Ok, I feel the time has come for
me to attempt to tell you about my trip to the USA. The journeys both
there and
back were hellish, but you can read about them in the two posts below.
Needless to say, the past three
weeks have been the best of my life, and I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to
manage to fit this rant into an acceptable length. But let’s see how I go, it
might be too long.. Before I go any further, here’s the deal: I was on tour with two bands
from NZ,
The Outsiders and
Freddy Fudd Pucker. Both these bands include two of
my big brothers and four of my favourite people in the world. We drove the
entire way in a 1986 Chevy van, the “Good Time’s” model. I kid you not. That is the official model name of the van. (UPDATE: Good Times has died a sad mechanical death as of 12/11/11 and the guys are stuck in Wyoming with no money and no way to get anywhere! If you want to help you can go
here and buy their album!)
So, the delirium began in
Manhattan, New York, with slices of pizza and then a show (as in a gig the
bands were playing) just off Broadway at The Studio at Webster Hall, with two
other bands,
Cobra Skulls and
Nothington, with whom we would cross paths
several times in the coming weeks. I had been travelling for around 90 hours at
this point so was a mere puddle of a person, but I managed to pull it together
and drink a lot of coffee and beer. The night ended in Rosemary’s Bar in
Brooklyn, drinking gigantic $4 beers and then me passing out asleep in the back
of the van with one of my brothers, parked outside a friends’ apartment.
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| Three for the Wonderwheel |
The next day it was time to eat
New York bagels and go to Coney Island. Stu, Kitt and I set off on the subway.
We immediately realised we were heading in the wrong direction and had to get
off and pay to get back on again which was a bit of a bummer but ah well. Coney
Island was awesome! The Wonderwheel was everything I had hoped it would be and
more, and it was pretty cool to see the place
The Warriors call home. I loved
the people watching, so many Orthodox Jews everywhere, which, as most of you
know, I’m pretty into. After a little nap on the boardwalk, all too soon it was
time to head back to Brooklyn and pack into Gordie Good Times to head to Philadelphia.
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that the Fresh Prince theme song was sung
relentlessly during this drive, but I just did so there you go. This show was
good, but I was too tired to comprehend what was going on, so as soon as I
could I fell asleep in the back of the van again.
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| Richmond, Virginia |
The next morning it was off to
Richmond, Virginia, via Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, D.C. This was also
an excellent show, and we got put up by the nicest guy ever (the millionth of
many) who cooked us the most nutritious meal any of us had eaten in a long
time. We struck up a conversation with a guy at the bar who’s daughters cousin
is Terence Trent D'arby, that was a little bit awesome. There was also the most
amazing Great Dane there named Louie. He was gigantic. I’d forgotten how fantastic
it is to be able to pat dogs, because the ones here are all scody and flea and
mange riddled. Anyway, moving on. The
next hazy day we went down to check out Occupy Richmond. It was really amazing
seeing the movement in action. These people are serious about what they are
doing and what is going on in the world. And they are totally right. It is time
for change in this world. It was really inspiring seeing signs in shop windows
all over the country saying “We Support Occupy (insert city here)”. Unfortunately
we couldn’t hang around for too long as we had to drive to Norfolk, Virginia
for the show that night.
In Norfolk, I unfortunately had a
melt down and had to go sleep in the van again. The jet lag hit me so badly, it
sucked. But from what I was told the show was great and everyone loved the
guys. By the time we went back to the house we were staying at I had my second
wind and was ready to drink some beers and talk some trash. Once again, the
nicest people in the world were giving us their home to stink up.
The next day we went to Virginia
Beach. It was a shithole. That’s all there is to it. Highly disappointing. By
this time, there were several team members on the brink of a mental breakdown.
