"I'm just renting movie after movie these days. Don't go to the movies now that I've got my new widescreen. I just order one and watch it. BAM! Then I get another movie out. BAM! Ten bucks. BAM!"
The conversation, with associated sound effects, is coming from the table of uber-wealthy yuppies next to us. We're at Pacifica Restaurant and Bar, an establishment that is - like most places in Aspen - well beyond the means of your average joe, us included. A main course of grilled Alaskan salmon costs as much as 14 fillets of blue cod at The Flying Squid in Dunedin. I can't see two-dollar shoestring on the menu anywhere, although if there was I'd be expecting one-and-a-half chips attractively arranged on a plate and served with a molecule of tartare sauce. Just the drinks for us today, thanks.
On the road into Aspen this afternoon, I spotted a sign that said "Aspen: Home of the '97/'98 Regional Tier I Girls Hockey Champs". Rather a humble claim, I thought, considering that for a long time Aspen has been the home of countless celebrities and the epicentre of upmarket resort frivolity, a "glitzy playground of the wealthy and famous" (thanks Wikipedia). The list of big names to own properties in the area includes Kevin Costner, Jack Nicholson, Mariah Carey, Michael Douglas, Martina Navratilova, Posh Spice, Antonio Banderas, Clifford Irving, Felicity Huffman and her husband, William H. Macy.
As well as attracting the rich and famous, Aspen attracts no small measure of the rich and not-at-all-famous, such as the two men at the next table, who compensate for the unfortunate fact that they're nobodies by brazenly flaunting their wealth. The Man Who Watches Lots Of $10 Movies is decked out in cream trousers and a Ralph Lauren polo shirt, rounded off with genuine "I'm a wanker" designer sunglasses. His buddy, an older man, is wearing a loose, short-sleeved cotton shirt that allows him to show off his oversize gold Rolex watch. He's also wearing boat shoes and a visor, thereby creating the impression that he's just stepped off a yacht, even though we're over a thousand miles from the nearest large body of water.
They are easily the most repulsive men I've ever laid eyes on, and I'm old enough to remember Robert Muldoon.
"We're gonna be flying into Saint Tropez, getting on the boat there and going up the coast to Portofino", says the younger man to his friend. "Got three nights there, then we're cruising further up the coast. Then got five nights at Lake Como, after that we go to Venice for three nights. Then we wind up with three nights in Rome".
The older man has been taking this all in with a well-practised nonchalance and the occasional nod of approval, as if his friend had been running his shower routine past him. Now it's his turn.
"Oh, you'll love Portofino. It's a wonderful spot", he says, pausing briefly to order a vodka double soda lemon from a passing waitress. "Usually we fly to Nice and just get on the boat wherever. From there we take a helicopter to Saint Tropez, although last time we flew because it's only like 40 minutes by jet. St. Tropez is awesome, it just goes off over there. So does Cannes". He pronounces it "Cans", to rhyme with with "pans".
"You shouldn't pronounce it 'Carns'", he continues. "The locals, they'll just laugh at you". Good to know. Normally I'd feel a little guilty about blatantly listening in on someone else's conversation, but these guys are so loud that their conversation unequivocally belongs in the public domain. Any road, the man's vodka double soda has arrived, and he goes quiet for a while.
It's not the first time I've noticed Americans' predilection for mixing alcohol with soda. I once found myself working the bar at a hotel outcatering function for the Young Presidents Association, a group of young American CEOs who go around the world holding conferences and talking about how great they are, not unlike these two.
I'd barely had time to get my bearings when the first young president approached the bar and asked for a vodka club soda. I didn't know what on earth that was then, and I still don't know now. Why would you want to go dipping a club sandwich in vodka and soda? Surely the bread would go all soggy.
"Well, ummmm", I stammered, pretending to rummage around for a drink I knew did not exist in this country, "we don't have any. Sorry".
"What have you got then?"
"Well sir, have Speight's, and, ahhh, a local pilsener".
"And what would that be?"
"Speight's Pilsener, sir". I believe he opted for a Speight's, although it was a long time ago and I can't be sure.
It went on like that for most of the night. Young presidents harrassing me for vodka club sodas, or BLTs a la Bacardi, or toasted baguette dipped in rum, and leaving with either a bottle of Speight's or nothing at all.
Back at the table, the conversation behind me has moved on to exploring great cities of the world. "Good way to see a city is to find a good real estate agent", says the Rolex Watch. "Let him show you around, get a feel for house prices and what kind of stuff is on the market".
We finish our drinks and end up dining with the unwashed masses at Little Annie's Diner, where the burgers and sandwiches are as good as the designer fusion seafood at Pacifica for a quarter of the price. No one in here is talking about the size of their boat or upcoming Mediterranean sojourns. Instead they're talking about the perenially-underperforming local baseball team, and the price of basic foodstuffs before the war. "Grandpa, who is Little Annie?", asks a girl of about seven to an old man at the next table.
Little Annie is obviously the name of a long-dead prostitute. A blurb on the back of the menu reads, "Little Annie moved to the Aspen area in the 1880s and soon became a favourite of the miners. Everywhere she went, she put a smile on the faces of local townsfolk".
"Ahhh, Little Annie was a famous magician", says the man to his granddaughter, doing a good job of thinking on his feet for a man of his advancing years. That's the beauty of dining out in America, I realise. When you have nothing interesting to say for yourself, you simply leave it to the folks around you to fill in the blanks.
Aspen provides an interesting study in what a town looks like when you eliminate the lower classes (or at any rate, shunt them to a cheaper town 20 miles down the road where they don't ruin the scenery). Walking around town this morning, we encountered nothing but happy, contented souls reading the paper in the sun or tending to their gardens. "Would you care for a cigar?", asked a grinning local, pulling a soggy roach out of the garden he wass watering. At the supermarket, a tall, kindly stranger not only pointed out to us where the pre-made sandwiches could be found, but then sneakily lent us his discount card so that we could enjoy 39 cents off the yoghurt potles we were about to purchase. Nothing in this town is too much trouble, and no one ever has to go without.
Wandering through the mall at lunchtime, I walk past a man pushing a pram who looks exactly like William H. Macy. No surprise there, because it is William H. Macy! And there is his wife, the Desperate Housewives star, talking on the phone and looking important, which she clearly is. Suddenly the celebrity hunt is on and we all begin scanning the area for other famous faces. Say, isn't that Chris from the Sopranos over there? A little chubby perhaps. But I could swear that guy who served us at the supermarket looked like Seth Green. On reflection, it totally was him. Cool.
This afternoon we're travelling on the cable car with the hoi polloi (rich people don't take cable cars, they take helicopters) up to the Sundeck at the summit of Aspen Mountain, which serves as the focal point of the Aspen/Snowmass ski fields. There is a cable car in Queenstown, but it's nothing like this one. The Aspen cable car is four kilometres long and rises 3,000 vertical feet, making it three times larger than the Queenstown gondola. Happily, it also looks far less likely to shake itself loose from its cable and send us plummeting to our messy, albeit memorable, deaths.
The sun is beaming down on the station at the summit and a pleasant atmosphere has been created. A bluegrass band is performing to an audience of 30 or 40 people in deckchairs, while on a lawn there are a dozen or so children having fun with hoola hoops. The main building is a giant wooden structure that houses a couple of overpriced souvenir shops and a large canteen. On the exterior wall is a recently-added pictorial tribute to some extreme sports tosser, who recently became the first man to ski down all 54 of the peaks over 14,000 feet in Colorado within a calendar year, during which time about 800,000 Darfur orphans starved to death.
Considering that the sum total of their contribution to the betterment of mankind is less than zero, I have no idea what gives skiers and snowboarders the right to be such smug, self-aggrandising backslappers. Like gallivanting around a mountain on elongated flat sticks and getting pissed on Jager shots every night is ever going to help cure cancer, or solve the Middle East Crisis, or put a man on Mars. I speak from experience too, because I myself have gone skiing and snowboarding a fair few times. That's if you count sliding downhill on your arse for half an hour then spending the rest of the day in the canteen drinking $7 beers and listening to people around you with their hats on back-to-front saying things like "whoa, excellent!" and "like, gnarly, dude" as skiing, and I do.
If I ever met this 54-peaks-in-a-year fella (which I won't, because I don't remember his name and he looks like every other extreme skier I've ever seen with his designer stubble, blue eyes and "God I'm amazing" expression), I know exactly what do say to him. "Listen, dude", I'd say, "no one cares about your total wipeout at St. Moritz last summer. No one cares about the totally gnarly air you got on Shitkicker's Chute, or Tosspot's Trail, or whatever you dicks call it. How about you trade your skis in for a life, get a job, and make something of yourself. And by the way, your cap is on the wrong way round". On second thoughts, I would probably choke on my own hypocrisy before I got all that out.
We decide to take a nature walk, guided by Tom Arnold (not the famed actor who was once married to Roseanne, but a local park ranger on his university holidays). Turns out Tom is as dismissive of skiing as I am, but is remarkably knowledgeable in the field of pocket gophers and local flora. He also describes at length the horrendous conditions that the first miners on this mountain endured. They worked 14-hour shifts, digging for silver with only axes and their bare hands and shipping everything out to smelters on pack mules. At 11,000 feet, they were breathing air 30% thinner than at sea level and the average winter yielded 35 feet of snow. Still, they were handsomely remunerated for their toils: around $3 a week, which would've been enough to allow the miners a couple of hours each with Little Annie, if they were that way inclined.
This evening, our keen snouts take us past Little Annie's Diner and into the Aspen Parker Hickory House. BBQ meat is the name of the game here, or so it seems from a quick glance around at what the other diners are eating. It's got one of those disheartening menus where you know everything is going to be delicious and you can only choose but one. Fortunately, this restaurant caters for families and offers a "Feast" option: two whole racks of babyback ribs, half a chicken, shredded pork shoulder and shredded beef brisket, served with fries, onion rings, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, beans, cole slaw and garlic bread. Piece of piss, then.
"Do you think the four of us could get through all that?", my father asks the waiter, expecting an answer in the affirmative.
"Well it's a lot of food", he says gravely. "But with three guys you should be able to get through it". I can't help but notice he's looking at me in particular as he says this.
I read somewhere recently that the obesity epidemic is at least in part a product of our distant ancestry. For the majority of human history, food has been in short supply and therefore we have feasted whenever we could, in anticipation of leaner times ahead. On the basis of tonight's efforts, no one in our family will need to eat again for generations. My father attacks the ribs and Joey gets to work on the chicken, leaving me to dismantle the tender, juicy piles of BBQ beef and pork. It's hard work, but someone has gotta do it. In a roundabout way, it's for the good of mankind.
My final morning in Aspen finds me sitting outside at a cafe, eating a bagel, mulling over the New York Times Sunday crossword and making comparisons between Aspen and our own alpine resort town of Queenstown. It's inevitable really, considering the remarkably similar histories of the two towns. Both were established as 19th century mining boom-towns. Both went into a prolonged decline when the minerals ran out, only to boom once again when tourism came to town. Both are set amidst the backdrop of stunning mountains, lakes and rivers. The similarity ends about there.
It seems to me that Aspen is the product of careful planning and a shared vision on behalf of its residents. Everything about the town is immaculate and works. The architecture is consistent and fits in with the landscape. By contrast, nothing works in Queenstown. Virtually every building is an eyesore, the streets are clogged with buses and locals have been priced out of town by spiralling living costs. Queenstown is the product of an unregulated scramble to develop as much land and make as much cash as quickly as possible with no regard whatsoever for the the image or character of the town.
And while Aspen's careful planning has resulted in its status as a premier worldwide tourist destination, Queenstown has whored itself out as a sleazy, tacky hotbed of debauchery and occasional skiing. As such it has attracted the worst sorts of visitors: syphilitic Brazilians, low-budget Australians in map-of-Noosa t-shirts, American package tourists from Pschittsville, Arkansas with their t-shirts tucked into their shorts. Sadly, there appears to be neither the vision and ability to turn the situation around, nor the will to do so.
One thing the towns do have in common, however, is their curious lack of history. Even though both towns got their starts as mining centres, each has turned its back on its past and instead attempted to show itself off as a glitzy, fast-paced tourist destination. This leaves me feeling a little hollow, as it did the old man who approached the restaurant entrance last night and asked the waitress where he might find the Red Onion.
The Red Onion is, or was, an Aspen institution - something like the Green Parrot in Wellington - that this old fella no doubt remembered from his much younger days. For whatever reason, be it rising rent or the gradual drift away from old school dining, the Red Onion recently closed its doors and a bit of Aspen history was forever lost. There seems to be no room for sentimentality in this town.
"Well sir, it's down a couple of blocks on this side of the street", the waitress said. "But I believe it's now closed down".
"Oh it's closed?", the old man asked, suddenly alarmed.
"I believe so. Sorry sir".
The old man stood there for a while in silence as if remembering all the good times he'd had in there. Then, turning around to leave, he said to her, "even nostalgia isn't what it used to be".
Monday, June 30, 2008
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Great Sand Dunes National Monument, CO
It seemed like such a good idea at the time. Like doing a Masters, for instance, or eating a Lamb Madras at lunchtime. It was a beautiful morning, the sun was out, we had a couple of hours to kill, what better time to take a casual stroll up a hill?
I'm in the Great Sand Dunes National Monument - halfway up what is quite possibly the largest dune on the planet - in a state of considerable distress. The sun is beating down hard on my back and my lungs are struggling to take in enough thin alpine air. We're at 8,000 feet above sea level today, and it feels like 80,000. The sand is so soft that every forward step takes me halfway back to where I was the step before. It's a 230 metre high dune but it might as well be a 460 metre climb. And with every ridge I negotiate, there is another view of the summit of the dune getting further and further out of reach.
"Allow 2 hours return for Star Dune summit walk", read the sign in the carpark. Fine, fine, I thought, that's two hours for your run-of-the-mill sedentary beer-bellied American, and half an hour for me. Alarmingly though, there are no Americans fitting this description to be seen on this climb. The only other hikers I've seen are fit, supple and painfully enthusiastic. So this is where they keep the skinny ones! They're all roaming the sand dunes of Southern Colorado. Maybe they're actually in training in case America happens to get involved in some sort of armed conflict in a country with a predominantly desert landscape. The only fat Americans I've seen today were the cheerful family of seven in Boston Red Sox caps who I breezed past at the base of the dune. They didn't look like making it up the first hill, if I'm honest.
I can see Joey pulling further away from me up ahead. He has taken his shoes off and is making good progress. I have decided to keep mine on, mainly because of the bet I made with him before we started that wearing them would be an advantage, and I'm not going to give him the satisfaction of being right. My shoes are filled with sand and feel like lead weights now, making my chances of reaching the summit look ever slimmer. On the other hand, my chances of death are improving by the minute. I'm even beginning to picture the write-up in the local paper.
Police confirmed today that the badly decomposed body found in the Great Sand Dunes National Monument belongs to a New Zealand tourist missing since last June.
Authorities say the grisly discovery serves as a timely reminder that the dunes are not suitable for unfit, overweight, alcoholic hikers.
Around 20,000 New Zealanders visit the U.S. each year. A small island off the East coast of Australia, New Zealand is known for its formidable soccer team, the "All Blacks", who attempt to intimidate their opposition by performing a native wardance known as the hokey pokey.
The beauty of the sand dunes is that there are no paths to the summit, allowing you to pick and choose your own route. The unfortunate part is that I seem to have chosen the wrong route at almost every turn, making my journey twice as long as it needs to be. Somehow people walking twice as slowly as I am are ascending faster. I don't think I've got much left in me now, I think to myself, as I enter what appears to be the self-pity stage. It won't be long now before I find a nice peaceful hollow out of the wind, drink the last of my water, pull out my notebook and begin writing.
"Dear mother..."
"But dad, we didn't get to go to Dairy Queen yesterday, either!", comes a voice from the other side of the ridge. Unbelievable! The family of seven in the Boston Red Sox caps are still making their way up the dune and within seconds will be pulling level with me. I may be most of the way to death, but there are some indignities that I would never be able to live with. Drawing upon the last of my strength, I struggle to my feet, grit my teeth, cast a pose, grit my teeth a bit more while I make entirely sure that I've got my breath, and push on towards the summit.
As I reach the top of the next ridge, Joey comes into sight once again. This time he is no longer moving. He must be at the summit! With renewed vigour I trudge ever upward, feet sinking half a metre into the sand with every step. I dare not even look up anymore. And then suddenly, I arrive at a point where there is nothing left to climb. In every direction, the sand drops off to smaller, lower dunes. I am at the summit. I am Hillary, atop my own 230m Everest.
And then the most remarkable thing of all happens. One by one, the Red Sox family arrives alongside me at the summit and collapse in varying states of mental and physical disrepair. We exchange smiles that speak of shared adversity. "Apparently it's a bit easier going back down", I say, airing a joke that has almost certainly never been heard in this situation before.
Needless to say, the views from up here are quite startling. To the west of the dunes, endless featureless plains stretch to the horizon. To the east rise the 14,000-foot peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains (which at a wild guess translates as "Blood of Christ"). Behind me, on the route I have taken up the dune, tiny figures are milling about in the carpark and kids are playing in the nearby river. It would be a magnificently serene spot, except for the savage wind that is threatening to blow me back in the direction of Los Angeles at any moment.
Turns out the trip back down is a whole lot easier. Most of it involves sprinting down the face of slopes that I had been crawling up merely half an hour ago. At the base of the dunes, we cool our feet in the river and turn around to look at the Star Dune in all its monstrous splendour. Dozens of foolhardy climbers are making their way up in the midday sun, like ants on a giant anthill. Climbing sand dunes is so old, I decide. Been there, done that.
I'm in the Great Sand Dunes National Monument - halfway up what is quite possibly the largest dune on the planet - in a state of considerable distress. The sun is beating down hard on my back and my lungs are struggling to take in enough thin alpine air. We're at 8,000 feet above sea level today, and it feels like 80,000. The sand is so soft that every forward step takes me halfway back to where I was the step before. It's a 230 metre high dune but it might as well be a 460 metre climb. And with every ridge I negotiate, there is another view of the summit of the dune getting further and further out of reach.
"Allow 2 hours return for Star Dune summit walk", read the sign in the carpark. Fine, fine, I thought, that's two hours for your run-of-the-mill sedentary beer-bellied American, and half an hour for me. Alarmingly though, there are no Americans fitting this description to be seen on this climb. The only other hikers I've seen are fit, supple and painfully enthusiastic. So this is where they keep the skinny ones! They're all roaming the sand dunes of Southern Colorado. Maybe they're actually in training in case America happens to get involved in some sort of armed conflict in a country with a predominantly desert landscape. The only fat Americans I've seen today were the cheerful family of seven in Boston Red Sox caps who I breezed past at the base of the dune. They didn't look like making it up the first hill, if I'm honest.
