Travel EDC

While holidaying in the US in August, I noticed, after a week or so, that the stuff I carried with me everyday, while being a tourist and doing touristy things, had stabilised, i.e. I'd stopped carrying the things that I wasn't using and weren't necessary and only carried what I used/needed. So this is what I ended up carrying pretty much every day.

Hat and sunglasses. It was summer, so, although I don't usually wear sunglasses much back home, I got used to it by the time we were doing day trips to New York City. The hat just makes walking around and catching buses in the sun that much more comfortable. I bought the hat at one of the hundreds of Lids stores I found. And the sunglasses cost me $5 from a street stand in NYC, and I still wear them.

A Storm of Swords. Although I'm not a big book reader, the Song of Ice and Fire series has me hooked, so having a book to read while flying around the country, catching Amtrak trains, during the road trip and on nights or mornings when everyone else was still asleep was a great way to pass the time.

Money clip + wallet. I bought myself a new wallet from Nordstrom on Michigan Ave in Chicago. I was just carrying a money clip before that, but carrying my ID, travel card and cash at the same time became a little annoying. So I wanted a money clip (because I find carrying cash like that to be most useful, especially in the US), but also a slot/pocket to carry my ID and travel card, so I found something close enough to what I needed (although slightly bulkier than what I wanted) and I've been using it ever since.

Fisher Space Pen. After the first week, I found myself without a pen on a few occasions (signing bills, paperwork at hotels/airports/airplanes), so when I was in New York City one day, I bought a Fisher Space Pen from the New York Public Library, and it was probably one of the most useful EDC purchases I made. Unfortunately, although I managed to keep it with me all throughout the US, I lost it after being home in Melbourne for just three days.

Sony Cybershot. My girlfriend bought this camera for my birthday a couple of years ago. It's suffered through a lot of use and sits in my backpack every day. It's a great little camera.

Xikar Cigar Cutter. Between James, Shaun and I, we enjoyed a few cigars. I thought it was only fitting to have a cigar cutter on-hand, just in case we walked past a tobacconist and saw something we liked.

My Favorite Shell Productivity Hack

This is, by far, my favorite productivity hack for Linux shells, which I stole from a guy I used to work with. In ~/.inputrc :

"\e[A": history-search-backward
"\e[B": history-search-forward

That's it.

What does it do? Well, remember a few hours ago when you scp'd a file from/to some server, but either can't remember or just can't be bothered typing out the full command again? Type, 'scp ' in your shell and start pressing your up arrow and it'll go through all of your past uses of scp. You could just type 'history | grep scp', but when you get used to this hack, you'll start using it all the time.

As a bonus, it also works in, for example, your command-line MySQL client too. And anything else that keeps a command history.

Las Vegas and Home

Although we were all excited to finally get to Vegas, along with that excitement came the realisation that this was the last stop before we had to go home. For Cherie and I, when we started this holiday, five weeks seemed like a long time. Whenever we felt like we'd done so much, we looked forward and realised that we still had a lot more to do.

Soon after landing, we headed to our hotel, the MGM Signature. Shaun and James had a room each, next door to each other, and Cherie and I were a few doors down. The rooms were amazing! It was nice to have a couple of couches and a table to sort out our stuff, instead of having to use our bed. It was nice to have a separated shower and bath, although not for any particular reason. It was awesome to have a good view of Vegas from the balcony.

It was nearly 10pm by the time we had settled into our rooms and freshened up a bit, so we hung out in James and Shaun's conjoined rooms and enjoyed a few drinks and shared a cigar to ease into the end of the trip.

The Grand Buffet at the MGM Grand was my favorite place to eat. As someone training for strongman competitions, I often need to eat a lot of food and sometimes that puts a bit of a strain on my wallet. This is where buffets comes in. The Grand Buffet breakfast is a bottomless pit of bacon, eggs, hash browns, omelettes (with everything in them), turkey patties, turkey sausages, country gravy, smoked salmon and fruit. It's a strongman's dream breakfast. And all for around $20, plus tip.

With the exception of one morning, where Cherie and I had breakfast together at Avenue 24 (it was good, but nothing to write home about), we ate at the Grand Buffet every morning.

Occasionally, on the way back to the hotel from breakfast, at 9am, we'd stop and buy 32oz daquiris. Just because we were on holiday and we could. And man, they were ridiculously alcoholic. Vegas makes it so easy to get, and stay, drunk all the time.

I'm not much of a shopping buff. I don't do a lot of it at home, and usually only spend a little bit of time shopping for presents for other people when I'm on holiday, but this time around in Vegas, I bought a lot of clothes at the outlet malls.

