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19th December 1999, Sunday
Still in Atlanta, GA, USA
Still bikin' lots - and shock horror gasp - starting to get in shape again!! We've just come back from a hoon in the hills, and are pleased to have got back to the level of (in)competence where we're constantly falling off - after all, if we're not falling, we're not trying....
I'm even back into past pleasures - the other nite Rob & I turned up for an 'urban assult'. This involves a pack of 15 or so stud riders (plus us) who go out nite riding through all the downtown parks, up & down stairs, along railway lines and generally create two-wheeled mayhem. Awesome fun, but these people are seriously fit. Hurt me fit. Feels great though!
We've been staying with Rob his fiance Jen quite a bit - they're both really busy getting ready for Xmas, planning their wedding, etc. Jen's got an amazing dog, that, well, is best described as a warthog. Nika really likes it's hairstyle - kind of crazy! Zoe & Paul & Gemma & Mia are really busy getting ready for the move back to Australia, but we've still managed to get out with them! We're really grateful to everyone for taking us in and being so kind - travelling is actually really hard work!
Last weekend we had a true culinary culture extravaganza! Breakfast was at "Waffle House" - these are a chain of diners, whose corporate mission statement is to 'have a store on every freeway exit'. Super high-cal, super folksey, super 1950's, super linoleum, super lard-laiden and super thearpeutic after a big nite. Strange that half the women in there look up if you holler "Tammy!". Felt a bit leftout that we didn't have a gi-normous pickup truck to park outside!
Next stop on the cuisine tour was a Dairy Queen - imagine a way rundown McDonalds serving hyper artifical immitation dairy products made from coal and other petroluim extracts. Example - the "cream" is literally blindingly dazzling white - it positively glows! Welding glasses required to look at it! The "rasberry" sauce would look right at home in an 80's Wham! dayglow video clip... Our maxicalorific day was rounded out with a few feet of ribs at Hoolahans - we're now begining to really understand and identify with the lifestyles of Elvis & Homer Simpson at a deep gut level.
A stunning Atlanta highlight (and there are quite a few to chose from!) was a trip to the 'World Of Coke'. Imagine everything you know about Coke, multiply it by the cummulative power of their PR machine, drape yourself in the Star Spangled Banner, and cram this into a three story shrine to the 'world's greatest brand'. Awesome! As of the time of our visit (4:07:35pm EST 17-Dec-99), the Coke company had sold 5,988,104,668,030 Cokes!! And this number is exponentially increasing by just over 12,000 per second. There was a heartwarming reel of Coke TV commericals since the begining of time - and my favourite, a press ad "Coca Cola - the ideal brain tonic". Amen. Then the fatal part - after being whipped into a frenzy of consumption and unquenchable thirst - the last part of the muesum is the company's world tasting room! It's corporately irresponsible - being let into a room with 71 different types of softdrink on tap - no holds barred! Everything from Lychee Mellow (think Mellow Yellow made with lychees) to strawberry creaming soda to bitter apricot apretif to southern style iced tea to birch Fanta (think Vaporub) to PowerAid (to keep up the drinking stamina). It hurt - we literally rolled out of there - groaning - satisfied disciples of excess consumption.
On a much more moving note - a visit to the Martin Luther King memorial / muesum was compelling and humbling - unbelievable to think this was only 30 years ago. The old films were electrifying - from the "I have a dream.." speech to the racist white goverment of the time "blacks are a threat to law & order...". Inspiring.
On Sunday went to an outlet mall with Rob & Jen - a huge mall built literally in the middle of nowhere where brandname goods are sold dirt cheap in factory stores. Lastest model Timberlands for $25 etc. Glup. Consume!!!
We're just putting the finishing touches to organising the second part of our trip - after dozens of hours on the phone / in travel agents, it looks like: New York, Washinton, Costa Rica, Cuba, Rio, Bolivia, Peru, Miami, New Orleans, Denver, drive across to LA. It's literally like a job arranging all this! Great perks, but the pay sucks!
