Travelling in the States

Whenever I travel I can't help but notice the little things that are different compared to back home in Australia.  I'm just finishing up a few weeks in the United States, and maybe it's because the US and Australia aren't really too different, so the little things seem more noticeable.  So anyway, I couldn't help but compile a mental list of the differences, both good and bad.  

So here you go, in no particular order, my take on what is better or worse in the US of A:

1.  Good: Taco Bell.  Now I know a lot of American's will disagree with me on this one, but coming from Australia where the Mexican food is just aweful I think it's great that I can find a bean and cheese burito just about anywhere.
2. Bad: Tipping.  Tipping is just a pain in the butt.  There's the whole social awkwardness side - how much is the right amount, when do you tip, do you tip for counter service etc etc.  You always have to have cash handy, and then there is the maths required, not really my strong point.  Worst of all, I reckon when I actually got great service from someone, they were doing a job where I wasn't able to give them a tip!  Eg. the check out chick who gave good advise on things to do; the bus driver who made a point of stopping the bus just for us and letting us know it was the right stop, the guy who double bagged our groceries and gave us a discount, or the park ranger who recommended hikes.
3. Good: 
   
   Dogs get in or on a lot of places.  In the US, it's not unusual to see someone with their dog on public transport, on a plane, in a hotel, a restaurant, or a national park.  Dogs are really common in cities' downtown areas too.   In Seattle we had a dog park right around the corner.  In Australia, you can barely take your dog anywhere, and you never see a dog in the CBD unless it is a service dog.  Dogs are great, and having dogs around is just better.
4. Good:  Free chips and salsa.  Every Mexican restuarant in the States provides complimentary corn chips and salsa while you wait for your meal to be brought to the table, and they will even fill up the bowl with more chips if you run out.  In Australia half the time you can even get tomato sauce for your pie without paying extra.
5. Bad:  Sales tax not included in the total.  You never really know how much something is going to cost until they run it through the till.  It's just a pain in the butt.  FFS just include the sales tax in the ticket price people!!!  It's not that hard!!!!!!
6. Good:  Booze is everywhere, and cheap.  Some may not think that this is a good thing, but I love being able to pick up a six pack of beer at the same time as my petrol, groceries, laundry, drugs, guns (ok I'm not sure about this one).  Every little place is licensed too, so you can easily order a beer to go with your burrito.  And it's cheap, an actually pretty damn good!  Sure they still have cats piss for sale like Budweiser and Coors, but now there are heaps of great micro breweries around.  It's not just beer either.  Last night I had dinner at a place where all of the extensive alcohol was from within 360 miles of the venue.  That's whiskey, gin, vodka, rum - all made local.  Come on now that's just tops.  Support local and get pissed doing it.
7. Good: Mexican Food.  You may have noticed that quite a few on this list are about Mexican food, but it deserves it's own point.  Mexican food is in every town in every little nook and cranny, and every one of those is better than the junk we get in Australia.  In fact as a rule, the worse the place looks in the US, the better the food tastes.  Did I mention you always get free chips and salsa?
8. Good:  REI.  REI is a retail chain that started in Seattle and is now all over the place, that sells good quality and reasonably priced outdoor recreation gear.  Every time I go into one of their stores I find stuff I didn't even know existed that I now need.  They make me want to go out and have awesome wilderness adventures.  The staff are really good too and know their stuff, and the company is actually really cool - just check out Wikipedia.  The Seattle flagship store I went to a few days ago had a park ranger giving out maps and hiking information.  They even had a mountain bike test track around the building FFS!  Nothing in Australia comes anywhere near close.  REI REI REI REI REI.  Rad.
9. Bad:  Four way stops. 
   
   This one is a real gripe of mine, four way stops are just so dumb!  If you don't know what I mean, it's where all roads that come to an intersection have a stop sign, instead of one road having the right of way.  It's moronic.  You have to stop even if no one is around, and then if more than one car get to the intersection at the same time you do this stupid dance trying to be polite, still get where you are going and not have an accident.  Plus it creates heaps of stop-start traffic and wastes fuel.
10. Good:  Right on red.  Fortunately, whatever points the yanks lose because of four way stops, they more than redeem them with this ltttle beauty.  Basically, unless there is specifically a sign saying you can't do it, you can legally turn right when you have a red light, as long as there is a gap in traffic.  It's so awesome.  You don't have to wait at a red light for no good reason, and it kinda feels like you are cheating a little bit so you get a stupid thrill every time you do it.  Or is that just me?
11. Bad:  Coffee. 
    
