Luke in America

In the small town of Lynchburg in Moore Country, Tennessee (which is a dry county) lies the biggest whiskey distillery on the planet, the Jack Daniels Whiskey Distillery. We arrived in the afternoon, had some food at a local diner, and then went on a tour of facilities. Our tour guide was a sweet old lady named Bettie, who had a dry sense of humour and a lot of knowledge about Tennessee whiskey (Jack Daniels is Tennessee sipping whiskey and not bourbon, apparently).

The Distillery grounds are beautiful, and it was so interesting to walk through the entire whiskey production process. Water is sourced from natural springs underneath the complex, then mixed with corn mash and fermented is massive vats across several warehouses, before being distilled into 100 proof bourbon (it is bourbon at this point). Then it travels, drop by drop, through charcoal vats. It is this process that gives Jack Daniels a smokey flavour and the label of Tennessee sipping whiskey, rather than bourbon.I asked Bettie how much whiskey the distillery produces, and Bettie told me between 26 and 30 million gallons a year. That’s more than 250,000 litres a day! More than enough to last the Gazzards for the rest of our lives (if you don’t include Kallum). We watched a video of the barrelling process. Jack Daniels barrels are created by hand, on site, and are only used once before being sold on to other wineries and distilleries. The whiskey is stored in barrels for 3-4 years, where the flavour and colour will come out and they’ll bottle the drink and send it on it’s way. For a Master Distiller to know if a barrel is ready he only has to have a smell through the barrel’s bunghole. It’s quite a gift, and I’m not quite there yet. One day.After our tour we got a a group photo and started walking back to the car, when something amazing happened. One of the girls behind the photo printer counter ran outside and invited us all to her house after she finished work, to drink some Jack with her friends. All it took was a couple minutes chatting to them with our accents and we were getting invited back home. Chris and Kallum were gobsmacked. Without any effort on their part, girls were trying to pick them up. Unfortunately Lynchburg is a 90 minute drive from Nashville, and we had no time to spare. It was disappointing, but I’m sure the guys didn’t mind the ego boost.

After something so cool, we then had the worst experience of the trip arriving in Nashville. We pulled up at the Crowne Plaza Hotel to learn than our booking (made 3 days previously) had been cancelled the night before due to “credit card fraud”, They wouldn’t specify further, and they had no vacancy. Luckily the hotel let us use their wireless and I was able to find another hotel – The Hotel Preston out by the airport. I booked it,  and we headed over to check in. But as soon as we arrived we were told there had been a mistake made, the hotel didn’t actually have any rooms. I was fucking floored. Twice we’d parked, unpacked, and walked into what we thought was a sure thing. It was 7pm on Saturday and we still had nowhere to stay.

We were all hungry at that point too, so even though a couple of us were fuming we went to the hotel bar for dinner and a couple beers. After that I managed to find a nearby Hyatt with vacancy for a good price -  the place even had an indoor/outdoor pool and a hot tub. So we drove over, had showers, and went out on the town. And it was CRAZY!

We started on Broadway Street and headed to a saloon. It had 3 floors, all overlooking the main stage area with a band playing country rock music. It later turned into a line dancing stage. One of the floors had free pool, foosball, air-hockey and shuffleboard. It also had a cowboy-themed store and I bought a crappy cowboy hat for $20, so I would fit in (though it turns out not many people were wearing them) We stayed there for a few drinks, before heading off down the street for something a little less family friendly. And soon enough, we found another bar, this one with a mechanical bull. And yes, each of us road it.Me moved on from there to a college bar (of the same name as the one in Knoxville, The Tin Roof) that had a really cool live band and I swear the drinks were even stronger. Me and a couple other guys got out on the dance floor there, and I made a complete fool of myself. It was awesome, but I was covered in sweat after 30 minutes. It’s so damn hot in Tennessee. The humidity in this side of the country is so high that the temperature doesn’t really drop at night – it never goes below 30°C, and is close to 40°C during the day.  After drinking, dancing, sweating, and talking to locals, we piled into cabs and dragged ourselves to bed. The next morning we arose, hungover, piled into The Beast, and hit the road. But not before swinging past the city for a quick spot of shopping. The night before I had seen a sign that read“But 1 Get 2 Free Cowboy Boots”. There is no way I could resist, so I ducked in and bought a pair. And then another one. Kallum got the third, and I am now the proud owner of two pairs of Nashville cowboy boots.

