The owners of the Ziploc Bag brand have informed me that I do not have permission to use their brand in my story. So ‘America the Land of the Ziploc Bag‘ will be called ‘America the Land of the Anonymous Plastic Bag’, until we can come up with a better name.

Please if you have any ideas let me know.

Cheers

38. Empty Nest Syndrome

Well, directly after church we piled into Betsey and high-tailed it to the other side of Milwaukee. Perhaps in this instance a better verb might have been that we ‘MapQuested’ our way to Hartland, Wisconsin. This is relevant because this was one of our last relaxed non-GPS navigated trips, more on that later.

We arrived at our friend’s house to discover that they were well and truly suffering from empty nest syndrome. Their youngest daughter had done the grown up thing and gone out and got married. Like so many do these days, rather than her moving out of the family home, she and her husband  moved in, sprouted a sprog(119) and settled down. Time passed by, money was saved, no doubt a little space was required, and the young family decided to move away from their in-built babysitters with the well stocked fridge and into their own home. It was shortly after this event that we arrived.

This was one of the times that my pastor’s training was required for we found our friends rather downcast and notably empty-nested, sitting bedraggled on their lounge floor. For indeed, not only was the home empty because their daughter, her husband and snot-gobbler(120) had just left, but the home was also empty because the exiting daughter and her young family had taken the stinkin’ furniture with them. So the dutiful man of the cloth that I am, I that it was my responsibility to point this suffering, empty-nested couple towards the light and to provide some much-needed refreshment for their tired bodies and no doubt aching butts.

In this case, the light turned out to be a honking huge and brand spanking new flat and wide screen television, that just happened to be airing a live Green Bay Packers game and the refreshment, well, that was beer from his fridge.  With beer and a Packers game, who needs furniture in their house?

But seriously, ‘house’ is exactly the wrong word to describe this lounge-furniture-less abode. Immediately upon walking through the front door we felt instantly at home. It was almost a weird feeling, because there is no real reason for such a feeling. We have journeyed with this family for about seven Lithuanian Julys and always liked their…. I do not know the word for it. Perhaps it is their ability to be themselves whilst allowing others to also be themselves. Or maybe it is their ‘what you see is what you get’ attitude. I cannot put my finger on it, but we did feel instantly at home in their home. Part of it naturally enough was recognising God’s peace in their home, but this was only part of it. Their home environment kind of personified an oasis of good home-cooked-Olivia-Walton(121)-American values. We rested there.

That evening they had invited into their home everyone who was local and had previously met us at the Summer Language School here in Klaipėda(122). It was a nice time of catching up with friends and acquaintances, but no-one enjoyed it more that their grandson. The wean(123) was in carpet-crawling ecstasy. Not only was he on the floor playing with his train-set, but all of the adults were down at his level as well. ‘Twas something to do with all of the furniture having been moved from this lounge to his lounge.

We had a good sleep and were gone early in the morning for breakfast with another friend.

When Americans do breakfast, they do it right, well, almost right. American breakfasts can best be described as Scottish breakfast ‘lite’ as in only half the content and a quarter as unhealthy. But great nonetheless. Our friend, of whom this was the first time we had met her husband, is an inspirational force in my life. So we ate and drank coffee, whilst turning over endless possibilities of wonderful programmes for the orphanage kids. The problem so often being, is how are we supposed to down-scale these great North American-birthed ideas and apply them to a still-desperately-trying-to-emerge-from-communism Lithuanian public sector and state-run orphanage culture? It is tantamount to trying to fit the Sahara in a test tube, the programme tends to get buried under the daunting administration of the task.

Now just to set up the future story, our friends blessed us with a gift and tried to bless us with another. The first gift was the keys to their crib(124) in ‘Up North(125)’, Wisconsin. The second gift and mixed bag of blessings was a GPS system to find the crib up north.

So with a belly full of bacon and a cup full of caffeine, we regrettably plugged the GPS into Betsie and set off up north.

Tune in next week to read about the GPS from hell.

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

You may have noticed some bracketed numbers in this chapter. These numbers correspond with explanations and definitions that are in an accompanying glossary. To read the glossary you will need to by the yet to be released book. Sorry!

Thank you so much for reading out for lunch. If you would like to contribute toward the running of out for lunch or donate money towards my writing projects, please click on the donate button. Thanks Kel.

This chapter was gratefully sponsored by contributors to coffee fuel. If you would like to sponsor a chapter of  ‘Clueless in America’, please click on the button.

This chapter was gratefully sponsored by contributors to coffee fuel. If you would like to sponsor a chapter of ‘Clueless in America‘, please click on the button.