I can see Joey pulling further away from me up ahead. He has taken his shoes off and is making good progress. I have decided to keep mine on, mainly because of the bet I made with him before we started that wearing them would be an advantage, and I'm not going to give him the satisfaction of being right. My shoes are filled with sand and feel like lead weights now, making my chances of reaching the summit look ever slimmer. On the other hand, my chances of death are improving by the minute. I'm even beginning to picture the write-up in the local paper.
Police confirmed today that the badly decomposed body found in the Great Sand Dunes National Monument belongs to a New Zealand tourist missing since last June.
Authorities say the grisly discovery serves as a timely reminder that the dunes are not suitable for unfit, overweight, alcoholic hikers.
Around 20,000 New Zealanders visit the U.S. each year. A small island off the East coast of Australia, New Zealand is known for its formidable soccer team, the "All Blacks", who attempt to intimidate their opposition by performing a native wardance known as the hokey pokey.
The beauty of the sand dunes is that there are no paths to the summit, allowing you to pick and choose your own route. The unfortunate part is that I seem to have chosen the wrong route at almost every turn, making my journey twice as long as it needs to be. Somehow people walking twice as slowly as I am are ascending faster. I don't think I've got much left in me now, I think to myself, as I enter what appears to be the self-pity stage. It won't be long now before I find a nice peaceful hollow out of the wind, drink the last of my water, pull out my notebook and begin writing.
"Dear mother..."
"But dad, we didn't get to go to Dairy Queen yesterday, either!", comes a voice from the other side of the ridge. Unbelievable! The family of seven in the Boston Red Sox caps are still making their way up the dune and within seconds will be pulling level with me. I may be most of the way to death, but there are some indignities that I would never be able to live with. Drawing upon the last of my strength, I struggle to my feet, grit my teeth, cast a pose, grit my teeth a bit more while I make entirely sure that I've got my breath, and push on towards the summit.
As I reach the top of the next ridge, Joey comes into sight once again. This time he is no longer moving. He must be at the summit! With renewed vigour I trudge ever upward, feet sinking half a metre into the sand with every step. I dare not even look up anymore. And then suddenly, I arrive at a point where there is nothing left to climb. In every direction, the sand drops off to smaller, lower dunes. I am at the summit. I am Hillary, atop my own 230m Everest.
And then the most remarkable thing of all happens. One by one, the Red Sox family arrives alongside me at the summit and collapse in varying states of mental and physical disrepair. We exchange smiles that speak of shared adversity. "Apparently it's a bit easier going back down", I say, airing a joke that has almost certainly never been heard in this situation before.
Needless to say, the views from up here are quite startling. To the west of the dunes, endless featureless plains stretch to the horizon. To the east rise the 14,000-foot peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains (which at a wild guess translates as "Blood of Christ"). Behind me, on the route I have taken up the dune, tiny figures are milling about in the carpark and kids are playing in the nearby river. It would be a magnificently serene spot, except for the savage wind that is threatening to blow me back in the direction of Los Angeles at any moment.
Turns out the trip back down is a whole lot easier. Most of it involves sprinting down the face of slopes that I had been crawling up merely half an hour ago. At the base of the dunes, we cool our feet in the river and turn around to look at the Star Dune in all its monstrous splendour. Dozens of foolhardy climbers are making their way up in the midday sun, like ants on a giant anthill. Climbing sand dunes is so old, I decide. Been there, done that.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Taos, NM
Our journey to Taos begins with a short detour to Los Alamos, formerly known as "the town that never was". It was here, during World War II, that the atomic bomb was developed by some of the world's greatest minds under a thick shroud of secrecy, in what was known as the Manhattan Project. Nowadays, you can learn about what happened here - and what has been happening since - for free at the nearby Bradbury Museum. I'm not one to miss an exciting opportunity to expand my mind, let alone a free one.
A brief introductory video provides an overview of the Manhattan Project, after which we are at liberty to roam the museum as we see fit. Considering that the topic of nuclear science can be rather grim at the best of times, the museum has done a wonderful job to create an exhibition that is both interesting and informative. Among the highlights of the public displays are a letter written from Einstein to President Roosevelt in 1939 urging that he consider the military implications of nuclear energy, and a collection of photographs taken in Hiroshima the day after it was bombed. Both sets of documents are profoundly moving for quite different reasons.
What impresses me the most about the museum is the total absence of gung-ho jingoism that you might expect to find at a military museum. Nowhere is the use of nuclear weapons glorified: rather, the atomic age from Rutherford to Kim Jong-Il is documented in a frank, even-handed and holistic manner. There is even a separate section of the museum that serves as a forum for public discussion on nuclear energy, including a comments book accessible to all members of the public.
Flicking through the book, I find predominantly intelligent, reasonable debate from people on all sides of the nuclear argument, with not a love heart nor a penis drawn in anger. A recent comment reads, "the work done in Los Alamos is insane. Nothing can justify the hijacking of American ideals by the defence complex. Even without the bomb's use, its effects are poisonous".
Directly below that, someone has written "Nuke Tehran".
What also strikes me is how many of the key players in developing the atomic bomb were Europeans who had fled their homelands for fear of persecution from the Nazis. Not just Einstein, but Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, Gregory Breit, and many more. There is a tremendous feeling of satisfaction knowing that by casting Jewish scientists out of his empire, Hitler contributed in a roundabout way to his own downfall. Had these brilliant men been on the Nazis' side, Hitler may well have got to the button first, and those of us who survived the nuclear fallout would have suffered the misfortune of spending their remaining days prancing about in lederhosen, eating sauerkraut and playing football in a boring, mechanical fashion.
As it turns out, the low road to Taos proves comfortably spectacular enough for our liking. After negotiating the drab outskirts of Espanola, the road takes us up a long climb, round a sharp bend before suddenly, a wide plain spreads out before us, hemmed in by distant mountain ranges. At the far end of the plain is Taos, separated from us by a large gash in the landscape, in the form of a deep canyon through which the Rio Grande flows. We are drawing ever nearer to the imposing shadow of the Rockies.
"Thank God I'm A Country Boy" comes on the radio and I am reminded, with a tinge of sadness, that I will not be attending the Waikaia Cabaret Ball this year. Generally considered to be the gala event of the Northern Southland social calendar, no Waikaia Ball is complete without at least 15 renditions of the aforementioned song, usually accompanied by frenetic line dancing and jug-sculling.
John Denver is held in exalted status in Southland; right up there, in fact, with Clarke Dermody and Robert E. Lee. There are some who believe that he was actually Southland born and bred, subsequently assuming an American persona and remaining incognito until such time as his Southern brethren issued the call to arms and he was to return to Southland to lead the insurgency against the tyranny of the northern provinces. I could believe it.
"Almost heaven, Northern Southland, Hokonuis, Makarora River..."
We arrive in Taos mid-afternoon and I am immediately enamoured with the town. Frankly, it's hard not to like a place that has a town square at its centre. Just like Santa Fe's town square, the Taos Plaza seems to set the pace and mood for the rest of the town. No one is in a hurry, and everyone is smiling. Our hotel occupies almost an entire side of the plaza and its adobe design gives it an old time western feel, as if you might expect John Wayne to stroll out of the hotel at any moment.
Thursday night is live music night in the plaza and around dinnertime, the square begins to fill up with locals and tourists. We sit from a second floor balcony at the bar, sipping beers and watching a country-rock band entertain the high-spirited-yet-predominantly-sober crowd. There is almost no drunkenness at all: in fact, a family atmosphere prevails. Vendors are selling barbecued ribs and candyfloss and soft drinks to children, old folks are walking their dogs around the square, even the mayor shows up on stage to honour the work of local Indian musician Robert Mirabal, who is greeted with a rapturous ovation. At once the beauty of the town square is apparent: it is the benevolent heart of the town from which good vibes radiate outward, imbuing Taos with a healthy mid-evening glow. On second thought, maybe I have been brainwashed by the nuclear folk at Los Alamos.
The following morning, we head north to the nearby Pueblo village. According to just about everyone, this is the oldest continuously inhabited site in North America. Many of the local native population still live and work in the village, without electricity, plumbing or foot access to a Wal-Mart. This ought to be a mind-blowing experience, but it isn't.
For the $10 entry fee and a $5 camera fee, I'm hoping to see a glimpse of human existence as it was 4,000 years ago. At the very least, I'd like to see some tribesmen round up and scalp a bunch of English tourists. But as it happens, there are very few Indians around at all. The few that can be seen are either manning lemonade stalls or selling souvenirs inside their houses. They are friendly and engaging, but also carry an air of resentment at the hundreds of years of European intervention, as well they might. I find myself quietly ashamed that I have paid money and come here to observe these people, when in actual fact it is their land and I am the strange-looking outsider, in my chuck taylors and beer t-shirt, who should be feeling awkward and conspicious. I buy myself a can of lemonade to assuage my guilt.
Back in the town square, I sit back with a beer and wonder why on earth Donald Rumsfeld would choose to live in a place like this. For the most part, its residents are the sort of liberal-minded free spirits that Rumsfeld would utterly detest, and the feeling would be mutual. Perhaps he just has a ranch somewhere out of town and gets his flunkies to come into town and run errands for him. Perhaps he and Cheney are just pissing the way the last of their miserable existences on his balcony, sipping gin and tonics and talking about how Bush was right to invade Iraq because God told him to.
As I move onto my third beer, I once again find myself admiring the masterstroke of urban planning that is the town square, and considering the benefits it could have for cities and towns closer to home. Imagine if SkyCity in Auckland were to be ripped up and replaced by a village green, where people from all walks of life could listen to music and eat barbecued ribs instead. Imagine if the unsightly carpark that used to be Cathedral Square in Christchuch was torn up and replaced by a park. In fact, imagine if everything within a 40km radius of Cathedral Square was bulldozed and converted to a green space. What a tremendous improvement that would be for the fair city of Christchurch.
I go to bed congratulating myself for almost not mentioning food for an entire entry, and thinking pleasant thoughts of simpler times when village greens were abundant and the social problems we now face as a result of their general absence were non-existent. At least now if the decline of Western Civilisation is eventually traced back to a lack of village greens, I'll be able to sneer down from my high horse and say, "I told you so".
A brief introductory video provides an overview of the Manhattan Project, after which we are at liberty to roam the museum as we see fit. Considering that the topic of nuclear science can be rather grim at the best of times, the museum has done a wonderful job to create an exhibition that is both interesting and informative. Among the highlights of the public displays are a letter written from Einstein to President Roosevelt in 1939 urging that he consider the military implications of nuclear energy, and a collection of photographs taken in Hiroshima the day after it was bombed. Both sets of documents are profoundly moving for quite different reasons.
What impresses me the most about the museum is the total absence of gung-ho jingoism that you might expect to find at a military museum. Nowhere is the use of nuclear weapons glorified: rather, the atomic age from Rutherford to Kim Jong-Il is documented in a frank, even-handed and holistic manner. There is even a separate section of the museum that serves as a forum for public discussion on nuclear energy, including a comments book accessible to all members of the public.
Flicking through the book, I find predominantly intelligent, reasonable debate from people on all sides of the nuclear argument, with not a love heart nor a penis drawn in anger. A recent comment reads, "the work done in Los Alamos is insane. Nothing can justify the hijacking of American ideals by the defence complex. Even without the bomb's use, its effects are poisonous".
Directly below that, someone has written "Nuke Tehran".
What also strikes me is how many of the key players in developing the atomic bomb were Europeans who had fled their homelands for fear of persecution from the Nazis. Not just Einstein, but Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, Gregory Breit, and many more. There is a tremendous feeling of satisfaction knowing that by casting Jewish scientists out of his empire, Hitler contributed in a roundabout way to his own downfall. Had these brilliant men been on the Nazis' side, Hitler may well have got to the button first, and those of us who survived the nuclear fallout would have suffered the misfortune of spending their remaining days prancing about in lederhosen, eating sauerkraut and playing football in a boring, mechanical fashion.
As it turns out, the low road to Taos proves comfortably spectacular enough for our liking. After negotiating the drab outskirts of Espanola, the road takes us up a long climb, round a sharp bend before suddenly, a wide plain spreads out before us, hemmed in by distant mountain ranges. At the far end of the plain is Taos, separated from us by a large gash in the landscape, in the form of a deep canyon through which the Rio Grande flows. We are drawing ever nearer to the imposing shadow of the Rockies.
"Thank God I'm A Country Boy" comes on the radio and I am reminded, with a tinge of sadness, that I will not be attending the Waikaia Cabaret Ball this year. Generally considered to be the gala event of the Northern Southland social calendar, no Waikaia Ball is complete without at least 15 renditions of the aforementioned song, usually accompanied by frenetic line dancing and jug-sculling.
John Denver is held in exalted status in Southland; right up there, in fact, with Clarke Dermody and Robert E. Lee. There are some who believe that he was actually Southland born and bred, subsequently assuming an American persona and remaining incognito until such time as his Southern brethren issued the call to arms and he was to return to Southland to lead the insurgency against the tyranny of the northern provinces. I could believe it.
"Almost heaven, Northern Southland, Hokonuis, Makarora River..."
We arrive in Taos mid-afternoon and I am immediately enamoured with the town. Frankly, it's hard not to like a place that has a town square at its centre. Just like Santa Fe's town square, the Taos Plaza seems to set the pace and mood for the rest of the town. No one is in a hurry, and everyone is smiling. Our hotel occupies almost an entire side of the plaza and its adobe design gives it an old time western feel, as if you might expect John Wayne to stroll out of the hotel at any moment.
Thursday night is live music night in the plaza and around dinnertime, the square begins to fill up with locals and tourists. We sit from a second floor balcony at the bar, sipping beers and watching a country-rock band entertain the high-spirited-yet-predominantly-sober crowd. There is almost no drunkenness at all: in fact, a family atmosphere prevails. Vendors are selling barbecued ribs and candyfloss and soft drinks to children, old folks are walking their dogs around the square, even the mayor shows up on stage to honour the work of local Indian musician Robert Mirabal, who is greeted with a rapturous ovation. At once the beauty of the town square is apparent: it is the benevolent heart of the town from which good vibes radiate outward, imbuing Taos with a healthy mid-evening glow. On second thought, maybe I have been brainwashed by the nuclear folk at Los Alamos.
The following morning, we head north to the nearby Pueblo village. According to just about everyone, this is the oldest continuously inhabited site in North America. Many of the local native population still live and work in the village, without electricity, plumbing or foot access to a Wal-Mart. This ought to be a mind-blowing experience, but it isn't.
For the $10 entry fee and a $5 camera fee, I'm hoping to see a glimpse of human existence as it was 4,000 years ago. At the very least, I'd like to see some tribesmen round up and scalp a bunch of English tourists. But as it happens, there are very few Indians around at all. The few that can be seen are either manning lemonade stalls or selling souvenirs inside their houses. They are friendly and engaging, but also carry an air of resentment at the hundreds of years of European intervention, as well they might. I find myself quietly ashamed that I have paid money and come here to observe these people, when in actual fact it is their land and I am the strange-looking outsider, in my chuck taylors and beer t-shirt, who should be feeling awkward and conspicious. I buy myself a can of lemonade to assuage my guilt.
Back in the town square, I sit back with a beer and wonder why on earth Donald Rumsfeld would choose to live in a place like this. For the most part, its residents are the sort of liberal-minded free spirits that Rumsfeld would utterly detest, and the feeling would be mutual. Perhaps he just has a ranch somewhere out of town and gets his flunkies to come into town and run errands for him. Perhaps he and Cheney are just pissing the way the last of their miserable existences on his balcony, sipping gin and tonics and talking about how Bush was right to invade Iraq because God told him to.
As I move onto my third beer, I once again find myself admiring the masterstroke of urban planning that is the town square, and considering the benefits it could have for cities and towns closer to home. Imagine if SkyCity in Auckland were to be ripped up and replaced by a village green, where people from all walks of life could listen to music and eat barbecued ribs instead. Imagine if the unsightly carpark that used to be Cathedral Square in Christchuch was torn up and replaced by a park. In fact, imagine if everything within a 40km radius of Cathedral Square was bulldozed and converted to a green space. What a tremendous improvement that would be for the fair city of Christchurch.
I go to bed congratulating myself for almost not mentioning food for an entire entry, and thinking pleasant thoughts of simpler times when village greens were abundant and the social problems we now face as a result of their general absence were non-existent. At least now if the decline of Western Civilisation is eventually traced back to a lack of village greens, I'll be able to sneer down from my high horse and say, "I told you so".
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Santa Fe, NM: Part II
You may not know much about the Pueblo Indians of Northern New Mexico, but that's okay because neither do I. Today, that's going to change. Hervey and Leslie are taking us to remote Frijoles Canyon, where can be found the remnants of an ancient Indian village dating back thousands of years. No one knows why the Pueblo Indians chose to leave here - they may have been flushed out by a prolonged drought, slaughtered by murderous Apaches or just moved down the valley closer to the casino - but what they left behind promises to be fascinating.
Back in the days when it was fashionable to be called Adolf, Swiss-born anthropologist Adolf Bandelier wandered the untamed West in an attempt to "trace the social organisation, customs, and movements" of Native Americans. He travelled relentlessly up and down the continent in search of answers, or a killer burrito, depending on who you ask. In 1880, he stumbled upon the Pueblo village in Frijoles Canyon and declared it "the grandest thing I ever saw". He was to later retract this statement upon visiting the Grand Canyon. Nowadays, thanks to good old Adolf, the Bandelier National Monument is a scenic day trip and a 2,000-year-old history lesson rolled into one.
As we pull out of the driveway, I notice a small tree across the street has been bent over and flattened, as if ploughed into by a runaway car. Strange, I hadn't noticed it before.
"Probably just a bear", Hervey says. Just a bear?
Hervey goes on to say that he's only seen one bear in the wild during the nine years he's lived here. Surely that means he's due to see another one any day now? This is bad news all round. I remember reading somewhere that bears can smell fear from three miles away. You do the math. I'm bear bait.
Perhaps sensing my unease, Hervey continues. "Don't worry, you're far more likely to see a mountain lion than a bear". Oh goody. Mountain lions are a piece of cake, you know. I fight them off in my sleep all the time. My nightmares that is.
"And what about snakes?", I ask tentatively. This time, he doesn't even answer. This is either a really really bad sign, or he can't hear me over the aircon. I really can't deal with snakes either. My last encounter with a snake came while hiking in northern Burma. I was looking out so intently for the bastards that I failed to notice that I was about to step on one. Suddenly a voice beside me yelled out "Max. Stop!" I stopped just in time to look down and see it crawl past me into the bushes. Another almost-new pair of pants ruined.