Kallum and Chris also bought some awesome cowboy hats, and Kallum got the coolest, most American belt buckle you could ever imagine; an America eagle in front of an American flag in front of a map of the United States. It’s safe to say that this song has become our theme for the trip. Oh, and this one too, because it’s god damn funny.I was very sad to leave Tennessee, and now Nashville has joined New York as a city I’m definitely coming back to. But we had to push on and hit the road, going in the direction of Atlanta, and then New Orleans. Louisiana baby, here we come!

We’ve been on the road for two days in Tennessee and it was some of the best days I’ve ever had. Why didn’t we block out more time for this state?? The accent is sexy, the people are friendly, the countryside is beautiful and the drinks come strong and cheap. We left Washington early Friday morning (early as in 7am. For guys used to partying all night this was a challenge) and drove down through Virginia, across Tennessee and into Knoxville. I think Tennessee is the 7th state I’ve visited, and for the other guys it would be closer to 14th. Still nowhere near the total 50, but we’re getting there.I’m in love the Tennessean accent. In New York, Philly, and D.C. the American accents were very similar to the kind you hear most often in television and film. I think our exposure to media has dampened the effect some American accents have on us, because we’re used to listening to people who talk that way. Not so in Tennessee. As soon we stopped into a diner for breakfast and we’re greeted with “How y’all doin?” we knew we were in for something different. It’s magical.

We drove The Beast for 8 hours before we hit Knoxville, and everyone was tired when we arrived. After a quick swim and some showers, we walked downstairs and discovered the hotels was having a seafood buffet. The Gazzards may have been tired, but I for one got energy from our server. A cute blondie, whenever we talked to her she blushed and giggled, and continued to for the night. She kept asking us to repeat things too. I asked if she was having problems her our accent. Her reply: “No, I think it’s the cutest thing ever. Where are y’all from?” All spoken in a real country, Tennessean way.We headed down Gay Street into a bar after dinner, for once wearing our custom-made Gazzards shirts (we have a team logo and everything, it’s awesome trust me). Because of the shirts and our accent, the bartender gave us our first round of beers for free. Little did we know what we had begun. After the first round, we ordered mixed drinks – Jack Daniels and coke of course. But in Tennessee they pour drinks a little different than other places. It goes something like this: add ice, pour whiskey 90% to the top, then a squirt of coke.

I’m being serious. Every one of us was in shock at how much whiskey they poured in our drinks. After the first sip I swore it was on the rocks. And every single pour, at every place we went too, was the same. I actually couldn’t handle it. I may not be the best drinker, but years of going out with good drinkers and partying in Sweden could not prepare me for these drinks. All of us were having the same reaction – after every drink grimacing, trying to hold it down. Only Kallum drank them as per usual, to his detriment – I’ve never seen the guy more drunk than that night. Good value for money I suppose, but the night soon went messy.

After getting buzzed at that bar, we headed into the Old Town of Nashville, but were disappointed by the lack of people. After talking to a few locals we gathered that Nashville is a college town, and due to it being summer most students were back at home. Still, we took the advice of a bouncer and got a cab to a place called The Tin Roof, a college bar across town. And all hell broke loose.

