Thursday 28th September 2000

It was with a relatively clear head that the bang on the door awoke me from my dreams, the first dreams I'd had in quite some time. It was Aggy letting me know that it was 8am and we should start getting our shit together in order to fly out to Phoenix.

I wandered down the stairs where Aggy was getting the tea made, good man. I pretty much lazed around whilst Aggy did a "Steeley" and ran around the house packing in preparation for our trans-Atlantic trip. I drank tea, listened to Chris Evans on the radio and made a few last minute preparations myself.

We arrived at Heathrow without incident and made our way to Terminal 3 arrivals so that I could collect the baggage that I had deposited there the night before. We took our place in the queue for the check-in procedure which was loooooong - with a capital "Would all you old bastards please get out of the way". Aggy and I were really not expecting quite so many people to be around. The check-in queue was one of these ziggy-zaggying things seperated by the lines of plastic or whatever. Aggy and I passed these two delightful girlies numerous times...well I say two - I was only paying attention to one of them. She was wearing a delightfully tight, black t-shirt with the word "Angel" blazoned on the front. She was. However, since I'm still a one woman man I really didn't give her any other thoughts.

After check-in we queued for passport control. After queueing for passport control we queued for security checks. Finally we made it through with a little time to spare. I now totally understand why I always seem to be so ridiculously late for flights. It's because assholes will stand in a queue waiting for passport control. They will stand and stand, waiting patiently with the odd grumble, as the British do. They will then be faced by a rather stern looking gentleman who says "passports please". It's like a revelation to them - they fumble in their oversized hand-luggage pulling out plane tickets, tissues, asthma inhalers, everything bar the fucking passport. What is it that these idiots think they've been queueing up for? Most sane people i.e. Aggy and I, had our passports at the ready a long time before meeting the passport chap.

You'd think these people would have learned their lesson - but oh-no! After twenty minutes of queueing for the metal detector thing, it's only as the person says to them "Do you have any metallic objects about your person"...."oh yes" comes the somewhat moronic reply. After which they spend what seems like an age pulling mobile phones, coins and lighters from every pocket they possess. Fucking idiots!

Anyway - our mission - as we'd decided to accept it was to acquire tea-bags and beans for Jason.....well I don't suppose there's much of a demand for them in duty free, so we failed. It was with our heads hung low in shame that we purchased a couple of books and went for a last pint in the "Shakespeare Pub" before leaving this green and fertile land formerly known as Albion.

Sadly this time Aggy and I didn't get upgraded to Business class so we were sat in with all the cattle. To Aggy's left was some woman who continually drivelled on inanely about general crap. I didn't pay too much attention - I was too busy smirking about my fortune of not being placed next to her. Although my seat also had a drawback. Some fat little girl sat behind me and continually rammed her feet against the back of my seat. Being a typical Brit I merely gave her a few particularly stern stares until she stopped. Her fat fucking father with the "Star Wars Episode I" t-shirt [ nice! ] seemed quite content to let his daughter wreak havoc on the plane. Her fat mother was happy to read her Jackie Collins book and occasionally release an ear splitting scream of "Would you STOP wriggling". Jesus!

The flight was OK. We watched some movies:

Gone in 60 seconds.........predictable, but with a beautiful blonde dreadlocked girl....I thought of Anke.
Ummm, one about a rabbi and a catholic priest and some chick.......humorously predictable.
Some courtroom drama thingy about some 'nam incident........dull.

The last time Aggy and I flew, as I mentioned earlier, we were upgraded to Business, where the drinks came faster than a teenager on his first shag. Now that we were in cattle it was somewhat more difficult to lay our hands on enough alcohol to reduce the plane journey to a blur.

We did manage to get pleasantly pissed but about 3 hours before landing, the chick that was serving us said that they "had stopped serving alcohol because they had to maintain supplies for the return journey". Hmmmmm, why does this conjour up the phrase "fucking bullshit" in my head? I shouldn't imagine the people in 1st class and business were receiving similar lines from the stewardesses.