Half an hour of driving deep into the wilderness and we're there. "Welcome to Bandelier National Monument", says the park brochure I've just picked up, "You are in Wildlife Territory!", accompanied by pictures of a bear, a snake, a squirrel and a mountain lion. Hmmmm. Below this it says, "Do not feed or tease the squirrels. They bite!". It doesn't say anything about the bears, snakes and mountain lions biting though. Might this mean they've all had their teeth and other sharp bits removed? It seems unlikely, although it may provide some recourse if I find myself engaged in hand to hand combat with a mountain lion. "Excuse me, good sir, but nowhere here does it say you may bite me".
Further down the page, it says "Report any negative wildlife interactions to a ranger". Now, there's a phrase. What exactly constitutes a negative interaction with a bear, I wonder? Passing one on a trail without saying hello to each other? Getting cut off by a bear in an SUV at the carpark entrance? Seems to me that the only kind of negative interaction you could possibly have with a bear would result in you being left in a permanent state of inability to report it to anyone. Unless you were with friends of family, who could dutifully report your negative bear-related death to a ranger on the way home.
A short walk from the parking lot takes us to the ancient Indian village, where a young park ranger is giving an educational talk to a large group of fat Americans with their shirts tucked into their shorts, who for the most part are talking amongst themselves about the new low-carb menu at Taco Bell and the number of miles to the gallon they get with their Chevy Impala. The talk concludes and the Americans clear off, slowly and in the general direction of the refreshments stall, leaving us to enjoy the serenity of the site.
Park Ranger Nathan is a strapping young man of about 21, and loves mountain lions. "Oh yeah, we had one kill a deer here just last week", he says enthusiastically. Great. "But don't worry folks, they're pretty shy and won't attack groups of adults. They prefer an easy kill; something they can 'pop in the microwave and it's done', you know?", he says, indicating for the first time that America's obsession with fast food extends to its native fauna.
For no apparent reason, my father tells him we're from New Zealand. He enjoys doing this. "Oh, Noo ZEEE-land!", says Nathan, in a tone that indicates he's heard of it before. Immediately my mind begins taking bets on what he's going to say next. It's either "All Blacks!" at $1.85, "Lord of the Rings!" at $3, or "Flight of the Conchords!" at $4.25. He's young so maybe the latter might be the most attractive bet.
"All Blacks!", he says. "Y'all like rugby?"
Of course we do, we're from Noo ZEEE-land!
"I love those guys. So intimidating!" High praise coming from a man whose work involves trying not to get killed by rather imposing wild animals on a daily basis.
All that is left of the village are the brick foundations and remnants of walls where it used to stand. More intriguing are the small rooms that have been carved out of the canyon wall. I find myself imagining the scene a millennium ago: farmers tending to their maize crops, women creating winter blankets with yucca fibre, children collecting water from the stream, young men fashioning axes for hunting deer, old men complaining about having to pay $13.99 a night for high speed cable.
Further up the path is the Alcove House, a large hollowed-out cave that served as a gathering place for the villagers. It's only accessible via four ladders that ascend 140 feet up the canyon wall, so the old folks carry on walking up the trail while Joey and I decide to head up. The ladders don't look daunting from the base, but then, they never do. I can't think of many worse ways to spend a morning than falling 140 feet, except perhaps falling 140 feet into the arms of a bear.
"Go on up, you'll be fine", says Hervey.
"And take your time up there", Leslie says. "It's a beautiful spot".
"Just remember you don't have any medical insurance" are the best words of encouragement my father can muster.
I reach the cave without incident, which is a relief because this note is getting rather long, and look out over the forest and down the canyon. It is incredible to think that on this very spot for hundreds of years, Indian tribesmen ate, drank, partied, talked shit and did all those things we take for granted in our own daily lives. I'm told that on weekends, young descendents of the original Pueblo Indians come up here to drink moonshine and make out under the stars, and it comforts me to know that this ancestral link still endures into the 21st century.
Back on the trail, we stride purposefully in the direction of the old folks. My mind is so lost in amazement at the timelessness of the area that I've almost forgotten about the wildlife dangers when I hear an unfamiliar rustling sound just to off the path to my right. It's not a pitter-patter of footsteps, rather the continual sound of leaves and detritus being disturbed. I know what animal is making it. It's a sound I've heard on TV shows, movies and documentaries a thousand times before.
It's slithering through the undergrowth and over a log less than a metre from where I stand. Immediately my mind races back to Hervey's advice about what to do when confronted by a rattlesnake. "Don't turn and run, just jump to the side. Rattlesnakes can only strike in a forward direction". This seems like the kind of perfectly good advice that would, in application, invariably be ignored in favour of the "turn and run" approach. Actually, I do neither: I stand still and slowly reach into my pocket for my camera. If I'm going to die out here, the least I can do is get a photo of what killed me so that my family can hand over to the friendly ranger a more thorough and clear report of my negative interaction with the wildlife.
It's not a rattlesnake, of course. It's a relatively harmless garter snake. It's almost as afraid of me as I'm afraid of it. It sits on the log for a while, regarding me with mild disinterest, before it's satisfied that I've got enough photos of it, and it disappears into the bush. A short way further up the trail, I encounter the old folks, who in turn have encountered three deer. Although surely shaken by the recent mountain lion kill, they are happy to come almost within reaching distance of us, chewing happily on tree leaves while paying us very little attention at all. As interactions with wildlife go, this one is fairly positive.
Back at the car, still buzzing from our numerous wildlife encounters, we enjoy a healthy and refreshing picnic lunch. The sun is out but is pleasantly shaded by pine trees and the valley walls and babbling brook provide a pleasant backdrop for an afternoon feast. So familiar is the landscape that I could almost be forgiven for thinking I was back in New Zealand. Except there's a squirrel running around pestering me for food, and a bear rustling about in the trees about 20 feet away. Wait, no, it's not a bear. It's just an American with his shirt tucked into his shorts who has wandered off the trail to take a slash.
If you're wondering what kids do at night time in Santa Fe, the answer is a little disappointing. They do what kids the world over do: drive around and around the block in shitty cars, playing shitty music and hurling abuse at strangers. I make eye contact with one such individual as I enter the La Fonda Hotel just after dark. He thinks for a second about calling me a faggot, decides not to, and zooms off into the night.
Hervey takes us to the hotel bar, where the Bert Dalton Trio have already opened their jazz routine. Bert himself is on the keyboard this evening, in cahoots with a drummer and a third man on the stand-up bass. Hervey comes here every Tuesday night, he explains, and a glance around the room suggests much of the crowd are regulars too. Nellie the waitress brings some beers to the table and Hervey introduces us all. "Hello", she says, "can I see some ID please?"
Nellie has been waitressing in here long enough to remember the days when cowboys would cruise in off the dusty streets at lunchtime to enjoy a couple of shots of rye before heading back out to resume shooting people, or doing whatever it was that cowboys actually did when no one was filming them. Nellie is well into her 70s and definitely belongs to the old school of customer service. This is made clear as she glares menacingly at the young couple who are making out ferociously on the dance floor, in full and awkward view of at least 30 people. Eventually they sense her eyes burning through the back of their heads and go elsewhere to resume their lurid pre-mating ritual in public, much to everyone's relief.
In between sets, Bert comes over to chat with Hervey, who informs him that we have come all the way from New Zealand to see him play.
"Louisiana?! Wow, that is a long way!"
"No, New Zealand".
"Oh, Noo ZEEE-land! Well that's even further! Whereabouts are y'all from?"
Queenstown.
"Well how about that, we played a couple of shows in Queenstown once upon a time! Long time ago now. Maybe 1983". I didn't even know Queenstown existed that long ago.
"Great place, Queenstown. Beautiful place. Wanna hear a funny story? We're driving into Queenstown, along the big old windy road along the lake... what is called. Why-cat-a-poo? Yeah. So we're packed into this van with a trailer and you know what, we didn't even know, but the trailer door isn't shut properly! So we get to Queenstown and discover we're missing a tom, drive all the way back down the road lookin' for it, but you know, it's all mountains on one side of the road and lake is on the other, and no sign of this damn drum anywhere".
The glint in his eye as he tells the story suggests that he has never told it before, but has been waiting a long time for the right moment to bring it out.
"So you know what? We went and got on the radio station there in Queenstown, sent out a message asking anyone who finds the drum to return it. And you know what? Very next day, some fella returns it to us. Great people they are down there, great people". Sounds like Queenstown was pretty much as wild 25 years ago as it is now.
After the break, the trio is joined by a trumpet player, forming what I suppose you'd call a quartet. The trumpeter adds an extra dimension and the music steps up several notches as they blast out one foot-tapping number after another. They're not dissimilar to Dunedin's very own Calder Prescott Quartet, only a little younger, and playing to a very much more upmarket crowd than you might expect in the Robbie Burns on a Thursday night. They carry on playing well past 11 o'clock, by which time I've long since left - noting with interest that the same halfwit in his shitty car passed me as I left the hotel - and gone to bed. It was quite a day.
It's a curious fact that Flight of the Conchords is as popular, if not more, in America than it is in New Zealand. Without doubt it has superseded Lord of the Rings as our most well-known entertainment export to the US. A lot of Americans never knew the New Zealand connection to Lord of the Rings anyway, as evidenced when they showed up at travel offices in their droves, trying to book holidays to Middle Earth.
Otherwise, New Zealand's contribution to American society is less than minimal. Snapple does make a brand of kiwifruit-and-strawberry juice, the label for which displays a picture of a koala in a kiwifruit tree. Michael Campbell earned his three minutes of fame when he out-duelled Tiger Woods in the 2005 Open. But these occasional moments in the limelight aside, our most popular export to America, particularly in the post-Lomu era, is still the All Blacks.
In the last few years, the British rugby media (or as I like to call them, "fucksticks") has made much of the supposed "loss of aura" surrounding the All Blacks and the devaluation of the All Black brand. I've always just dismissed this as moronic bleating from a bunch of stuck-up toffs who are tired of seeing their pathetic excuse for a rugby team getting bent over and having not very nice things done to them by the mighty All Black machine. However, I suppose I could never really know one way or the other without actually going to another country and gauging the public's feeling toward the All Blacks. Nathan the park ranger yesterday seemed pretty impressed with the All Black brand as it is. So far so good, then.
Today, Hervey takes us just out of town to lunch at Harry's Roadside Diner. Our waitress introduces herself as Jennifer, a thirty-something Italian girl from New York City (she didn't actually say that last bit, I just inferred it).
"Now, can I get you guys something to drink?", she asks.
"We're from New Zealand!", my father volunteers cheerfully.
"Oh, Noo ZEEE-land! I love that place, you know, I was thinking of going to live there one time. The locals are so friendly!"
"Glad to hear you say that".
"And you know, I love those Maori soccer players who do the-"
At this point, she slams her fists against her chest then raises them forcefully into the air whilst making a loud hooting noise.
"Oh, the haka".
"Yeah the hocker! Oh my God, I love it! So scary!"
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, you sad old English gits. All Black aura is being lost eh, well certainly not in Northern New Mexico, that's for sure.
It's funny how all Americans who visit New Zealand rave about how friendly the locals are, and all New Zealanders who visit America rave about how friendly the locals are. One country has obviously got it all wrong. Still, I suppose it just goes to show that change is as good as a holiday.
I had the buffalo burger, by the way. Tasted just like chicken.
It's our last night in Santa Fe and we're invited to the stately home of Myron and Jan, more family friends from my father's university days. Their house is an architectural marvel, blending Pueblo influences with that wonderful American desire to make everything twice as large as it needs to be. The ceiling in the dining room is 23 feet high, "which is great until you have to change a lightbulb", Myron says.
We dig into a hearty barbecue of whole chickens and sausages with potato salad, coleslaw, pickles and sourdough bread with that creepy pale American butter that looks like sour cream and tastes like nothing. Leslie asks me what I've enjoyed most about Santa Fe. "The food", I manage to blurt out, washing down a large chunk of chicken breast with a refreshing Santa Fe Pale Ale. In fact, I've enjoyed just about everything about Santa Fe. The weather, the architecture, the easy pace of life, oh and did I mention the food?
After dinner we sit on one of Myron's three balconies and watch the sun go down over the Rockies and the lights flicker on in the distant town of Espanola. I remember Leslie telling us that it was one of the most drug-riddled towns in America. Nowhere else in the country is the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots as conspicuous as it is here in New Mexico.
"It's a funny old place, New Mexico", Myron says. 10.8% of the population is of native American descent, more than ten times the national average. This adds immensely to the cultural capital of the state, but also brings with it social issues not encountered elsewhere.
"We have terrible problems with drink driving", Myron continues. "And one of the highest rates of pedestrian deaths in the country, from kids driving all over the road and knocking people over. It's unbelievable. Some guys get caught drunk driving three, four times in a year, judge knows if he doesn't send him to jail he's just gonna keep driving, but if he does send him to jail, his family starves".
It sounds much like the situation we have with our indigenous people, I tell him. "I bet. And the laws are just hopeless to prevent the situation. In New Mexico, you need insurance to get a license, but you can get it by the hour. So you get your insurance, go in and get your license, then go straight out and cancel the insurance policy again".
"Yeah, the law-makers are hopeless around here", Hervey chimes in. "And our city councillors are the best that money can buy". Still, in spite of New Mexico's many threats to life and limb - bears, snakes, biting squirrels, unregistered drunk drivers - it seems like a pretty swell place to live as far as I'm concerned.
For 28 years Myron had a holiday home in Taos, which is our next destination about 70 miles up the road. I don't know much about Taos, except that Donald Rumsfeld owns a house there.
"Oh, don't worry about that", he says reassuringly. "It's still a great little town. You'll love it. Are you gonna take the high road there or the low road?"
Until this point I was unaware of the Frostian implications of driving from Santa Fe to Taos.
"You've gotta take the high road! It's a bit longer, but it takes you through all sorts of country and the scenery is incredible".
Sounds good, but Hervey is sceptical. "I don't know Myron. It's a pretty rough road. Last time I drove it I ended up in a cow paddock".
"Yeah, that'll happen", Myron says. "There's a couple of left turns that aren't well signposted and easy to miss. If you end up in a cow paddock, turn around, go back and make a right".
"Didn't a couple of kids go off a cliff on that road not too long ago?", Hervey continues.
Think we'll just take the low road.
Back in the days when it was fashionable to be called Adolf, Swiss-born anthropologist Adolf Bandelier wandered the untamed West in an attempt to "trace the social organisation, customs, and movements" of Native Americans. He travelled relentlessly up and down the continent in search of answers, or a killer burrito, depending on who you ask. In 1880, he stumbled upon the Pueblo village in Frijoles Canyon and declared it "the grandest thing I ever saw". He was to later retract this statement upon visiting the Grand Canyon. Nowadays, thanks to good old Adolf, the Bandelier National Monument is a scenic day trip and a 2,000-year-old history lesson rolled into one.
As we pull out of the driveway, I notice a small tree across the street has been bent over and flattened, as if ploughed into by a runaway car. Strange, I hadn't noticed it before.
"Probably just a bear", Hervey says. Just a bear?
Hervey goes on to say that he's only seen one bear in the wild during the nine years he's lived here. Surely that means he's due to see another one any day now? This is bad news all round. I remember reading somewhere that bears can smell fear from three miles away. You do the math. I'm bear bait.
Perhaps sensing my unease, Hervey continues. "Don't worry, you're far more likely to see a mountain lion than a bear". Oh goody. Mountain lions are a piece of cake, you know. I fight them off in my sleep all the time. My nightmares that is.
"And what about snakes?", I ask tentatively. This time, he doesn't even answer. This is either a really really bad sign, or he can't hear me over the aircon. I really can't deal with snakes either. My last encounter with a snake came while hiking in northern Burma. I was looking out so intently for the bastards that I failed to notice that I was about to step on one. Suddenly a voice beside me yelled out "Max. Stop!" I stopped just in time to look down and see it crawl past me into the bushes. Another almost-new pair of pants ruined.
Half an hour of driving deep into the wilderness and we're there. "Welcome to Bandelier National Monument", says the park brochure I've just picked up, "You are in Wildlife Territory!", accompanied by pictures of a bear, a snake, a squirrel and a mountain lion. Hmmmm. Below this it says, "Do not feed or tease the squirrels. They bite!". It doesn't say anything about the bears, snakes and mountain lions biting though. Might this mean they've all had their teeth and other sharp bits removed? It seems unlikely, although it may provide some recourse if I find myself engaged in hand to hand combat with a mountain lion. "Excuse me, good sir, but nowhere here does it say you may bite me".
Further down the page, it says "Report any negative wildlife interactions to a ranger". Now, there's a phrase. What exactly constitutes a negative interaction with a bear, I wonder? Passing one on a trail without saying hello to each other? Getting cut off by a bear in an SUV at the carpark entrance? Seems to me that the only kind of negative interaction you could possibly have with a bear would result in you being left in a permanent state of inability to report it to anyone. Unless you were with friends of family, who could dutifully report your negative bear-related death to a ranger on the way home.
A short walk from the parking lot takes us to the ancient Indian village, where a young park ranger is giving an educational talk to a large group of fat Americans with their shirts tucked into their shorts, who for the most part are talking amongst themselves about the new low-carb menu at Taco Bell and the number of miles to the gallon they get with their Chevy Impala. The talk concludes and the Americans clear off, slowly and in the general direction of the refreshments stall, leaving us to enjoy the serenity of the site.
Park Ranger Nathan is a strapping young man of about 21, and loves mountain lions. "Oh yeah, we had one kill a deer here just last week", he says enthusiastically. Great. "But don't worry folks, they're pretty shy and won't attack groups of adults. They prefer an easy kill; something they can 'pop in the microwave and it's done', you know?", he says, indicating for the first time that America's obsession with fast food extends to its native fauna.
For no apparent reason, my father tells him we're from New Zealand. He enjoys doing this. "Oh, Noo ZEEE-land!", says Nathan, in a tone that indicates he's heard of it before. Immediately my mind begins taking bets on what he's going to say next. It's either "All Blacks!" at $1.85, "Lord of the Rings!" at $3, or "Flight of the Conchords!" at $4.25. He's young so maybe the latter might be the most attractive bet.
"All Blacks!", he says. "Y'all like rugby?"
Of course we do, we're from Noo ZEEE-land!
"I love those guys. So intimidating!" High praise coming from a man whose work involves trying not to get killed by rather imposing wild animals on a daily basis.
All that is left of the village are the brick foundations and remnants of walls where it used to stand. More intriguing are the small rooms that have been carved out of the canyon wall. I find myself imagining the scene a millennium ago: farmers tending to their maize crops, women creating winter blankets with yucca fibre, children collecting water from the stream, young men fashioning axes for hunting deer, old men complaining about having to pay $13.99 a night for high speed cable.