Long drives, sleeping on floors, relentless drinking and low-grade food were
taking their toll. Oh, I don’t think I’ve mentioned that the others had been on
tour like this for 4 weeks already. So that night we made the big decision to
splash out $50 on a dive motel in Emporia, North Carolina. We couldn’t afford
for everyone to have somewhere to sleep, so we got a room with two double beds
and snuck the extra three people in. With two to a bed, one on the floor and
two in the van, we had a much needed semi-good nights’ sleep. We slept late and
missed the free breakfast, so it was off to yet another
Waffle House with us
for yet another unhealthy stack of hash browns. Delicious. I love diners. This
day we were headed to Durham, North Carolina to meet up with the two bands we’d
played with in NYC. We had some time up our sleeves, so we took some really
beautiful back roads. We ended up at Fall’s Lake, which was very pretty, if
rather grubby.
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| Team Gordie Good Times |
Then it was on to Durham. This was
a particularly good night. The show was at a really cool venue, and we were got
to see our friends’ bands play again. This night involved some good
shenanigans, but as this is somewhat of a PG 13 version of events, I can’t
really go into detail. Let’s just say there was a significant amount of beers
and cheap malt liquor. So many, in fact, that the next day I was still drunk
and this was when I got my perm.
Ah the perm. The biggest waste of
money to date. This thing is the mid-90’s love / bane of my life. It was ok
when I was still in the USA, but now that I’m back in humidity-land. Well, I’m
sure you can imagine. The motivation for the perm was peer pressure from Sarah,
who has had one for about the past 9 months. Hers is great. And so is mine, we
just have very different hair. Oh the perm.
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| Great Smokey Mountains |
So, it was with a head smelling
of farty perm solution that we headed down the road to Creedsmore, North
Carolina, as we had been invited to play at a party being held by friends of
the people we’d crashed with the night before. This was a particularly good
night. The hosts were the most welcoming and wonderful people in the world (yet
again), and plied us with booze, delicious food and a cornucopia of good times,
including the sacrificial burning of a wedding dress from the previous marriage
of a woman that had just married into the family. The burning was going on
while Tom and Sarah (Freddy Fudd Pucker) were playing songs to us all around
the camp / wedding dress fire. It was a very good time indeed. The next day
after a big delicious breakfast from our delightful hosts, and a lot of huffing
of their helium balloons and singing of Roy Orbison songs, we headed into the
Great Smokey Mountains, which are part of the Appalachian Mountains. Wow. This was
an incredible drive. It’s Autumn in the US at the moment, so the colours were
breathtaking. We stopped off for a picnic lunch at some beautiful falls, there
were signs everywhere warning us to look out for bears, but alas, we didn’t get
to see any. I was sad about it. This drive took us to Newport, Tennessee, and
as we had no show and therefore nowhere to stay that night, we forked out
another $50 for a truckers Best Western. This one had a semen-tank of a hot tub
in its pool area which was both a treat and terrifying all at the same time.
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| Permtastic Waffle House |
The next day we were keen to go
to Dollywood on our way to Knoxville, Tennessee, but as no one had any money,
Dolly Parton-land will just have to wait until next time I’m in the area.
Knoxville was a bit of a crappy place. A total college town with cheerleaders
and douchey looking guys strutting around. But the show was awesome, it was in
a Saloon and when the guy behind the bar ran out of .75c beers for us, he let
us go to the liquor store and buy our own to sneakily drink as he didn’t want
to rip us off with full priced beers. Oh the hospitality. It was unfortunate
that this show ended with the most horrible display of American culture we’d
yet to come across: some dickhead that started laughing at us because the NZ
police don’t carry guns. He then went on to rant about how he has 12 guns at
home. When we asked why he just started yelling about the fact that it’s his
constitutional right, that’s why. Then he started throwing the N-word around
and it was time to get the hell out of there. So it was back to a new friend’s
place for a wild Taco Bell party and passing out on yet another floor.