    This one is a biggie, and I will cut to the chase.  The coffee in the States is just plain shit.  I even went out of my way to visit supposedly reputable cafe's with coffee-wank up to your eyeballs.  They all had the hallmarks of a good brew:  cool music; good vibe; trendy customers; uber hip barista with sleeve tattoos, piercings, skinny jeans and stupid big rimmed glasses etc etc.  But even these places served a disappointing beverage when compared to what you can get from your local fish and chip shop in Straya.  Plus the espresso based drinks are freaking expensive, it's no wonder most American's still drink giant cups of filtered coffee.  To summarise - all the gear, no idea.  
12. Good:  National and State Parks.  The Parks in the States are simply amazing.  There are heaps of them, tons of trails, and they are kept in awesome condition.  There is also very often a visitor information centre either staffed by rangers or volunteers who give great information and advice.  Even basic facilities like the public toilets are really good, they have lighting, toilet paper and soap dispensers!  
13. Bad:  Yoghurt.  It's all low fat and crap.  Nuf said.
14. Good:  The Interstate system.  When Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR to his mates) became the 32nd President, the States were in a bit of a mess.  Deep in the Great Depression, a quarter of the workforce were unemployed.  Roosevelt sounds like he was one of the few interesting political figures, and one of the things he did was put the unemployed to work on large scale infrastructure projects.  This included the expansive interstate network, which is pretty impressive today.  Consequently you can get where you need to fast (if you can avoid all the traffic of course), or you can take the quiet scenic backroads and get to your destination a bit slower.  As a side note, FDR was also responsible for much of the establishment of the National Parks due to the same economic initiatives.
15. Bad:  The Imperial System of measurement. 
    
    The United States is pretty much the only place to refuse to change over to the Metric System, and instead measures in units like inches, yards, chains, perch, quarts and pounds.  I had to get something printed a few days ago, and asked for it on A4 paper.  The guy behind the counter just looked at me with a dumb look on his face, so I had to basically point to what I wanted.  Americans, you know the Imperial System is stupid, just suck it up and make the change already.
16. Good:  Big Stuff.  Everything is bigger in the States - cars, food portions, roads, mountains, trees, people....  Ok the last one maybe isn't such a good thing, but a lot of the big thinks are pretty cool.
17. Bad:  Cafe Service.  This point relates to 11 and 2 above.  So I've already mentioned that the coffee is crap and expensive, but when you do order a coffee you have to collect it from the counter yourself, and then return your dirty cups and cutlery yourself too!  And this is one of the establishments where the staff expects tips!  Here's a tip, get off your hipster-arse, walk around the counter and clean my table and maybe there's a couple of extra bucks in it for you.
18. Bad:  You can wear a bandana on your head and not get weird looks. 
    
    For some reason this is quite a popular look in the States.  To help solve this problem, I have devised a simple test for any American readers.  Answer this question: Are you a member of the Crips or the Bloods?  If your answer is 'No', do not wear a bandana.
19. Bad:  Water level in the toilet bowl.  It's just too high.  It's weird.
20. Bad:  Pay at the pump.  I did a lot of driving while on holiday, and this one gets annoying quickly.  In the States, the petrol (gas) pumps are always off, you have to pay first.  Now it's true that they do all offer to pay with a credit card, which means you don't need to walk in the service station at all.  However, for some reason they don't have PIN's on their cards, so instead to validate the credit card is really yours you have to enter your ZIP (postcode) instead.  For people like me who have a card from overseas, this does not work and you have to pay with cash.  To do this, you have to walk into the service station and queue up, then prepay an amount.  Now this is really just a guess if you want to fill up your tank, which of course you do.  The attendant then pre-loads your pump with that amount and turns it on.  You walk back out to your car and use the pump.  You finish pumping.  Then you have to freaking walk back in to the service station again to queue up to collect your change.  So annoying.  So stupid.  So so stupid. 

 So there you have it, my twenty little things I noticed that are good or bad in the ol' US of A.  I'm sure there are heaps of others, any suggestions?  Or any you don't agree with?