Even with summer break the place was absolutely packed. There was the local football team singing chants, a live rock band, and college girls with cute accents from all across the country as far as the eye could see. And the reaction to us being from Australia was greater than normal; people loved it out here! And a lot of people’s response to finding out we were Aussie was similar to what I experienced when I lived in Sweden: “That’s cool! But why the hell are you here?” As if we needed a reason to come to Knoxville. I won’t give many details on how the night ended. Kallum met a girl that recommended an “Irish carbomb”. I wasn’t game enough to try it, but both he and Chris did it with the girl. It’s a shot of Jamesons mixed with Baileys, dropped into a quarter pint of Guinness and then downed. It sounds pure awful, and the look on Chris’ face was priceless before he bee-lined to the bathroom. We were pretty hungover for the next day, but there was no time to waste. We jumped back into the car and started off towards Nashville, with a slight detour along the way – The Jack Daniels Distillery.

The White House. The Pentagon. President Barack Obama. Welcome to D.C.   We arrived in D.C. on Tuesday afternoon, on a train straight from Philly. The train went past Baltimore, Maryland. Baltimore just happens to be the settings of the HBO television show The Wire, my favourite show of all time. The show portrays Baltimore as crime-infested blight full of gangbanger drug dealers with no hope of salvation. And it’s less than 100km from the capital city of this country. Everything is so damn close up here on the east coast. We spent the next 2.5 days looking at monuments, museums, and walking around the Washington Mall, the area between the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol Building. We saw the White House, where some fellow was loudly praying to Allah out the front (my guess was it was a protest), and we got our picture taken in front of the large, imposing statue of Abraham Lincoln at the west end of the Mall. We looked out from Lincoln at the Reflecting Pool where Forrest and Jenny embrace in Forrest Gump, and were disappointed as it has been drained for renovations.The Washington Monument was again something else which surprised me with its size (that’s what she said!). In movies it must always be filmed from afar, because up close the 180m tall obelisk seemed much larger than portrayed. You can even get an elevator to the top and see Washington from a height, but tickets sell out early each morning and we never managed to get in. After seeing it, I keep wondering what the meaning behind it is. I know it’s a monument to George Washington, the first President of the United States, but what’s the symbolism behind the structure?We saw the Vietnam and Korean War Veteran Memorials, and got close enough to the Capitol Building to be told we could go no further. Congress is currently in session, arguing back and forth as they try to solve the current deficit problems (the country has only a few days until it defaults on its debt, and conservative lawmakers refuse to vote to raise the debt limit. Riveting, I know). Obama is in town too, though I don’t think we sure him.

We spent some time in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, and were thoroughly impressed. The building has a large array of planes, ranging from the Wright brother’s first ever plane to WW2 Japanese fighters and hundreds of other. We watched a very cool 3D IMAX film on the Hubble telescope, half of which I slept through. But while the museum was very cool, there seemed to be something missing. There were no huge planes, no B52s, and Chris was very upset that he wasn’t about to find a Space Shuttle. Everything in the museum seemed a bit… small-scale. But then we found a pamphlet directing us to another Air and Space Museum, one out by the airport…Called the Udvar-Hazy Centre, it takes up a huge hanger out by Dulles Airport and contains a plethora of large planes, jets, helicopters, and spacecraft. On our final day in Washington we had to get out to the airport in order to pick up a rental car, so that was our excuse. As soon as we picked up our Chevy Suburban SUV (we’ve been affectionately referring to it as “The Beast”) we drove down the wrong side of the road and checked out the coolest museum on the planet.