Further up the path is the Alcove House, a large hollowed-out cave that served as a gathering place for the villagers. It's only accessible via four ladders that ascend 140 feet up the canyon wall, so the old folks carry on walking up the trail while Joey and I decide to head up. The ladders don't look daunting from the base, but then, they never do. I can't think of many worse ways to spend a morning than falling 140 feet, except perhaps falling 140 feet into the arms of a bear.
"Go on up, you'll be fine", says Hervey.
"And take your time up there", Leslie says. "It's a beautiful spot".
"Just remember you don't have any medical insurance" are the best words of encouragement my father can muster.
I reach the cave without incident, which is a relief because this note is getting rather long, and look out over the forest and down the canyon. It is incredible to think that on this very spot for hundreds of years, Indian tribesmen ate, drank, partied, talked shit and did all those things we take for granted in our own daily lives. I'm told that on weekends, young descendents of the original Pueblo Indians come up here to drink moonshine and make out under the stars, and it comforts me to know that this ancestral link still endures into the 21st century.
Back on the trail, we stride purposefully in the direction of the old folks. My mind is so lost in amazement at the timelessness of the area that I've almost forgotten about the wildlife dangers when I hear an unfamiliar rustling sound just to off the path to my right. It's not a pitter-patter of footsteps, rather the continual sound of leaves and detritus being disturbed. I know what animal is making it. It's a sound I've heard on TV shows, movies and documentaries a thousand times before.
It's slithering through the undergrowth and over a log less than a metre from where I stand. Immediately my mind races back to Hervey's advice about what to do when confronted by a rattlesnake. "Don't turn and run, just jump to the side. Rattlesnakes can only strike in a forward direction". This seems like the kind of perfectly good advice that would, in application, invariably be ignored in favour of the "turn and run" approach. Actually, I do neither: I stand still and slowly reach into my pocket for my camera. If I'm going to die out here, the least I can do is get a photo of what killed me so that my family can hand over to the friendly ranger a more thorough and clear report of my negative interaction with the wildlife.
It's not a rattlesnake, of course. It's a relatively harmless garter snake. It's almost as afraid of me as I'm afraid of it. It sits on the log for a while, regarding me with mild disinterest, before it's satisfied that I've got enough photos of it, and it disappears into the bush. A short way further up the trail, I encounter the old folks, who in turn have encountered three deer. Although surely shaken by the recent mountain lion kill, they are happy to come almost within reaching distance of us, chewing happily on tree leaves while paying us very little attention at all. As interactions with wildlife go, this one is fairly positive.
Back at the car, still buzzing from our numerous wildlife encounters, we enjoy a healthy and refreshing picnic lunch. The sun is out but is pleasantly shaded by pine trees and the valley walls and babbling brook provide a pleasant backdrop for an afternoon feast. So familiar is the landscape that I could almost be forgiven for thinking I was back in New Zealand. Except there's a squirrel running around pestering me for food, and a bear rustling about in the trees about 20 feet away. Wait, no, it's not a bear. It's just an American with his shirt tucked into his shorts who has wandered off the trail to take a slash.
If you're wondering what kids do at night time in Santa Fe, the answer is a little disappointing. They do what kids the world over do: drive around and around the block in shitty cars, playing shitty music and hurling abuse at strangers. I make eye contact with one such individual as I enter the La Fonda Hotel just after dark. He thinks for a second about calling me a faggot, decides not to, and zooms off into the night.
Hervey takes us to the hotel bar, where the Bert Dalton Trio have already opened their jazz routine. Bert himself is on the keyboard this evening, in cahoots with a drummer and a third man on the stand-up bass. Hervey comes here every Tuesday night, he explains, and a glance around the room suggests much of the crowd are regulars too. Nellie the waitress brings some beers to the table and Hervey introduces us all. "Hello", she says, "can I see some ID please?"
Nellie has been waitressing in here long enough to remember the days when cowboys would cruise in off the dusty streets at lunchtime to enjoy a couple of shots of rye before heading back out to resume shooting people, or doing whatever it was that cowboys actually did when no one was filming them. Nellie is well into her 70s and definitely belongs to the old school of customer service. This is made clear as she glares menacingly at the young couple who are making out ferociously on the dance floor, in full and awkward view of at least 30 people. Eventually they sense her eyes burning through the back of their heads and go elsewhere to resume their lurid pre-mating ritual in public, much to everyone's relief.
In between sets, Bert comes over to chat with Hervey, who informs him that we have come all the way from New Zealand to see him play.
"Louisiana?! Wow, that is a long way!"
"No, New Zealand".
"Oh, Noo ZEEE-land! Well that's even further! Whereabouts are y'all from?"
Queenstown.
"Well how about that, we played a couple of shows in Queenstown once upon a time! Long time ago now. Maybe 1983". I didn't even know Queenstown existed that long ago.
"Great place, Queenstown. Beautiful place. Wanna hear a funny story? We're driving into Queenstown, along the big old windy road along the lake... what is called. Why-cat-a-poo? Yeah. So we're packed into this van with a trailer and you know what, we didn't even know, but the trailer door isn't shut properly! So we get to Queenstown and discover we're missing a tom, drive all the way back down the road lookin' for it, but you know, it's all mountains on one side of the road and lake is on the other, and no sign of this damn drum anywhere".
The glint in his eye as he tells the story suggests that he has never told it before, but has been waiting a long time for the right moment to bring it out.
"So you know what? We went and got on the radio station there in Queenstown, sent out a message asking anyone who finds the drum to return it. And you know what? Very next day, some fella returns it to us. Great people they are down there, great people". Sounds like Queenstown was pretty much as wild 25 years ago as it is now.
After the break, the trio is joined by a trumpet player, forming what I suppose you'd call a quartet. The trumpeter adds an extra dimension and the music steps up several notches as they blast out one foot-tapping number after another. They're not dissimilar to Dunedin's very own Calder Prescott Quartet, only a little younger, and playing to a very much more upmarket crowd than you might expect in the Robbie Burns on a Thursday night. They carry on playing well past 11 o'clock, by which time I've long since left - noting with interest that the same halfwit in his shitty car passed me as I left the hotel - and gone to bed. It was quite a day.
It's a curious fact that Flight of the Conchords is as popular, if not more, in America than it is in New Zealand. Without doubt it has superseded Lord of the Rings as our most well-known entertainment export to the US. A lot of Americans never knew the New Zealand connection to Lord of the Rings anyway, as evidenced when they showed up at travel offices in their droves, trying to book holidays to Middle Earth.
Otherwise, New Zealand's contribution to American society is less than minimal. Snapple does make a brand of kiwifruit-and-strawberry juice, the label for which displays a picture of a koala in a kiwifruit tree. Michael Campbell earned his three minutes of fame when he out-duelled Tiger Woods in the 2005 Open. But these occasional moments in the limelight aside, our most popular export to America, particularly in the post-Lomu era, is still the All Blacks.
In the last few years, the British rugby media (or as I like to call them, "fucksticks") has made much of the supposed "loss of aura" surrounding the All Blacks and the devaluation of the All Black brand. I've always just dismissed this as moronic bleating from a bunch of stuck-up toffs who are tired of seeing their pathetic excuse for a rugby team getting bent over and having not very nice things done to them by the mighty All Black machine. However, I suppose I could never really know one way or the other without actually going to another country and gauging the public's feeling toward the All Blacks. Nathan the park ranger yesterday seemed pretty impressed with the All Black brand as it is. So far so good, then.
Today, Hervey takes us just out of town to lunch at Harry's Roadside Diner. Our waitress introduces herself as Jennifer, a thirty-something Italian girl from New York City (she didn't actually say that last bit, I just inferred it).
"Now, can I get you guys something to drink?", she asks.
"We're from New Zealand!", my father volunteers cheerfully.
"Oh, Noo ZEEE-land! I love that place, you know, I was thinking of going to live there one time. The locals are so friendly!"
"Glad to hear you say that".
"And you know, I love those Maori soccer players who do the-"
At this point, she slams her fists against her chest then raises them forcefully into the air whilst making a loud hooting noise.
"Oh, the haka".
"Yeah the hocker! Oh my God, I love it! So scary!"
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, you sad old English gits. All Black aura is being lost eh, well certainly not in Northern New Mexico, that's for sure.
It's funny how all Americans who visit New Zealand rave about how friendly the locals are, and all New Zealanders who visit America rave about how friendly the locals are. One country has obviously got it all wrong. Still, I suppose it just goes to show that change is as good as a holiday.
I had the buffalo burger, by the way. Tasted just like chicken.
It's our last night in Santa Fe and we're invited to the stately home of Myron and Jan, more family friends from my father's university days. Their house is an architectural marvel, blending Pueblo influences with that wonderful American desire to make everything twice as large as it needs to be. The ceiling in the dining room is 23 feet high, "which is great until you have to change a lightbulb", Myron says.
We dig into a hearty barbecue of whole chickens and sausages with potato salad, coleslaw, pickles and sourdough bread with that creepy pale American butter that looks like sour cream and tastes like nothing. Leslie asks me what I've enjoyed most about Santa Fe. "The food", I manage to blurt out, washing down a large chunk of chicken breast with a refreshing Santa Fe Pale Ale. In fact, I've enjoyed just about everything about Santa Fe. The weather, the architecture, the easy pace of life, oh and did I mention the food?
After dinner we sit on one of Myron's three balconies and watch the sun go down over the Rockies and the lights flicker on in the distant town of Espanola. I remember Leslie telling us that it was one of the most drug-riddled towns in America. Nowhere else in the country is the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots as conspicuous as it is here in New Mexico.
"It's a funny old place, New Mexico", Myron says. 10.8% of the population is of native American descent, more than ten times the national average. This adds immensely to the cultural capital of the state, but also brings with it social issues not encountered elsewhere.
"We have terrible problems with drink driving", Myron continues. "And one of the highest rates of pedestrian deaths in the country, from kids driving all over the road and knocking people over. It's unbelievable. Some guys get caught drunk driving three, four times in a year, judge knows if he doesn't send him to jail he's just gonna keep driving, but if he does send him to jail, his family starves".
It sounds much like the situation we have with our indigenous people, I tell him. "I bet. And the laws are just hopeless to prevent the situation. In New Mexico, you need insurance to get a license, but you can get it by the hour. So you get your insurance, go in and get your license, then go straight out and cancel the insurance policy again".
"Yeah, the law-makers are hopeless around here", Hervey chimes in. "And our city councillors are the best that money can buy". Still, in spite of New Mexico's many threats to life and limb - bears, snakes, biting squirrels, unregistered drunk drivers - it seems like a pretty swell place to live as far as I'm concerned.
For 28 years Myron had a holiday home in Taos, which is our next destination about 70 miles up the road. I don't know much about Taos, except that Donald Rumsfeld owns a house there.
"Oh, don't worry about that", he says reassuringly. "It's still a great little town. You'll love it. Are you gonna take the high road there or the low road?"
Until this point I was unaware of the Frostian implications of driving from Santa Fe to Taos.
"You've gotta take the high road! It's a bit longer, but it takes you through all sorts of country and the scenery is incredible".
Sounds good, but Hervey is sceptical. "I don't know Myron. It's a pretty rough road. Last time I drove it I ended up in a cow paddock".
"Yeah, that'll happen", Myron says. "There's a couple of left turns that aren't well signposted and easy to miss. If you end up in a cow paddock, turn around, go back and make a right".
"Didn't a couple of kids go off a cliff on that road not too long ago?", Hervey continues.
Think we'll just take the low road.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Santa Fe, NM: Part I
Living in New Zealand gives you rather a distorted sense of distance. Even allowing for the third-world standard of our roads, nowhere is that far from anywhere else. The longest distance to a town you'll ever see on a road sign is 200km, maybe 250 tops. So, when we hit the road bright and early and the highway sign tells us that we are 421 miles (or 673km, as we say in English) from Santa Fe - and then consult the map to discover that the distance in question represents a tiny fraction of the drive across the continent - it's hard not to feel that we are miniscule specks on an unfathomably immense landscape.
When adventurer Steve Fossett's plane disappeared over remote Nevada airspace last year, private aircraft from around the country joined in the search for the wreckage. To this date no trace has been found, but within the first week, searchers had found five other previously undiscovered crash sites. The result of five other searches that had obviously been called off due to the improbability of finding the equivalent of a needle in a haystack in the vast expanses of the American West.
Interstate 40, the superhighway that has carried us most of the way from Los Angeles, traces a 4,118km coast-to-coast path from Barstow, California to Wilmington, North Carolina. Its length equates to 18 trips from Christchurch to the West Coast. When I-40 was completed in 1990, journalist Charles Kuralt noted that "thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything". This is what we are experiencing now, as we scythe through seemingly infinite semi-arid desert punctuated only occasionally by a power plant or factory, and even less occasionally by a bleak township that hugs the freeway and nearby rail line like embarrassment clings to George W. Bush.
The modest town of Winslow, Arizona has been spared that fate by the Eagles, who drove through it in 1971 and decided, presumably on a whim, to mention it in a popular song. We get off the interstate and take a cruise through the town to make the unsurprising discovery that the town is playing the "Take It Easy" card pretty heavily. On the corner of the two busiest streets we find "Standin' on the corner Park", which in reality is just a section of pavement about five metres by ten metres. Standing on the corner is a bronze statue of Jackson Browne, the man credited with writing the song. In case you've still missed it, a sign above his head says "standin' on the corner". And in case you've still missed it, a nearby general store is blasting the song itself over its loudspeakers, as it has presumably been doing for the past 35 years. Parked at the curb is an actual flatbed Ford, painted red. There is no girl (my Lord) slowing down to take a look at Jackson, so I can't be sure whether its positioning there is intentional or not.
As towns go, Winslow really is a one-trick pony. Still, it is better than a no-trick pony, which most of the nearby towns clearly are. There is even a shop across from the park selling "souviners", which is enough to raise an intrigued eyebrow, but not quite enough to entice me into the shop to discover what a souviner is. The only other point of interest on the drive is a road sign we encounter shortly after crossing into Nevada. The sign reads "Gusty winds may exist", which I take to mean that gusty winds may also not exist. "I suppose that's just a reflection of the uncertain times we live in", I say to no one in particular, pausing for the first and possibly the last time in my life to consider the existential anxieties that gusty winds experience.
Our gracious hosts in Santa Fe are old family friends Hervey and Leslie. Their new house is beautiful inside and out, with a magnificent view north towards the Rockies and a guest fridge full of beer. I've barely had a chance to down one before Hervey is firing up the barbecue. I grab another beer and head out to join him. He's been reading a book called "In Defence of Food"
"I've been reading a book called 'In Defence of Food'. Message is: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants", he says, removing the lamb chops from the grill and replacing them with a juicy plate of steaks. "Think about it. Asian countries have been eating the same foods for hundreds of years and have never even needed dental care".
I point out that no two nutritionists have ever come to the same conclusions about what and what not to eat so who's to say what really is "healthy", and besides, it's the tomatoes that we should be really worrying about.
"Well", he replies after some thought, "you should try chicken sausages. They're a lot healthier".
We sit down around the dinner table on the balcony, overlooking the Rockies, in the balmy New Mexico evening heat, and dig into a fine array of meats, vegetables and salads. The tomatoes have been halved, sprinkled with parmesan and grilled in the oven, then - if I'm not mistaken - finished with a light dusting of salmonella. It doesn't get much better than this. Even the American beer that has been provided for us tastes bloody good. And the lamb is superb.
"They say New Zealand lamb is the best in the world, but this is as good as any I've had".
"Oh, this is New Zealand lamb", says Hervey. It figures.
The after-dinner conversation moves on to politics, much to my intrigue. My father opens proceedings by lamenting that Hillary didn't get the nomination and claiming that Obama "scares the shit out of me" with his idealist rhetoric.
"If he thinks anything is going to change overnight in Washington, he's got another think coming" he says, give or take a few unrepeatable words.
Rick, the other dinner guest, voices his concern for Obama's business policies. Hervey is right in behind Obama, he declares, and has been from day one. Up until this point, I have been fairly noncommital about either candidate, until Leslie embarks upon impassioned monologue about Obama's visit to Santa Fe late last year.
"We left the house at 4pm, his speech was scheduled to begin at 5.30. And you know what? Traffic jams, back past our place, right out of town. Everybody in the town was going to see Obama speak. And we finally got to the arena, and what did we see? Queues, six or seven deep as far as the eye could see! Hervey wanted to go home, but I said, we've got this far now, we may as well stay".
She speaks with the passion and conviction that only a born-again Obama follower could possess.
"Everyone was there. The whole town. The old, the young. People my age. Men, women. Blacks, whites, Hispanics. Tall, short, fat, skinny. Everyone. Everyone. There were thousands of people outside who didn't get in, so he had megaphones set up and everything. And when he was done inside, he went out and spoke with everyone who didn't get in". He does sound like a pretty swell guy.
"And you know what? I felt like I was a part of history. Hervey, pass me the ice cream will you?"
As Hervey passes his wife the ice cream, he takes the opportunity to resume the narrative. "I was 21 in 1960. I saw JFK speak three times. This feeling around Obama at the moment is exactly the feeling that there was around JFK".
Obama is a dreamer, no doubt. And he knows as well as anyone that, if elected, he won't be able to deliver on all the promises he has made to the American people. But his countrymen have suffered through eight years of being dragged through the mud by an inept and uncaring administration, and they want to believe that change is in the air. "Healthcare is a disaster", Leslie says. "We're not even teaching our children. Oil prices are driving people into poverty. And the rest of the world hates us". Obama, with all his hopes and dreams, is going to change all that. At least that's what the people want to believe, and that's what they will believe.
In hindsight, I probably had one beer too many.
Santa Fe is comfortably the oldest town I've ever visited; in fact, it's one of the oldest continously settled sites on the continent. For thousands of years, American Indians frequented the area, drawn here by the water from the Santa Fe River. They lived peacefully and as one with Mother Earth, establishing several villages in the Santa Fe area from 1050 onwards. Sadly, their fortunes took a significant turn for the worse in the early 16th century when the Spanish turned up and tried to convert them all into God-fearing Catholics, only to discover that it was easier just to kill them all instead. Those bastards duly got theirs in 1846, when the Good Guys marched westward under the command of Brigadier General Stephen W. Kearny and claimed the territory of New Mexico under the American flag.
The Navajo Indians were to impart an important legacy on the city, however, in the distinctive adobe architecture it has adopted. Adobe structures, built out of a mixture of sand, clay, water and straw, are ideally suited to their region due to the excellent insulation they provide and the fact that they look awesome.