This chapter was gratefully sponsored by contributors to coffee fuel. If you would like to sponsor a chapter of the ‘Clueless in America‘, please click on the button.

This chapter was gratefully sponsored by contributors to coffee fuel. If you would like to sponsor my writing, please click on the button.

33. Canada, it is not the USA

Well we drove into London as dusk was falling. I had spent hours back home in Lithuania researching driving instructions to our various friends’ houses, and though it was peak hour, London’s busyness was quite placid. We drove though the cool, crisp evening air without taking one wrong turn. Though Betsie was still a little rattled after the border comment, I could sense that she was quite proud of us. The person we were going to visit was my room mate at college some twelve or so years ago. I can still remember the first time that he walked through the door of our tiny British Columbian campus/house. I thought ‘Oh no! Here is trouble’ and indeed I was right. What I didn’t realise at the time was that he would be my brother-in-arms, the one that I spent time with drinking beers and barbecuing steak. Or that eventually the two of us would move into a cardboard house on a lonely Mexican mesa and spend all of our money on building a roof so that our new-found Mexican friends could live a little better. Over the six months we spent living in and out of each other’s pockets we accrued quite a lot of history, fought a few battles together and never got caught during our misadventures. And this placid London evening was our barbecue and beer reunion. The anticipation of meeting again was killing. Of course, now he was married with a couple of sprogs, one of them being only a week or two old.

Betsie lumbered to a stop in front of his house. My mate was out the front chopping up a tree that had collapsed under the weight of a recent snow dumping. After a long drive it always takes us a while to gather things up and actually get out of the car and then we went to the back of the car to gather our bags etc. and start dragging them up the driveway. On my way past the tree, I stopped and greeted my buddy whom I had been waiting so long to see, with a polite hand-shake and a hello before entering the house to meet his wife and settle in. After twelve years of waiting, our reunion was no more that a hello and a hand-shake. It appears that Canadian men are just as inept as Kiwi blokes at sharing their emotions.

I mean if we had been American, like the ‘south of the border’ brand, we would at the very least have hugged and said something like ‘It’s really good to see you again’. And shoot if we were from some parts of Europe, we would have sped frantically through Michigan, swerving in and out of the cars, whilst excitedly honking the horn and randomly whacking the brakes and accelerator. We would not have eaten during the whole trip, but would have stopped numerous times for coffee. When we got to the border, we would have had to spend thirty minutes searching for our passports and then another thirty minutes searching for the car keys that we lost in the process. We would have totally missed the comment about the ‘pricks south of the border’. And once in Canada we would have rung our friend twenty separate times to get fresh instructions on where to find his house. And on arrival we would have abandoned the car half on the road and half on his front lawn, would have jumped out of it and run open-armed across his lawn, oblivious to the fallen tree and running chainsaw. We would have hugged, maybe kissed and maybe even cried, whilst yelling things like ‘It has been so long, it is so good to see you!’. Then once more oblivious to the tree that needed to be cleared before dark, we would bring out the beer, wine, bread, cheese and sausage and sit, eat and drink whilst sharing how we felt about almost everything. Somewhere about one or two in the morning we would have our last coffee, send the kids to bed and stumble to the car to discover that leaving the door open all evening had run the battery flat. But we wouldn’t care, we would just grab our bags, retire to bed and sleep through until lunchtime, before starting on the coffee and intimate feeling sharing again.

But alas we are dignified Anglo-Saxon subjects of the Queen, we suck up our pain and only share our emotions at the pub in that two minute window between being happily drunk and stupidly drunk. Thus a hand-shake and hello sufficed.

But me thinks, this is not entirely true. We settled in and my mate cut his wood and cleared the tree in the fading light. When he had finished, he came inside and gave me a beer and asked how the drive was. This was Commonwealth man lingo for, ‘It is good to see you again’ and was a rather intimate moment. We were all hungry, his wife presented us with steak, we grabbed another beer and followed her pointing towards the barbecue. This translated out to ‘I remember all of the times we ate steak and drank beer together in BC(109), they were really special times we had together and I have missed them ever since’. Then we stood out there beside the barbecue in the freezing temperatures together. Because that is how Commonwealth men bond and express their love and companionship to each other. We could not work out how to light the gas barbecue, then suddenly it quite literally and dangerously exploded into combustion, we giggled and though carefully avoiding eye contact, smiled at each other. This translated into ‘We really miss our simpler, freer days before we were married, but are quite content and happy to now be married, though sometimes it can be a little work, but is well worth it’. Then we stood there, froze, drank our cold beer, ignored the steak and bagged our third college room-mate. This translated out to, ‘Yeah we had some fun back then, they are really good memories, it is such a shame that we no longer live in the same city and that we are not here for each other, you would be a really good supporting friend for me and sometimes I could really do with someone who understands me the way you do’.

