• With the puppy show done and dusted, the ribbons handed out, the photos taken, and the puppies all making their way home, today was fly out day for us too. After great success at jamming all our stuff within the specified dimensions and weight limit of our domestic luggage allowance, it was off to the “small” Dallas Airport (Love Field). “Small” is relative cause it’s still a big joint, but the “big” airport (DFW) is the fourth busiest airport in the US and has its own police and fire department so it’s kind of on another level.
• We got to the terminal early because we’re good passengers, and had our fix of Starbucks. I’m going to miss pumpkin spice, whatever the hell that actually is. Seems like it’s in everything. I don’t even like pumpkin, but that pumpkin spice is the ducks nuts.
• The plane’s AC accidentally released some of the chemtrail in to the cabin so the mind control kicked in sooner than expected. When we woke back up nice and compliant, it was time for takeoff.
• I had the window seat for this one, so I grabbed a few happy snaps on the flight. The size of US cities sure make Australian cities look miniscule. You start flying over what you think is Las Vegas and it just keeps going and going for miles and miles of suburbia before the commercial areas start appearing, let alone the CBD itself. So much resource consumption… Also saw some kid on a dirtbike getting chased by a truck in the canals, dunno what that was about.
• Our last US hotel of the trip was in Santa Monica, within a cooee of the pier. It didn’t have air conditioning, and the windows of the room were literally the footpath of Lincoln Boulevard. It did have a big box on the wall and a thermostat so super fridgie here sprung in to action to get some cold air happening… and it was a bloody furnace. Tried reversing the polarity to get make it run cold but something something laws of physics something something. Our proximity to people walking past was super uncomfortable, and how the hell does a motel exist without air conditioning in Current Year?? Can’t imagine how bad this place would be in summer.
• We left our halfway house of a hotel room and wandered down to the pier to see what the fuss is about. Anyone who’s played GTA V will have massive deja vu here because Del Perro is pretty much a pixel perfect copy of Santa Monica. It’s a nice enough area, but we’re a bit spoiled for beaches in Australia, especially with our close proximity to Surfers Paradise, so it wasn’t quite the attraction it might have been. The beach is looonggg and if you’re going for a quick surf you’ll need to pack a lunch and have an overnight stay before you even get to the shallows. Lucky they didn’t film Baywatch’s “running down the beach” scenes here or David Hasselhoff would have died of old age before the first slowmo was over.
• Apparently it’s a thing in the US to have too many dollar bills on your person, because lots of helpful people in the street kept offering to relieve me of any spare dollars I may have to save me carrying them around. Also apparently I must look like a record producer because people kept trying to hand me their CDs. Perhaps the guys with the CDs should find the people with excess dollars and run an exchange program.
• It was time for lunch and I hadn’t had jambalaya in at least 48 hours, so it was off to Bubba Gumps again to satisfy that craving. Well, except I got fish… Not exactly sure how that happened. This outlet was not nearly as enthusiastic as the one in Vegas, and I had to actually ask(!!) for a Dr Pepper refill. Food was ok, but classic tourist trap area with the champagne prices for beer taste. Bit of a let down after the highs of the outlet in Vegas. If Bubba hadn’t been killed in Vietnam he’d be getting a strongly worded email.
• Lots of buskers giving objectively bad performances with more desire for money in the hat then to improve their artistry, overly expensive rides, and a surplus of cheap touristy trinkets. Had a look under the pier for dead bodies because it always features heavily in US crime shows, but found nothing there but pigeons and discarded fishing line.
• We walked back to the hotel and after being asked for a few more of those spare dollars, we decided that maybe we’d take an uber after dark. We weren’t that far from where we stayed in LA intially all those weeks ago, but there’s so many more homeless here.
• Back at our halfway house for a quick shower before dinner. Got stung with the early closing issue again, so ended up back at a Cheesecake Factory. This one was directly across from a Tesla salesroom, so we daydreamed about being able to afford and justify buying a zoomyboi. Specifically a Model S Plaid. Just a nice little grocery getter, ya know? A nice little 2.2 second 0-100kph, <10 second quarter mile, >1000hp, >1000lbft shopping cart.
• Being Halloween, there were many people dressed up and going to parties in fancy dress. Mostly the male costumes seemed to be vaguely referenced superheros but with their shirts off, and the ladies wore sexy versions of everything from nurses to witches to playboy bunnies which actually seemed a bit redundant. I felt very over dressed, and also very unattractive.
• Uber back to the hotel, and there was a homeless bloke sleeping outside our hotel room. With his “room” made of cardboard sheets and a shopping cart we likely head similar levels of road noise, but I don’t reckon he paid the better part of $300AUD for it.
• Tomorrow is our last day in the land of the free and home of the brave, and then it’s back to the land of football, meat pies, kangaroos, and Holden cars… Well, except the Holdens. We don’t have them anymore. Better have two pies instead.
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