We spent one day at the North Outlet Malls and another at the South Outlet Malls. The four of us bought a lot of clothes. Everything from singlet tops to shorts to jeans to sunglasses. And all of it at stupidly cheap prices, especially when compared to what I would pay back in Australia. Six pieces of clothing for $90? Unheard of back home. It took most of the day, but we walked into pretty much every store there was. And everyone walked away with a good haul. The only thing I regret not buying was a Nautica watch that I really liked the look of. Since returning home, I haven't been able to find anything similar.

After long days shopping at the malls, it only made sense to separate shopping and whatever we were doing that night with a dip in the pool, a couple of drinks and a cigar. The hard life...

Our nights were pretty simple. At this point, because we'd been travelling for a couple of weeks longer, Cherie and I felt tired much earlier in the night than Shaun or James did, so we didn't go crazy. One night, we went for, what turned out to be, an epic walk down the strip - which is a lot longer than it seems - and stopped off near the Planet Hollywood casino to have dinner and drinks at PBR Grill. Dinner was the usual fare of BBQ and beer, which had very much become the norm for us at this point. The rest of the night was spent at the slot machines, enjoying a few very cheap drinks.

That was one thing I never expected, but had always heard of, in Vegas; cheap drinks. And by cheap, I mean $1-2 for a scotch, and that $1-2 is just the tip for the waitress. So the drink was pretty much free, as long as we kept putting money into machines and onto tables and having fun.

James had the good fortune to be up nearly $400 on craps, before getting greedy and losing all of it again. Shaun won small amounts of money here and there. Cherie won enough money from the slot machines for a couple of packs of cigarettes. Actually, if there was anything I thought was surprising, it was how much Cherie enjoyed the slot machines. We have plenty of them at home, and neither of us can stand them. But when you're in Vegas, all of a sudden they're more appealing, and although I didn't really bet anything more than a couple of bucks, I found myself addicted to watching Cherie and James hit up the slots.

For another night of adventure, James and Shaun managed to pick up some tickets to Brad Garret's Comedy Club and a Marc Savard's Comedy Hypnosis. We were running a little behind for the 7:30pm show at Brad Garret's, and we still needed to fit dinner in. So at 7pm, we walked into Pub 1842 for dinner. 30 minutes to get drinks and dinner in and get to the comedy club? It could happen...

Dinner was pretty easy. I had a roast chicken with a side of brocollini, just for a normal meal that was something like I would have at home. Cherie and Shaun had burgers and James had a ziti pie, which was pasta (the "ziti" part) baked with some sauce and meat. And just because we couldn't decide what to drink, and because we didn't know any of the beers on the menu, Cherie and I ordered a "beer wheel" each, which was a sampler of eight beers of all sorts; porters, lagers, pale ales, dark ales and stouts. The great thing about this is Cherie and I have completely opposite tastes when it comes to beers. Whatever one likes, the other hates, so we swapped samples around pretty easily. But the winner of the lot for me was definitely the Speakeasy Porter.

And we were done just before 7:30, so we walked our asses off towards the entrance of the MGM Grand and scurried down the escalator to Brad Garret's and got there just in time! The first act was just starting, and the guy who seated us said we had shit seats, so he moved us to a VIP table instead! And then, for an hour and a half, we laughed our asses off! None of us had any idea who the comedians were or what kind of jokes to expect, but they ended up being just right for all of us, which was a real surprise, because the four of us have a different sense of humor from each other.

When the show was over, we quickly raced over to Planet Hollywood to see Marc Savard's Comedy Hypnosis show.

Now, being a fairly skeptical man, my logical hat came on when around 30 people from the audience got up on stage and Marc Savard said that throughout the night he would dismiss people as he saw fit if they weren't taking to the hypnosis as well as others. But none the less, I managed to hold myself back from making any comments so I could just enjoy the show. And I did! Even if parts of it may or may not have been faked, or if some of the "audience members" were actually actors, it was still an entertaining show and a great way to spend a couple of hours.

After the show was done, we spent a couple of hours at Planet Hollywood's casino, where petite dancers wearing very little clothing dance on table-tops all night. But the highlight was the DJ. There's nothing better than watching a DJ who looks like he actually enjoys his job. He mixed all kinds of 80s and 90s songs into newer electronic music. It's not every day you hear AC/DC and The Proclaimers in a DJ's set.

The only thing I hated about walking around Planet Hollywood's casino, was being approached by dancers all the time looking to give away free tickets to clubs. It's free, so you must want it right? I mean, what kind of person turns down free stuff?

For our last full day and night in the US, we relaxed. We tried to make the day last as long as possible.