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| Heavy Petty! |
The next day we headed to
Atlanta, Georgia. This was a strange show, as there was two other completely
awesome bands playing across town, so we didn’t get many of the type of people
that would usually come to one of our shows. It was still a great night though,
made all the better by the fact that the bar tender was hilariously drunk, and they
had a ping pong table, one of the only games I’m good at. The next day we were
in Jacksonville, Florida. On the way we had a tire blow-out, which Tom managed
to deal with like an expert, avoiding certain death by rolling had it been me driving.
After a tyre-change as quick as some kind of race car pit stop crew, we were in
Jacksonville. This was a good show, and a really fun night that ended with me
and Dave drinking free Four Loco and being very messy drunks. A good time was
had by all I would say. We decided not to stay in Jacksonville that night, but
to push on to Gainesville, only 1 ½ hours away as that’s where we were going to
be based for the next 5 days or so due to the greatest music festival of all
time....
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| The best pool party |
FEST 10! This was hands down the
best weekend of my life to date. A very big call, I know. But true none the
less. Imagine if you had a town that emptied out its college frat boys and
sorority girls for one weekend a year to make way for 5000 fun-loving,
beer-swigging, peace-promoting punks to overrun it. Throw in over 200 bands and
10 venues, dozens of tents in several people’s backyards, all your new best
friends and all the $1 PBR’s you can drink, and that’s Fest. The greatest time
and place on earth. Highlights of the weekend for me were most definitely the
pool party at the Holiday Inn after registration that started off the weekend,
Against Me!, and dancing more or less topless with my brothers to Heavy Petty,
the Tom Petty tribute band that closed the festival. Oh Fest. How I miss you
so. For those of you that care, here are just some of the incredible bands I
saw: Smoke or Fire, Dead to Me, Cobra Skulls, The Dopamines, Teenage
Bottlerocket (who played Ramones, Lillingtons and Bad Religion covers!), Off
With Their Heads, Samiam, Against Me!, Nothington, Lemuria, Spanish Gamble,
Dillinger Four, A Wilhelm Scream, The Flatliners, Mikey Erg and Banner Pilot.
And that’s just some of them. It was like 20 years worth of awesome bands
coming to NZ in just one weekend. There are a lot of very good stories about
Fest that unfortunately cannot be told in this PG 13 space, but when we next
see each other, boy have I got some treats for you.
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| The best photo ever taken. Without question. |
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| Who's legs? |
So it was with a heavy and very
hungover and scragged out heart that on Monday morning we tried to pull
ourselves together to get back on the road as we had another show in Atlanta, Georgia
that night. But, Gordie Good Times did not want us to leave either, so he was
towed to the auto-shop and us to the liquor store. It was Halloween today. Or,
as I like to call it now, Clownoween. Sarah had been carrying around a bag of
clown make up for nearly a month waiting for the perfect opportunity to arise.
And what better time than in some guys back yard, on Halloween, with a bunch of
new best friends that also didn’t want the party to be over. Within about 4
hours we were all very drunk and there were about 25 terrifying clowns kicking
about in the backyard playing frisbee with Louis the dog, singing badly around
a campfire, carving festive gourds, letting off fireworks and being fed by the
manager of the
Ramones Museum in Berlin (who had Kiss clown make-up on), who
was there with an official photographer to document the festival, the bands
(us?) and the general good times for one of Germany's biggest music magazines. Hmm. This random and unplanned night turned into
one of the highlights of the whole three weeks away. I think the fact that
Sarah, a new friend, and I found a secret and incredibly plush secret bed to sleep in topped the
night off. After 4 nights sleeping on the hard Florida ground in a tent with no
bed rolls, this was a huge treat.
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| The Gulf! |
Finally it was time to say
goodbye to Gainesville. Today we were off to Hattiesburg , Mississippi, via
Pensacola Beach, Florida and Alabama. I can now tick “swim in the Gulf of
Mexico” off my bucket list. It was awesome.
