building - apparently relentless negativity can become a little annoying. the reid/faloyin tussle over the correct way to drive erupts every time we try to arrive somewhere.

We ate a Wendy's for lunch today, expecting something similar tomorrow. Reidy was served by a humongous chap who later went on break along with most of the burgers in the shop so there are a few points being scored.

Washington DC offered a lot, huge quantities of museums during the day and a fun bar-scene at night. The highlight of proceedings was a three nil thrashing of the US by the UK in a beer games competition, culminating in a by-a-man win in a 2 vs 2 boat race.



We're up in the North Carolina mountains now, listening to crickets and looking at incredible views. Tomorrow we are going to Atlanta, Georgia to a big fucking aquarium.

Beer of the Day: Leinenkugen Sunset Wheat - a deliciously fruity beverage that retains a little of the light corn-beery taste of other American light beers, but isn't shit.

Motto of the Day: Life's too short to eat round burgers

a word on the ads

Please guys, all click the adverts on this page when you read a post. any money generated from these ads will be withdrawn and placed 'on red' when we get to our last night in Las Vegas. I think a click is worth a few pennies or so so dont be shy. You dont have to buy anything once the page is loaded, you can just close it again. I'll also promise to do more video posts etc if we hit certain financial targets. To start with, I'll post a picture of Reidy and I sporting our NASCAR beater marks when we get to a quid.
xxxx

theme parks

Yesterday we visited six flags New Jersey, home of the kingda ka rollercoaster. Early start in Princeton, one sickeningly sweet breakfast later and we're on the road back to Trenton New Jersey which we've passed three times now. We arrived at six flags and fell into step between Reidy who marched us purposefully if a little briskly towards the world's fastest rollercoaster. After typical delays and confidence shaking repair works being carried out in front of our eyes we boarded. And 25 seconds later we'd travelled from 0 to 120mph in 2.8 seconds and ascended and descended 44 stories. More theme park esque stuff happened.

Reidy's driving quote of the day:
to the satnav voice after executing a highly illegal u-turn rather than following the route suggested, "recalculate that bitch"

In other news, the couple argument game saw a huge game changing moment when after taking an early points lead with a car-park spat, the seemingly unassailable lead of Emily/Dipo was challenged by an unexpected pairing of Tara and Dipo. The newly formed partnership exchanged shots over the correct way to drive around suburban D.C in the dark and showed great promise for the coming weeks.

We're going to see some of DC now
Piece x

Nascar

Today was NASCAR day. Up early to discover fairly disappointing weather, drove in the chevvy to pocono raceway and after a brief look around the car park and an examination of the cultural phenomenon that is tailgating we went and found our seats. NASCAR is LOUD. And quite repetitive. This being said, a good time was had by all, necks were burnt and beater mark foundations were established.


In other news, the scores for the I spy game are being decided primarily by roadkill spots as there hasnt yet been much chance to do much heavy drinking. Also, disappointingly few couple arguments so far.

One category not added to the initial post is number of times tried to start the car with the handbrake on which stands at 1-1-0 in emily's favor with Lizzie yet to take the wheel.

Tonight, Princeton.

Day one

Today we collected the car. We've named her Mo the Boat. She's a chevvy suburban and barring actual lorries she's the biggest thing on the road. We could have had a ford edge but opted for bigger.

Two quotes from Reid today. On a Chinese woman driving along next to us: "look at him, he looks like he's missed two steps in the evolutionary chain"
On another person driving a ford edge: "fuck you edge, I could have had you but I spurned you"

We've just got home from a bar that sells 1 dollar mixers. Salut x

The Hit List

I will be awarding 'I-Spy'-style points for seeing/doing the following.

Eating - 5 pts for all
MacDonalds

Burger King

KFC

-Additional 5 pts for a KFC Double-Down

Arby's

Jack In The Box

Taco Bell

Chipotle

Wendy's

TGI Fridays

Appleby's

Twinkie

Herschey's

Drinking - 10pts

Miller

Miller Lite

Bud

Bud Lite

Coors

Coors Lite

Keystone

Everclear (extra 5pts)

Seeing

Morbidly Fat Person 5 pts

-extra 10 for fattie astride a mobility scooter

GUNS 1pts

Cheerleader - 5 pts

Crackhead - 5 pts

"Dont Mess With Texas" - 5pts

Dipo Panicking - 0.5 pts

Couple Argument - 2 pts

Road Kill - 5pts

Doing

Bolting - 2pts

-Additional 8 pts if part of a boat race

Beer Pong - 5pts

Flip Cup - 5pts

Stopped by the Police - 10pts

Arrested - 100pts

Winning in Vegas - 200pts

Losing in Vegas - 2pts

Addtional Points

15pts per 'ideal garden' collected

-extra 10pts if said garden includes a wrecked car

25pts for every yank who believes Tara is Prince William/Hugh Grant's nephew/a Spy