It's on the Meter

by Paul Archer

  After donning the obligatory hospital gown, I was disappointed to see that I came in at under half the weight requirement, although we all applauded a hefty chap who easily topped the scales soon after with 371 lbs.

  We were all feeling a little fragile so we plumped for the twoburger 'Double Bypass' option, with no extra bacon. All except Leigh who was brought out the calorific Quadruple Bypass, replete with 20 extra rashers of bacon, apparently a whopping 8,000 calories in total.

  As he tried to get his mouth around the giant handful, grease dripped uninvitingly out on to the table and he had soon attracted an audience of passing tourists who were gawking through the window, laughing and taking pictures. Half an hour later he threw in the towel with about a quarter of the last patty still uneaten, and another half an hour later the first three-quarters of the burger reasserted themselves on a Vegas sidewalk. He didn't eat another burger for the entire time we were in the States.

  The next item on the whistle-stop tourist checklist was the Grand Canyon, and although we had chosen a southerly route across America we soon discovered that it was way too cold for our plan to camp near the rim. The next best option was to all squeeze into one cheap motel room and wake early in the predawn chill for the ride down to catch the sunrise. Fortunately, given this plan, it was time to see Drew off at the airport, so there would be one fewer sweaty body to squeeze in.

  Ice encrusted the floor of the motel parking lot the next morning as we gingerly walked over to the two cars, bleary-eyed. A mixture of extreme cold and tiredness meant that I was concentrating on peering out through a patch scraped in the ice and following Skinny Marge in front when Leigh looked over and saw to his alarm that the engine temperature was spiking right off the scale. We stopped immediately and, upon opening the finger-numbingly cold bonnet, were engulfed in a cloud of steam; it was a strange juxtaposition of severe temperatures. We figured that the cooling water in the radiator must have frozen, and I cursed myself for not being vigilant enough and for this happening at the worst of times.

  As it was still dark and we were in sub-zero conditions we parked up on a side road, scribbled a hasty note to leave on the windscreen and all piled into Skinny Margarita, the yellow cab, for a morning walk around the chilly and slippery Southern Rim. We could deal with Hannah when the sun had warmed things a little.

  CHAPTER 49

  THE MOST HEAVILY ARMED MAGAZINE IN THE WORLD

  When we had started the trip, and indeed for most of the journey so far, we had had no idea what we were really getting into or how to actually do any of it. We had no clue how to get corporate sponsorship, ship foreign vehicles across seas, fix mechanical problems in wholly inappropriate places or deal with the media. But along the way we had slowly been learning on the job, and as we got further round the world more and more people started following our story, and asking us for advice for their own trips. One of these groups was Overland Journal, a magazine dedicated to the burgeoning lifestyle of overland travel. They invited us to their headquarters to take a look around, show off our car and see their range of much more impressive and appropriate vehicles. It was when we were talking to these guys that what we had achieved so far really started to dawn on me.

  'You know, you guys are famous? You've probably done more for overlanding than anyone in the past ten years.'

  Maybe they were being tongue-in-cheek but I suppose they were right. Now that we were three-quarters of the way around the world in a completely unsuitable car on an unsupported expedition, people were starting to take notice. The fact that someone was now paying for us to complete our adventure and that the story was starting to be picked up by major newspapers and TV stations showed that we were doing something remarkable, even if it was really just an excuse to go travelling and party on an overextended road trip with our best buddies.

  For now, we were only thinking about a statement their digital editor Matt had made to us before our arrival.

  'So we hear you like guns in Arizona?' we had said.

  'Are y'all kidding?' he replied. 'We're probably the most heavily armed magazine in America – no, the world!'

  Reminding him of this, he walked over to a towering safe behind the iMacs and the filing cabinets.

  He swung the door open and our eyes widened.

  'Is that,' faltered Paul, '… a grenade launcher?'

  'Yeah-huh, but you can't buy grenades for it.'

  'What's the point in having a grenade launcher and no grenades?'

  'I put golf balls in it and shoot them… that's how we golf in AMERICA.'

  We loaded up a humongous pickup truck called a Dodge Power Wagon that the Overland Journal was testing, hopped in the flat-bed and drove into the wilderness. An AK-47, a Walther PPK (the gun used by James Bond), a vintage World War One boltaction rifle, and boxes and boxes of ammo later, we felt like virile, masculine and manly real men.

  None of us are particularly into guns and we had been a little shocked to find a whole aisle of them at an American supermarket earlier that week. Sure, we've grown up around Action Man and Arnie films but we all found the stereotypical American obsession with firearms a little strange. However, when you're in the scrubland of the American West with a veritable arsenal of weapons it's hard not to see at least some of the appeal.

  Although Matt and I had done a fair amount of shooting in our RAF days we quickly found that there's a definite difference between a straight-down-the-line warrant officer giving you commands to fire single shots down a military firing range, and between spurting bursts of AK-47 bullets at empty beer cans in the desert.