Downtown Santa Fe owes much of its charm to the predominantly adobe buildings that line the streets. It is a slow-paced, relaxed city of 70,000 people or so, and for a long time has been a haven for artists, musicians, literary types, and Julia Roberts. Down its curious narrow streets can be found fascinating art gallerys, museums and, of course, a shitload of Mexican restaurants. Wherever I walk, the smell of barbecued meats pervades the air, putting me further at ease with my surroundings. If there is a more satisfying or comforting olfactory sensation known to man than that of a dead animal roasting on an open fire, I've yet to encounter it.
After lunch I take a seat on a bench in the central plaza, a large open public space in the centre of town, and watch the world go by. I am very impressed by the friendly and unrushed pace of Santa Fe: a bit like Dunedin, only thirty degrees warmer and without the bogans. An eclectic mix of folk wander past me through the plaza and onto God-knows-where: locals, cowboys, American tourists with their t-shirts tucked into their shorts, foreign tourists complaining about the heat, students, elderly couples, hawkers, and just about everyone else in the city as well. I feel a bit like Humphrey Bogart sitting on a park bench in "The Treasure of Sierra Madre", only not quite as much of an outlaw.
In the centre of the plaza is an impressive monument, surrounded by bushes and protected by an iron fence. The plaque on it reads "Monument to the heroes who have fallen in the various battles with ____ Indians in the territory of New Mexico, 1862". The word between "with" and "Indians" has been chiselled off, which can only make me think that the removed word had some sort of derogatory or inappropriate connotations. But what? "Dastardly Indians"? "Noble Indians"? "Not very nice Indians"? "Poofy Indians"? I saw lots of Native Americans in the diner where we stopped for lunch in Gallup yesterday. We were actually the only white people in there, and they certainly didn't look poofy to me. In fact they looked quite capable of snapping me like a twig, had they not been so preoccupied with trying to sell me cheap bracelets and jewellery.
Hervey and Leslie have a treat lined up for us for dinner. We are taken on a short drive north of town to Gabriel's Mexican Restaurant and promised the best Mexican food we've ever had. Things begin impressively when a waiter wheels over a trolley to the table and... makes the guacamole fresh in front of our eyes!
"That's pretty fresh", I say, displaying the classic Kiwi penchant for understatement that Americans don't get.
"Won't get it any fresher than that", Hervey confirms.
The waiter can barely speak English, which is a good sign because it means he hasn't wasted his time learning another language when he could be honing his guacamole skills. Though a young man, he is already a master, whipping up a massive bowl of the good stuff in mere moments. It is fresh, and it is superb.
The main courses are no less incredible. Each is a work of aesthetic genius, almost too good to eat if you didn't know that it was going to taste deliciously delicious anyways. I have gone for an old favourite with a twist: chile rellenos stuffed with chargrilled chicken and cheese, deep fried and smothered in an chili sauce, served with beans, rice, corn and - you guessed it - more guacamole.
Back at home, nursing the now-customary distended belly that comes free with every dinner you eat at a restaurant in America, I once again find myself wondering how best the food industry in New Zealand might be improved. It occurs to me that perhaps the US government has covertly passed a law stating that any person caught serving shitty food be executed. This would make sense, considering we haven't had a bad meal so far. What implications might such a law have back home? From what I can see, it would either drastically improve the experience of dining out in New Zealand restaurants, or result in the entire food industry being wiped out virtually overnight. Sadly, I can't help but feel it would be the latter.
When adventurer Steve Fossett's plane disappeared over remote Nevada airspace last year, private aircraft from around the country joined in the search for the wreckage. To this date no trace has been found, but within the first week, searchers had found five other previously undiscovered crash sites. The result of five other searches that had obviously been called off due to the improbability of finding the equivalent of a needle in a haystack in the vast expanses of the American West.
Interstate 40, the superhighway that has carried us most of the way from Los Angeles, traces a 4,118km coast-to-coast path from Barstow, California to Wilmington, North Carolina. Its length equates to 18 trips from Christchurch to the West Coast. When I-40 was completed in 1990, journalist Charles Kuralt noted that "thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything". This is what we are experiencing now, as we scythe through seemingly infinite semi-arid desert punctuated only occasionally by a power plant or factory, and even less occasionally by a bleak township that hugs the freeway and nearby rail line like embarrassment clings to George W. Bush.
The modest town of Winslow, Arizona has been spared that fate by the Eagles, who drove through it in 1971 and decided, presumably on a whim, to mention it in a popular song. We get off the interstate and take a cruise through the town to make the unsurprising discovery that the town is playing the "Take It Easy" card pretty heavily. On the corner of the two busiest streets we find "Standin' on the corner Park", which in reality is just a section of pavement about five metres by ten metres. Standing on the corner is a bronze statue of Jackson Browne, the man credited with writing the song. In case you've still missed it, a sign above his head says "standin' on the corner". And in case you've still missed it, a nearby general store is blasting the song itself over its loudspeakers, as it has presumably been doing for the past 35 years. Parked at the curb is an actual flatbed Ford, painted red. There is no girl (my Lord) slowing down to take a look at Jackson, so I can't be sure whether its positioning there is intentional or not.
As towns go, Winslow really is a one-trick pony. Still, it is better than a no-trick pony, which most of the nearby towns clearly are. There is even a shop across from the park selling "souviners", which is enough to raise an intrigued eyebrow, but not quite enough to entice me into the shop to discover what a souviner is. The only other point of interest on the drive is a road sign we encounter shortly after crossing into Nevada. The sign reads "Gusty winds may exist", which I take to mean that gusty winds may also not exist. "I suppose that's just a reflection of the uncertain times we live in", I say to no one in particular, pausing for the first and possibly the last time in my life to consider the existential anxieties that gusty winds experience.
Our gracious hosts in Santa Fe are old family friends Hervey and Leslie. Their new house is beautiful inside and out, with a magnificent view north towards the Rockies and a guest fridge full of beer. I've barely had a chance to down one before Hervey is firing up the barbecue. I grab another beer and head out to join him. He's been reading a book called "In Defence of Food"
"I've been reading a book called 'In Defence of Food'. Message is: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants", he says, removing the lamb chops from the grill and replacing them with a juicy plate of steaks. "Think about it. Asian countries have been eating the same foods for hundreds of years and have never even needed dental care".
I point out that no two nutritionists have ever come to the same conclusions about what and what not to eat so who's to say what really is "healthy", and besides, it's the tomatoes that we should be really worrying about.
"Well", he replies after some thought, "you should try chicken sausages. They're a lot healthier".
We sit down around the dinner table on the balcony, overlooking the Rockies, in the balmy New Mexico evening heat, and dig into a fine array of meats, vegetables and salads. The tomatoes have been halved, sprinkled with parmesan and grilled in the oven, then - if I'm not mistaken - finished with a light dusting of salmonella. It doesn't get much better than this. Even the American beer that has been provided for us tastes bloody good. And the lamb is superb.
"They say New Zealand lamb is the best in the world, but this is as good as any I've had".
"Oh, this is New Zealand lamb", says Hervey. It figures.
The after-dinner conversation moves on to politics, much to my intrigue. My father opens proceedings by lamenting that Hillary didn't get the nomination and claiming that Obama "scares the shit out of me" with his idealist rhetoric.
"If he thinks anything is going to change overnight in Washington, he's got another think coming" he says, give or take a few unrepeatable words.
Rick, the other dinner guest, voices his concern for Obama's business policies. Hervey is right in behind Obama, he declares, and has been from day one. Up until this point, I have been fairly noncommital about either candidate, until Leslie embarks upon impassioned monologue about Obama's visit to Santa Fe late last year.
"We left the house at 4pm, his speech was scheduled to begin at 5.30. And you know what? Traffic jams, back past our place, right out of town. Everybody in the town was going to see Obama speak. And we finally got to the arena, and what did we see? Queues, six or seven deep as far as the eye could see! Hervey wanted to go home, but I said, we've got this far now, we may as well stay".
She speaks with the passion and conviction that only a born-again Obama follower could possess.
"Everyone was there. The whole town. The old, the young. People my age. Men, women. Blacks, whites, Hispanics. Tall, short, fat, skinny. Everyone. Everyone. There were thousands of people outside who didn't get in, so he had megaphones set up and everything. And when he was done inside, he went out and spoke with everyone who didn't get in". He does sound like a pretty swell guy.
"And you know what? I felt like I was a part of history. Hervey, pass me the ice cream will you?"
As Hervey passes his wife the ice cream, he takes the opportunity to resume the narrative. "I was 21 in 1960. I saw JFK speak three times. This feeling around Obama at the moment is exactly the feeling that there was around JFK".
Obama is a dreamer, no doubt. And he knows as well as anyone that, if elected, he won't be able to deliver on all the promises he has made to the American people. But his countrymen have suffered through eight years of being dragged through the mud by an inept and uncaring administration, and they want to believe that change is in the air. "Healthcare is a disaster", Leslie says. "We're not even teaching our children. Oil prices are driving people into poverty. And the rest of the world hates us". Obama, with all his hopes and dreams, is going to change all that. At least that's what the people want to believe, and that's what they will believe.
In hindsight, I probably had one beer too many.
Santa Fe is comfortably the oldest town I've ever visited; in fact, it's one of the oldest continously settled sites on the continent. For thousands of years, American Indians frequented the area, drawn here by the water from the Santa Fe River. They lived peacefully and as one with Mother Earth, establishing several villages in the Santa Fe area from 1050 onwards. Sadly, their fortunes took a significant turn for the worse in the early 16th century when the Spanish turned up and tried to convert them all into God-fearing Catholics, only to discover that it was easier just to kill them all instead. Those bastards duly got theirs in 1846, when the Good Guys marched westward under the command of Brigadier General Stephen W. Kearny and claimed the territory of New Mexico under the American flag.
The Navajo Indians were to impart an important legacy on the city, however, in the distinctive adobe architecture it has adopted. Adobe structures, built out of a mixture of sand, clay, water and straw, are ideally suited to their region due to the excellent insulation they provide and the fact that they look awesome.
Downtown Santa Fe owes much of its charm to the predominantly adobe buildings that line the streets. It is a slow-paced, relaxed city of 70,000 people or so, and for a long time has been a haven for artists, musicians, literary types, and Julia Roberts. Down its curious narrow streets can be found fascinating art gallerys, museums and, of course, a shitload of Mexican restaurants. Wherever I walk, the smell of barbecued meats pervades the air, putting me further at ease with my surroundings. If there is a more satisfying or comforting olfactory sensation known to man than that of a dead animal roasting on an open fire, I've yet to encounter it.
After lunch I take a seat on a bench in the central plaza, a large open public space in the centre of town, and watch the world go by. I am very impressed by the friendly and unrushed pace of Santa Fe: a bit like Dunedin, only thirty degrees warmer and without the bogans. An eclectic mix of folk wander past me through the plaza and onto God-knows-where: locals, cowboys, American tourists with their t-shirts tucked into their shorts, foreign tourists complaining about the heat, students, elderly couples, hawkers, and just about everyone else in the city as well. I feel a bit like Humphrey Bogart sitting on a park bench in "The Treasure of Sierra Madre", only not quite as much of an outlaw.
In the centre of the plaza is an impressive monument, surrounded by bushes and protected by an iron fence. The plaque on it reads "Monument to the heroes who have fallen in the various battles with ____ Indians in the territory of New Mexico, 1862". The word between "with" and "Indians" has been chiselled off, which can only make me think that the removed word had some sort of derogatory or inappropriate connotations. But what? "Dastardly Indians"? "Noble Indians"? "Not very nice Indians"? "Poofy Indians"? I saw lots of Native Americans in the diner where we stopped for lunch in Gallup yesterday. We were actually the only white people in there, and they certainly didn't look poofy to me. In fact they looked quite capable of snapping me like a twig, had they not been so preoccupied with trying to sell me cheap bracelets and jewellery.
Hervey and Leslie have a treat lined up for us for dinner. We are taken on a short drive north of town to Gabriel's Mexican Restaurant and promised the best Mexican food we've ever had. Things begin impressively when a waiter wheels over a trolley to the table and... makes the guacamole fresh in front of our eyes!
"That's pretty fresh", I say, displaying the classic Kiwi penchant for understatement that Americans don't get.
"Won't get it any fresher than that", Hervey confirms.
The waiter can barely speak English, which is a good sign because it means he hasn't wasted his time learning another language when he could be honing his guacamole skills. Though a young man, he is already a master, whipping up a massive bowl of the good stuff in mere moments. It is fresh, and it is superb.
The main courses are no less incredible. Each is a work of aesthetic genius, almost too good to eat if you didn't know that it was going to taste deliciously delicious anyways. I have gone for an old favourite with a twist: chile rellenos stuffed with chargrilled chicken and cheese, deep fried and smothered in an chili sauce, served with beans, rice, corn and - you guessed it - more guacamole.
Back at home, nursing the now-customary distended belly that comes free with every dinner you eat at a restaurant in America, I once again find myself wondering how best the food industry in New Zealand might be improved. It occurs to me that perhaps the US government has covertly passed a law stating that any person caught serving shitty food be executed. This would make sense, considering we haven't had a bad meal so far. What implications might such a law have back home? From what I can see, it would either drastically improve the experience of dining out in New Zealand restaurants, or result in the entire food industry being wiped out virtually overnight. Sadly, I can't help but feel it would be the latter.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Grand Canyon, AZ
I suppose the one thing you can say in defence of American beer is that it isn't Steinlager Pure. Nor can said yuppie pisswater be found anywhere I've been so far. It would be fair to say that mainstream American beers haven't endeared themselves to the international beer community either. This oft-told joke in bars around the world has more than an element of truth to it:
Q: What does American beer have in common with sex in a canoe?
A: They're both fucking close to water.
Jokes aside, there's no coincidence here really. Water has zero calories, and the primary aim of commercial American brewers is to create a beer that's as close to zero calories as possible. As we know, less calories = less flavour. Take, for example, the Michelob Lite I had the misfortune of consuming last night. It tasted like mineral water: the trade-off being that I could have drunk it all night guilt-free because hey, it was only 62 calories! Of course, that assumes that I enjoy getting wasted off five litres of mineral water.
"Stay in control with Miller Lite!", scream advertising billboards everywhere I look on this trip. "Enjoy the clean, crisp taste of Coors Lite! It won't fill you up!". Americans are far more concerned about getting fat than getting drunk; at least that's the only conclusion I can draw from the fact that "Lite beer" in America means low calorie, not low alcohol. Every single label dutifully displays the calorie content of the beer, but hardly ever the alcohol content. Essentially, you can get as pissed as you like, make an arse out of yourself at a work party, vomit out a taxi door and go home with Dennis from Accounts, but as long as you don't exceed your recommended daily calorie intake, you're "staying in control".
Americans are fiercely proud of their beers too. Working in a large Queenstown hotel for two summers gave me the rare opportunity to meet and great a great number of hand-over-heart Yanks. A conversation I had one afternoon with a particular cantankerous old man from New Jersey lingers particularly strong in the memory. He had just returned from a two-night cruise on Milford Sound, if I recall rightly. As I carried his bags from the carpark to the lobby, I asked him how he enjoyed his trip there.
"There was no fuckin' Budweiser", was his immediate reply.
"Ahhh". I was taken slightly aback. That was not the usual response at all. "Well, we do have a lot of nice local beers around he-"
"No fuckin' Budweiser! Can you believe that?", he growled, in the same tone of voice that you might use to describe the toilet facilities in a third world country.
I explained to him that, being the cosmopolitan hub that it is, Queenstown would be full of bars that would accommodate his taste for watered-down shite in a bottle. This seemed to calm him down somewhat.
Fifteen minutes later he was back in the lobby. "I want you to make me a list of all the bars in town that stock Budweiser", he asserted, stuffing a grubby US$1 bill into my hand. He never came back to collect his list, presumably having succumbed in his room to the debilitating effects of Budweiser withdrawal. Probably not a bad thing either, since I never made the list anyways.
I'm currently controlling a pint of Samuel Adams in a bar in Flagstaff, Arizona. This is meant be the cream of the crop when it comes to mainstream American beers but frankly, I just can't get excited about it. It tastes a bit like Tasman Bitter, but without the metallic tang of its antipodean cousin, nor the soggy-cardboard aftertaste. I can't decide whether this is a good or a bad thing. At any rate, I'd certainly say it's nothing to write home about, except that's exactly what I'm doing right now, so I won't. It's also full-strength, which means calorie chaos. After today's adventures though, I reckon this is one beer that I've actually earned.
A trip through Arizona without visiting the Grand Canyon would be a bit like holidaying in Australia and not talking in a loud, obnoxious voice, enjoying sexual congress with rare marsupials and buying a map of Noosa t-shirt. It's a view I'd seen a thousand times in pictures and on postcards. Well, today I finally did see it with my own eyes, and would you believe it, it looked exactly as it does in every damned photo, only with a mind-boggling "wow" factor attached that tacky 20c slices of cardboard just can't quite replicate.
Perhaps it is just that the sheer magnitude of the canyon is impossible to take in. Standing on the rim and gazing out on a truly awesome (and I mean that in the biblical sense) work of nature stretching for dozens of miles in all directions, it is just too much for the human mind to comprehend. I do respect the brave pioneer who had the discretion to stand on the spot I stood on this morning and say, "my word, that is grand ". If I had been the first white man to lay eyes upon it, it would have been called the Holy Shitballs Batman Canyon, which aside from being un-kiddy-friendly, would also likely have run into legal issues somewhere along the line.
We walked a good distance along the rim either direction from the parking lot, stopping to gasp and take photos with each new impressive scene that hoved into view. At times the path ran close enough to the ledge for me to dangle my camera over the edge and take an uninterrupted shot of the valley floor, some 1,500m below me. Occasionally a fellow tourist would sneak under the barrier fence and inch delicately towards the ledge in search of the perfect photo op, egged on by friends and complete strangers alike. Not for the first time in my life, I noted that the prospect of seeing a man fall to his spectacular death is enough to bring people from all walks of life together in a kind of fixated stupor.
Given that it's well into the summer season, I was concerned that our view of the canyon would be obscured by half the population of Arizona, and then some. It turned out that even I had underestimated the American people's reluctance to walk more than 100m from their parked car or the nearest snack bar. The throngs of crowds that greeted us upon our arrival pretty much petered out into nothing within five minutes of walking in any direction. From there, we encountered only the hardiest of walkers, such as the occasional Brit or German couple, and a Japanese man who had obviously become hopelessly separated from his tour group. And so I spent most of the morning and early afternoon wandering along the canyon rim, hot and sweaty but contented, and pleased enough to report back to you all that yep, the Grand Canyon looks exactly like it does on the postcards. Only a lot, lot bigger.
