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.