9th December 1999, Thursday
Atlanta, GA, USA
Wow - we have been in Atlanta for over two weeks now - unreal to have a house (or two) to stay in and not have to pack the bags every few mornings and decide en-route where we are going. Just awesome to sit around and do nothing for a while!
Well it's no quite true about doing nothing. We've watched lots of cable, used dishwashers, taken out garbage, raked leaves, driven to the shops - and bought our bikes!!! I got a GT xcr2000 i-drive with a Marzocchi Z3 H2O DH fork(4" travel), 20mm hubs, Vanilla R Float rear shock (4.5"), XT derailleurs, strengthened Rhino Lite rims, risers, 515's, WTB SST seat and heaps of other candy. Nika has a GT Richocet running full LX, with clip-ins & a RockShox Jett-C fork - it's a sexy sweet little hardtail!
I've done some epic rides with Rob's crew - including one called "Bull Mountain". This is a 19 mile (30km?) ride which went up (and up and up) hill, and then turned around for an insane mind warping downhill through close packed trees and jumps on nasty twisting single track. The pro-adrenalin goatie was flapping with joy in the slip stream!! The riding isn't technical at all (nothing to Red Hill) but it's really cardio intense and fast! All the tracks are covered in a rusty blanket of leaves, which cover (tree) roots - these can be "interesting" when cornering!!! Nika and I have been out riding at a local bike park (Yellow River), which has some fast single track and is great for her to learn how to use the clip-ins and get used to goin' off road. No spills yet for either of us. We're both (slowly) getting back into shape after the Euro eating orgy.
Appart from riding three days out of four, Nika's been hanging with Zoe and her two kids a lot (going to the mall, etc) and I've been staying with Rob quite a bit. Rob's got a really cool house - filled with boy toys (nothing's changed). We've really been getting into Unreal Tournament, making low-fat smoothies, and mucking around on the web. I've revamped our web page, adding heaps of new photos (and putting in a few hiden pages which are worth a look). Also been to a few cool movies - Fight Club (great twist) and Dogma (a must see movie - particularly if you're a Catholic!). Had a great dinner round at Jen's place (Rob's fiance) - she's totaly active and cool - and we even witnessed the hallowed American tradition of decorating the Christmas tree. The Xmas carols were a bit harrowing though...
Shopping (as in a supermarket) is a seducing experience here - every product is lovingly packaged in the most appealing, eyecatching, mouthwatering way, and labeled in a way that commands me to buy it in a way that suggests my life will be meaningless unless I possess it right now. Every pack oozes delicious excess - "mega-ultra-extra-delicio-smoothum-suculentia-chocomanic-gigiantian-bestbuddy-200%RDA-morsels-indulgimax-orgasimax-fatfree-curecancer-caffienefree-crampedfull-rammedfull-EATME". And all that's for a packet of biscuits.... After working in marketing for 12 years designing new packs and products - supermarkets here are like an irrestiable candy store - the scheming and calculating people who designed all these products know exactly what my weaknesses are and what really turns me on! It takes a real conscious effort not to walk out with trollies full of stuff that I don't really need!
Must go - feel the need to go play on my bike in the local park inorder to quell a rising urge to go to the supermarket again!
29nd November 1999, Monday
Atlanta, GA, USA
After an incredibly boosy nite (why break a trend on our last nite in Europe?) we gingerly poured ourselves into the big tin budgie, and winged our way across the Atlantic. We definately got value for money from our flight - we felt every last kilometer of it....
Zoe (Nika's sister rescued us from the airport, and whisked us home in her "truck" (read: enormous black jeep - Mr T, aka the A Team would be jealous!). Great to catch up with Paul, and see their two kids Gemma and Mia - Mia's conversation was minimalist as she's only 12 weeks old, but she does have the most amazing vibrating chair which sends her to sleep ASAP. Could do with one ourselves... The next day we chilled out by checking out local bike stores for 'bike candy' - uuummmm tasty stuff here - and watching most of a twelve hour X-files special on cable.