Hattiesburg was a house party,
and I hate to say it, but I was partied out. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. The 12
nights or so in a row of heavy drinking were catching up on me, so it was back
in the van for some sleep for me. The next day I was told it was a wild party
and I totally missed out. Oh well. Next, onto Houma, Louisiana, via New
Orleans. New Orleans is a very cool place. And driving in and out of there is
insane. All swampy, with drippy trees everywhere. Unfortunately we only had a
couple of hours to look around New Orleans, but they were a good couple of
hours that’s for sure. We went down to the French Quarter, it’s full of musicians,
voodoo stores, palm readers, curly tall buildings, cobble stones and horses and
carts. A whole different world.
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| Sassy Pickles |
Houma, Louisiana was an excellent
time. We stayed with some good friends the guys made last year when they were
there. I have to say that the Louisiana accents are basically the coolest in
the world. So long and drawn out, and everything ends with “hun” or “baby” I
loved it! That and the fact that out the back of the venue there was a 5ft
gator living in the bayou. Many an hour was spent staring at the water in the
dark convincing ourselves we’d seen him. We spent two nights in Houma, and
during the day in the middle we all had the first shower and underpants change
we’d had in between 4-9 days. There was also laundry done. It was a real treat,
let me tell you. The second night there was Ladies Night at the bar we were
playing at (the same one as the night before) so Sarah, Jo and I pulled out the
red lipstick and fluffed our perms and got free drinks all night. The stroke of
midnight marked Tom’s birthday. Sarah and I had concocted him a birthday bag
full of trash from the gas station, trash we found in the van and some of his
own belongings we stole from his bag, including an infamous pair of pool ball
underpants. He was a very happy boy.
After Houma we had a very long
drive ahead of us to Austin, Texas, Sarah’s home town. This was a rough drive
filled with birthday sassy pickles, incredibly urgent pee stops and me starting
to get emotional and anxious as I was leaving in two days. We finally made it
to Austin by about 9pm, and it was fantastic to finally get to meet Sarah’s
family, who plied us with much needed beers and tacos. Stu, Tom, Sarah, Kitt
and I then headed down the road to a real-life cowboy bar. It was amazing. They
weren’t playing dress-ups, they were really wearing those hats and boots and
belt buckles. Kitt and I danced a little to the live band, but I can’t two-step
so we weren’t nearly as good as the locals. Then it was on to Tom and Sarah’s favourite
bar in Austin for some pool and to wait for our friend that was going to stay
with us that night, to finish his show with his band. We eventually scooped him
up and went back to Sarah’s for more tacos and very many more beers. Finally at
around 5am it was time for bed. This was the first time and of us had our own
beds in a long time, and it was all too strange, so we all ended up furiously spooning
in one bed. It gets lonely sleeping alone when you’re used to having at least
two others crammed in there with you.
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| A big 'ol bag of birthday trash |
And finally, my last day with the
team had arrived. I was pretty anxious and freaked out and emotional this day
as I didn’t know whether the flooding in Thailand was going to let me get home
or not. Plus, I just plain didn’t want to leave. Eventually, the time came, and
you can read about that
here if you want. It sucked and I cried like the little
baby I am.
Being in the USA was a very
strange experience. I’ve only skimmed the surface of what I want to tell you
all. But this is already far too long. So here’s one more quick observation:
remember Styrofoam? Yeah, I’d forgotten it existed too. Not so in the USA.
Everywhere you go people are using it. It’s disgusting. You eat in a diner and
they will serve you on disposable Styrofoam plates. Bizarre.
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| Van Living |
So these were the best three
weeks of my life. All the above is interwoven with the best times ever. Stolen
condiments from fast food outlets, borderline malnutrition due to being poor,
near-miss nervous breakdowns, an inability to stay awake in the back seat of
the van due to the stifling heat and the fact that only two windows up front open
and there’s no a/c. Sleeping on floors night after night, not showering for
days on end and wearing the same clothes during the day that you slept in the
night before and the night before that. Zero personal space. My favourite people
in the world and all the incredible new best friends I made along the way that
I am devastated I’ll probably never see again.