  'It looks like that's nearly all the ammo guys,' announced our de facto range supervisor after a good few hours. 'Y'all should shoot your car with the last few rounds of the .303.'

  There was a palpable pause.

  'Shoot… Hannah?' Leigh looked worried.

  'Yeah, just somewhere inessential, it's not like she's not battered already.'

  Grins started to spread on our faces; all of them but one.

  'You know, it might actually be pretty good for the pictu—'

  'We are not shooting Hannah!' Leigh burst in, glaring at the group.

  '… but it would be a funny story for the…'

  'Guys! There's no way we're shooting our own car,' he pleaded, looking around desperately for a face of reason but finding none.

  'Come on mate, just through the bonnet, it might even help with the cooling.'

  After a moment's thought he groaned and grabbed the remaining clip of bullets. 'Fine!' he huffed, marching off towards our baby. 'But I'm doing the shooting!'

  So, with a couple of new cooling holes in the bonnet to help the weary engine, we said goodbye to our new buddies and headed south to Tucson.

  Although we had negotiated a living allowance with GetTaxi, we quickly realised that we did this back when we were surviving on less than £5 a day in Asia and had a different perception of budgets. This meant that even with multimillionaire backers, we still had to save as much money as possible. Jon simply had no money and my tightness seemed to have rubbed off on the other two. This usually resulted in us haggling hard for a £20 motel room then sneaking the five of us in when the concierge wasn't paying attention. By this point in the trip we had shared beds with each other more times than we cared to count.

  Tucson would be the eastern terminus of what we had dubbed The Megadrive: a 900-mile slog through prime Texan ranch country over to Jon's hometown of Houston. We aimed to cover it without stopping for anything other than food or fuel. But before the start of the marathon interstate session we checked out an interesting attraction.

  A consequence of a government having defence spending that is more than the next 20 countries combined is that the Americans have lots and lots of spare planes and helicopters – more than they know what to do with, in fact. In the dry desert air near Tucson, spread over a plot of land larger than 1,500 football pitches, sit rows and rows of over 4,000 aircraft – from Vietnam-era B-52 bombers to
attack helicopters stripped of their rotors and sealed up tight. Some are simply mothballed in case of future emergency while others are cannibalised for spare parts or slowly chopped up for scrap metal. The 'Boneyard' was basically a giant open-air museum. The main drag even had a hall of fame with the entire aeronautical history of the USAF spread along one road, although, amusingly, the space behind the 'F-117 Stealth Fighter' sign simply had a trio of wheels and some mounting steps that led to nothing.

  We had so much to see in the States and with our shipping already booked from New York we perfected a travelling technique where we would drive through the night, sleep in the cars and have action-packed days.

  Nearly a thousand miles of good, straight AMERICAN roads later and we were in San Antonio at dawn on a bright Saturday morning. As we had got closer and closer to Texas, Jon had started to get giddy and excitable – whooping like a cowboy as we passed the state line – telling us all about how it was Texas Independence Day.

  Jon and I arrived in the faster NY taxi a good few hours before the others, so we ate a wonderful breakfast at a famous Mexican foodstop with cracked Formica tables and a rotund, sweaty chef without a word of English. Independence Day is also the anniversary of the end of the Battle of the Alamo, and the local vintage re-enactment club would be doing their thing around the grounds of the old building. Jon explained the story to me over the theatrical gun and cannon fire, the cloud of cordite getting thicker and thicker as the 'battle' went on.

  As far as I understood, and any Texans reading this will disagree, the whole battle went like this: some white guys who wanted slaves were told they couldn't have slaves, so they went to Texas (which was part of Mexico) with their slaves. The Mexicans took exception to this as slavery was forbidden (plus it was part of their country), and gathered an army to attack 'The Alamo' (a small fort/house where the slavers were living). They offered reasonable treaties to the Texans, who refused, and everyone died.

  Perhaps Jon was explaining it wrong, but it's a big deal in Texas. If it's a big deal in Texas – the home of BIG – then there would be some big parties. And where better to party in Texas than 'the live music capital of the world', Austin.

  We pulled up outside Jon's cousin's flat, which was to be our home for the night, and started to interrogate him on the nightlife. Aged 20 and a few years into university, the ridiculous American drinking laws meant he still, apparently, could not be trusted to drink beer. So his knowledge of the famous Sixth Street party scene was non-existent.

  Being the kind-hearted, altruistically natured individuals that we are, we felt this needed to change. A five-minute brief on how to speak like an Englishman and how to look bouncers in the eye (as well as taking my UK Driving Licence as ID) and we headed to Sixth Street.

  He was like a child in a sweet shop, especially when the first bar we walked into suddenly erupted and every girl in there climbed on to the bar and started to dance and take their clothes off (this actually happened – we have no idea why, but that doesn't mean it wasn't fantastic). In the next bar he was using the superpowers an English accent gives you to chat up American girls and in the next he pulled together the guts to go to the bar and buy beers, which he enjoyed so much that he refused to let anyone else buy any drinks for the rest of the night.

