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Published: September 5th 2008
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So I travelled on a greyhound bus, and I didn't get beheaded which was a bonus. The bus rolled through Maine, Massachusetts through some beautiful tree filled towns at dusk where artists should be walking down streets. Springfield Massachusetts was interesting. If my phone was working I would have text my sister to tell her that I was in the Dandenong of America, here is where plump American bogans in cheap tacky clothes smoked and smooched and swore at each other, a young man spoke yo diggity to himself while chewing on a toothbrush. Luckily I have spent many an hour/day/night at Frankston station, I am seasoned.
I travelled onwards towards Vermont where I was to meet a girl on the riding staff from camp who was competing in a show and I was going to visit and watch, I was really in horsey mode since camp, being a 'pro' and all was great. I wanted to see some American equestrian industry in action.
I arrived in another beautiful town of Bellows Falls and my horsey friends dad picked me up in a glorious white mercedes. We drove over to the town of Manchester Vermont where the show was taking place.
Manchester reminded me of Marysville but with more ski rental places, there was a crispness of mountain in the air, reminding me of trips to the snow last year. Mountains that my family were skiing at back home without me(homesick pang alert)
I hadn't driven in America because I was scared of the whole doing it backwards thing and my vague brain = potential very bads. But anyway my friends dad asked me if I could drive her to the show in the morning, I could not say no to that, so I was up at 6am driving his precious cargo in his glorious white Mercedes in the morning to the show. I didn't crash into anything so that was good.
The horseshow was filled with beautiful horses of expensive breeding and absolutely incredible temperaments, I have never seen so many well behaved horses in one place, or maybe they were all on valium. The riders wore a lot of Ralph Lauren and had mexican grooms, it was totally unlike the typical Australian horse show with bogans aborad mangey Thelewlls style ponies tearing up arenas with tatty horsefloats and cartwheeling ex racehorses. These guys come by the barnloads, with
trainers, with magnificent trucks, and more Ralph Lauren. The show was lovely to watch and the scene was one to admire, young people did riding as their activity, they seemed to waltz in all clean, mount their clean horse, compete, dismount, socialise and look beautiful. In the evening we relaxed at the hotel which was absolutely glorious, it had a pool and a spa which I made good use of. This was a wonderful place to begin inwinding from living in a mouldy cabin at camp and working 24/7. I was cleeeaann.
I think we did 3 days of the show, and then onward back towards New York, where I stopped off in the glorious town of Albany, a famous shithole. I stayed in the cheapest possible motel, one that may have been ok in earlier years but now the mould had set into line the walls of the rooms It had that epic tackyness of falling down grandeur. While arriving alone and saying my goodbyes to my short term family I noticed that some homeless people seemed to live in the courtyard area of this motel, how cultural, I had decided.
A couple of hours later, while having
a tipper tapper on my laptop I heard - 'bang bang bang bang bang ..bang'. Maybe it's the writer in me, or the fact that I am too influenced by the media but I thought there was a gunman (or woman) on the loose and I was going to be in headlines. It was a very good kind of hotel for a shooting. I wasn't so terrified that I hit the floor but I did stay rather still for a few minutes, wasn't all that keen to look out the window. Eventually I looked out the window and no one was dead on the pavement. I survived the rest of my stay. The next day I went across the road to get some cash out, and that creepy vibe had not yet gone away, there were a group of slick looking black guys lurking around the store, I am not racist, I don't have any problem with skin colour but I just kept thinking ' pop a cap in yo ass' all the time.
I was rather happy when I sat in the smelly dated lobby in the heat while I waited for a taxi to take me to the
greyhound station, the taxi driver was nice, the people in the bus station were not, as usual. The bus was taking me to Boston where I was meeting the lovely Nancy who was co-head of riding with me at camp. I was going to spend a few days staying with her and her family in the beautiful town of Duxbury.
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