After breakfast, we headed down to Wet Republic. Having never been to Wet Republic before, I had no idea just how big it was. There are multiple, big pool areas. A bar, with the standard selection of frozen cocktails, is never too far away. And there are people everywhere. Cherie, Shaun and I spent a couple of hours relaxing on the banana lounges and floating around the pool, cocktails in hand.

That night we experienced a Cirque du Soleil show; Ka. Cherie and I had seen Ka the last time we were in Vegas, but given how amazing the show was, we were more than happy to see it again with Shaun and James. And the second time around, it was still amazing. James watched the entire show with his mouth wide open.

We spent the rest of the night at the slot machines, and then started to clean up our hotel rooms and pack our bags for checkout the next day. We were all pretty sad that in 24 hours we would all be on a plane heading back home.

For our very last day, we went souvenir shopping, both for ourselves and for our friends and family. In what we decided has become a new tradition for us, we had our last dinner at Ruby's at McCarran International Airport before flying back to LAX.

I still hate LAX.

By coincidence, my brother, Aaron, was also catching the same flight back home to Melbourne, so, after playing a few rounds of Go Fish, we caught up at the super-boring Tom Bradley International terminal. There is nothing to do at that terminal. All you can do is sit and wait for your flight. And because we had arrived at LAX just before 9pm, we had nearly three hours to kill.

In a completely unexpected turn of events, I bumped into a very old friend of mine, Dan, who just happened to be in the US at the same time as us and was also catching the same flight home as us. It was good to catch up with him, and made the time go by a little bit quicker before finally getting back the cold and horribly unpredictable weather that only Melbourne can provide.

And that's the end of our awesome, completely unforgettable, five-week holiday in the US! We made a lot of memories, met a lot of people and had stupid amounts of fun.

It's been nearly six weeks since I arrived home and have continued writing these blog posts since then. It's been great to go over a lot of the details, memories and photos and I'm very happy to have written all of these posts. Even if nobody else ever reads any of it, I'll at least be able to look back and remind myself of some great times.

Austin and Fort Worth

It took seven hours to get from New Orleans to Austin, with a few quick stops littered throughout the drive, but we were all so excited to finally be in Texas.

When we got to Austin, we cleaned ourselves up a bit and headed straight out for some food and drinks, because we only had one night in Austin and needed to make it count.

We were tossing up between BBQ and Mexican food for dinner, but after going outside for a smoke, James came back inside wanting to check out Uncle Julio's, so Mexican food it was.

Both James and I had the carne asada, which came highly recommended by the waitress, who had told us the meat sits in the marinade for 24 hours before it's cooked.

It was awesome. That's the only word I can use to describe it. I don't even remember what Cherie and Shaun ate, but I do know that me and James were NOT envious.

Straight after dinner we headed to 6th St, where all the action happens. Bobby, the MC from The Swamp in New Orleans, had told us to hook up with a guy named Justin at the Thirsty Nickel bar. So that's where we headed.

Justin had finished his shift and moved onto another bar, The Liberty, by then so we hung around for a few beers, watched a couple play Jenga with oversized pieces and listened to the live band that was playing.

We moved on to Coyote Ugly after that. The bar girls were a little obnoxious, but they served us well and we were plenty drunk by the time we got out of there. Body shots were also had by Shaun and I, and then, to get Cherie back, we bought her a body shot too, which the bar girls made a much bigger show and dance out of.

We took one of the many pedicabs to The Liberty, passing over what the driver/rider referred to as "crackhead bridge".

When we all finally walked into The Liberty, we asked for Justin and we met him. It took him a minute to remember the text Bobby had set him about four Australians who needed to get "fucked up", but he remembered and our heavily tattooed and somewhat drunk bartender got right to it.

By the time we left, we were all very drunk, had taken a few photos for Justin to send to Bobby and had given Justin our email addresses, although nobody remembers what for. I don't remember how, but we got back to the hotel. James and I bullshitted with a couple of Wisconsinites outside for about an hour before heading to sleep.

The next day was mostly spent recovering. We attempted to line up at Franklin BBQ, but when we were told that we would have to wait 90 minutes, and that we weren't even guaranteed to get any meat, we got out trusty ole Urban Spoon and found Stubb's BBQ.

Stubb's BBQ was the greatest BBQ I've ever had. The brisket was soft and buttery and the pork ribs peeled off the bone all by themselves.

For hours afterward, while driving toward Fort Worth, we didn't eat anything else, but we could still taste the brisket. Finding that place was one of my finest contributions to the whole trip.

It's a shame we didn't stay longer in Austin.

We had two nights in Fort Worth.

The first night was particularly quiet. Cherie wanted to go to Texas Roadhouse, but after driving past the same Texas Roadhouse four times down the freeway without being able to get off because about five straight exits were closed and our GPS couldn't give us an alternate route, we gave up and went to H3 Ranch, near our hotel, for their steaks and ribs instead.