We were all blown away. It was the best museum-type place we’ve been to yet. Nothing but a fuck-load of planes in every direction, hundreds of them, and some big ones too. There was a B29 Superfortress Bomber (the same plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima), a Concorde Jet, the Boeing Dash 80 (a prototype jetliner built in 1954), a Space Shuttle, a Huey Helicopter, and the fastest jet plane ever created, the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, as seen in the film Transfers 2. The plane once set a record flight time for flying from New York to London in less than 2 hours. We spent hours walking around that place, and it was fantastic. One of my personal favourites was the Nazi personal helicopter that extended from a backpack. Best idea ever!Besides sightseeing we spent a couple nights out on the town in D.C. It was a very different experience to New York, but still good. The bars closed a lot earlier on non-Weekend nights (1.30am was last call in most places) and it was a lot harder to find decent places. We asked a Hooters girls for advice on where to go on Tuesday (yes, we had lunch at Hooters) and she told us that U Street was the place to be. We walked over there and checked out a few places, but weren’t keen on any of them, so we continued on to an area of the town called Adams Morgan, where we found a really cool rooftop bar and stayed there for a few hours. We met some locals there, I looked after an incredibly drunk girl (she kept telling me she was “Irish as fuck” which I think was just an excuse to drink herself stupid) and then stopped by McDonalds for some disgusting drunk food on the way home. It was a good night. Our Wednesday night was spent meeting back up with some local girls in Georgetown. We went to a couple bars that night, and it was alright. The most memorable part of the night for me was when an American girl we were talking with was blown away when she found out it was winter back in Australia. She had no idea the seasons were opposites on the different hemispheres. It made me wonder about what else she didn’t know, like, where does she think the sun goes at night? Does she think the world is flat too? I love Americans.

Ahh, D.C. You’re a nice city, but your taxis are expensive and you have too many public servants. It reminded me of home really, which is a bad thing. No one wants to be reminded they live in Canberra.

On Sunday morning the six Australians known as “The Gazzards” departed the greatest city in the world on an Amtrak train bound for Philadelphia. We were a sad and tired bunch, but I found some respite in eating a cheeseburger and reading a magazine while Kallum played Minecraft next to me. It was a short but enjoyable train ride, and now I’m considering going on a longer train journey at another point in the trip.Because we were unorganised fools we we had no accommodation in Philly when we arrived, and spent our first half an hour there searching for hotels on the train station’s wifi. Thank god for modern technology that allows for such disorganisation; it really saved us. We ended up choosing to stay two nights at the Sofotel in the centre of the city, which turned out to be a very nice 4.5 star place. My only complaint would be the lack of a pool, but the location was excellent and the room service tasty.After some naps and food (Karl and Vinnie had burgers at the Good Dog Bar on South Street and highly recommend them) we decided to drag our sorry asses out to a Lucky Strike bowling bar and see if we couldn’t make something of Sunday night. We had all had 2 massive nights in a row and were feeling pretty sorry for ourselves, but this turned around mainly due to our server, a really nice local girl named Sarah. She was friendly, excited to be talking to Australians, and recommended us beers that we drank not knowing they were 10.5% alcohol. I was also shocked to learn that she earns $2.50 an hour and relies completely on tips to survive. After she told us she was going out to a bar after work, the night’s plans were sealed. We went to Marathon Bar on 10th street and drank $4 mixed drinks, talked to lots of students (Philadelphia has a lot of colleges and the population is about 20% students), and me and Kallum sung karaoke (the song was Kiss – I was Made Loving You). Embarrassing and hilarious, the night got messy after that and ended up with me and Kallum puking our guts out in the bathroom and then getting the hell out of there. Not my proudest moment, but expected after so much partying.

After Kallum passed out in the room, I went back to the streets looking for food, to discover Chris and Sarah were still out. Chris was up for some food, so the two of us wandered around and found an all-night diner called Little Pete’s. We had some burgers, some coffee, and a long D&M (deep and meaningful conversation for any oldies reading this). I have no idea what time it was when I retired to bed, but I swore to myself I would not be drinking the next two nights.

The next day was at a much slower pace. I began the morning getting a shave, haircut and colour. I’ve had my hair quite long the past year, and only got 1 inch taken off. I also got it dyed dark brown, and thinned out. My hairdresser was a tall, skinny bloke called Joaquin, with tattoos covering his entire body. Nice guy actually, and after 2 hours in his chair I only paid $96. Best haircut I’ve ever had.Peter and I walked a few blokes over the city in the Old Town area of Philly to look at the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. I never knew that Philadelphia was the place where the Declaration of Independence was written and ratified, or that it was the nation’s capital before Washington. This was the place where the entire idea of America was born, where the nation was forged and the war of independence began. Pretty heavy stuff, but the actual Independence Hall was uninspiring, and the Liberty Bell had a line hundreds of people long so we didn’t actually see it.

