| Jul. 3rd, 2009 @ 10:24 am 2009 World Tour, Part One |
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We're in Vancouver, BC right now, and will be for about another 26 hours.
Here's what our past few days have been like:
6/29, 4:30 AM: Wake up, drive to Wellington.
7:30 AM: Stuck in tremendous traffic snarl on way into Welly. Slowed to a halt. Plane leaving at 10. Pants being shit at this point.
7:45: Liz uses the iPhone to find us an alternate route. We arrive at our destination only 15 minutes behind schedule as a result.
8:15: Cable car ride down to the CBD in Wellington.
8:50: The 8:40 bus to the airport finally shows up.
9:15: Electronic checkin at the airport.
9:16: Checkin complete. Holy shit that was fast.
10:00: Plane ride to Auckland.
10-11: Customs, security.
13:00: Plane leaves for Fiji.
16:00: Arrive in Fiji. What a tease: we can see all this awesome scenery outside, but since we're just transferring to LA, we're restricted to this mall-like airport terminal for six hours. We pass the time playing War and Peggle. Liz is already exhausted.
22:00: Plane leaves Fiji for LA.
I read Richard II on the Fiji to LA flight. I didn't have to read it; I read it because I wanted to. "HEY, he's learnin' on his own! Let's get 'im!"
I really hope the guy who spent most of that flight hacking up a lung in the seat next to me didn't have swine flu.
13:00, June 29: Arrive at LAX. We left at 22:00 on June 29, and arrived at 13:00 on June 29. Time travel FTW.
Reminder: punch our travel agent in the sack when we get back to NZ. The info on our itinerary wasn't clear at all as to which airline was actually flying us to Seattle; it said American Airlines (flight operated by Alaska), so we went to American first, which was clear on the other fucking side of LAX from where we were meant to go. Hooray for hauling around all of our gear in LA summer heat when we have less than three hours to make our connecting flight.
On returning to the U.S. for the first time in a year, things I notice:
Flying into LA, I couldn't believe how gross the air over the city is. When the smog layer is so thick it causes turbulence when you descend through it, it might be time to beef up your clean air legislation.
It's not as loud as I'd feared it would be, but it's still plenty boisterous.
Fat people EVERYWHERE, as anticipated.
A plague of iPhones. In the restaurant at the airport, all three of the people sitting behind Liz had one. I saw more people with iPhones within an hour of landing in the U.S. than I've seen in the past YEAR in NZ.
At the restaurant, I ordered a seafood cob salad. I was expecting a small bowl, but the guy set this enormous monstrosity in front of me. I was taken aback. I had forgotten how ridiculously huge the portion sizes are here. Liz calls it "getting what you pay for". After factoring in the exchange rate, she's correct: 150% more cost for 200% more food (and calories) = extra primo bargain. Too bad most of the food is inedible, chemically-tainted swill.
16:30: Leave L.A. bound for Seattle.
When you look at L.A. from above, there's no trace of it that isn't wholly manufactured. Hundreds of square miles of concrete, asphalt, and steel. Trees? What the hell are those? The Pacific Ocean sits next to this giant cancer of a city like an afterthought. I can't help but wonder what this place might have been like 60 years ago, before my grandparents' generation, armed with "gumption" and good intentions, completely ruined Southern California forever.
I order a Jones Soda. 30,000 feet above Santa Barbara, I have my first taste of high fructose corn syrup in over a year, and I seriously want to hurl. The aftertaste is brutal, a chemical tang like someone poured a jar of formaldehyde in my mouth. I did not finish my drink.
20:05: Arrive in Seattle.
20:30: Find the rental car counter unoccupied, so we have to catch a shuttle to the rental place. We are not amused.
20:50: The rental agent tries to talk us into getting a bigger car so we'll have more room than the economy model. I ask what the economy model is. It's a Toyota Yaris. It's bigger than our car back home. We take the economy car.
21:00: Leave Seatac, bound for Sequim. Caffeine, Liz's randomness, and KNDD 107.7 are the only things keeping me from crashing. That, and my mantra, repeated every time I start driving: "The car goes on the RIGHT side of the road. RIGHT turns are TIGHT turns."
23:00: Arrive at my mom's house. Over 36 hours of travel later, we can finally sleep in a real bed.
July 1, 10:00: Bank of America in Sequim only has $45 in Canadian. They assure me one of the Port Angeles branches should have more. This will be important later.
10:30: Spend 20 minutes in the AT&T store trying to get a SIM and pre-paid plan for my iPhone so I can use it in the States, only to find out that AT&T no longer offers pre-paid plans for the iPhone, for no other reason than that they want people to stick to the 2-year contracts. I am livid, and I will be devoting a very long, nasty post on TUAW on this topic when I get back to NZ.
