Here’s something I spliced together while waiting for a plane in Peru. Apologies for the jittery focus on some of this – our camera seems to be stuck in jittery-focus-plus mode for some reason. Best watched fullscreen and in high definition, for similar reasons.
The soundtrack is Bjork live, for those of you who don’t recognize Icelandic pop music at first listen (Hey Hjortur! And congratulations on your engagement!).
We’ll move onto the rest of our South American adventures shortly…
Ah, the Galapagos. Amazing wildlife, jaw-dropping geology, fresh air, champagne. It was just like that Lonely Island video…
Well, not really. Yes, we spent our days hopping from island to island. Yes, we saw the most incredible flora and fauna. And yes, we were on a sailing catamaran motoring (and very occasionally sailing) around the Pacific Ocean with a lovely bunch of travelers / holidaymakers for a week. But there was remarkably little booze. It’s not that there wasn’t any on board, it’s just that very few of us actually felt the need (which, after a few habit-forming years of a beer or two every evening after work was surprisingly refreshing).
Other than the occasional broken night’s sleep (see below) the trip was perfect. Lucy and I were blissfully free of the seasickness that occasionally poleaxed some of our companions. We got up in the morning to the sound of the ship’s bell. A hearty breakfast, a pootle around an island, elevenses, a little snorkelling. Then a three course lunch followed by a siesta or a laze on the sundeck. More island pootling, perhaps more snorkeling, then a three course dinner, a briefing from our on board naturalist (not that kind) and bed. It was all highly regimented yet strangely comforting once you were in the flow of it – like being back at public school.
The crew were top notch, the other passengers were good company, and we all happily exchanged trivialities at first before risking anything more of ourselves (yes, I have been reading Paul Theroux, but other than this minor plagiarism I have remained relatively immune to his more misanthropic tendencies). We couldn’t have wished for a better bunch.
On reflection – and I am writing this at altitude in Peru after a six hour bus ride – my favorite part of the Galapagos wasn’t a particular animal or island (although Darwin’s boobies were amazing). The best part of the trip for me was seeing such a range of islands at such different stages of development: a fresh lava island covered in nothing but surrealism… next to an eroded lava island with a few plants and thousands of seabirds… next to an island that has been completely overtaken by vegetation, complete with giant tortoises. It normally takes huge leaps of imagination to picture anything happening on a geological timescale – here you just have to hop on a boat and travel a few miles to see millions of years back and forward in time, with all the changes in animal physiology and behavior to match. Truly fascinating.
Broken night’s sleep? Well, I have had a new business idea. It’s a new type of alarm clock for stressed executives who are having problems waking up in the morning, and it will be the recorded – yet unamplified – sound of a fifty meter steel anchor chain being hauled out of its resting place by a fifty pound kedge anchor just one thin sheet of plywood away from your head. I can guarantee its effectiveness, as I have now mastered the skill of sleeping through “slightly bumpy night navigations” (with one foot braced against the ceiling of our cabin, and with the sound of the waves blotting out Lucy’s occasional yelps as she was thrown out of bed). The anchor chain alarm clock never failed to rouse me, however. A shame that it usually marked the end of the night navigation at around 3am!
We are both standing at a crossroads. Life decisions. Future directions. Deeply profound. Heavy meaning. Yadda yadda.
No.
We are standing at THE crossroads. The legendary crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi where Robert Johnson famously sold his soul to the devil in exchange for mastery of the blues guitar. THAT crossroads.
Down to the Crossroads by the Patrick Dodd Trio (a great, yet struggling Memphis bluesman, who we saw in a dive bar on Beale Street, and whose CD we now obligatorily own)
I guess it’s only fitting. We started this morning at Al Green’s All Gospel Tabernacle in Memphis, where Bishop Green himself saved our souls with a two hour, all-singing, all-dancing, tongues-speaking, Lord-praising, barn-storming hallelujah of a Sunday service. So I suppose it’s appropriate that we should be drinking beer and making Faustian pacts at sundown.
The Reverend Green will be glad to see you, if you haven't got a prayer...
We don’t have any photographs of the inside of Al’s church – we didn’t feel it appropriate. That said, how are you supposed to behave when VERY large VERY elderly ladies are moshing in the pews to the power of a funk Gospel breakdown? Bowed heads? Applause? CPR? It was like nothing either of us had ever seen. Bishop Green was deeply, deeply charismatic, if … erm … slightly hard to follow in the logical thread of his preaching. Just go with it – Church of England this ain’t.
Clarksdale Mississippi, on the other hand, is home to the Shack Up Inn (thanks for the intro LouAnne!) – a motley collection of renovated shotgun shacks down by the railroad tracks (der DER da da DUM!) surrounding a bar / impromptu performance space. Our shack for the night used to belong to Robert Clay, another long suffering blues man whose spirit suffuses the place. If Lucy leaves me, and if my dog up and dies in the night, I will know who to blame.
The Shack Up Inn - how exactly does one "dust a broom" anyway?
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On today’s journey from the deeply holy to the merely spiritual, we paused for a few hours at the National Civil Rights Museum. Built in and around the motel in Memphis where Martin Luther King was assassinated, this was yet more deeply powerful stuff. Seeing the iconic images of race hatred and determined struggle set in their proper historical context (it was unbelievably recent) was a two-wide-eye-opener for a couple of measured Brits, and a reminder that modern day New York and 20th Century America are two very different places.