While the two of us were being underwhelmed, Chris and Kallum were recuperating and Vinnie and Karl were getting tattoos. That’s right, two of the boys spend 5 hours and several hundred dollars that afternoon getting their arms tattooed while in Philly. The jobs were pretty well done too, with Vince getting a Native American girl coloured and Karl getting a black-and-white image of a Spanish Conquistador fighting a Filipino warrior. Very impressive. I’m writing this on the train from Philly to Washington D.C, which we boarded this morning (Tuesday). I was very happy I went to Philly, and now we have 3 nights in D.C. the it’s time for a road trip (which we haven’t actually planned yet!). So long Philly, hello D.C.!

So after a little recovery, I’m ready to post about our final day in New York. It was a Saturday, and the group decided we would start the day with some New York style pizza. I had eaten a slice on pepperoni pizza at the baseball game, but Karl found a place on the east side that had a good reputation, so we piled into cabs and got over there. We then had some of the greasiest pizza I’ve ever seen. I put three napkins on my slice and they went completely transparent. It was a little disgusting actually, and I can’t say I really enjoyed eating that pizza. Maybe we needed to try other places. We then headed over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met). Me, Peter, and Kallum took a long route because our taxi driver misheard us and we didn’t realise until we were on the highway going towards Yankee Stadium. A five minute ride turned into half an hour, which we didn’t pay for of course. Sometime it seems like half the cabbies in this city are asleep while they drive. It’s a bit disconcerting really.

The Met had some cool Egyptian and Medieval weaponry exhibits, but I was a little too hungover to really enjoy it. After a few hours of wandering around, most of the guys decided it was time to get back to the hostel to get ready for dinner. We decided after a couple nights where we got rejected by clubs, that we needed to get out early. We had seen the Jane Hotel in the Meatpackers District on Thursday, and I saw some of the most beautiful women walking in and out of there. We made a booking at the hotel restaurant so we knew we would get in there early enough to stay.But I’m getting ahead of myself. As everyone was leaving, Kallum and I thought we could spend some time walking around Central Park, which none of us had done yet – and I’m so glad we did. Just walking out of the Met, we saw on a map of the park something labelled “the obelisk”. It turned out to be a 50m tall Egyptian obelisk, brought to New York more than 100 years ago. After seeing that, I started to realise Central Park wasn’t just the big park I thought it was. I grabbed a map and learnt that there are a couple dozen baseball diamonds in there, as well as several lakes, a castle, a swedish cottage, some concert arenas, and something called Alice in Wonderland.

We walked around for an hour and realised we needed a few to walk the whole park. Either that or rent a bicycle. But there’s never enough time in this city? We had to get home so we could go out, and there would be no time the next day. We hadn’t even see the Empire State Building or the Brooklyn Bridge. What a city. I’m going back for good.

So we got home, got ready, and went out to the Jane Hotel. The restaurant was a french cafe with some of the nicest foods I’ve had so far, and then we moved into the hotel bar for drinks. Everyone in the group was quite hungover from the night before, and the night started with us drinking some scotch and wine, with no one barely talking. Kallum looked like he was about to fall asleep. However, we had gotten seats in nice big couches in front of a fireplace in one the classiest bars I’ve ever been too, and were getting table service service by a tall brunette with a nice smile and a dress that barely covered her. After a few hours the place filled up, the drinks and shots started kicking in, and I ended up spending $600.I was amazed at that place, and at how easy it was to talk to people. Our Australian accents got us noticed, and we all had little stories we would make up (we were all in the army that night again, and Kallum was still my little brother). I loved every minute of it. We talked to a few New Yorkers at the start of the night, before it got messy, and got more recommendations from them; too bad we were leaving the next morning. It’s really obvious now that as soon as we get to a new place we need to meet some locals as soon as we can to find out where we need to go. Wikipedia isn’t enough. In hindsight, we were stupid the first few nights out.