It was after my last experience of flying Virgin that I had decided to fly into LHR from Germany in order to fly with Virgin again. Looking back now I calculate it probably cost me an extra 350 pounds to do this. After the service I received I shall not make this mistake again. The food was acceptable, the movies were middle of the road, the service was dire and the flight was delayed. I take back all my previous rantings which extoll the benefits of flying with Richard Bransons outfit. I would always choose them above B.A. but I would never again go out of my way to book with them. In the future, if I'm living in Germany, then I shall fly from Germany.

We landed at LAX pretty much on time. We queued and queued, as normal. I collected my baggage, which those oh so careful baggage handlers had decided to damage - they ripped the handle off my bag. Wankers. Aggy and I were pretty much the first to reach baggage control and both got pulled to one side and had our bags searched. Aggy even had to empty out his pockets :)

I had a brief panic when she [ my bag-checker ] pulled George out of my bag and looked at him with a somewhat confused look upon her face. Whenever George and I fly together I always have a constant fear that some over-zealous customs official is going to take a knife to him to check for drugs or whatever. So I hurriedly blurted out that his name was George and that we travel everywhere together.

"Cute" was the womans reply.

We eventually cleared immigration and I popped my bag onto the onward journey to Phoenix conveyor belt thingy. Aggy and I met up outside LAX where I was enjoying my first cigarette in 10 hours. We then made our way over to our next departure gate and sat around for a while waiting for the connecting flight to Phoenix. Everything went according to plan and we landed at Phoenix at about 5pm U.S. time [ ummmm about 1am GMT ]. Jason was of course wating for us so all seemed to be going according to plan. This didn't last long.

The bags came off the conveyor belt. Mine hadn't. The conveyor belt stopped. My bag still hadn't arrived. Fucking marvellous!

In my bag was my laptop [ yes I know!!! about three bajillion gazillion people have said "What! you checked your laptop in!" ], my digital camera, all my clothes.......but most importantly, George! The laptop could be replaced without too much effort, as could the camera...hey we all have insurance. However, my banana munching holiday companion is indeed unique, irreplacable, a star, my sleeping companion, my little boy!

The people at American Airlines were nice enough. They pretty much assured me that it would be on the next flight out of LA and that they would deliver it to Jason's house just as soon as it landed. They were as good as their word, the bag arrived 2 or 3 hours after we arrived at Jason's house. The laptop still works, the camera is fine - and the gorilla with the banana breath was in one piece.

Jason was his usual organised self. Beers in the fridge, Margerita stuff in the cupboard, food for the barbecue just waiting to be cooked. We all [ Jason, Aggy, Debbie, Steve, Per and myself ] just chilled for a while. Well, they chilled and I grumbled about the inefficiencies of airlines. Sheldon arrived with Kim and we all sat down to eat food. Following which a bunch of us climbed into Jasons new hot-tub to relax for a while. Aggy and I eventually wandered off to our respective rooms at about 6am GMT. To sleep the sleep of zombies.

I write this now on my newly reclaimed laptop, at about 5am US time...jetlag...don't you just love it. The sun is just rising, the birds have started to sing and it's a pleasant 75 degrees. I thought I'd demolish a few beers in the hope of grabbing a few hours more sleep, sadly Jason has taken a liking to Heferweissen....great...I spend 16 hours travelling and end up drinking Bavarian beer which I'd hoped I'd left behind in Germany for a few weeks. Ho-hum - at least it shows that if there is a god then at least he/she has a sense of humour.

Today will be spent travelling down to Mexico.....but that will of course be written up later.....