Then the beer ran out, which meant the steak must have been cooked and our intimate deep and meaningful time was over. We wandered emotionally drained inside to our waiting wives who seemed to have been communicating on a rather different level and had been using such strange intros to their sentences as ‘I feel’ and ‘It hurts me when’. We presented the steak which incidentally was bloody rare to them, and sat down and ate. This was followed by putting the kids to bed, then we whiled the rest of the evening away with idle chit-chat before going to bed at a respectable hour. Oh the Commonwealth, it presents us with such a comfortable, predictable and somewhat boring lifestyle. But it is what we know, who we are. And for us the emotionally-inept contingent of Commonwealth  men, we would really like to change things, but outside of having another beer and shouting at our favourite hockey, cricket or rugby team, have no idea how to express it.

Tune in for the next issue and read more about our Canadian adventures.

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

You may have noticed some bracketed numbers in this chapter. These numbers correspond with explanations and definitions that are in an accompanying glossary. To read the glossary you will need to by the yet to be released book. Sorry!

And to donate towards the production of the ‘Clueless in America’, just click on the button.

32. It’s all in a road sign.

Okay, back to the 10% of our freaking out on the ‘World’s Fastest Goat Track’. One of the things that we couldn’t help but notice were the road signs. American road signs were either written for the stupid or by the stupid which is odd because I did not meet any stupid  Americans during our visit.

I could write a whole book on silly road signs, so I will endeavour to keep this short. American road signs do not like punctuation. Take for example this sign, ‘SLOW MEN WORKING’, so fire them if they are too slow and hire faster people. Or the really common one on the ‘Goat Track’, ‘KILL CONSTRUCTION WORKER $10 000 FINE’. Okay next time I run one over, I will make sure he lives. How about ‘BE PREPARED TO STOP’? Hello, if I am not prepared to stop, how the hang could I pass my licence? Isn’t every person behind the wheel of a car supposed to be prepared to stop? Or ‘SHOULDER WORK 500FT’: What? Is there a gymnasium ahead, and why is the verge so crappy? Let’s try ‘RESUME SAFE SPEED’. Why, dang this sucks, I was really enjoying driving like a dangerous maniac. Okay, just two more; ‘NO LITTER $50 FINE’. Quick kids, throw some trash out the window before we acquire a $50 fine. And lastly, ‘CAUTION CHILDREN’. Ah man, I do not have time to stop and tell them all to behave, they don’t listen anyhow.

How much money would it cost to stick a stinkin’ comma on a road sign? ‘SLOW MEN WORKING’ with the addition of a comma would move work-men from being thick to being safe. For example ‘SLOW, MEN WORKING’, or better still ‘SLOW DOWN, MEN WORKING ON THE ROAD’. I don’t know, is it too hard to read the four extra words and comma at fifty miles per hour, or is it too expensive to write the extra words?

Here is my plan. How about we hire an over-perky, service industry-trained and highly-skilled, smiling and slightly elusive KFC worker to write the signs? Then they would read something like, ‘HOW Y’ALL DOIN’? LOOK I DON’T WANT TO BE OFFENSIVE OR ANYTHING, BUT PLEASE SLOW DOWN, THERE ARE GOOD MEN WORKING ON THE ROAD AHEAD. WOULD YOU LIKE FRIES WITH THAT? HAVE A GOOD DAY, SEE Y’ALL NEXT TIME’. Then even dumb foreigners could understand. But don’t panic America, Europe’s not better. Our roads are full of signs that consist of pictures and numbers that merely allude to the possibility of an instruction.

And then before we knew it, we were approaching the Canadian border. Oh Canada, oh Canada, the closer we got to your border the more warm and fuzzy our emotions got. The Queen of New Zealand also happens to be the Queen of Canada, somehow that mere little fact makes Canada alright.

So here we were on the Blue Water Bridge with the beautiful Lake Huron to our left and St Clair river on our right. Traffic was at a standstill before we hit the almost two mile long bridge. This gave us plenty of time to watch Betsie’s temperature rise dangerously high and to find our passports etc. Amongst the documents we had to find Betsie’s insurance card. Betsie’s owner had very kindly purchased special insurance for our Canadian sortie. One of us somewhere along the line had placed it in the ashtray. Not a problem in itself, except that the ashtray seemed to be full of identical cards and we spent the next thirty minutes searching through them sorting them into dates, thus narrowing down the options until we were left with the two relevant cards. At the start of the ordeal, I jumped into the fastest lane, taking note of the car with which were parallel. We were in a hurry to have a cuppa(107) with Lizzie(108), but by the time we found our way to Canada, the parallel car, as expected, was long gone.