11:00: Enter a Wal-Mart for the first time since 2006 with the intent of getting a T-Mobile SIM and card. Sadly, they have no SIMs. Neither do any of the other T-Mobile stores in the area. So for the duration of our holiday, my iPhone has become an iPod touch. Thanks a fucking bunch, U.S. telecommunications. Please form a line to the left and suck my motherfucking dick, you pricks.
Back at my mom's place, for most of the day, she and John are content to sit around and watch TV, as I'd expected. To combat boredom, Liz and I go for a 2-hour walk down by Dungeness Bay. On our walk, Liz notices something: before we moved to NZ, the Olympic Peninsula seemed the epitome of clean, natural, unspoilt beauty. After a year in NZ, Washington's best-kept areas seem ordinary and even somewhat blighted by comparison, and FAR too crowded. All this natural beauty is hemmed in by highways, power lines, and billboards. It's disheartening to say the least.
We spend most of the rest of the day either riding around on my mom's quad bike (MEGA fun) or playing with her two Labrador Retrievers. My mom's dogs are incredibly unhealthy (one is so overweight he can barely reach his junk if he wants to lick it), and VERY poorly behaved. If they just got the exercise they need, they'd be far better off both physically and mentally. My mom admits she can't do for them all she'd like, but all I can say is if you're incapable of administering the proper amount of care and attention, you probably shouldn't own Labs. There are plenty of dog breeds that need little exercise in order to live happy lives - Labs aren't one of them.
Mom herself is looking very stricken. She's two years younger than Liz's mom, but looks ten years older as a result of her smoking and various ailments, rheumatoid arthritis among them. Her doctor suspects she may have lupus, and after seeing rashes on my face (caused by having little access to face washing facilities for nearly two days), she leapt to the conclusion that I must have it, too. It's not lupus. It's never lupus.
July 2, 11:00 - we leave my mom's place and head for a Bank of America in Port Angeles to get some Canadian cizzash. Unfortunately, this results in a clusterfuck that could only happen in America: the woman who has all the Canadian money in her drawer is on her lunch break, and no one else can open her drawer. GOD FORBID they provide some actual SERVICE and get her out there to help us for two minutes; instead, they give us the $120 they have in other drawers and basically tell us to fuck off.
This incident is a perfect example of hos American customer service is absolute shit compared to NZ. Americans seem more interested in telling you why you can't do something and then passing blame up their chain of command rather than actually helping you. "I'm sorry, but the RULES say I don't need to help your sorry ass out. Now please fuck right off, sir or madam." In NZ, they seem more willing to help people rather than following completely arbitrary rules designed for no purpose other than making life difficult for average people and easier for corporate interests. This is one of the biggest reasons why I left the U.S., and something that will stop me from coming back for at least a couple of years.
12:45: We get on the ferry, despite an initial scare that we wouldn't get a space because we didn't make a reservation. I've ridden on Washington ferries for 25 years, and this is the first I've ever heard of needing a reservation to get on one, but whatever. We get on and head for Victoria so Liz can shop at the Tall Girl store. On our way there, we see several pods of Orca swimming through the Strait. That alone made it worth the trip.
14:00: Only a couple dozen miles away from my mom's place in Sequim, the atmosphere in Canada is completely different. The streets are cleaner; the people are fitter, happier, less judgemental. Things that were a giant hassle in the States, or that they'd try to charge you money for (like exchanging money) are suddenly free of charge and hassle. We're both highly impressed with Canada's people and environment, both of which remind us of New Zealand in many ways. We've decided that if Liz can't find an internship in the UK, Canada will be a very close second choice. Under no circumstances will she intern in the U.S., however; except for very brief visits, we are both definitely done with America.
18:00: On the ferry to Vancouver, I find myself suffering from exhaustion. Bad enough is the 19-hour jet lag; worse is the seasonal lag. My brain is convinced that it's supposed to be dark by 5:15, but the sun still rides high at 7:15, with hours to go until it sets. Very disorienting.
20:30: We arrive in Vancouver. This is my first visit to the city in about 20 years. The impression I got of it from my last visits was that it was Canada's Seattle, and this is an impression I retain, for now.
July 3, 11:00: I sit here typing this, waiting for a phone call from friends of ours. Actually, the waiting stops as soon as I post this.
Stay tuned for part two, wherein I will no doubt find much more negative things to say about the U.S. upon visiting the condensed version of everything I loathe about it: Las Vegas. *shudder* |
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