Thanksgiving was a real blast - Zoe cooked up a turkey, Rob came around, ate way too much and couldn't fit in the brownies / peacan pie.
The next day was B DAY - Bike Day. We've both ordered new bikes, which should be delivered late this week. Nika's steed is a GT Ricochet with front shocks, and Ian's alumium demon is a GT XCR2000 i-drive with lots of post market fast bits (actually its a high tech mobile armchair for an ex-office boy). Christmas is definately coming early for the world travellers. I couldn't wait for my steed to arrive and I couldn't find one to hire, so I've borrowed a bike and have gone on two awesome rides with Rob & his crew. The riding here is really different from Oz - it's all twisty single track through forests - with thousands of trees waiting to catch the handle bars and administer an "au-natural" body piercing. Cool! The surface is hard packed earth covered with really slippery leaves - the front tires have an alarming habit of sliding out. There's no rocks or dropoffs (as we know them) but it is really beautiful fun riding. Day two's ride was a six mile uphill to a stunning lookout, followed by an awesome single track downhill which I'm still grinning about. Post ride, had my first Taco Bell 'experience' (or should that be Taco Hell?). There's something about riding and Mexican food that really clicks...
Over the next few days our web page will be getting a major upgrade - stay tuned for new photos, etc!
22nd November 1999, Monday
London
Our last day in Europe - my how 6 1/2 months have flown - it alternates between feeling like we've been gone for 6 years or 6 weeks! Just don't ask the impossible question - "so, what was your favourite place?". (We have about two dozen favourite places so far!!)
We survived another cattle flight with Ryan Air - still can't believe that an "airline" can make money selling tickets at $20 each - and trained straight into the lap of luxury at Martin (M3) and Karens place in East Puttney. One of their flatmates is an outstanding chef, and the first night we got down over a home cooked meal to doing what Londoners do best - drink. Fantastic to catch up with all the gossip, find out who's being doing what to who, and that things really don't change in the corporate world... (no surprises there!). M3 & Karen are both looking wonderful - legends in a London winter! Still going down to the local park and kicking the footie around.
The insightful view on the corporate world was further reinforced when I had breakfast (at the crack of noon) with an old friend Natalie from P&G who now works for Saachi - talking about work, the "C" word ("Client") was starting to sound very much like another "C" word (it wasn't "Compassion" either). After travelling for 6 months I can now talk about the corporate world without the pulse going above 60bpm - neat!
It's really bizzare here that it gets dark around 4pm - at around 5pm it feels really late and almost time to hit the hay (I'm sure this has nothing to so with a few lunchtime pints). Will investigate this phenomena further... maybe with a few different brands of beer / cider.
Off for a last blast of culture this afternoon, before getting up at some ungodly hour tomorrow inorder to be at Heathrow at 8am (about the same time as the sun comes up). This should be really challenging as we've got a big nite tonite with more of the old Nestle crew (Liz Foster & co). It's going to be tough, but we're sure we're up to it - well practiced....
16th November 1999, Tuesday
The Coldest Place In Eire
Still absolutely freezing - which actually does have its benefits - the longer we take to drink our beers, the colder they get. Tonite the temperature is forecast to drop to at least minus 3”. Glup.
On the plus side, we have been training hard for such an incident, and we can happily say that there is now more alcohol than blood in our bodies. We shall never freeze! Never! Ever! As a fall back we’ll throw heaps of peat on the fire to get us through the night - amazing concept; in summer dig out of a bog (marsh, not loo) what looks like dark wobbly earth, let it dry for a few months, and then burn it like wood. Very......traditional. Speaking of traditional, we’ve been trying to talk with some of the locals. Our closest neighbour (Mike) is an indeterinately old guy who “talks” with his teeth & mouth glued firmly together. I can pick up about 1 in 10 words, but when lashings of Irish humour and sweet irony are tossed in - absolutely totally indeciperable!!