Mountain Biking

A couple of months ago I bought a bargain second-hand Giant hard tail mountain bike, which a mate converted to tubeless tyres.  Since then I have been trying to get out on it fairly regularly, and I have to admit I could see how this dirt stuff could become a bit addictive.  I don't think I can really say that I am a "mountain biker" yet, that would require a minimum competency level which I have not yet attained.  It's not like you are a chef just because you own a frying pan.  Hopefully this year, if I keep doing it regularly enough, I will reach that magical minimum proficiency, whatever that may be, and truly will be able to hold my head high and say I am a Mountain Biker!  Not just a roadie who owns a mountain bike, like I am now.

At the moment when I go and ride the mountain bike, typically I alternate wildly between fun and fear.  What do I mean by this?  In my mind I am flying down the single track, in reality I am doing 12kph.  In my mind I am dropping off these super sick vertical walls, in reality I just managed to ride over a log not much bigger than a twig.  And the whole time my inner monologue is swinging like a pendulum between "this is amazing!" to "ohmyfuckinggod I am going to die!!!!!!".  I assume that, whenever I do reach that minimum competency level, the pendulum inner monologue thing will cease, or at least reduce a lot, and I can just kick back and enjoy the ride.

The Road to Mount Joyce Mountain Bike Park

It probably hasn't helped that most of the time I have been going mountain biking on my own, so in the back of my mind is this fear that I will somehow be one of those people that ends up on the news.  You know the stories I mean: solo idiot gets lost in the bush within 20 metres of the carpark, wanders in circles for three days until the SES rescue him, covered in leaches and ticks.  A few weeks ago I took myself on a mini adventure to Mount Joyce mountain bike park (which is a pretty cool place - all you mountain bike types should go check it out if you haven't already).  Mt Joyce really does feel like you are in Bumfuck Nowhere though, I was literally the only person there.  To make things worse, my Garmin bike computer was telling me it was over 40 degrees out there, and when I rode every single goddamn stick looked like a snake.  One time I must have ridden over a branch that flicked up and whacked me in the knee.  No joke I actually pulled the bike over and checked my knee for puncture marks and thought about sucking out the venom.

These are not the issues I am used to facing when riding a bike.  Not too many problems with snakes on the roadie (although there was that ONE TIME at Mount Warning - HUUUGE python), you are much more at risk on the road from inattentive, aggressive or just bad drivers than snakes.  I've been riding road bikes for years, and a lot of that has been in training for some sort of race.  I definitely still enjoy riding on the road, however often it became focused more on the intended outcome than the actual ride.  Stay in zone two for three hours, do blah blaah blaaah intervals for 40 minutes...  I think that is partly why I have been enjoying riding the mountain bike so much, I don't worry about what my heart rate is doing or how many watts I am putting out (although of course I am putting out a fuck-tonne of watts because I am a mother fucking machine), I just ride and try not to hit a tree.

So I think I will keep doing this mountain biking thing.  If there are any readers out there who are any good at mountain biking, and very patient, feel free to hit me up for a ride.  Maybe you can teach me the way of the dirt and help me become a legit Mountain Biker one day.

(I've also heard mountain bikers drink beer after a ride, that sounds like something I could get good at).

Why I Hate Cyclists

Ok, maybe ‘hate’ isn't exactly the right word.  This blog might be a bit controversial, and not surprisingly given that I am a cyclist myself, but hear me out.

My motto has become “two wheels are better”, and I genuinely believe that life is more fun when on two wheels.  Plus there are all the environmental and economic benefits that come with getting more bums on bikes, but that’s the boring stuff.  Riding a bike is just fun!  But this increase in popularity comes with consequences, and this is where I have a bit of the old inner turmoil going on.

It’s been said for a few years now that “cycling is the new golf”, actually I’m pretty sure that I coined the phrase myself over a post-ride brew with mates – can I claim royalties for that??   Cycling as an activity has clearly gained hugely in popularity since LA brought the Tour de France into the living rooms of Australians at ungodly hours, many for the first time.  Despite us copping the abuse of bogan’s far and wide, cyclists aren’t going anywhere either, figuratively speaking of course.   Literally speaking we are going everywhere, and in increasing numbers.