Towards the early hours of the morning a few of us decided we couldn’t leave New York without seeing a strip club, so we ducked over to Times Square and popped into one, passing Robert DeNiro’s cousin on the way in (the doorman did a great impression). I didn’t spend any money in there, just chatted with the girls and enjoyed watching guys getting brought on staged and stripped to their boxers so the girls could spank them. Chris fell in love with a stripped after a 3 minute dance turned into a 40 minute conversation. We had to drag him out of there and back to the hostel.

Everyone got home between 4 and 5am. We then got up at 9am, packed, and jumped on the train to Philly. I’ve never seen such a sorry bunch of hungover Aussies as I did that morning, but it was totally worth it.So then we came to Philly, which will be the next blog post. New York, I love you, but you wrecked me. I’m slowly recovering, and can’t wait to return and get wrecked again.

Holy shit. I don’t even have words. Well, maybe I do – otherwise this would be a short post. But man oh man, New York was everything I hoped for and more. We should have stayed for another week, though I’m not sure my wallet and liver would ever forgive me if we did. This is the first real downtime I’ve had in a week; even my past two posts were hurriedly written between enjoying myself. Pretty much every day went like this:

• 9am – wake up, shower, get a cab or subway into the city
• 5pm – return to the hostel, hot and exhausted, for a shower and change of clothes
• 6pm – argue about where to go for dinner, then get out there
• 3am – return to the hostel in a drunken stupor, collapse

Insane. So where to start? We were in the city from Monday to Sunday (today), having left on a train this morning to Philadelphia. I wrote my last post on Thursday night, just before dinner. We ended up going out to Little Italy because we couldn’t find a restaurant in Chinatown, and had a great meal at a place called SPQR. The tipping system still throws me – restaurants automatically add 20% to the bill, and they throw in some tax on top of that. Each meal ends up being way more expensive that expected, and it’s starting to add up. Nothing much else happened on Thursday night. We got a cab to the Meatpackers District and checked out a place Vinnie was recommended – The Jane Hotel. The place looked good but we didn’t get out until midnight and there was no chance we were getting in, so we smoked some cigars instead and went home.

Friday was spent checking out 5th Avenue shops, and I found some pretty decent stuff there. Peter has been going crazy about a shop called J Crew, and we all went and bought a few things. While shopping somewhere else we asked for directions to the nearest stakehouse. I’m getting better at navigating this city now; as soon as the bloke said “between 5th and 6th on 26th street” I knew exactly where he meant. So we walked over and discovered that the place was actually an Outback Stakehouse, and they sold James Boags Premium, one of my favourite beers from back home. I’m getting sick of the watery piss that is Budweiser, so it was a nice change. That is not to say American beer is bad, because I’ve had some really good ones, but they’re typically micro-brews and not the big factory beers like Bud, Coors, et cetera.Friday night was very exciting – we were going to a baseball game in Yankee Stadium! I’ve never been a fan but I must say I really had fun there. The stadium is huge, the atmosphere is incredible, and our seats were special “bar” seats, which apparently not many people know about because they were easy to get and gave us incredible views. I booked my ticket after the boys already had, so I was in a different section. This ended up being a good thing, because the two Yankee fans I sat next to gave me the skinny on all things baseball (I never knew that there were two leagues, the American and the National, and the World Series is the two teams playing each other), as well as great advice on where to go out after the game.

They told me to get the train down to Union Square and walk into the East Village and find a bar or pub. Damn were they right! We ended up at a crazy bar called 31 Steps and stayed there until 4am. Me and Kallum were brothers that night (I was older), Peter convinced a girl he was an Australia SAS officer that did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Chris met a very lovely 41 year old lady (he told me to put that up). Me and my little bro played beer pong for the first time, which was very fun, and while swinging past McDonalds on the way home we exchanged words with some bloody poms (I’m still not over the Ashes).