At the entry booth we were nervous as we were not totally convinced that we had all of the right insurance details. Not only that but I presented the dude in the immigration booth a British driver’s licence, Kiwi passport and American car ownership papers which belonged to someone else. I was expecting an ordeal and an ordeal is what I got. This gruff-looking and speaking Canadian dude in the booth looked at my passport and said, ‘So you are from New Zealand eh?’ I said ‘Yeah’. He replied, ‘New Zealand and Canada have a lot of similarities don’t they?’ Eh! Other than Canada being blessed with our Queen, my mind was drawing a blank. But I knew that that man holding my passport not only had a lot of power to make life hard for me, but like seemingly most other border patrol officers, had an over inflated sense of just what that power was. So I frantically tried to find some similarities. I fumbled out something like, ‘Yeah we both have mountains and our people are quite laid back’. And his reply was, and I quote you word for word, ‘Yeah unlike all of those pricks south of the border eh!’ And then without ever asking to see our insurance, he handed back our passports.

I was both flabbergasted and in hysterics! In fact I was laughing so much that I needed to stop at the border toilet. The gall of this guy, I was bewildered, bemused and totally beside and beyond myself with his comment. It was so out of context and so rude that it totally tickled my humour and slightly offended me. Welcome to Canada, the land of my Commonwealth cousins. It seemed to me that the polite ones were the ones that got away and all proudly live south of the border.

But this comment was such a Canadian thing to say and at that, such a Canadian male thing to say. If I had to put a sign at the border, it would read; ‘Welcome to Canada, the nation that defines itself by who it is not’. Or if I needed to be more specific for the sake of US citizens, the sign would read, ‘Welcome to Canada, we are not the USA’. But of course Canada could never endorse such a sign, because, and sorry if I offend you by saying this, because Canada is the ‘politically correct’ capital of the world.

In my totally humble opinion, Canada has some of the best cop and robber television shows in the world. And yes, I did mean to say Canada, not Hollywood. But the problem with Canadian television is that the people are always so predictable. I mean it only takes thirty seconds to work out who the really bad guy is. He is the one that does not say ‘Get ooout of my hooouse nooow’. Or in other words, the bad guy is always the US citizen. And if you want to work out who is the good, intelligent, sharp person in control, well start the narrowing down process by searching for the females. Canada, after all is blessed with being a matriarchal society. Then when you have singled out the females, search for the minorities, the chances are that the head honcho will be the best looking black woman on the set. I don’t have a problem with this, it just gets boring after while. And then the men, well Canadian television has that uncanny knack of making most of its men look slightly fumbly and cute. Even on the rare occasion when the bad guy is a Canadian man, he still manages to have a totally lovable and cute innocence about him.

Anyhow we had arrived in Point Edward. Oh, I am homesick already for Mother Commonwealth. Thirty seconds across the border and the Canadians have to throw such an English place name at you. It probably took a Canadian committee of public servants a few years to come up with such a simple, pleasant and politically correct place name which screams into your face, ‘This is not the USA’. I mean if Americans named it, it would have been something like Point Chuck or Point Randy.

Anyhow time to get off that subject and to make it perfectly clear that I do like Canada, though please don’t stone me for this, but it is kind of like the USA except laid back, without the intensity or brightness. It doesn’t hurt your eyes so much. Maybe it is the USA ten years ago and with good beer. But for the sake of my Canadian friends, IT IS NOT THE USA!!! Have you got it, IT IS NOT THE USA.

And it only took us about two miles to have this point totally rammed home at us. We went past a road sign on the autostrada. I read it out loud as we approached it. I wish I could remember what it said or had asked Sharon to write it down. But it was just too long for that. It had multiple, multiple-syllable words crammed into multiple sentences all on a little road sign. After I had finished reading it, Sharon and I looked at each other and said, ‘What did that mean?’ Then befuddled and confused, we looked at each other and said, ‘Welcome to Canada, this aint the USA’. Except Sharon would have said ‘This isn’t the USA’.

And at that, we were on the 402 heading towards London. Oh, isn’t it so cute having all of these English place names?

Tune in for the next issue and read about fish ‘n’ chips and other stuff that I have jet to

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

You may have noticed some bracketed numbers in this chapter. These numbers correspond with explanations and definitions that are in an accompanying glossary. To read the glossary you will need to by the yet to be released book. Sorry!

And to donate towards the production of the ‘Clueless in America’, just click on the button.