Friday 29th September 2000

The morning was due to be spent preparing for the trip down to Mexico. However due to myself and Aggy still suffering from jetlag we were both up circa 7am. We left a brief note to say we'd left on the mountain bikes seeking fame, fortune and bagels. So we went to JB's for an all you can eat breakfast, and jesus did we eat. We brought back a selection of bagels for the people who chose to laze around in bed. So after breakfast there was food and drink to be purchased, toys to be packed up and bags to be packed. Jason and Per went off to pick up our 11 seater bus to transport the gang [ Steve, Debbie, Jason, Nicole, Per, Marie, Aggs and myself.....Sheldon and Kim were travelling seperately ]. When Jason departed to collect the bus he left the remainder of us with a few simple tasks....

Repair the puncture in the doughnut thingy.
Go to the shops with the shopping list.
Pack the shit up.
Shampoo the carpets.
Build a swimming pool.
Worm the cats.
Reconstruct a life size model of the leaning tower of Pisa from matchsticks.

Needless to say the boys almost had accomplished the first task and the girls were still taking care of the second when Jason returned.

Eventually we were ready to climb aboard the fun bus and head south to Rocky Point, Mexico. The trip south was pretty uneventful. We had a stop in Organ Pipe National Park where we took a picture or two. Obviously we drank a heap of beers and criticised the writing style of Robert Sabbag, the author of Snowblind. The book itself is a good insight into cocaine culture and the means of smuggling the stuff, but the arse writes as if he's trying to impress the whole world with his vocabulary and his command of 'ahem' english. In my ( ever so humble ) opinion the book should have been more factual and Mr. Sabbag should have kept his unimportant personal opinion out of what could have been a classic piece of writing... ho-hum.

We arrived at the Mexican border, sailed stright through without any trouble whatsoever, and stopped at a liquor store to purchase vodka, tequila, more tequila and just for good measure an extra bottle of tequila. If I may take you back a few paragraphs to the "The trip south was pretty uneventful." section...well Jason had other ideas. We'd been in the lawless country of Mexico and out of the liquor store for a matter of seconds before he screamed the phrase "Vodka Lemonade". We used powdered lemonade juice, a modicum of water and a shit load of vodka to mix some demon drinks. The pitcher of extreme alcohol made it's way up and down the bus, the music was cranked up, the ice was thrown around, everyone suddenly had a huge grin on their face and much much fun was had.

By the time we reached the Corona warehouse everybody was utterly smashed. We bought four crates of Corona, a couple of bags of ice and poured ourselves back into the van to make the journey to our houses. The houses we had rented were a little way out of town down the most excellent dirt track for a "bounce around and hit your head on the roof" drive. We arrived at the houses, unpacked the bus and then immediately fell in love with the beach. Whichever way you looked was miles and miles of golden beaches with clear blue sea lapping at them and not a soul in sight [ OK, this bit isn't actually true....we counted four people ].

After unloading the bus we all got ourselves relaxed with the aid of extreme amounts of alcohol. We swam in the sea, threw frisbees, kicked footballs, swam some more, drank lots lots more and generally had fun. The sun slowly started settind and many photo opportunities came about. Eventually all thoughts turned to dinner. Whilst people were preparing dinner other people were preparing margeritas whilst other people were drinking the aforementioned margeritas. It was pretty much ordered chaos. Dinner came and went.

OK, I'm now writing this two months later and so I shall be brief.

After a few naked skinny dips on our own private little beach we decided to play this game called "Asshole". This is where somebody is nominated as President [ in this case Marie ], and other people are given roles. I was a little drunk by this point and so the first words out of my mouth were "Hey how come she gets to be President, we can't have a girl as President, I wanna be President". To which Marie casually replied with "Finish your beer".

"What? You mean I've gotta do what you say? This is ridiculous!" said I.
"and your tequila" replied Marie.

I noticed everyone else around the table was being very quiet. Obviously they'd played this game before. So I drank my drinks and shut up for a while. After a bit of being quiet I thought I'd test the waters again and hurl a few insults at Marie. Can't remember exactly what they were but I seem to remember insinuating that she was a toll booth attendant or something. Well she wasn't too happy with this and I ended up drinking a raft more drinks, and then promptly vomitted....which kinda brought the game to an abrupt end. Ho hum.

Saturday 30th September 2000