We’ve been getting out on the mountain bikes during the day - terrorising the local cows (well they look up when we creak by) and giving the locals the ‘one finger wave’. This isn’t the bird, but the faintest lift of the right index finger which evidentially is a warm and cordial conversation in these parts. Great to hear the legs screaming (with exertion) again - can’t wait for the US where we’re going to buy more mountain bikes - we want to be the Imelda Marcos of bikes!
House building is coming on sweet - we’ve got half the roof iron on - running up & down the ladders dodging the passing rain showers. OMG cold though. Caroline makes a mean Irish coffee which breaks throught the cold barrier nicely. Uhmmm more......
13th November 1999, Saturday
Ballyruane, Crusheen, Clare, Republic Of Ireland
After being laughed out of France (due to the All Blacks WOEFUL peformance - hapless water buffalos floundering in the mud...), we were delighted to be deposited in Ireland courtesy of Ryan Air Cattle Coaches Inc. Still, for a $40 flight we were relieved that luxuries like oxygen were included in the ticket price (images of "Oh Sir, that will be a $100 surcharge if you want to breathe during the flight").
Ireland's totally cool. Magnificent to be in a country where the locals speak English (well, kind of...). We hotfooted it out of Dublin early (11:30am), eager to explore the "real" Ireland. First stop Kilkenny and the exstacy of a real Guinness - liquid velvet caressing the taste buds, lubricating the huge pub meals and reducing meaningful conversation to the lowest common demoninator. After checking out the local castle we slowtailed it down to Cork. Not a pretty town, but it has a wicked pub scene. In one of these dens of pleasure we watched the Wallabies crush the French - made even sweeter by a few very vocal French people going down in flames, watching their dreams of global football domination evaporating like 'steam off their piss' (** great local saying**).
We both kissed the Blarney Stone - well actually gave it the slightest of slight pecks. I'm not sure whether this was a result of not wanting to get stuck with the gift of the gab and never shut up again, or being somewhat prudish at slobbering over a rock which millions of other people have smooched. Totally cool old castle though - lots of neat narrow corridors, dark passages and even a dark damp caustrophobic dungeon. Neat!
Next stop Kilarney - cute, but pretty touristy. Had a kack of a day trip with two Aussie pilots driving around the Ring Of Kerry. The bloke talk thick and fantastic - Nika now thinks I'm actuallly quite a sensitive nature lovin' guy (by comparison). The Dingle peninsular was less touristy and more scenic than the Ring Of Kerry - fantastic weather - I even spent 20 minutes sunbaking on a stunning beach. Great to get the Speedos on for one last time - even in an Irish winter.
We're now chillin' (literally) at Andy & Caroline & Rory's place. Nika used to work with Caroline at Sterling many corporate lifetimes ago. Andy & Caroline are building their house from scratch on a couple of acres in the middle of farming land. The lounge, bedrooms and ktichen are up and during the day I'm helping Andy build the rest. It's great fun playing with circular saws, chain saws, hammers, glue, crow bars, etc. Very tangible and immediate gratification. Especially the chainsaw.
It's getting seriously cold here - we're both wearing every piece of clothing we own, and lots more that we've borrowed. At night we huddle around a roaring peat potbelly fire - just soaking in the warmth. Makes the Guiness taste even better. Went out the other night to see "Diddley". The dictionery definition of this would be Irish Traditional music. The reality of it is up to a dozen people playing what sounds like the same "song" over and over on fiddles, accordins, spoons, flutes, bits of wood, etc. Sounds like a cross between dentistry and animals mating, with a folksey beat. Even moderate exposure is dangerous to one's health. In one pub, an old guy even gave us a lesson on how to play the spoons, and then used our assorted limbs as resonance boards for a "spoon solo". Makes air guitar look intersting.
We're here until the 17th or so, then a few days in Dublin, a few days in London and off to Atlanta on the 23rd for Thanksgiving. Uhhhmmm turkey....