31.  Where has all of the Coffee gone?

So there we were, sweaty, dishevelled, slightly shaking and at a tourist information centre in Michigan. To say that we needed coffee was an understatement; I am sure a caffeine boost would have at best synched our heart rates and shaking, or at the very least just settled us down.

And coffee, that very dear subject, was one of the biggest changes I had noticed in America since our last visit. Last time we visited, coffee was free and everywhere. Often when driving along the autostrada(104), we would spot a sign that read something like ‘Stop, Revive and Drive, Sponsored by the First Church of the Great Shepherd’. So naturally enough, off the lovely smooth Oregon road we would go! Only to be confronted by a bunch of clucky, scarily happy American do-gooders determined to bless us with good free coffee, huge chocolate cookies and wishes of ‘Have a good day’. And if society’s do-gooders were not on the road, well we just needed to follow the information centre signs, because all of them had free, fresh take-away coffee percolating in anticipation of being taken for a drive.

But oddly enough, I seemed to be the only person in the entire world who knew this. Over the past number of years, I have told almost every American I know about how easy it is to get free coffee in  their country. Most of them looked at me as if I had two heads and a strange accent and then followed this up with a polite smile. This is a normal way for many Americans to politely disagree. Though it does seem that Americans’ methods of disagreeing vary according to their circumstances. For example if I had said ‘America had lots of free coffee and bad healthcare’, then I think many of them would have politely quizzed me. But better still, if I had said this with a CNN television camera trained on me with a live link to the entire world, then I would have been verbally challenged by someone throwing their arms around, on the verge of tears and screaming, not at me but at the television audience. Television cameras and live news feeds are definitely one of the demons for America’s international reputation.

But never mind, I am off the subject again. My point was that information centres were consistent with the rest of twenty-first century America; just couldn’t get a free coffee anywhere. And the strange thing is, everyone seemed to know this but me.

Another thing, as beautiful as Michigan was, it had disgusting water. With not being able to find a coffee, I walked to the water-fountain and filled up my water. I took one drink of it and spat it back out. What a bad day we were having…., a never-ending goat track, no coffee and bad water. We were narrowly saved by having heaps of peanuts.

Well we were hungry, it was lunch time. Sharon loves KFC and I love those ostentatious free-way fast-food signs.  It kind of passes the time during the boredom of driving and endlessly searching for wherever NPR has moved to on the bandwidth. Not only that, the signs are all designed for the sight-impaired and can be read, proof-read and corrected into English all at least a mile before the town. So we drove along miles of quiet free-way, past miles of brown grass on flat land and past spasmodic collections of gory shaped and coloured fast-food and gas station signs. We drove and we drove and we drove. We past towns like St Joseph, Kalamazoo, Battle Creek and Charlotte. We drove so long without a break and were so hungry and so sick of peanuts that the pages of our ‘Road Master’ were actually looking appetising. Then out of nowhere, which is also known as Potterville, Michigan, we spied a Taco Bell sign and out of frustration, decided to brave the lethal stares of at least all four of the local townsfolk and substitute our tired hopes of a KFC for this lonely, slightly tatty Taco Bell.

We were clearly the first customer that this Taco Bell had seen for quite some time. The ‘Fat Albert’ look alike behind the counter was so, so happy to see us. A wide warm smile spread across his cute chubby cheeks, whilst his dancing eyes wobbled around his skull in anticipation of an order being placed. He greeted us, arms spread out, with something like a ‘How ya’ll doing folks, what can I give you today?’ And then he did the weirdest of all things, he waited. He waited all of a few seconds, before slowly his dancing eyes narrowed and focused on us and his grin subsided into a confused frown. And I watched his face change from Santa Claus beauty to Homer Simpson bewilderment as the startled realisation dawned upon him that we did not have a clue what to order.

It is a peculiar thing about Americans. They seem to have a sixth sense that allows them to perceive what they want to order in every fast-food restaurant before entering the building. I mean, you watch Americans order food. They can walk into seemingly any restaurant anywhere in the country and walk straight up to the counter and order exactly what they want. I think the only reason why places like Taco Bell have menu boards is to humour us foreigners.

Fat Albert, the excellent advertisement for his food, slowed down long enough for his smile to return and his eyes to dance again. The sight in front of him clearly amused him. There we were, road worn, cranky and giddy from hunger, staring blankly at the menu board. From the outside it looked like the lights were on and nobody was at home. On the inside we were frantically trying to compare prices, pictures and words, but nothing seemed to make logical sense. So I asked Fat Albert, ‘What is good?’ American service industry strikes again, he started bouncing on the spot with excitement, with his ears twitching as he launched into a monotone monologue. Which of course, due to our hunger and culture shock we heard none of, but by now our eyes had fixed on a two-shades-of-yellow picture with a price beside it, which was somewhere near the bottom of the price tree. We pointed and grunted and he performed his joyful duty for us.