I'm now sitting in Collins' Irish Bar in Flagstaff, mulling over the dregs of my Samuel Adams. It's such a lovely summer night that a walk around town seems in order. Flagstaff is a funky university town of about 70,000 people, not dissimilar to Dunedin except slightly on the warmer side. Unlike most Western towns, it has a distictly liberal feel to it. The main streets are endowed with handsome limestone buildings and interesting shops, browsed by smiling students (although since it's 5pm on a Friday, it's quite possible that their dispostions are alcohol-enhanced).
We adjourn for dinner at San Felipe's Cantina on North Leroux Street, directed here by a New York Times review that claims "the Mexican beach hut decor is amusing, and the food, including the best fish tacos this side of Veracruz, is delicious. Or try the Gordito Burrito, which weights five pounds. The tequila list, meanwhile, tops out at 100 varieties".
As much as the notion of a five pound burrito arouses me, I've been hanging out for fish tacos for a while and this seems like an opportune moment. Turns out the NY Times reviewer has not let me down. The tacos are delicious, healthy and refreshing, thanks in no small part to the homemade salsa, easily the best I've had. Naturally, the meal comes with beans and rice, all of which is washed down with a pint of Heineken for a scarcely believable $3. I unilaterally declare it the best meal I've had so far on the trip, and I've had plenty of good'uns, as well you know.
On the drive back from Flagstaff I finally find the frequency for National Public Radio, that proud bastion of intelligent and even-handed reporting in a sea of shitty R&B stations, Christian Rock and pro-Bush troglodytes masquerading as political commentators. The only blot on NPR's copybook is the distinct lack of coverage of New Zealand current affairs.
In the news this evening, congress has just approved a bill that further restricts the civil liberties of its citizens. Something about your phone company being required by law to dob you in if you criticise the Bush Administration over the phone. Oil, as always, is a headline news item, but we'll come to that another day. On the campaign trail, Senator Obama is in Florida, dissing Senator McCain for his apparent "flip-flopping" over the issue of off-shore oil-drilling. Senator McCain is "on a foray into Canada", whatever that means. At any rate, he's dissing Senator Obama for something he may or may not have said or done at some stage. Since all they do is diss each other, I don't know why, in this age of TV saturation, they don't just sit at home and diss each other from the comfort and safety of their own lounges? I guess that live in-person dissing will always be more of a vote-winner than televised dissing.
The other big national news story is that the salmonella scare involving tomatoes has now spread across 32 states, with 550 reported cases to date. Yes that's right, tomatoes. Most of the restaurants we've dined up had notices on the door regarding their inability to serve fresh tomatoes. Unfresh ones and canned ones are all good though, apparently?
One has to wonder how a tomato gets contaminated with salmonella. From sitting out in the sun too long? If so, doesn't that just make it a sundried tomato? And if that is the case, does that mean that the ingredient I've so enjoyed in sandwiches, calzones and pasta salads is in fact just tomato a la salmonella? I'm not too concerned about it all myself: I've spent nearly six years in Dunedin and am pretty much ready for anything the bacteria kingdom can throw at me. My 2nd year flatmate's specialty dish was salmonella on toast, after all.
Back in Williams, my mind inevitably drifts to the subject of where Javier Bardem is staked out tonight. I now know that he's not in the room nextdoor because that's occupied by a nice elderly couple from Montgomery, Texas. A quick reconnoitre of the block around the motel just before dark revealed no trace of him. Suddenly it hits me: oh god, what if he's been hiding in the closet the entire time I've been staying here? I wouldn't put it past him, the crazy bastard.
Eventually I am forced to discount this theory as well, when I realise that there isn't a closet in the room. I get back into bed, resigned to the fact that I will never find Javier; when the time comes, Javier will find me. Seeking a diversion from thoughts of my own imminent death, I switch on the TV and do a little channel-surfing. ESPN is showing a replay of a college baseball game played yesterday. Over on a local access channel, a beekeeper is lamenting the strange disappearance of most of her bees during the winter. Apparently this is a very grave phenomenon going on all over Arizona.
"Have they died or just moved away?", asks the interviewer earnestly.
"I really don't know", she says in sorrowful tone. "But I'm desperate to find out. I loved my bees".
I flick over to the Entertainment Channel, on the off chance that James Blunt has been murdered or something. Instead they are showing "exclusive" shots of the annual Spanish film awards. I sit bolt upright in my bed. "Oscar winner Javier Bardem has been honoured with the 2008 National Cinematography Prize in his native Spain in recognition of his contribution to the country's film industry", says the voiceover. The broadcast then cuts to footage from the awards ceremony itself in Madrid. Javier is there, hugging family members and thanking the audience and his fellow actors.
I don't believe it for a second.
Q: What does American beer have in common with sex in a canoe?
A: They're both fucking close to water.
Jokes aside, there's no coincidence here really. Water has zero calories, and the primary aim of commercial American brewers is to create a beer that's as close to zero calories as possible. As we know, less calories = less flavour. Take, for example, the Michelob Lite I had the misfortune of consuming last night. It tasted like mineral water: the trade-off being that I could have drunk it all night guilt-free because hey, it was only 62 calories! Of course, that assumes that I enjoy getting wasted off five litres of mineral water.
"Stay in control with Miller Lite!", scream advertising billboards everywhere I look on this trip. "Enjoy the clean, crisp taste of Coors Lite! It won't fill you up!". Americans are far more concerned about getting fat than getting drunk; at least that's the only conclusion I can draw from the fact that "Lite beer" in America means low calorie, not low alcohol. Every single label dutifully displays the calorie content of the beer, but hardly ever the alcohol content. Essentially, you can get as pissed as you like, make an arse out of yourself at a work party, vomit out a taxi door and go home with Dennis from Accounts, but as long as you don't exceed your recommended daily calorie intake, you're "staying in control".
Americans are fiercely proud of their beers too. Working in a large Queenstown hotel for two summers gave me the rare opportunity to meet and great a great number of hand-over-heart Yanks. A conversation I had one afternoon with a particular cantankerous old man from New Jersey lingers particularly strong in the memory. He had just returned from a two-night cruise on Milford Sound, if I recall rightly. As I carried his bags from the carpark to the lobby, I asked him how he enjoyed his trip there.
"There was no fuckin' Budweiser", was his immediate reply.
"Ahhh". I was taken slightly aback. That was not the usual response at all. "Well, we do have a lot of nice local beers around he-"
"No fuckin' Budweiser! Can you believe that?", he growled, in the same tone of voice that you might use to describe the toilet facilities in a third world country.
I explained to him that, being the cosmopolitan hub that it is, Queenstown would be full of bars that would accommodate his taste for watered-down shite in a bottle. This seemed to calm him down somewhat.
Fifteen minutes later he was back in the lobby. "I want you to make me a list of all the bars in town that stock Budweiser", he asserted, stuffing a grubby US$1 bill into my hand. He never came back to collect his list, presumably having succumbed in his room to the debilitating effects of Budweiser withdrawal. Probably not a bad thing either, since I never made the list anyways.
I'm currently controlling a pint of Samuel Adams in a bar in Flagstaff, Arizona. This is meant be the cream of the crop when it comes to mainstream American beers but frankly, I just can't get excited about it. It tastes a bit like Tasman Bitter, but without the metallic tang of its antipodean cousin, nor the soggy-cardboard aftertaste. I can't decide whether this is a good or a bad thing. At any rate, I'd certainly say it's nothing to write home about, except that's exactly what I'm doing right now, so I won't. It's also full-strength, which means calorie chaos. After today's adventures though, I reckon this is one beer that I've actually earned.
A trip through Arizona without visiting the Grand Canyon would be a bit like holidaying in Australia and not talking in a loud, obnoxious voice, enjoying sexual congress with rare marsupials and buying a map of Noosa t-shirt. It's a view I'd seen a thousand times in pictures and on postcards. Well, today I finally did see it with my own eyes, and would you believe it, it looked exactly as it does in every damned photo, only with a mind-boggling "wow" factor attached that tacky 20c slices of cardboard just can't quite replicate.
Perhaps it is just that the sheer magnitude of the canyon is impossible to take in. Standing on the rim and gazing out on a truly awesome (and I mean that in the biblical sense) work of nature stretching for dozens of miles in all directions, it is just too much for the human mind to comprehend. I do respect the brave pioneer who had the discretion to stand on the spot I stood on this morning and say, "my word, that is grand ". If I had been the first white man to lay eyes upon it, it would have been called the Holy Shitballs Batman Canyon, which aside from being un-kiddy-friendly, would also likely have run into legal issues somewhere along the line.
We walked a good distance along the rim either direction from the parking lot, stopping to gasp and take photos with each new impressive scene that hoved into view. At times the path ran close enough to the ledge for me to dangle my camera over the edge and take an uninterrupted shot of the valley floor, some 1,500m below me. Occasionally a fellow tourist would sneak under the barrier fence and inch delicately towards the ledge in search of the perfect photo op, egged on by friends and complete strangers alike. Not for the first time in my life, I noted that the prospect of seeing a man fall to his spectacular death is enough to bring people from all walks of life together in a kind of fixated stupor.
Given that it's well into the summer season, I was concerned that our view of the canyon would be obscured by half the population of Arizona, and then some. It turned out that even I had underestimated the American people's reluctance to walk more than 100m from their parked car or the nearest snack bar. The throngs of crowds that greeted us upon our arrival pretty much petered out into nothing within five minutes of walking in any direction. From there, we encountered only the hardiest of walkers, such as the occasional Brit or German couple, and a Japanese man who had obviously become hopelessly separated from his tour group. And so I spent most of the morning and early afternoon wandering along the canyon rim, hot and sweaty but contented, and pleased enough to report back to you all that yep, the Grand Canyon looks exactly like it does on the postcards. Only a lot, lot bigger.
I'm now sitting in Collins' Irish Bar in Flagstaff, mulling over the dregs of my Samuel Adams. It's such a lovely summer night that a walk around town seems in order. Flagstaff is a funky university town of about 70,000 people, not dissimilar to Dunedin except slightly on the warmer side. Unlike most Western towns, it has a distictly liberal feel to it. The main streets are endowed with handsome limestone buildings and interesting shops, browsed by smiling students (although since it's 5pm on a Friday, it's quite possible that their dispostions are alcohol-enhanced).
We adjourn for dinner at San Felipe's Cantina on North Leroux Street, directed here by a New York Times review that claims "the Mexican beach hut decor is amusing, and the food, including the best fish tacos this side of Veracruz, is delicious. Or try the Gordito Burrito, which weights five pounds. The tequila list, meanwhile, tops out at 100 varieties".
As much as the notion of a five pound burrito arouses me, I've been hanging out for fish tacos for a while and this seems like an opportune moment. Turns out the NY Times reviewer has not let me down. The tacos are delicious, healthy and refreshing, thanks in no small part to the homemade salsa, easily the best I've had. Naturally, the meal comes with beans and rice, all of which is washed down with a pint of Heineken for a scarcely believable $3. I unilaterally declare it the best meal I've had so far on the trip, and I've had plenty of good'uns, as well you know.
On the drive back from Flagstaff I finally find the frequency for National Public Radio, that proud bastion of intelligent and even-handed reporting in a sea of shitty R&B stations, Christian Rock and pro-Bush troglodytes masquerading as political commentators. The only blot on NPR's copybook is the distinct lack of coverage of New Zealand current affairs.
In the news this evening, congress has just approved a bill that further restricts the civil liberties of its citizens. Something about your phone company being required by law to dob you in if you criticise the Bush Administration over the phone. Oil, as always, is a headline news item, but we'll come to that another day. On the campaign trail, Senator Obama is in Florida, dissing Senator McCain for his apparent "flip-flopping" over the issue of off-shore oil-drilling. Senator McCain is "on a foray into Canada", whatever that means. At any rate, he's dissing Senator Obama for something he may or may not have said or done at some stage. Since all they do is diss each other, I don't know why, in this age of TV saturation, they don't just sit at home and diss each other from the comfort and safety of their own lounges? I guess that live in-person dissing will always be more of a vote-winner than televised dissing.
The other big national news story is that the salmonella scare involving tomatoes has now spread across 32 states, with 550 reported cases to date. Yes that's right, tomatoes. Most of the restaurants we've dined up had notices on the door regarding their inability to serve fresh tomatoes. Unfresh ones and canned ones are all good though, apparently?
One has to wonder how a tomato gets contaminated with salmonella. From sitting out in the sun too long? If so, doesn't that just make it a sundried tomato? And if that is the case, does that mean that the ingredient I've so enjoyed in sandwiches, calzones and pasta salads is in fact just tomato a la salmonella? I'm not too concerned about it all myself: I've spent nearly six years in Dunedin and am pretty much ready for anything the bacteria kingdom can throw at me. My 2nd year flatmate's specialty dish was salmonella on toast, after all.
Back in Williams, my mind inevitably drifts to the subject of where Javier Bardem is staked out tonight. I now know that he's not in the room nextdoor because that's occupied by a nice elderly couple from Montgomery, Texas. A quick reconnoitre of the block around the motel just before dark revealed no trace of him. Suddenly it hits me: oh god, what if he's been hiding in the closet the entire time I've been staying here? I wouldn't put it past him, the crazy bastard.
Eventually I am forced to discount this theory as well, when I realise that there isn't a closet in the room. I get back into bed, resigned to the fact that I will never find Javier; when the time comes, Javier will find me. Seeking a diversion from thoughts of my own imminent death, I switch on the TV and do a little channel-surfing. ESPN is showing a replay of a college baseball game played yesterday. Over on a local access channel, a beekeeper is lamenting the strange disappearance of most of her bees during the winter. Apparently this is a very grave phenomenon going on all over Arizona.
"Have they died or just moved away?", asks the interviewer earnestly.
"I really don't know", she says in sorrowful tone. "But I'm desperate to find out. I loved my bees".
I flick over to the Entertainment Channel, on the off chance that James Blunt has been murdered or something. Instead they are showing "exclusive" shots of the annual Spanish film awards. I sit bolt upright in my bed. "Oscar winner Javier Bardem has been honoured with the 2008 National Cinematography Prize in his native Spain in recognition of his contribution to the country's film industry", says the voiceover. The broadcast then cuts to footage from the awards ceremony itself in Madrid. Javier is there, hugging family members and thanking the audience and his fellow actors.
I don't believe it for a second.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Williams, AZ
To be fair, the mention of my next destination doesn't quite set tourists' hearts racing in the same way that Los Angeles and Las Vegas do. Nevertheless, Williams is not without its own unique charms. It's a mere hop, skip and a jump from the Grand Canyon, the motels there are rumoured to have free wireless access and my father has spoken in reverent tones about a diner there that makes dessert pies to die for. And I'll be damned if those aren't three bloody good reasons for visiting any neck of the woods.
Our 250 mile drive from Vegas takes us through some pretty interesting country, too. Much of the drive traces the path of historic Route 66. The "Main Street of America" and "The Mother Road" as it is affectionately known, Route 66 took millions of immigrants westward to greener pastures - literally and figuratively - during and after the Great Depression. It is also the road on which Mick Jagger famously claimed that one could obtain one's kicks. We'll soon find out, I guess.
Our first stop is at the Hoover Dam, half an hour South-East of Vegas. The largest dam in the world when completed in 1935, the dam still represents an impressive feat of engineering today. Indeed, at 221m in height and 379m in length, it seems most deserving of its place among the seven architectural wonders of the United States, even if I don't know what the other six are.
We park the car and walk along the crest of the dam, marvelling at the art deco plaques and furnishings. Everything, right down the toilet doors, is finished in brass and even the spillway towers would not look out of place in the Manhattan skyline. Since the Colorado River, which the dam spans, represents the border between Nevada and Arizona, it is also possible to stand halfway between each end and enjoy the odd experience of having one foot on each side of the state line, a novelty that lasts a good few seconds. I regret to say that our very own Clyde Dam is not a patch on this architectural marvel. I suppose the one thing you could say for it is that it isn't quite as overflowing with busloads of lumbering Americans at 9.30am on weekday mornings.
In the early afternoon, we turn off the interstate and drive into the town of Seligman, Arizona (population 436), curious as to how a Wild West hick town managed to procure a Jewish name. The answer isn't quite as exciting as I'd hoped: it is named after the wealthy Seligman brothers, who financed the railroad south in 1905. A quick consultation of my travel guide reveals that this may be my sort of place, or at least it was 100 years ago:
"At the turn of the century, Seligman was populated primarily by cowboys working the large ranches of the area. Along with these rough and ready men, came a piece of the Wild West, complete with shootouts on the streets. At this time the saloons and brothels outnumbered the churches three to one".
There's little evidence of any such mirth and debauchery in modern day Seligman. This is a one-street town if ever I saw one, overflowing with souvenir stores selling genuine Route 66 memorabilia. Parked outside a rusting vehicle garage are two Ford Edsels, widely considered to be the ugliest cars ever built. Fifty years of sitting in the blazing sun has not done them any favours either.
On a street corner I see a run-down old diner with a sign out front that says "Burgers - Tacos - Malts - Dead Chicken". Instinctively, I go in. There's a crowded little waiting area, every surface of which is plastered with old photographs and brochures from a bygone era when whores, cowboys and priests ruled over the town in equal measure. On the frame next to the serving window is a sign that says: "Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to hide the bodies of those people I had to kill because they pissed me off".
Turns out I've stumbled upon a precious little piece of Americana. I'm in Delgadillo's Snow Cap Drive-In, being served by self-styled comedian John Delgadillo. In 1953, his father Juan, along with Juan's father and brothers, built the premises out of scrap lumber he collected while working for the railroad. A much-loved member of the community, Juan worked in the diner every single day until his death in 2004, aged 88. Now John has picked up exactly where his father left off, right down to amusing his guests with irrepressible goofball humour. The whole situation is kinda neat, I think. I decide to introduce myself formally.
"Are you Juan's son?", I ask.
"That's right, sir. John's the name".
"Nice to meet you John, I'm Max". I shake his hand.
"Nice to meet you too".
Then, realising that I have not much more to say to him, I thank him again and bid him farewell by way of a friendly wave. If you're ever in Seligman, this is the place to go for a feed. John will still be there. He sure is heck ain't going anywhere else.
Leaving the diner, I walk down a side street, past boarded up saloons and shop fronts and old long-abandoned stone houses. The town extends one block to the south, where it meets the railroad to which it owes its very existence. The other side of the tracks and everything beyond belongs to the Mojave Desert, which stretches endlessly to the horizon. At a well across the street, an old man is fiddling with the back of his Ford pickup truck while his daughter fills up a water tank. This is about as real as it gets. I feel like a character in an Eagles song right now.