My first day back here in Mae Sot
was a bit of a mind warp. I experienced some pretty serious culture shock: I
went into the Clinic to say hi and the first thing my friend said as she rushed
out the door was “a baby just died in my arms I’m going to buy some smokes”.
When I came back outside someone had spat all over my shoes and there was a
baby peeing on my feet. Reality hit me pretty hard. As did the jetlag and
borderline homesickness. I’m feeling much better now, but I’ve just realised
that I only have six weeks left here now, and that doesn’t seem like long
enough. So now I need to do some serious thinking about how the hell I am going
to make it back here in February. Even though I’m struggling to figure out what
the hell has just happened in the past three weeks and how that fits in with the
completely weird life I live over here, I’m not ready to leave these people or
this place and I’m not quite sure what to do about it.
There is so much more I can tell
you, so if you want to know, just ask...you know how I like to talk.
Firstly, I’d like to say an enormous
thank you to all of you that have shown your support since my last postcard.
And to those of you that have chosen to contribute, thank you so much. It’s a cliché,
but really, words cannot express my gratitude, it means so much to me that
there are such amazing people in my life. So thank you thank you thank you. 
So, how about that election then
NZ? The results were not even remotely close to what I was going for, but I
suppose that’s democracy. Although, I am really shocked that Winston is back.
That’s just weird. Apparently voter turnout this year was the lowest it’s been
since 2002, which is incredibly disappointing. Apathy is a terrible thing. At
this stage, the electoral office is saying that only 73.83% of eligible voters
actually bothered to vote. I find it really distressing that there are people
the world over literally dying for the right to vote, and so many people from
the place I call home don’t bother to exercise their right to vote. 
This weekend a work friend of
mine got married, so eleven of us from the Clinic made the six hour journey up
the border to Mae Sariang for the wedding. It was just great. We stayed with
one of our colleagues that has a house up there, we all slept together on the
floor in the main room, well, the two boys with us slept outside. I’m not sure
why as there were plenty of other places in the house they could have slept and still been separated from us. The next morning we all got up super early (as is the local way), and got
dressed up in our traditional Karen outfits, I have my own Karen skirt and my
friend gave me an amazing top to wear, it wasn't Karen, but it was similar. It reminded me of some kind of Eastern European folk dancing attire with all it's ribbons and tassles. 
We got to the church – the most
quaint Catholic church I have ever seen. It even had stables with cows living
in them at the bottom of the steps. The windows were open to views of the
mountains and the recently harvested rice fields. It was picturesque to say the
least. The whole ceremony was in Karen, except for the vows, which were in
English, so I had no idea what was going on at any stage, although you don’t
need language to understand love and happiness, as cheesy as that sounds. My
friend, the bride, looked absolutely beautiful in her Karen outfit, with a
traditional western style white veil, she was glowing. The whole thing was
fantastic. 
After the ceremony we all followed
the bride and groom down the street in a parade to the reception.
Unfortunately, the food was a bit much for me, I’m not so into chicken feet and
skin soup, and uncooked pork mince with congealed blood mixed in. But everyone
else was into it, so it was ok. The reception was a dine and dash affair, as we
had a six hour drive ahead of us on very winding roads that were partially
washed away in many places due to all the rain we had in the wet season. So we
all piled back into the back of the pickup truck (no safety rules here), and
off we went. I felt terrible for some of the girls: it’s been a long time since
I’ve seen so many people so seriously car sick. The drive was stunningly
beautiful though, and we stopped off a few times to buy vegetables and things, and
drop things off to peoples family members in one of the refugee camps along the
way. The whole weekend was lovely, it was great to spend some time with my
local colleagues outside of work, and it was wonderful to be part of such a
rich cultural experience as a wedding.