We had two bites at Nashville. We arrived lateish on a thundery Thursday evening, went out for fried chicken at Monell’s (meeting a lovely couple – Richard and Karen – whose college-age son is considering a career in investment banking, even after speaking with us). We then hit the town, which was staging an extended Amateur Drinking Hour. After a couple of hours listening to interminable sound checks and getting pushed around by all-beef-fed meatheads (male and female) we went to bed somewhat frustrated. Nashville hadn’t really been what we had hoped for, and we were due in Memphis.
The next morning we decided to indulge in The Ultimate Luxury, which is – of course – time. We didn’t have to be anywhere we didn’t want to be. We would take a mulligan day and do Nashville all over again, Jan Johnson style.
For those of you who don’t know Jan, she rocks. Before we worked together in New York, Jan had spent a little time in Nashville, no doubt being talented, and awesome, and awesomely talented. She had given us a long list of recommendations, which we had initially not paid enough attention to, and we decided that this was our problem – we would spend our extra day in Nashville purely following Jan’s advice.
First stop: pancakes out by Vanderbilt university. Piles of fluffy deliciousness, with maple syrup, and sausages (just go with it, OK?).
Next stop: daytime drinking and live music. We eventually worked out that the key to excellent country music is fiddles. And old dudes – old dudes are to good country music what fat chefs are to good cooking.
Next up: Country Music Hall of Fame. Rhinestones, twangy guitars and hillbillies. Actually deeply engaging, even for an Underworld fan such as myself.
The main event: Bluebird Café. In suburban Nashville in the least pre-possessing strip mall you have ever seen. Cue two hours of finely nuanced, carefully crafted, funny singalong singer songwriting.
Then we strayed. We were weak. We slipped from the path of Jan. The next recommendation was a fried catfish and hushpuppy joint (Caney Fork) a $65 round trip taxi ride from where we were. Jan, we are truly sorry, but we balked, went to a crab shack you didn’t recommend … and were rewarded with the worst meal we have had in the USA. Truly terrible, and not in a bad New York Zagat review kind of way (“it was my birthday and they only gave me one glass of free champagne” etc.) but actually really hard to eat. We retired hurt to Doritos in our hotel room (actually they weren’t Doritos, but we have a friend who works for Pepsi, Doritos are a Pepsi product and we are under pain of death not to eat anything else, so they were Doritos, OK?).
Despite the weak ending, we had a lovely time, and came away with the obligatory CD – nothing says “I was in Nashville” like owning a CD of a struggling singer songwriter. Yee haw!
Jan we miss you.
[Or for those of you who aren’t British – I pass my driving test and am unleashed on an unsuspecting American driving public]
Baby Driver - Simon & Garfunkel at their road trippiestThey say that amongst the most stressful things to go through in life are (i) leaving / changing job; (ii) moving house; and (iii) getting divorced. Well, I am of course a fantastic over-achiever – whilst (i) and (ii) were firmly in reach (see the stress-wrinkles!!), (iii) seemed sadly unlikely given my single status. Hence I decided to throw one more challenge into the mix: how’s about learning to drive? Too easy?? How’s about learning to drive IN MANHATTAN. With a total of 3 WEEKS to get your test.
In all seriousness, this was something I’d always promised James I’d do before we set off together on our RTW trip, incorporating as it does a 2,500+ mile drive across America. Lesson one – starting (in rush hour) on 52nd street before turning down Park Avenue – had me questioning the depth of our relationship: was I really willing to go through this? Really?? Many phone calls / active counselling sessions with my poor unsung parents later, I was calmer. The lessons continued, my prowess (confidence? lack of fear??) grew, and within a few weeks, I was the proud owner of a NY state driving licence (which, for those interested, in its temporary form looks JUST like a receipt. Haven’t accidentally thrown it away…yet).
This was a week before our road trip. Yep, that’s right, a road trip involving all SORTS of challenges rarely seen in a Manhattan driving lesson: motorways, bendy roads, supermarket car parks, calm and non-aggressive drivers (how does it work when no-one cuts you up whilst swearing at you in something very foreign and very fluent?). The challenges are endless. This post, then, is the first of a confessional series. First off the go:
Driving on an interstate [check out the SERIOUS expression]. Turns out I’m a SPEED DEMON. Who knew?!!
Skyline Drive. We’ll post a map of this. Suffice to say: BENDY. Think Alpine roads, then supersize (this is America after all). This puppy has a “runaway truck ramp” – 100m of gently upward sloping gravel bed – coming off it in event of truck-speed-bendiness emergencies! Day one: no-one died. Day two: starting to get the hang of it. I think. Also, no-one died. Bring on day 3!!
Driving…I guess it ain’t ALL bad.
Our last drinks party at 83 Mercer. We’re going to miss you guys.
We'll meet again. Johnny Cash, American IV
The category “heavy things I want to carry around the world” includes:
Unless we come across a particularly fine drop zone that is (i) somewhere utterly spectacular, (ii) happy to lend me a 170 sq. ft. piece of ripstop nylon and (iii) accept a scanned copy of my log book, I probably won’t be jumping over the next eight months. Sniff.
I am desperately going to miss the camaraderie, the speed, the views, the sunshine, the hanging off the outside of planes, the playing with hi-tech kit, the exercise and the drop zone food (OK, maybe not the food). Fortunately, before we headed off Mirko had the sense to have the world’s best bachelor party down at the drop zone at Cross Keys.
Guys, I’m going to miss you. See you when we get back.