2nd November 1999, Tuesday
Paris, Old Stone Central
We have now been away for six months. And slowly, almost imperceptabily we are starting to develop some of the traits of longterm travellers. We've got the "200 meter stare" - as if we're perpetually gazing off into the distance at undiscovered new lands and cultures. And w e a r e s t a r t i n g t o r u n a l l o u r w o r d s t o g e t h e r i n a c l a m e v e n m a n n e r a n d o c c a s s i o n a l l y j u s t s t a r t r a m b l i n g o n a b o u t i r r e l e v a n t t o p i c s l i k e w e a r e a d d r e s s i n g a c a s t o f t h o u s a n d s w h o o n l y w e c a n s e e. Beaucoup weird shit. Both phenomena could also be explained by copious French red wine.
Paris is totally cool and exhausting - there is just so much to see - I've got massive culture overload. We've been to the Louvre three times and seen just over half of it - there are over 30 kilometers of exhibitions in the one muesum - ranging from the discotheque like Mona Lisa room (all the flashes of people making their own personal photographic copy for posterity), to the opulence of Napolean III's personal appartments, to massive paintings (15m x 5m battle scenes), to sculture and literally tonnes of treasures plundered from antiquity. I've decided I was born in the wrong century - a life as a 17th century painter would be way cool - spending all day painting / sculpting near naked women as a job. Cool.
We've also almost figured out how the traffic "flows" around the Are de Triomphe, with its 12 feeder roads. Short answer; mayhem. Long answer; who ever is already in the arena must give way to all the traffic entering the roundabout - lots of speed and blind faith help. Surprisingly we only saw one collision.
The other muesums have been a delightful cultural frenzy - the D'Orsay (x2), Rodin, Modern Art topped off with a way cool trip to the science muesum where I repeatedly flew a Mirage jet into the ground at many 000's of kmh on a Scilicon Graphics flight simulator.
Two quirks of life in Paris; firstly the metro, which most of the carrages run on rubber wheels and takes dozens of stops and transfers to move even a few kilometers. The second quirk is the Parisian love of sirens - they run all day and all night - normally ferrying huge numbers of police from point A to point B, and then back again. One night we wanted to go for a walk in the Luxemborg gardens, but they were blocked off with 200 or so riot police in full gear. Must have heard we were coming, but honestly we're not that dangerous. The only other people on the street were a few dozen Parisians strolling about their business as if nothing was happening.
Caught up again with Alena (from Prauge) and her friend - good fun just wandering around with them, especially during Halloween - everyone gets dressed up & all the shops are themed well. Spooky.
Tomorrow we fly to Dublin by Ryan Irish Air - airport's miles out of Paris, but they are way cheap! Fingers crossed.
26th October 1999, Tuesday
Paris, Dog Shit Central
Few things in life are as nice as Paris in autumn (a cold beer, gnarley MTBike trail, X Files, washing clothes, etc). We got here yesterday and successfully talked our way into a friends appartment (he's away) which has all the modcons including a 1000 year old elevator (every trip's an adventure!) and a (distant) view of the Eifel Tower etc - life's tough! However, it was a bit sad arriving, as we had to return our beloved little red car - litres of beer later we've almost stopped sobbing. See the tribute to it below. Sniff sniff.
When we left Stuttgart we had a cool race through the Black Forrest (sniff sniff sob), and then a delightful evening strolling around Strazbourg - more catherderals, cute rivers old buildings, etc. The next day we raced (sniff) up to the Champagne district to pick up Hsuen a friend of Nika's from another life (Arnotts). It was her birthday, so we toured the Moet & Chandon caves - ogling at 96,000,000 bottles of Moet (unsuccessfully working out how to liberate .000001% of them into our care) - we definately could do with a cellar like this at home. We drowned (unfortunately not literally enough) our dissappointment at not scoring any "samples" with a few glasses of the real stuff in the tasting rooms.
That night was a birthday feast of amongst other things; Moet, duck liver pate, frogs legs and smegma chesse - well it smelt like that anyway.