However unlike during my first American visit, when presented with an empty paper cup, I found a drinks machine and filled it up with root-beer. My drinks debacle happened on my first visit to Hill Country Texas. I was straight off the plane from nine months in New South Wales(105), which incidentally, minus a kangaroo or two, looks quite similar to this part of Texas. After being picked up from the airport, I was driven to a week long Camp Counsellor training session. At the end of the week we were all taken into town for a meal and this was my first taste of American restaurant culture. My poor little head was swimming and sinking well before we got to the restaurant, I was totally fixated on the car number-plates and the heat. Whilst I was dreaming, everyone else was focused on eating. Of course, they all walked in, ordered and were seated in about thirty seconds flat, whereas me, well I was last in the door, it took me forever to order, and then came my ‘moment’.

Yes, my moment. I ordered a 7UP. Upon hearing my request, the freakishly friendly perfect example of the American service industry presented me with an empty cup. I looked at this cup, picked it up and dreamily handed it back to her and said ‘Oh I am sorry, I asked for a 7UP, this is empty’. To which Little-Miss-Smiley-Freaky-Shoes replied, ‘Yes that is right Sir’ and handed me back the empty cup. Confused and tiring of this game really quickly, I picked up the empty cup and placed it on the counter in front of her and said, ‘Oh I am sorry, you don’t seem to understand, but I would like to drink a 7UP, this cup is empty’. She replied ‘I understand Sir’ and gave me back the cup. The only thing that my head was computing was this lassy’s irritating smile, the rest of it was like a popcorn machine on steroids. But then as if it was the beautiful sound of God himself, a voice perpetrated the clatter of combusting popcorn and rescued me from this fresh soda-pop hell I had stumbled across. Amongst the clamour I clearly heard the angelic words of ‘chirp chirp’. Somewhere on the periphery of my hearing was the blessed conversation of an Australian budgie. At last something that was familiar to me in this situation. I said to the still smiling bundle of perkiness, ‘Excuse me, I will be back’. And at that I fair dinkum ran to the pet shop that was a couple of doors down the strip mall(106). I went straight to the budgies and chatted away to them until my emotional instability faded enough to notice the concerned stares of the shop assistant. With my newfound sense of peace, I returned to the restaurant and asked the Little-Miss-Perky exactly how to get 7UP into my cup. Without batting an eyelid, she pointed to the drinks machine with a really cool turbo-ice-cube-chucker around the corner. And thus I learned about American drinks machines and having to fill up that cup myself.

The stuff on our plates looked more like Mexican vomit than Mexican food, but all the same it was quite palatable and filled a rather deep hole.

From here, Betsie, us and our bellies full of Taco Bell clamoured our way though Flint and on towards the Canadian border.

Next week read about how cute Canada really is and how road signs really should be written.

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

You may have noticed some bracketed numbers in this chapter. These numbers correspond with explanations and definitions that are in an accompanying glossary. To read the glossary you will need to by the yet to be released book. Sorry!

And to donate towards the production of the ‘Clueless in America’, just click on the button.

30. It wasn’t O’Hare.

Yeah that is right, it was not O’Hare, I screwed up. We flew domestic so we arrived at Chicago’s other airport. I am really pleased to have finished the previous chapter, it was a lame attempt to cover a subject that is still brewing in me, but maybe I will address it another time.

Within seemingly seconds of arriving at the terminal, the news reached us that Obama had basically waltzed into the office of President. It was greeted with some excitement among the cabin crew and one couldn’t help but think that we really were at an epoch-changing time in American history. For me, I will always remember November 14, 2008 for three reasons. Firstly, because it was the day that I was given the hugest bag of salted peanuts that I have ever seen by Southwest. Secondly, because a promising black man became President and thirdly, because it was the day I screwed up my airline tickets. It was my one big lack-of-attention-to-detail-dyslexic-mistake. I had somehow managed to change our 19:35 departure to a 07:35 departure. I realised it the day before, so it didn’t affect us too much. We spent more time in Texas and less time in Canada and our friend picking us up at the airport had to stay up later rather than collect us at lunch time.

