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Spot the tourist
Blue and white I can manage but there was no way there was ever gonna be any red in there... Items Lost: 1 (camping mat)
New Phone Number: (001) 907 227 4747
Mobile numbers on my possession: 0 (PLEASE SEND ME YOUR NUMBERS)
Mates nearly fired on my behalf: 1
Doctors' orders followed: 0
Doctors' orders ignored: several
Indians met: 500
Indians liked: 490
Times cried: 4 (more than normal due to sad Tommy Burns stuff on internet)
Bottles of champagne:11
$3000 bar tabs: 1
Months trip likely to be shortened due to the above: 2
Houses sold: 0
Cars sold: 0
Blog-in-a-Sun-word: Chaos
I am an idiot of some distinction. And, I suppose, they've invented this round thing called the wheel. But I hadn't fully appreciated quite how much of an idiot i was until relatively recently. I set off for my trip without having sold my flat, my car, paid my parking tickets (that have trebled in cost since they were incurred), or in possession of any documents that might signify where I was actually going. My rucksack - purchased blindly on ebay - arrived the day before my departure and would probably struggle to hold the school books of a 7 year old child. My ipod - likely to be my closest companion on the lonely bus
Take Me Out To The Ball Game
..Take Me Out To The Crowd, Buy Me Some Peanuts And Cracker Jacks... journeys through the Central American wilderness - had not been updated with any songs or pictures by the time my taxi arrived. But I had a plan: bring my laptop in the cab to the airport and send it back to Clapham with the cabbie. The 3059th song out of 3059 completed as we made our way up the Heathrow spur to Terminal 3 and the laptop made it home ok (cheers Kate)... but, as I said, chaos.
So that was me at the airport on time and good to go... havin' a laugh? Imagine they let you into America on a one way ticket... To be fair this is the first time I'd heard of this rule. Either the tour organisers that I'm travelling with hadn't told me or I hadn't read the information properly. I'll let you make your own guesses. 500 quid to buy a new ticket wouldn't have been the best start to the trip but there was a loophole: if you have any documentation to prove that you're leaving the country within 3 months then they'll let you travel. Only I didn't have any documentation. Cue a frantic call to Michelle to print and
And The Award For Most Gullible Boy and Girl In Chicago Goes To..
...these two who only moments before got fleeced into paying full price for standing room only tickets... look who had the last laugh though... fax my itinerary to the airline. 10 minutes later nothing had arrived and the woman at the Customer Service desk was drawing me daggers. 20 minutes and nothing. Can I double check that number? What? Yep, wrong one. Cheers love. More apologies to Michelle. Can you resend etc, flight closed 5 mins ago... Woman at desk still growling (even though by giving me the wrong number it was now technically her fault and she owed me time). 10 more mins and just as I had my credit card out to pay I heard the printer squawk into action. Thank fook. Shelby I owes ya. Now all I had to do was sprint to the furthest away gate in Terminal 3 (gate 21 if you wanna check) to a flight that was already boarding. Sweating and exasperated I took my seat on Air India flight 125 to Chicago O'hare swearing to myself that I've learned my lesson once and for all; I guess time will tell.
And then things started to look up. Even though the plane looked a lot like the one the Wright Brothers invented in 1903, I had 3 seats to myself, time to sit back, calm
down and reflect. Of course, I was the only white guy on the flight but I've always got on well with Indians - it was like being back at Xerox - and the friendly cabin crew made the flight an enjoyable one despite the Indian version of Last Of The Summer Wine that was repeating ad infinitum on the crackly TV screen. Before I leave the flight though I have two criticisms of Indian OAPs that I'm sure my Indian friends will find as funny as they are familiar:
1) What is the deal with them getting up on flights as soon as the wheels touch down and opening the overhead compartments? No amount of chastising from the cabin crew can make them sit down as the wander up and down the aisles in the manner of the zombies in of Shaun Of The Dead. It's not like they're gonna get off the plane any sooner!
2) They think it's the most normal thing in the world to stop / congregate / chat / shoot the breeze in the middle of a doorway when there's a massive queue of people trying to get through it! As Peter Kay
once said, old people, you can't beat them.. shame!
I got to the baggage carousel to discover that my camping mat had detached itself from my (Power Rangers) rucksack in transit but I was soon cheered up to see Rina waiting for me at arrivals. We spent that night with her friends in your classic American Irish bar that looks a lot more American than it does Irish if you know what I mean, playing buyer chooses the round which ended up as messy as you'd expect. I felt like Colin Frissell, the guy in Love Actually who ends up in a random American bar getting pampered by American girls and laughing at how funny it is the way Brits say 'bottle'.
The next day, having got up early to catch the FA Cup Final (and paid $20 for the priviledge), the girls surprised me by taking me to my first ever baseball game at the famous Wrigley field where the Chicago Cubs were hosting the Pittsburgh Pirates. Despite being less than au fait with the rules, I managed to fit in ok by eating nachos (with that radioactive orange-coloured cheese that goes with them), high-fiving anyone within
arm's reach (go Cubs) and learning the words to Let's Go Out To The Ball Game. But just after the Seventh Innning Stretch (check me) my jetlag started to kick in so I headed back to the apartment to rest up for we had a big night in store.
I've been accused of many things in my time, but being stingy certainly isn't one of them. Which is one of the things that makes travelling difficult for me - I am the world's worst budgeter. But even by my horrendous standards, getting caught up in a $3000 bar tab between 8 people takes some beating. I've never fully understood how nightclubs can get away with charging the price of a hospital wing in Uganda for a bottle of vodka, but the girls had taken extremely good care of me and I certainly didn't wanna lose face in The Underground, downtown Chicago. Girls, if you're reading this, I'm only trying to be funny: you know that I know that you know I had a great time and don't regret it for a moment but it's tinned baked beans for dinner for the rest of the trip...
I've been lucky
enough to visit Chicago a few times with work so it was without the pressure of feeling like I was missing out on any sights that I spent the rest of my weekend, lazily allowing the hangover to subside, eating ice cream and watching DVDs. It had been a hectic couple of weeks with all the preparations, Kinsale, trips between London and Glasgow etc so it was good to relax for a bit. Besides, I had the small matter of a 6 week camping tour in Alaska ahead of me, and of course did I have any camping stuff...?
That brings me up to date for now. Let me know how you're all doing and please send on your numbers.
God Bless This House
Ginty
P.S. More pics to follow
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Steve
non-member comment
dear god.....
hillarious....i literally cannot wait for the next edition.....is this trip gonna end like Into The Wild??!! :o)