  A short hungover hop the next morning took us down to Jon's college town (the imaginatively named 'College Station') to check out his friend's ranch. We were joined by a coursemate of Jon's, a Marine officer on his way to joining the FBI. In the back of his Tom Petty-blasting Mustang, he had brought an arsenal.

  'You Brits don't have guns so I figured you might like to shoot some on the ranch. I've also got some zombie clown cut-outs to use as targets.'

  We made our way to Houston that evening, where we stayed for a few days, and without doubt our highlight was the Houston Rodeo.

  The huge, 70,000-seat arena fills up every night for a few weeks in the summer. Everybody gets dolled up in their best cowboy outfit and heads down to eat some Tex-Mex and watch the show. We got in just as they were doing some bull-riding, followed by some incredibly impressive speed/obstacle course horse-riding, but then things started to get really Texan.

  The next event was the Calf Scramble. The basic premise of this is that 50 kids are put in the arena with a few calves, with a large square set out in the middle of the pitch. The kids have to lasso a calf, rope it up into a holster, and then drag it into the centre square. This is easier said than done – especially if you're a petite 15-year-old girl, desperately clutching the large calf's tail and being dragged around the arena as the poor animal casually saunters around. We weren't sure whether we felt more concern for the animals' well-being or the frantic teens desperately clutching at them. However, I did find out from a large Texan man sat beside me that the prize for the kids who get their calf in the square is full payment for their college education. Given that most of these kids were from under-privileged inner-city schools, we thought this was a pretty great prize. Apparently a Texan scholarship has nothing to do with grades, it's all about roping cows in front of 70,000 people.

  But that wasn't the best event. After 20 minutes of calf scrambling, the arena was cleared and a small sheep pen was brought out.

  'Ladies and Gentlemen, time for the event you've all been waiting for… MUTTONNNNNN BUSSSSSSTINNNN!!!'

  I'd happily have waited my entire life for this glorious spectacle.

  The competitors were brought out – three- or four-year-old kids in full-face hockey masks and protection – and introduced to their fluffy steeds. The competition, no joke, was that the child who rides a sheep the furthest distance wins.

  This was amazing.

  When it was all over the 'riders' were lined up in front of the cameras, almost all of them crying their eyes out, and given a rosette. The winner, however, received a big cup, and immediately stopped crying, posing for the camera with his very proud parents beaming behind him.

  This was followed by an awful (but apparently very famous) country and western singer so we went to the pub – once we'd seen Mutton Bustin', even the Beatles coming on stage would have been an anti-climax!

  CHAPTER 50

  COLESLAW WRESTLING IN THE US OF A

  We reached the heart of American voodoo late at night, crossing the straits of deep marsh and swampland on the outskirts of New Orleans. The only light came from the interstate, packed with trucks, while to either side dead trees loomed up eerily out of the darkness. It was a pretty creepy introduction. We stayed at a rundown motel surrounded by buildings with hints of the French architecture we were expecting in the city.

  In the daytime we visited the city's sights, and I met up with my great uncle who emigrated there 30 years ago. He regaled me with stories of his time in the RAF over po' boy sandwiches – a Louisiana speciality – and told me tales of how he kept getting into trouble when he used to work for a mafioso running party flights to Mexico before settling down as a teacher.

  However, New Orleans isn't a city for the daytime – it's a city for whiskey and sweat-soaked nights. In the evening, we watched a comedy night, and somehow ended up drinking bourbon with the performers, cruising from one incredible live music venue to the next in the French Quarter. One bar had a blues three piece, another a jazz quintet; there was even a 1930s big-band ensemble and an incredible blues man with a lap-steel guitar – all within 50 yards of each other. Unsurprisingly, the company was also hilarious, and we were sad that we'd have to leave so soon – the clock was ticking and we couldn't afford not to stick to our schedule.

  It's quite a long drive to Memphis, and our fuel pump started to fall off halfway into the journey, leaving a trail of diesel for 40 miles. An hour of roadside repairs meant that, again, we arrived at night. We headed to Beale Street, which is the musical hub of the city, and made a beeline for a free bar with a rockabilly band tearing up the stage. This was where we bumped into one of Jon's friends from university, recognisable by his matching signet ring – which
was handy as we hadn't arranged anywhere to sleep.

  When we looked at the map of America and plotted our straight lines from city to city we failed to really comprehend the massive distances involved, even after our experiences in Australia: land of the never-ending road.

  This was presumably why we decided to drive from New Orleans to Florida via Memphis and Birmingham, Alabama: a detour of over 500 miles and two states. Still, at least we got to see Elvis's house and experience some true Deep South accents. The decision to tack Birmingham on to the route was solely due to it being the namesake of the place where we came up with the idea for whole taxi trip. When we arrived, we were pleasantly surprised to find a thriving hipster pub where a moustachioed man was carrying around a wooden goose under his arm and the patrons brought their rare-breed dogs along for a pint. It wasn't quite the same as the Birmingham we knew.