And here we were at the airport, being picked up just after midnight. It seemed that the USA had been divided into two emotional camps; there were those running around seemingly unable to hide their gleeful smiles and then there were the melancholic others who all looked as if they were driving home from their mother’s funeral. It was actually quite funny to watch. Our driver and host definitely fitted his side of the fence. It was his third of four airport visits at our expense. His and his wife’s servant hearts really made our trip a lot easier. On the way home I couldn’t help but notice how all of the home-front political signs seemed to reflect the moods of their home owners. The McCain signs just seemed to look depressed, whilst the Obama signs seemed to be dancing on the end of their wooden stake supports. On arrival at our friends’ home, we looked at the same New Zealand pictures on the wall and tucked ourselves into the same bed as we had two weeks ago. We had an averagely early morning start with a cooked breakfast, grabbed our peanuts and most of our luggage, jandals exempted, and set off for Canada.

Now I have thought long and hard on the subject I am about to write about, and the importance of it has weighed heavily upon my wee mind, thus affecting my fleeting sleep patterns. Our Chicago friend lent us a car for the final two weeks of our visit. We drove this car from Chicago to Ontario and then back through Chicago to a place simply called ‘Up North’. The car was a very faithful white Toyota Camry. At a guess, supported by a wee bit of ‘google'(95), it was about a 1992 model. The car was in tidy condition, but not so perfect that I needed to be terrified about scratching it or parking it on the wrong street. The car was also mechanically sound enough for me not to need to worry about it breaking down or being stranded on the side of the road ‘Up North’ and not speaking the language.

I do not usually find the need to name cars, but for the sake of not having to say that I Camried north, I am giving this one a name. As I have said, I have thought long and hard on this subject and have come up with the name of ‘Betsie’. Why Betsie? Well, for me the name conjures up two images. The first is of a Kiwi cow cocky’s wife. I can see her in my mind’s eye now, so let me explain. She is, well to say the least, plump and robust and barefoot in a blue flowery apron. She is looking over a kitchen sink out a window at a line of macrocarpa(96) providing shelter for chook(97) sheds and eventually down a flowing Otago(98) hill onto cow paddocks(99). The sky is cloudy, sunny, blue and deceptively cold. In her arms is a large bowl of dough and in her hand is a lovingly-used wooden spoon. On the bench amongst general clutter are a mixer(100) and jars of preserved fruit, and behind her is a large, over-flowing, whipped cream-filled(101) ‘Fisher and Paykel'(102) fridge/freezer unit. Betsie is faithfully being the engine room of the farm, providing a place of warmth and nourishment. When Betsie is not happy, then as with the consumption of old whipped cream, the whole body starts to bloat and fold over on itself.

And then my second image is of ‘Betsie’ the dairy cow. Faithfully every morning she wanders down the hill into the milking shed to romantically dispense of her produce before meandering back up the hill for another busy day of looking picture postcard idyllic. She only interrupts this somewhat strenuous routine to return to the shed to donate yet another bucket full of potential whipped cream.

Both Betsies were faithful and functional with a Betsie kind of beauty. And thus I now officially christen the Camry Betsie.

So armed with a free, poorly-bound 2003 Road Master Atlas, we chucked Betsie into reverse and pulled out of the drive and the security of our friends’ home to conquer such exotic sounding places as London and ‘Up North’.

If Betsie was a horse, she would know her way, but she wasn’t a horse and nor were we. We never officially got lost but read on.

The roads we experienced in Northern California, Idaho and Texas were great. Free flowing, well lit, well signposted and very smooth. But for some reason, Illinois had to be different. Her roads were totally clogged, hellishly dark even in the day time, bizarrely signposted and at their very best, represented a gruelling, muddy, off-road four-wheel-drive track. To be specific, Chicago roads were absolutely shocking. And ironically, as soon as we jumped on the many toll-ways, things got notably worse. Not only did the shocking roads go metaphorically down hill, but traffic was always clogged up merging into single lanes, trying in vain attempts to skirt round Chicago’s endless supply of roadworks.

And roadworks in itself, are a bizarre concept. The road doesn’t work, that is the problem, so why put a sign up saying the road works when for the next forty miles you will be merging into that single lane followed by four closed off-ramps, each supporting an unreachable KFC sign. The relevance of that comment will come into its own soon enough. From now on let’s get it right and call it ‘road-no-works’ And as for the I294, from now on I will just refer to that as ‘The World’s Most Expensive Goat Track’. At least we knew where our toll money was being spent; on supporting those never-ending roadworks.

I mean, we totally embarrassed Betsie, I hope for her sake that none of her friends were watching. We spent ninety percent of our Goat Track time totally terrified and confused, the other ten percent we spent laughing at the road signs. So what freaked us?