On the way back to the car, I hear a voice over my shoulder say, "Oi! Hey. Get one of me next to Dean". I turn around to see a fat English geezer in a Manchester United shirt posing next to a lifesize plastic model of James Dean, while his equally unappetising wife brandishes a camera in his general direction. Nothing like a bunch of Poms to spoil an afternoon reverie.
I'll never be able to stay in a roadside motel again without being gripped by nightmarish visions of Javier Bardem bursting through the front door with a silenced shotgun and slaughtering me where I lie. The motel I've got in Williams is nice enough, but bears a spooky resemblance to the one in the scene where Javier casually sends the three Mexican drug runners to meet their maker. He's probably in the room next to me right now, biding his time, removing a bullet from his leg while watching tomorrow's forecast on TV. He knows I know he's there, but he doesn't give a shit. He's in no hurry. He knows I'm here for three nights. He knows everything about me in fact, from my time of birth to my precise time of death. I can't stop what's coming to me now. My fate is entirely out of my hands.
I go outside and stand on the street, surveying the scene. Surely not even Javier has the nerve to shoot me on the main road in plain view of half the town? Williams is a larger town than Seligman, but not by much. We have driven into an alpine climate and a cool breeze is blowing, but the sun is still brutal. The desert has given way to a thick pine forest, but the landscape is no less foreboding. On the breeze I detect the faint smell of barbecued meats and the sound of someone playing Eagles covers. High above, a crow circles. This really is no country for old men.
I walk in the direction of the barbecue smell and by some happy coincidence find myself standing outside a bar where the singer is also performing. He has now expanded his repertoire to include Cat Stevens and Bruce Springsteen. The man operating the barbecue wears a broad grin that says "I have the best job in the world". He is a short, stocky Hispanic man wearing a "This Country Was Founded on Trains and Beer" t-shirt. He catches my gaze and we both look down at the ribs, chicken and steak cooking on his grill, then he looks back up with a big smile and a slow nod. That settles it. I'm going in for a beer and a big hunk of something blackened and delicious.
Thankfully my family has the same idea. Trouble is, each of us is hankering for a different kind of meat. So we settle for the aptly-named Family Platter: a whole rack of beef ribs, a whole rack of pork ribs and half a chicken. Can't go wrong there, surely? In the meantime, I clench my teeth and order a Grand Canyon Pale Ale, which the menu claims is "freshly brewed". I can see the microbrewery attached to the back of the bar, so you'd bloody well hope it is.
The beer is delicious and the perfect way to wet my whistle for the feast to come. The waitress can barely carry the platter of meats out. It is augmented by coleslaw, Mexican beans and corn on the cob. Naturally, everything is magnificent. I maintain that things always taste better when eaten with your hands anyway, but even allowing for that, the meat is tender, juicy and falling off the bone. You know when other diners glance at your table in pure envy that you've done pretty well.
We've all enjoyed that eating experience so much that we decide, why not have another one? So we make our way, slowly at first, down the street to the diner with the pies. The choice is mind-boggling: cherry pie, blueberry pie, peach pie, black forest pie, banana creme pie, caramel pie, chocolate cake, oreo pie, coffee pie, banoffie pie, pumpkin pie, coconut and pineapple pie, and those are just the ones I can remember drooling at. We settle for sharing a coffee pie, peach pie and blueberry pie between the four of us, which we devour within seconds of their arrival at our table. You'd have been forgiven for thinking we hadn't eaten in months, when in actual fact, not half an hour ago we'd been hacking into the equivalent of a medium-sized dead animal. It's easy to see why Americans are so fat and to be honest, I don't bloody blame them.
Back at the hotel, I sit on my bed, nursing a considerable belly-ache, listening to the noises coming from outside. The town has gone eerily quiet, so that only the occasional cry of some unidentified animal can be heard above the hum of the air conditioner. I turn the aircon up a little louder, and lie back in bed with the baseball on mute.
Somewhere out there in the darkness, Javier is waiting.
Our 250 mile drive from Vegas takes us through some pretty interesting country, too. Much of the drive traces the path of historic Route 66. The "Main Street of America" and "The Mother Road" as it is affectionately known, Route 66 took millions of immigrants westward to greener pastures - literally and figuratively - during and after the Great Depression. It is also the road on which Mick Jagger famously claimed that one could obtain one's kicks. We'll soon find out, I guess.
Our first stop is at the Hoover Dam, half an hour South-East of Vegas. The largest dam in the world when completed in 1935, the dam still represents an impressive feat of engineering today. Indeed, at 221m in height and 379m in length, it seems most deserving of its place among the seven architectural wonders of the United States, even if I don't know what the other six are.
We park the car and walk along the crest of the dam, marvelling at the art deco plaques and furnishings. Everything, right down the toilet doors, is finished in brass and even the spillway towers would not look out of place in the Manhattan skyline. Since the Colorado River, which the dam spans, represents the border between Nevada and Arizona, it is also possible to stand halfway between each end and enjoy the odd experience of having one foot on each side of the state line, a novelty that lasts a good few seconds. I regret to say that our very own Clyde Dam is not a patch on this architectural marvel. I suppose the one thing you could say for it is that it isn't quite as overflowing with busloads of lumbering Americans at 9.30am on weekday mornings.
In the early afternoon, we turn off the interstate and drive into the town of Seligman, Arizona (population 436), curious as to how a Wild West hick town managed to procure a Jewish name. The answer isn't quite as exciting as I'd hoped: it is named after the wealthy Seligman brothers, who financed the railroad south in 1905. A quick consultation of my travel guide reveals that this may be my sort of place, or at least it was 100 years ago:
"At the turn of the century, Seligman was populated primarily by cowboys working the large ranches of the area. Along with these rough and ready men, came a piece of the Wild West, complete with shootouts on the streets. At this time the saloons and brothels outnumbered the churches three to one".
There's little evidence of any such mirth and debauchery in modern day Seligman. This is a one-street town if ever I saw one, overflowing with souvenir stores selling genuine Route 66 memorabilia. Parked outside a rusting vehicle garage are two Ford Edsels, widely considered to be the ugliest cars ever built. Fifty years of sitting in the blazing sun has not done them any favours either.
On a street corner I see a run-down old diner with a sign out front that says "Burgers - Tacos - Malts - Dead Chicken". Instinctively, I go in. There's a crowded little waiting area, every surface of which is plastered with old photographs and brochures from a bygone era when whores, cowboys and priests ruled over the town in equal measure. On the frame next to the serving window is a sign that says: "Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to hide the bodies of those people I had to kill because they pissed me off".
Turns out I've stumbled upon a precious little piece of Americana. I'm in Delgadillo's Snow Cap Drive-In, being served by self-styled comedian John Delgadillo. In 1953, his father Juan, along with Juan's father and brothers, built the premises out of scrap lumber he collected while working for the railroad. A much-loved member of the community, Juan worked in the diner every single day until his death in 2004, aged 88. Now John has picked up exactly where his father left off, right down to amusing his guests with irrepressible goofball humour. The whole situation is kinda neat, I think. I decide to introduce myself formally.
"Are you Juan's son?", I ask.
"That's right, sir. John's the name".
"Nice to meet you John, I'm Max". I shake his hand.
"Nice to meet you too".
Then, realising that I have not much more to say to him, I thank him again and bid him farewell by way of a friendly wave. If you're ever in Seligman, this is the place to go for a feed. John will still be there. He sure is heck ain't going anywhere else.
Leaving the diner, I walk down a side street, past boarded up saloons and shop fronts and old long-abandoned stone houses. The town extends one block to the south, where it meets the railroad to which it owes its very existence. The other side of the tracks and everything beyond belongs to the Mojave Desert, which stretches endlessly to the horizon. At a well across the street, an old man is fiddling with the back of his Ford pickup truck while his daughter fills up a water tank. This is about as real as it gets. I feel like a character in an Eagles song right now.
On the way back to the car, I hear a voice over my shoulder say, "Oi! Hey. Get one of me next to Dean". I turn around to see a fat English geezer in a Manchester United shirt posing next to a lifesize plastic model of James Dean, while his equally unappetising wife brandishes a camera in his general direction. Nothing like a bunch of Poms to spoil an afternoon reverie.
I'll never be able to stay in a roadside motel again without being gripped by nightmarish visions of Javier Bardem bursting through the front door with a silenced shotgun and slaughtering me where I lie. The motel I've got in Williams is nice enough, but bears a spooky resemblance to the one in the scene where Javier casually sends the three Mexican drug runners to meet their maker. He's probably in the room next to me right now, biding his time, removing a bullet from his leg while watching tomorrow's forecast on TV. He knows I know he's there, but he doesn't give a shit. He's in no hurry. He knows I'm here for three nights. He knows everything about me in fact, from my time of birth to my precise time of death. I can't stop what's coming to me now. My fate is entirely out of my hands.
I go outside and stand on the street, surveying the scene. Surely not even Javier has the nerve to shoot me on the main road in plain view of half the town? Williams is a larger town than Seligman, but not by much. We have driven into an alpine climate and a cool breeze is blowing, but the sun is still brutal. The desert has given way to a thick pine forest, but the landscape is no less foreboding. On the breeze I detect the faint smell of barbecued meats and the sound of someone playing Eagles covers. High above, a crow circles. This really is no country for old men.
I walk in the direction of the barbecue smell and by some happy coincidence find myself standing outside a bar where the singer is also performing. He has now expanded his repertoire to include Cat Stevens and Bruce Springsteen. The man operating the barbecue wears a broad grin that says "I have the best job in the world". He is a short, stocky Hispanic man wearing a "This Country Was Founded on Trains and Beer" t-shirt. He catches my gaze and we both look down at the ribs, chicken and steak cooking on his grill, then he looks back up with a big smile and a slow nod. That settles it. I'm going in for a beer and a big hunk of something blackened and delicious.
Thankfully my family has the same idea. Trouble is, each of us is hankering for a different kind of meat. So we settle for the aptly-named Family Platter: a whole rack of beef ribs, a whole rack of pork ribs and half a chicken. Can't go wrong there, surely? In the meantime, I clench my teeth and order a Grand Canyon Pale Ale, which the menu claims is "freshly brewed". I can see the microbrewery attached to the back of the bar, so you'd bloody well hope it is.
The beer is delicious and the perfect way to wet my whistle for the feast to come. The waitress can barely carry the platter of meats out. It is augmented by coleslaw, Mexican beans and corn on the cob. Naturally, everything is magnificent. I maintain that things always taste better when eaten with your hands anyway, but even allowing for that, the meat is tender, juicy and falling off the bone. You know when other diners glance at your table in pure envy that you've done pretty well.
We've all enjoyed that eating experience so much that we decide, why not have another one? So we make our way, slowly at first, down the street to the diner with the pies. The choice is mind-boggling: cherry pie, blueberry pie, peach pie, black forest pie, banana creme pie, caramel pie, chocolate cake, oreo pie, coffee pie, banoffie pie, pumpkin pie, coconut and pineapple pie, and those are just the ones I can remember drooling at. We settle for sharing a coffee pie, peach pie and blueberry pie between the four of us, which we devour within seconds of their arrival at our table. You'd have been forgiven for thinking we hadn't eaten in months, when in actual fact, not half an hour ago we'd been hacking into the equivalent of a medium-sized dead animal. It's easy to see why Americans are so fat and to be honest, I don't bloody blame them.
Back at the hotel, I sit on my bed, nursing a considerable belly-ache, listening to the noises coming from outside. The town has gone eerily quiet, so that only the occasional cry of some unidentified animal can be heard above the hum of the air conditioner. I turn the aircon up a little louder, and lie back in bed with the baseball on mute.
Somewhere out there in the darkness, Javier is waiting.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Las Vegas
Las Vegas strikes me as being the kind of place that Osama would absolutely hate. Not to mention the gambling and general debauchery, the city really does showcase the Western World's propensity for excess and unabashed extravagance. Everything in Vegas is ten times as big as it as it is anywhere else and proudly trumpets Americans' total lack of taste that so enamoured them to P.T. Barnum. It is a city built of want, not of necessity. None of this really needs to be here. Still, I'm glad it is here, otherwise I'd be standing on my own in the middle of a vast, barren desert without so much as a water source to keep me alive, let alone the 7/11 across the street, or that giant replica Statue of Liberty over there or the 400-foot glass pyramid behind it.
In past lives, Las Vegas was a fort and then a railroad town, its modest dimensions giving no hint at the tourist-eating monster it was eventually to become. Gambling was legalised in 1931 and the rest, as they say, is history. What this highlights to me is the vision and forward-thinking that Americans show with regards to all aspects of life, particularly in comparison with us humble Kiwis. Doubtless if Las Vegas was a town in New Zealand it would've simply meandered along and accepted its fate as a modest country town, with a few fish 'n' chip shops and maybe a Placemakers, that would only occasionally hit the headlines when a visiting All Black takes a junior coaching clinic or a prominent community figure is senselessly murdered by P-addled reprobates. In Las Vegas, some guys sat around getting drunk and said to each other, "you know what? Let's legalise gambling and see what the fuck happens. Yeah duuude!". And so they did. Imagination and commonsense are no barriers to progress in the American West, you see.
The aforementioned glass pyramid is the Luxor hotel, where we are booked in for two nights. The rooms are basic but acceptable, exhibiting some half-arsed attempts at Egyptian theming. The TV cabinet kind of looks like a temple entrance. The lounge chair looks a bit like something King Tut might've once sat on, only cheaper. Hieroglyphics are scrawled on the headboards and the faux-rock carving on the wall next to my bed is made of tin. I can't see anything particularly Egyptian about the air-conditioning unit (although I'm thankful for its presence) or the ice bucket.
Interestingly, the Egyptian Theming also extends to the internet facilities - that is to say, there aren't any. The only wireless network my laptop detects is named "ADULT***Vegas", and I'm not even going near that can of worms. Reluctantly, I get on the bell to reception.
While I hold the line, patiently waiting for a receptionist to answer and tell me to hold the line a bit longer, the recorded message fills me in on all sorts of fun facts about the hotel. Turns out it has 4,407 rooms in three buildings. Tremendous. The pyramid is 134 metres and 30 storeys high, and its elevators (or inclinators) travel on a 39 degree incline to the top floor. The vast interior of the pyramid is the largest atrium in the world by volume and the beam of light that shoots skywards from its apex every night is (yes, you guessed it) also the world's largest, so powerful that it can be seen by aircraft flying over LA, 250 miles away.
Just as remarkable is the buffet restaurant in the basement, "More". Its slogan is "Less is not more. More is more", which I find refreshingly honest in a town full of such lies and deceit. It boasts a salad bar 30 feet long: enough to accomodate three, possibly four average American males at a time, by my reckoning. Occasionally, another friendly recorded man comes on the line to remind me how important my call is to them, which is why I should hold the line for a few more minutes while I get thrown back on the Useless Luxor Facts merry-go-round.
I've pretty much got the hotel sussed right down to the number of steel rivets used in its construction when a receptionist answers the phone and tells me that there are no wireless facilities, but I can access high-speed cable via the TV for just $13.99 a night.
"$13.99?! That's outrageous!", I yelp involuntarily.
The silence on the other end of the line speaks for a woman who has heard that reaction many, many times before. I regain my composure and ask where I might find a public WiFi access point somewhere in the hotel.
"Sorry sir, we don't have any", she says. Bastards, bastards, bastards. My holiday is pretty much ruined. Looks like I'll have to find a way to amuse myself in Vegas that doesn't involve the internet.
Stepping out into the Las Vegas sunshine is like coming home and opening the oven door to discover that you've accidentally left it on all day. Unexpected, and warm to say the least. Forty degrees celsius in fact. The heat isn't proving a deterrent to the immense throng of people wandering up and down the strip with us. Vegas is a mecca for people of all walks of life, colours, shapes and sizes - but mainly large.
Every ten or so feet a Mexican is handing out free tickets to some unspeakably tacky entertainment show that you wouldn't for the life of you consider attending if you weren't in Vegas: clairvoyant reading, hypnotist shows, Elton John gigs and what not. They don't speak at all; instead they slap their wad of tickets forcefully against the palm of their hand and thrust them outwards in your direction, hoping this will somehow convince you that yes, a hypnotist show really is what I should be doing with my time in Vegas. Luckily I've been to South-East Asia before and know how to resist these rather forceful propositions.
Inside the casinos themselves, its a damn sight cooler but equally chaotic. I run a far greater risk of having an epileptic fit in here, too. In every direction, lights are flashing, music is blaring from unseen speakers, employees are yelling promotional slogans in my ear. Las Vegas really is an assault on the senses.
"The Strip Restaurant. Coming soon!", screams a billboard outside the MGM Grand. This makes absolutely no sense to me: why would you want some naked stranger bothering you while you're trying to eat your dinner? Elsewhere there are signs advertising the various musical highlights that Vegas currently has on offer: Barry Manilow, Johnny Mathis, Donnie and Marie Osmond, Elton John, and so forth. Vegas appears to be a sort of retirement village for entertainers who are no longer in their prime (and in most cases, never were). There are plenty of live shows and musicals permanently based in town - Cirque du Soleil, Spamalot, Love - but they too are outrageously overpriced, just like everything else in Vegas. Especially the bloody high-speed cable.
Some casinos are far more upmarket than others. It's immediately apparent that our dear old Luxor is among the shittiest on The Strip. The low ceilings, dark interior of the casino and lurid decor are a bit of a give-away, as are the rows upon rows of low-budget hicks from Arkansas feeding their children's education into slot machines. Excalibur (medieval themed) and Paris, Vegas (French themed, replete with Eiffel Tower replica out the front) aren't much flasher.
The most agreeable hotel we visit is the Bellagio. Unlike the rest of Vegas, the interior has been tastefully appointed, with high ceilings in the public areas and ornate decorations on the walls. The shops, too, are of an infinitely higher calibre - Prada, Chanel, Gucci. It even has the world's largest chocolate waterfall - a bit of a waste of chocolate if you ask me - displayed behind a large glass casing. Bellagio is definitely the place to stay in Vegas if you feel like splashing out US$600 a night. I wander past a Blackjack table where a lone moustachioed man in a cream suit is betting $300 a hand. At his side is a bottle of Miller Lite. For fuck's sake.
I mean seriously, if you're wealthy enough to be betting $300 a hand, surely you'd want to be drinking Bud Lite or Coors Lite, or maybe even Heineken Premium Lite? Just goes to show that money can't buy you taste.
I won't bore you with the details of dinner, except to say that it was large, unhealthy and delicious and involved a cheesecake for dessert. After nightfall we wander back to the Luxor along the strip, which is now a sea of flashing neon lights urging me to come on in and spend all my money. There's no escaping them now, inside or out. The Mexicans selling show tickets have been replaced by Mexicans advertising "Girls direct to your room in 20 minutes". This makes no sense to me either. Why would I need a girl to direct me to my room in 20 minutes? I already know the way, and I could get there in less than 20 minutes anyways. Vegas is a strange, strange place.