This post is getting long and I’m hungry, so I’ll finish this post and have a part 2 shortly. Until then.

We’ve now been in New York City for three days, and the past two have been huge. Throw in a heat wave (today it was 38°C), some humidity and a hangover, and everything starts to take its toll. But I’ve been loving every second of it, as have all of the other boys. The Gazzards push on.

We intended for Tuesday to be our “museum day”. We would walk twenty blocks down to the Museum of Natural History (made famous by the shitty Ben Stiller movie Night at the Museum), then through Central Park to see the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and hopefully stop by MOMA (The Museum of Modern Art) on our way to a Broadway play. Well, that plan didn’t last very long.

We soon realised after walking into the Natural History Museum that we would be there a while. That place is enormous. We were there for more than five hours; we saw exhibits on the human brain, the largest dinosaur ever discovered, and the big bang; we walked through halls showing the culture and lifestyle of native americans and polynesians; we saw about a million types of gems including an incredibly rare red diamond;  we went into a marine exhibit and saw a scale replica of a blue whale before walking down to the planetarium to watch a stunning show about stars. I still don’t think we saw everything in that place. It really threw me how much stuff is in there. Afterwards some of us went to see the Broadway show Jersey Boys. Our first choice of show was The Book of Mormon (an apparently hilarious send-up of Mormon missionaries created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park fame) but after winning a bunch of Tonies it’s all sold out. Undaunted, we got back-row seats to Jersey Boys, and I really enjoyed myself. It was funny, the songs were great (a couple of amazing male singers helped), and the way props and scenes were moved around on stage was done so fluidly and perfect that I was in awe. I’m now considering going to another show before we leave. I’ll have to convince the boys.

The night ended with some of us going out for a few drinks in the Meat Packers district (a couple of us more than a few – you guys know who I’m talking about). We found a nice German beer garden and when it closed, wandered around trying to get into a rooftop bar or a club. Kallum and Chris didn’t end up going to the Broadway show, and got into a place early (an apparently awesome rooftop bar where they convinced people they were AFL stars). Because the rest of us got out at 10:30 there wasn’t much hope; those clubs get full pretty quickly.

Wednesday was spent mostly in the Downtown area of Manhattan. To summarise, we:

• Went to the Ed Sullivan theatre and tried to get tickets to Letterman (we couldn’t)
• Went to the USS Intrepid, a military museum built on a decommissioned aircraft carrier, that also includes a dozen plans, some helicopters, and an old WW2 submarine
• Went to see the proposed 911 Memorial site where the World Trade Centre once stood – it’s due to open in two months
• Walked down Wall St and saw the NYSE and the Federal Reserve Bank
• Took the ferry to Staten Island, passing Liberty Island and her statue on the way

The WTC memorial was definitely something on my must-see list, and we also saw the new WTC buildings under construction. One tower is past 50 of its 106 stories and already towers over the city. Imagining the day when the Twin Towers went down is pretty terrifying, and more vivid now that I’ve walked around there. A member of Vinnie’s family died that day in New York, and we found her name on the memorial flag. Hard to believe it was almost 10 years ago.I was also really happy to have gone to the USS Intrepid, which we found out about while driving past in a taxi on the way to Little Italy. All the military history is so interesting, and getting to experience walking around an aircraft carrier’s flight deck was something I won’t soon forget. The whole lot of us got dog-tags to commemorate the occasion. We’ve entered a pact to not take them off for the rest of the trip – each of the has GAZZARDS WORLD TOUR written on them.

On a final note, the smog around the city is worse than I thought. The Statue of Liberty was hazy, everything across the rivers was dull grey, and I couldn’t help but think about the fact that we’re all breathing this shit every day. I’d love to live in this city, but all of that pollution can’t be healthy.

Alright, time to go to Chinatown for dinner. Peace.

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