American trucks are not that big, I think they call them eighteen wheelers or something like that. But when you are being forced to travel about fifty miles-per-hour in a thirty zone and you have one in front of you, one behind you, another to your left and another stinkin’ one to your right, well they start looking pretty stinkin’ big. And for us, no sooner would something like this happen, than we would spot flying past us a sign that would say something like ‘detour to Detroit, exit next right’. I would let out a frantic-bloodcurdling scream and shout ‘Did you see that sign?’ Panic-ridden, I would slam on the indicator and jerk my eyes towards the passenger side rear vision mirror, only to find it blocked by our oversized, and in this instance, particularly-useless roadmap, with the face of a desperately stressing Sharon buried deep inside, trying to work out if we should have been on the last detour four intersections back. I would look over Sharon’s shoulder under the tray of the eighteen wheeler beside us, only to see some clown in his sports car shaving or reading or something equally as stupid in such a life-defining moment as this. For a fleeting moment I would flirt with the notion of just sliding under the trailer of that eighteen wheeler beside us, there seemed to be plenty of room there. In the mean-time Betsie, with her indicators and break lights rapidly flying on and off, was starting to resemble an embarrassed Fourth of July fireworks display.

At one stage whilst being thankful for good health insurance, we were caught in a similar situation. We noticed two signs, one said something like ‘detour to Detroit straight ahead’ and the other said ‘detour to Detroit exit next right’. We indicated, switched the indicator off, stressed, braked, accelerated and just gave up and followed the track ahead. We really needed a sign on the back window that read ‘Stupid foreigners on-board, please treat with extreme caution’. Instead we had a sign that read ‘US Marine Corps’. Which for those following us was probably translated into ‘this soldier has seen one battle too many’.

I mean let’s put this into perspective. I am from Aotearoa New Zealand. I know I could stop there and all would be explained, but read on. Our number three city has the rather tranquil name of Christchurch, there is one road and one ferry which connects it to our number one city, our capital called Wellington. That road connects our southern island that happens to be rather creatively named the ‘South Island’ with our northern island that is rather embarrassingly named the ‘North Island’. That road is called ‘State Highway One’. Why State Highway One? Well because it is pretty much the only ‘one’, like the only road that you will ever need to travel on, and by default this makes it our country’s busiest road. Now you need to understand that this road is one lane each way, with the occasional passing lane. Heading north between Cheviot and Wellington, at the bottom of a hill motorists are confronted with the one-lane Awatere Bridge(103). This is like only one lane, with traffic lights at each end to stop north-bound and south-bound cars colliding. But if that is not enough, the bridge is two storied with a single train track running over the top.

So pull me out of this culture and slap me on ‘The World’s Most Expensive Goat Track’ and so far I think that I am doing pretty darn good.

The other thing we had a lot of problems with whilst nervously bouncing along the ‘Goat Track’ was, when the hang are we supposed to pay those toll fees? It was totally unclear to us. I do not remember paying a toll upon entering the ‘Goat Track’, but after a few miles of travelling comfortably along in the centre lane we found a sign that read something like ‘right hand lane for toll booth’. So after some daredevil stunt manoeuvres whilst searching wallets and purses for coins, we lined up and paid. And then seemingly after just a few more miles we saw the same sign. So we got over to the right and paid again. But this time I noticed that there were three open lanes on the left-hand side that seemed to amble past the toll booth. Then again seemingly after just a few miles there was another sign suggesting we go to the toll booth to pay yet again. This time we were caught map-searching-rear-vision-blocking-truck-encased in the middle lane and totally missed the toll booth. Oh well, what could be done? The next one we just looked at and puzzled over; were we supposed to stop or could we keep going? And before we knew it, we had sailed the choppy waters of Illinois, Indiana and had stopped or perhaps stalled in an information centre on the Michigan border. Anyone who saw us there, must have wondered what the hang had happened. Here we were sitting under some lovely trees in front of a very embarrassed and angry Betsie, sweating, shaking, thanking God for our lives and praising him that the ‘Goat Track’ was behind us. We sat there for quite some time in the fall sun, drinking water and munching on Southwest peanuts, just waiting for our heart rates to settle down. The  I294 aka ‘The World’s Most Expensive Goat Track’, east and west can only be described as one long, horrifying, torturous experience. You know those poor water-boarded fellows down Guantanamo way? If the US government had sentenced them to an afternoon on the I294 then they would have confessed everything and some more, and the only part of them that would have been wet would have been their pants. Not only this, a whole heap of future Pakistani and Afghani terrorist attacks could have been averted. Somehow the administration missed that one.

Next week read about about a KFC worker writing road signs and learn what one particular Canadian thinks about Americans.

For past chapters click here. Or look on the side panel.

You may have noticed some bracketed numbers in this chapter. These numbers correspond with explanations and definitions that are in an accompanying glossary. To read the glossary you will need to by the yet to be released book. Sorry!

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