It's actually something of a relief to get back to the hotel room and dig into my book for a bit of wholesome, inexpensive fun. I half-expected to return to find my book had been confiscated, and be told by concierge that the hotel had no reading facilities but I was welcome to read one of their many fascinating brochures for just $24.99 a night. Joey is also puzzled by the many hypocrisies and contradictions of this city.
"Why is there a notice in the bathroom asking people to conserve power when every fucking night they shoot a giant beam of light into the air that doesn't do shit?"
"That's not entirely true", I reply, pointing out that it does in fact give aircraft passengers flying over LA something to look at.
Vegas is billed as a place where you can do pretty much anything you like, whenever you like. You can fire a machine gun, ride a roller coaster on top of a tower, rent a hot air balloon, walk down The Strip with a half-yard of margarita, learn magic tricks, get your palm read, eat dinner while a woman gets naked in front of you, rent a humvee limousine, pay girls to direct you back to your hotel room in 20 minutes, access high-speed cable internet, and much much more. And you can certainly eat donuts at 8.30 in the morning.
Krispy Kreme donuts aren't as magically delicious as they were before they switched to a new trans fat-free recipe, but they're still quite an experience. I've just bought the one, because it's a little early and I want to savour the experience. The initial pleasant crunch gives way to soft, gooey dough and the maple icing raises the enjoyment factor through the roof. What a way to start the day.
As I'm eating the donut I'm alerted to another thing you can and should do while in Vegas: get hitched. The neon sign opposite where I'm sitting advertises "vow renewals starting at $99". Bargain. "Come as spouses, leave as newlyweds", the sign proclaims, accompanied by a photo of a middle-aged couple in a post-marital, pre-coital embrace. It doesn't strike me as being a great advertisement for marriage, though. For one thing, the man (a 50-year-old Gavin Larsen) doesn't look happy at all. He looks like a man who is genuinely concerned that the hours pissed away at the slot machines drinking beer that he's so looked forward to are suddenly in jeopardy. The distinct fear in his eyes suggests that hours spent in shopping malls and queueing for Elton John tickets are a very real possibility, and the woman has a look on her face that you know means she is always going to get her way. Poor Gavin.
The other thing I haven't done yet that I must do is gamble. It's a delicate situation though: I know my mother and Joey won't want to and my father is trying to talk himself out of it at every opportunity. The fiendish glint in his eye whenever Blackjack is mentioned suggests that he badly wants to play - and he was a master back in the '80s, according to some, mainly himself - but it's a chapter of his life that you sense he wants to put behind him.
I spent many hours of my teenage years at the entrance to Melbourne casino while my father rode his luck somewhere inside. Every half hour he would come back out with alternating good and bad news, and every time he'd ask me to give him another half hour. "Bad news, Max", he'd say on the hour, "I'm $200 down. I need another half hour to win it back. Here's $3, go buy a slice of pizza".
Half an hour later I'd be guzzling the last of my coke when he would reappear, grinning from ear to ear. "I'm $200 up and on a roll. You've gotta let me go back in for a half hour. Here's $3, go buy a slice of pizza".
And so this would go on for days, sometimes weeks until eventually he would reappear, unshaven and bedraggled, and say "Alright, I'm even. Let's go get a pizza". They were good days, they were.
It doesn't take much convincing in the end to get my father in the game. I could've gone myself but I've only set aside $100 to gamble, and at $10 a hand this would be gone in approximately two-and-a-half minutes. At least with my father there, the opportunity for a bail-out exists. We find an empty table at Bellagio and pull up a seat. Almost immediately, we are bleeding cash. Our dealer, a kindly old man named Jerry, is on fire. He is apologetic at all times, at one point asking where we're from to take the attention away from how much of a hammering we're taking, but there's no missing the fact that my $100 stack of chips is rapidly shrinking.
We get a new dealer, Bill, and our luck changes for a while. At least mine does. My father is still taking a battering. He's on quite the run, getting fives and sixes to Bill's picture cards hand after hand. So engrossed am I in proceedings, however, that I haven't even noticed the acoustic version of "Some Day" by Nickelback that is blasting out over the hotel speakers. I need some inspiration from somewhere, and Chad Kroeger may as well be it.
I'm down to my last two $5 chips now. This is it, one more hand. Lose and I'm out, and I walk away forever. Here goes. I've got eleven, and Bill is showing..... a 6! Yes! If only I had enough chips to double. But my father has already summed up the situation and sends two of his own chips to sit next to mine.
From this point on it's written in the stars. I pick up an 8, Bill busts and all of a sudden I've got $40 next to my name. I can see why people lose jobs, houses and families over this sort of thing. It is undeniably exciting.
I can't lose now. Every hand I get is a winner. I end up with $105 in chips, an impressive $5 up on where I started. Why, that's almost 22 minutes of high-speed cable at The Luxor! My father has also launched into one of his inevitable recoveries and almost gets back to even himself. I think he senses how much fun I'm having though, and does the responsible thing. He gets me the hell out of here. I'll probably thank him for it one day.
Walking back to the hotel along The Strip one more time, I just cannot find myself enjoying Vegas. Granted it's not much of a family destination - not for this family anyway - but I find the total artifice of it all combined with the human scum element rather unnerving. We stop for a beer in New York, New York, where a Franz Ferdinand song is assaulting our eardrums while all manner of flashing neon signs assault our eyeballs.
"This is the first decent song I've heard since we got to Vegas", Joey says.
"That's not true. I've heard "Smooth" at least twelve times now".
Next up is Coldplay's latest attempt to corner the market for cynical, overproduced, hyper-commercialised muzak. Two British songs in a row in an American hotel! What next, a black man running for president?
Back in the relative safety of my hotel room I concede that I've been a little harsh on Vegas. I suppose that the city itself - like all the morally-dubious activities it celebrates - is best enjoyed in small doses. More than that, and it begins to get unhealthy. Two nights seems about right, in the end.
Still, $13.99 for high-speed cable. There are some things that even a reasonable man such as myself cannot reconcile.
In past lives, Las Vegas was a fort and then a railroad town, its modest dimensions giving no hint at the tourist-eating monster it was eventually to become. Gambling was legalised in 1931 and the rest, as they say, is history. What this highlights to me is the vision and forward-thinking that Americans show with regards to all aspects of life, particularly in comparison with us humble Kiwis. Doubtless if Las Vegas was a town in New Zealand it would've simply meandered along and accepted its fate as a modest country town, with a few fish 'n' chip shops and maybe a Placemakers, that would only occasionally hit the headlines when a visiting All Black takes a junior coaching clinic or a prominent community figure is senselessly murdered by P-addled reprobates. In Las Vegas, some guys sat around getting drunk and said to each other, "you know what? Let's legalise gambling and see what the fuck happens. Yeah duuude!". And so they did. Imagination and commonsense are no barriers to progress in the American West, you see.
The aforementioned glass pyramid is the Luxor hotel, where we are booked in for two nights. The rooms are basic but acceptable, exhibiting some half-arsed attempts at Egyptian theming. The TV cabinet kind of looks like a temple entrance. The lounge chair looks a bit like something King Tut might've once sat on, only cheaper. Hieroglyphics are scrawled on the headboards and the faux-rock carving on the wall next to my bed is made of tin. I can't see anything particularly Egyptian about the air-conditioning unit (although I'm thankful for its presence) or the ice bucket.
Interestingly, the Egyptian Theming also extends to the internet facilities - that is to say, there aren't any. The only wireless network my laptop detects is named "ADULT***Vegas", and I'm not even going near that can of worms. Reluctantly, I get on the bell to reception.
While I hold the line, patiently waiting for a receptionist to answer and tell me to hold the line a bit longer, the recorded message fills me in on all sorts of fun facts about the hotel. Turns out it has 4,407 rooms in three buildings. Tremendous. The pyramid is 134 metres and 30 storeys high, and its elevators (or inclinators) travel on a 39 degree incline to the top floor. The vast interior of the pyramid is the largest atrium in the world by volume and the beam of light that shoots skywards from its apex every night is (yes, you guessed it) also the world's largest, so powerful that it can be seen by aircraft flying over LA, 250 miles away.
Just as remarkable is the buffet restaurant in the basement, "More". Its slogan is "Less is not more. More is more", which I find refreshingly honest in a town full of such lies and deceit. It boasts a salad bar 30 feet long: enough to accomodate three, possibly four average American males at a time, by my reckoning. Occasionally, another friendly recorded man comes on the line to remind me how important my call is to them, which is why I should hold the line for a few more minutes while I get thrown back on the Useless Luxor Facts merry-go-round.
I've pretty much got the hotel sussed right down to the number of steel rivets used in its construction when a receptionist answers the phone and tells me that there are no wireless facilities, but I can access high-speed cable via the TV for just $13.99 a night.
"$13.99?! That's outrageous!", I yelp involuntarily.
The silence on the other end of the line speaks for a woman who has heard that reaction many, many times before. I regain my composure and ask where I might find a public WiFi access point somewhere in the hotel.
"Sorry sir, we don't have any", she says. Bastards, bastards, bastards. My holiday is pretty much ruined. Looks like I'll have to find a way to amuse myself in Vegas that doesn't involve the internet.
Stepping out into the Las Vegas sunshine is like coming home and opening the oven door to discover that you've accidentally left it on all day. Unexpected, and warm to say the least. Forty degrees celsius in fact. The heat isn't proving a deterrent to the immense throng of people wandering up and down the strip with us. Vegas is a mecca for people of all walks of life, colours, shapes and sizes - but mainly large.
Every ten or so feet a Mexican is handing out free tickets to some unspeakably tacky entertainment show that you wouldn't for the life of you consider attending if you weren't in Vegas: clairvoyant reading, hypnotist shows, Elton John gigs and what not. They don't speak at all; instead they slap their wad of tickets forcefully against the palm of their hand and thrust them outwards in your direction, hoping this will somehow convince you that yes, a hypnotist show really is what I should be doing with my time in Vegas. Luckily I've been to South-East Asia before and know how to resist these rather forceful propositions.
Inside the casinos themselves, its a damn sight cooler but equally chaotic. I run a far greater risk of having an epileptic fit in here, too. In every direction, lights are flashing, music is blaring from unseen speakers, employees are yelling promotional slogans in my ear. Las Vegas really is an assault on the senses.
"The Strip Restaurant. Coming soon!", screams a billboard outside the MGM Grand. This makes absolutely no sense to me: why would you want some naked stranger bothering you while you're trying to eat your dinner? Elsewhere there are signs advertising the various musical highlights that Vegas currently has on offer: Barry Manilow, Johnny Mathis, Donnie and Marie Osmond, Elton John, and so forth. Vegas appears to be a sort of retirement village for entertainers who are no longer in their prime (and in most cases, never were). There are plenty of live shows and musicals permanently based in town - Cirque du Soleil, Spamalot, Love - but they too are outrageously overpriced, just like everything else in Vegas. Especially the bloody high-speed cable.
Some casinos are far more upmarket than others. It's immediately apparent that our dear old Luxor is among the shittiest on The Strip. The low ceilings, dark interior of the casino and lurid decor are a bit of a give-away, as are the rows upon rows of low-budget hicks from Arkansas feeding their children's education into slot machines. Excalibur (medieval themed) and Paris, Vegas (French themed, replete with Eiffel Tower replica out the front) aren't much flasher.
The most agreeable hotel we visit is the Bellagio. Unlike the rest of Vegas, the interior has been tastefully appointed, with high ceilings in the public areas and ornate decorations on the walls. The shops, too, are of an infinitely higher calibre - Prada, Chanel, Gucci. It even has the world's largest chocolate waterfall - a bit of a waste of chocolate if you ask me - displayed behind a large glass casing. Bellagio is definitely the place to stay in Vegas if you feel like splashing out US$600 a night. I wander past a Blackjack table where a lone moustachioed man in a cream suit is betting $300 a hand. At his side is a bottle of Miller Lite. For fuck's sake.
I mean seriously, if you're wealthy enough to be betting $300 a hand, surely you'd want to be drinking Bud Lite or Coors Lite, or maybe even Heineken Premium Lite? Just goes to show that money can't buy you taste.
I won't bore you with the details of dinner, except to say that it was large, unhealthy and delicious and involved a cheesecake for dessert. After nightfall we wander back to the Luxor along the strip, which is now a sea of flashing neon lights urging me to come on in and spend all my money. There's no escaping them now, inside or out. The Mexicans selling show tickets have been replaced by Mexicans advertising "Girls direct to your room in 20 minutes". This makes no sense to me either. Why would I need a girl to direct me to my room in 20 minutes? I already know the way, and I could get there in less than 20 minutes anyways. Vegas is a strange, strange place.
It's actually something of a relief to get back to the hotel room and dig into my book for a bit of wholesome, inexpensive fun. I half-expected to return to find my book had been confiscated, and be told by concierge that the hotel had no reading facilities but I was welcome to read one of their many fascinating brochures for just $24.99 a night. Joey is also puzzled by the many hypocrisies and contradictions of this city.
"Why is there a notice in the bathroom asking people to conserve power when every fucking night they shoot a giant beam of light into the air that doesn't do shit?"
"That's not entirely true", I reply, pointing out that it does in fact give aircraft passengers flying over LA something to look at.
Vegas is billed as a place where you can do pretty much anything you like, whenever you like. You can fire a machine gun, ride a roller coaster on top of a tower, rent a hot air balloon, walk down The Strip with a half-yard of margarita, learn magic tricks, get your palm read, eat dinner while a woman gets naked in front of you, rent a humvee limousine, pay girls to direct you back to your hotel room in 20 minutes, access high-speed cable internet, and much much more. And you can certainly eat donuts at 8.30 in the morning.
Krispy Kreme donuts aren't as magically delicious as they were before they switched to a new trans fat-free recipe, but they're still quite an experience. I've just bought the one, because it's a little early and I want to savour the experience. The initial pleasant crunch gives way to soft, gooey dough and the maple icing raises the enjoyment factor through the roof. What a way to start the day.
As I'm eating the donut I'm alerted to another thing you can and should do while in Vegas: get hitched. The neon sign opposite where I'm sitting advertises "vow renewals starting at $99". Bargain. "Come as spouses, leave as newlyweds", the sign proclaims, accompanied by a photo of a middle-aged couple in a post-marital, pre-coital embrace. It doesn't strike me as being a great advertisement for marriage, though. For one thing, the man (a 50-year-old Gavin Larsen) doesn't look happy at all. He looks like a man who is genuinely concerned that the hours pissed away at the slot machines drinking beer that he's so looked forward to are suddenly in jeopardy. The distinct fear in his eyes suggests that hours spent in shopping malls and queueing for Elton John tickets are a very real possibility, and the woman has a look on her face that you know means she is always going to get her way. Poor Gavin.
The other thing I haven't done yet that I must do is gamble. It's a delicate situation though: I know my mother and Joey won't want to and my father is trying to talk himself out of it at every opportunity. The fiendish glint in his eye whenever Blackjack is mentioned suggests that he badly wants to play - and he was a master back in the '80s, according to some, mainly himself - but it's a chapter of his life that you sense he wants to put behind him.
I spent many hours of my teenage years at the entrance to Melbourne casino while my father rode his luck somewhere inside. Every half hour he would come back out with alternating good and bad news, and every time he'd ask me to give him another half hour. "Bad news, Max", he'd say on the hour, "I'm $200 down. I need another half hour to win it back. Here's $3, go buy a slice of pizza".
Half an hour later I'd be guzzling the last of my coke when he would reappear, grinning from ear to ear. "I'm $200 up and on a roll. You've gotta let me go back in for a half hour. Here's $3, go buy a slice of pizza".
And so this would go on for days, sometimes weeks until eventually he would reappear, unshaven and bedraggled, and say "Alright, I'm even. Let's go get a pizza". They were good days, they were.
It doesn't take much convincing in the end to get my father in the game. I could've gone myself but I've only set aside $100 to gamble, and at $10 a hand this would be gone in approximately two-and-a-half minutes. At least with my father there, the opportunity for a bail-out exists. We find an empty table at Bellagio and pull up a seat. Almost immediately, we are bleeding cash. Our dealer, a kindly old man named Jerry, is on fire. He is apologetic at all times, at one point asking where we're from to take the attention away from how much of a hammering we're taking, but there's no missing the fact that my $100 stack of chips is rapidly shrinking.
We get a new dealer, Bill, and our luck changes for a while. At least mine does. My father is still taking a battering. He's on quite the run, getting fives and sixes to Bill's picture cards hand after hand. So engrossed am I in proceedings, however, that I haven't even noticed the acoustic version of "Some Day" by Nickelback that is blasting out over the hotel speakers. I need some inspiration from somewhere, and Chad Kroeger may as well be it.
I'm down to my last two $5 chips now. This is it, one more hand. Lose and I'm out, and I walk away forever. Here goes. I've got eleven, and Bill is showing..... a 6! Yes! If only I had enough chips to double. But my father has already summed up the situation and sends two of his own chips to sit next to mine.
From this point on it's written in the stars. I pick up an 8, Bill busts and all of a sudden I've got $40 next to my name. I can see why people lose jobs, houses and families over this sort of thing. It is undeniably exciting.
I can't lose now. Every hand I get is a winner. I end up with $105 in chips, an impressive $5 up on where I started. Why, that's almost 22 minutes of high-speed cable at The Luxor! My father has also launched into one of his inevitable recoveries and almost gets back to even himself. I think he senses how much fun I'm having though, and does the responsible thing. He gets me the hell out of here. I'll probably thank him for it one day.
Walking back to the hotel along The Strip one more time, I just cannot find myself enjoying Vegas. Granted it's not much of a family destination - not for this family anyway - but I find the total artifice of it all combined with the human scum element rather unnerving. We stop for a beer in New York, New York, where a Franz Ferdinand song is assaulting our eardrums while all manner of flashing neon signs assault our eyeballs.
"This is the first decent song I've heard since we got to Vegas", Joey says.
"That's not true. I've heard "Smooth" at least twelve times now".
Next up is Coldplay's latest attempt to corner the market for cynical, overproduced, hyper-commercialised muzak. Two British songs in a row in an American hotel! What next, a black man running for president?
Back in the relative safety of my hotel room I concede that I've been a little harsh on Vegas. I suppose that the city itself - like all the morally-dubious activities it celebrates - is best enjoyed in small doses. More than that, and it begins to get unhealthy. Two nights seems about right, in the end.
Still, $13.99 for high-speed cable. There are some things that even a reasonable man such as myself cannot reconcile.
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