Reporting from AmericaChristmas time. Stuffing our faces with food, getting drunk and laying down in the backyard. Not for me though, this year things were different. I spent this Christmas with my girlfriend's family in Chicago, the United States of America. I had a real white TV Christmas this year. Oh boy!
I sat in my big metal bird for 13 hours. Man did not evolve to fly, but he did evolve a need to be constantly entertained. Qantas seats have inbuilt movie players and game machines, except my controller had broken down and right buttons. My caveman made a lot of left turns in running away from mammoths.
Walking around the cabin, I couldn't help but stare at the entry hatch. That big metal handle, tempting me. Almost talking to me. Open me. You don't want to kill everybody, you just want to see what would happen. I would jump, but would I freeze to death? Drown? Be torn apart by the impact? The in-flight stats screen didn't quiet my mind any. I tried to remember the equations of motion I learned in high school. I'm 10km high, acceleration from gravity is 9.8m/s/s, initial velocity is 0 but I don't know my final velocity... it's -40°C outside the plane and blood freezes at 0.5°C at sea level, but the body generates 37°C... would the shock going from a pressurised cabin to a much thinner atmosphere give me the bends instead... Not that I thought any of that. No.
The first thing that I was greeted with in LAX was a double portrait of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, unfortunately I didn't have a camera handy. LAX really is the Mos Eisley spaceport of America, I heard more languages and saw more nationalities there than I expected. Asians, South Americans, Africans (both the real kind and the US kind) and even a few Australians. I found that I could pick out Australian accents in a crowd, but that was the last that I heard of them for a while.
The guy at customs scanned my terrorist fingerprints and took my terrorist photo. He was cranky, I guess I would be too if I had to work at 6am on Christmas Day and my kids were opening their presents as my neighbour was banging my wife. Leaving customs was another double portrait of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. I could feel their eyes following me, like I was in a Scooby Doo mansion.
From there I got on a connecting flight to Chicago. The view on that flight was nothing short of spectacular, the plane flew much lower than usual which gave me a great view of the North American continent. An sprawling metropolis became an amazing desert, which turned into a dramatic mountain range and then a green patchwork of farmland. Green squares slowly turned into white squares, punctuated by frozen lakes and small towns.
When I arrived in Chicago the temperature was -5°C and there was snow around. Due to timezone changes I had a 41 hour long Christmas Day, likely the longest one I'll have in my life. The day before I was walking around a drought-stricken farm back in Australia in stifling heat. A few days into my stay it snowed heavily, and it did not stop. Where I was at, snow is seen as an annoyance, but for me it was free cocaine. I hadn't seen snow in years and never in this amount, not even at a ski resort. I had been told that this would happen, but as always I knew better and packed t-shirts and shorts.
Ah America. Miles, pounds, inches, calories, Fahrenheit, acres, gallons and every other pre-industrial unit of measurement that the civilised world had long ago discarded but were still held on to in the US. My girlfriend can convert them all in her head and is fluent in both imperial and metric, but not me.
I had spent a month in the United States in 2005, so I wasn't a total Borat. Some things had changed since I had last been there. There were fewer American flags around, where previously they were on every house, street corner, car bumper and orphanage. The people were still exceedingly polite, and I was treated very well. I don't take too well to generosity and I outright hate being the centre of attention. Being Australian I was just barely different enough to attract attention, so I learned quickly not to talk too much and respond with friendly nods and brief homogeneous replies like "nope" and "uh huh". I tried my best to blend in, but I came across as awkward and insular. I sure felt that way at least.
One thing that all peoples have in common is their love of buying stuff. I spent a lot more American money than I would have spent with Australian money, despite items being a little cheaper over there. It didn't seem like real money to me, so I spend it like toy money. I blame not having David Unaipon's sobering face staring back at me... judging me. Speaking of money, banks in the US are drive-through! They have a air tube thingo for money and cheques. Personal cheques are much more popular in the US than in Australia as their equivalent of EFTPOS hasn't really taken off. What a magical land.
The food in the US is as you would expect. The variety is pretty poor, unless you like Mexican, but the quantity is massive. In fact Mexican food is pretty much dominant there, even McDonalds offers burritos. I never saw any "freedom fries", maybe I missed that wave. Actually, I never saw any in 2005 either, maybe it was all a big beat up. Buffets are big there. People are big there, and I joined them. I put on 2kgs over my stay.
The Mexican influence extends to more than food; almost all official signage I saw was in both English and Spanish. The racist in me cried foul that the mighty nation of America should not be pandering to those who haven't learned the language, but the rationalist in me realised that all people needed direction, and if that direction can't be understood then it is useless. Signage doesn't exist for the benefit of the people, but for the benefit of the system.
I returned to Australia in the new year with a suitcase full of chocolates and other edible things that aren't available here. So what was the best part of my trip? Well, there was the week-long Futurama marathon, and then there was this...
I love it. It's a sad day in the Lonely Planet offices when a commercial for car insurance is the most memorable part of an overseas adventure.
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I'm sure your girlfriend and her family will be delighted to hear you enjoyed a car insurance ad was more fun and interesting than they were.
I have absolutely no idea what that ad had to do with insurance.
But I have had the same morbid idea about the plane's door.
I'm no rocket scientist (or brain surgeon), but wouldn't it be exceedingly difficult to open the emergency doors at altitude?
no because the cabin is pressurised so when the lock is released it would open pretty fucken easy to open if it didn't fly open itself
It's like looking into a living snow mirror.
I like the fact that most of the comments on that intensely scintillating travelogue concerned your ruminations on the effects of rapid decompression. I can see the best-seller now "The Physics and Mathematics of Entertaining Suicides - What the Darwin Awards Don't Tell You!"
BTW, you look like Travis Bickle in a coat with sunnies. Nice work. Yeah i'm talkin' ta you.
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