The final night with the car (sniff) was in Troyes, a delightful old town that specialised in (yet more ....) old wood / stone buildings leaning over at all sorts of crazy angles, and which intertwined in a maze of narrow cobbles streets. Cool. Yet another great setting for a DeathMatch arena.
Alena our friend from Prague is joining us in a day or two - the girls are going to hit Paris in a big way! Unknown what Ian will do....
The Adventures Of Our Car (sniff)
* (Temporarily) Keeping up with a black Merc on the Autobahn (200 kmh plus)
* Going on a train underneath the English Channel
* Surviving a 16km tunnel in Austria
* Squeezing into parralel parks with a total free space of 15cm in France
* Squeezing through lanes so narrow that both mirrors had to be folded in, in Seville
* Playing the same tape 58 times and only chewing it once
* Resisting all break-in attempts with only minimal damage
* Never crashing in flames
* Negotiating a five story spiral carkpack ramp in Madrid that was tighter than the car's turning circle
* Climbing a 2856m mountain in French Alps
* Driving 21,659km in 113 days
* Chilling out at 2"C (Grindelwald) and sizzling at 56"C (Tuscany)
* Confronting traffic streams head on (wrong way) in Croatia
* Slurping petrol which cost the wrong side of $2 per litre
* Scattering tourists in the pedestrian streets in Toledo
* Bullfighting with the scooters in Italy and winning!!
22nd October 1999, Friday
Stuttgart, Germany
France just wasn´t satisfying our newfound fetish for cold, so we packed up and headed for the Swiss Alps. Amazingly scenic driving - a new sight around every corner - cliched mountains, fields with cute chalets, more smiling cows, 35 tanks trying to run us off the road .... the Swiss army had obviously heard we were coming back and weren´t going to take our French number plates as an excuse for our erratic driving again.
We headed up to a mountain resort Grindelwald and checked into one of (if not "the") best youth hostels we´ve been to. It overlooked the village, set in a picturesque green valley which was dwarfed by the Eiger (one mother of a nasty mountain!). In the background was the continual tinkling of 000´s of cow bells - closing our eyes, we could imagine we were only a few hundred meters from a hardcore Hari Christna commune.
Bright & early the next morning we set out at the crack of 11am to conquer the alps with an Aussie girl (Eliza). Being too refined (& lazy) we caught a cable car up to a 2400m peak and commenced an epic hike. After a few hours, we advanced onto the North Face of the Eiger and it started snowing - visibity dropped to less than in a smokey sleezy niteclub and our cold fetish got a serious workout. Cool fun. Literally.
However, we lived - as our aching legs have been constantly reminding us (Leg message to Brain: "You $%?#$ !!! Why did you make us walk down 1800 meters??!!?? We´re going to make you pay!!"). The next day the weather was perfect (3"C !!??!!) and we climded a mere 890 steps up to some ice caves inside a glacier, prior to reluctantly pushing on.
After an invigourating blast up the autobahn, we arrived at Nika´s grandmothers place in Stuttgart, where her uncle Paul gave us a very warm welcome - complete with lots of schnapps and weiss beer. Stuttgart is a really interesting place to walk around - not many old buildings survived WWII, but it was fascinating just wandering around looking at huge modern shops and enjoying German precision and efficiency. Everything is well signposted, clean, orderly, well lit, efficient and enticing - a great tonic to soak up after the chaos of some of the places we´ve been! Paul took us to see the sites of some nearby towns - great old buildings - prior to going out with his girlfriend Luba and stuffing us with great Italian food (made us want to turn around and go back to Italy again!). Sigh...
Unfortunately we´ve got to leave, as the car´s due back in Paris on Monday - 20,000km and (almost) unscratched. Sad not not actually meet Nika´s grandmother who was in Itatly, but we made a 3min video - we look like we´ve been traveling for 6 months. The pro-adrenalin goatie is coming on nicely. Next stop Strazbourg prior to Reims.
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