Old Willunga Hill at 2015 TDU Stage 5

I’ve just spent the last week in Adelaide, aka ‘Radelaide’, during the Tour Down Under, enjoying the racing and the great riding that South Australia has to offer.  Not unexpectedly, I was not the only cyclist in attendance, and it was great to see so many people enjoying the sport that I have grown to love over the years.  Apparently at Saturday’s stage there was around 120,000 spectators on Old Willunga Hill, and the atmosphere was simply awesome.  However I’m becoming a bit worried that the sport of cycling is starting to become uncool like the sport of Triathlon did.  Before the triathletes get upset, It’s ok, I’m allowed to say this because I used to be a triathlete myself.  I know, shocking.  I hope you were sitting down.  Back in my day, triathlon was cool, man.  Then somewhere along the line, everybody seemed to be doing a triathlon, and every race had turned into a mass participation event.  Fortunately by then I had become sick of swimming five times a week to try and improve my 50m time by 0.5 of a second, and had migrated over to the one true discipline of cycling.  Am I wearing rose coloured glasses?  Am I being a snob?  Could it have been that I actually wasn’t that cool after all?  Perhaps.

Nah fuck that I was cool as shit.

So back to cycling.  Cycling as a sport was historically a Euro-centric activity, steeped in tradition, culture and lingo.  As we all know in Straya, anything Euro is just cool.  Clothes, cars, architecture, food, music: the Europeans have got their shit together.  Euro sport is cool too, which meant that cycling was also cool.

COOL

NOT COOL

If you are the type of cyclist (like me), who shaves his legs, wears lycra and rides an expensive carbon fibre bike, you have most likely heard of The Rules.  The Rules are a tongue in check list of well, rules for doing cycling right.  Now to be honest I’m not a big fan of The Rules, but have been riding bikes for long enough to have a list of stuff that, in my mind, is stuff you just shouldn’t do.  Some of these things are about how you look, and some of these things are about how you act and how you interact.  When you do something for long enough you don’t need a list of do’s and don’ts to refer to, you know them through experience.  While at the Tour Down Under I saw many rule infringements.

I think this is what I am getting at.  As cycling has become more and more popular in Australia, and has become more of a mass participation activity, the number of cyclists that don’t realise/recognise The Rules (for want of a better definition) has also increased significantly.  I’m sometimes embarrassed by how cyclists here look, act and interact.  Is it any wonder that fluro-vested tradies mock us, when we clip-clop around in clown shoes with sweat dripping everywhere and lycra bulges that most of us would really prefer not to see?  I mock us!  How can we expect Shaneoo on his way to work in his ute to not do the same?

I’ve said sometimes that I wish golf was still the new golf and cycling wasn’t as popular as it is now, but of course I don’t really mean it.  Despite the consequences, I still like seeing more cyclists on our roads.  It sure beats having more cars.  I don’t hate cyclists, but sometimes I do cringe a bit. 

Maybe I'm just a wanker.

Six Months, No Regrets

It's already been six months since I left a good job at a software development company with no real idea of what I was going to do next, and lately I've been reflecting on what has happened in that time and what may come.  As I've matured (what I really mean is as I've gotten older, I still have the mind of a 15 year old) I've gotten pretty comfortable in "listening to my gut", and six months ago my gut was telling me to move on if I wanted to find happiness again.  I knew deep down that if I didn't introduced some risk into my life then I would have languished in the same position, unchanged and unhappy.  Leaving my job was the push I needed to start figuring out what the next phase of my life was going to be like.  Necessity is the mother of invention!

Of course I was very fortunate to be in a position where it was possible to make such a decision, and extremely lucky to have a partner who trusted me enough to let me do it.  That I had her full support was a huge weight lifted off my mind, and it made me even more committed to insuring that I worked things out.  I also knew that I could have fairly easily found another good job in the same industry, but I didn't want to "waste" this opportunity.  I certainly didn't want to be in the same position all over again in another couple of years, sitting at a desk in an office, staring at a computer screen, wondering.

Now I'd be lying if I said, six months down the track, I had everything figured out.  However, I am very lucky to be surrounded by an amazing circle of people, and one of those stepped up and offered me an opportunity to try something completely new.  It was very humbling, I know he didn't have to do it, could have very easily hired someone off the street with far more experience than me who could have 'hit the ground running', but he didn't.  The fact that he did that was amazing enough, doubly so when you consider that the job he was offering was in a new venture for him also.  Starting a business comes with enough risk as it is, let alone hiring some hubbard to bugger it up for you!

So for the last couple of months I have been working in hospitality, and learning a lot in the process.  It feels great to be doing something completely different and hands on, and I can honestly say I enjoy going to work again.  The response from people I know has also been overwhelmingly positive.  When I left my previous job, I wasn't really worried about what people would think, but I did expect some to think I was being an idiot.  If those people exist, they haven't said so to my face!   

I can't say what the future will bring, but I am confident about it.  I don't need to know all the answers at the moment, it's enough to be able to say that six months on I have no regrets.