It was probably one of the few nights we didn't try to have a big drinking night.

The next day was a longer, much more eventful one.

The first thing Cherie and I did was drop James and Shaun off at Six Flags.

After a brief stop at REI, so I could buy a Flash 18 backpack, we headed to Galleria Dallas, a nearby mall.

Cherie was after some makeup at the Sephora store, but another shop just across from Sephora caught my eye; The Art of Shaving.

I walked in and had a look around before the woman told me they also do beard trims and hair cuts, both of which I was in dire need of. My beard had grown for about four weeks and my hair for seven. I wasn't looking so great. So I said yes to the beard trim and hot towel shave.

I have never felt as relaxed as when I was sitting completely horizontal with a hot, wet, scented towel covering my beard and face for around ten minutes.

About 45 minutes after starting my beard trim and first straight shaving experience, I walked out of there feeling like a million bucks. This was something I'll never forget about the trip and something I would explore further back in Australia.

After wandering around the mall a bit longer, buying gifts for friends and family and, of course, ourselves, we picked up Shaun and James from Six Flags and headed to Hooters.

Getting to Hooters was an adventure. Because of freeway work happening all around the Dallas and Fort Worth area, a lot of the freeway exits were either closed or just didn't exist anymore.

But there were cars parked at Hooters, so there had to be a way!

After 30 minutes, having driven through some residential areas in the middle of who-knows-where, we finally made it to Hooters to enjoy some wings and beer served by petite girls in pushup bras.

That night we went to the rodeo in The Stockyards, which was a whole lotta fun! There were cowboy clowns, kids chasing calves and cowboys and cowgirls competing in a few different events.

One thing I was amazed by was how accurate they are with the rope. One event they had to do was in a team of two and one had to get one horn and the other had to get one hind leg. And, no matter how much of a fight the animal put up, they almost never missed!

After the rodeo, we, and most of the rodeo crowd, walked into Billy Bob's; a gigantic honky tonk. For the rest of the night we drank beer and ate some good ol Texas BBQ while listening to the live country music band.

James got pool sharked badly by a local who was adamant he was too drunk to win. He kept trying badly to bet us some money for another game, but we knew better. Hell, even his buddy was telling us how good he is at pool and that he always does this (and makes some good money doing it)!

We spent the next day shopping in The Stockyards. Between the four of us we bought cowboy hats, cowboy boots, a cowboy shirt, a money clip and presents for loved ones. Cherie and I may have spent a little more money than we should've!

The last thing to do, before getting on a flight to Las Vegas, was to drop off the car that we had come to love for the past couple of weeks. We named the GPS, Gloria, and the little ornamental guitar we hung from the rear-view mirror was Bob, but they had to be packed away for the rest of the trip now.

On the upside, we no longer had to worry about Gloria not knowing anything about new development or trying to take us off freeway exits that no longer exist!

While at the airport waiting for our flight, we realised that Cherie was the only one without a cowboy hat, so we fixed that up real quick, and then took off to Las Vegas.

New Orleans

The Big Easy! As we drove south, down the interstate, raised above the swamps, passing various swamp-side homes, we were all very excited to be in Louisiana, on the way to the very unique French Quarter in New Orleans for four nights.

After settling into our hotel rooms, sleeping separately for the first time since we started road tripping together, we headed straight to Bourbon St for food and drinks. Last year, Cherie and I had our first cajun and creole meals at Oceana Grill on Conti St, so we decided James and Shaun should do the same.

My meal was catfish la fouche, which was a blackened fish served over jambalaya with some crawfish tails thrown on top. It was amazing. I'd had jambalaya before, but never blackened fish. Well, it turns out I ate blackened fish a lot more throughout the trip afterwards.

The fish was soft and buttery, yet covered in a crusty, charcoaled layer of whatever magical mix earns it its blackened name. The jambalaya was spiced just perfectly for my tastes; mild enough to not take away from the rest of the meal, but hot enough to let you know it's still got a kick.

Cherie ate crab cakes, some of the best she'd ever had. James ordered blackened duck, which he would talk about for the next week, and Shaun decided on the Taste of New Orleans, which has a bit of everything.

All of this was washed down with a few good beers and New Orleans' own Hurricane cocktails. It was a great start to New Orleans.

That night we visited a handful of bars and caught up with my brother, Aaron, and our friend, Erik, again.

I'm not sure how to describe Bourbon St. Every second establishment is a strip club, with very scantily clad women outside trying to draw you in, promising all kinds of bullshit you'll probably never get. Every other establishment is a bar or fast food joint, often selling po boys, burgers and hot dogs.

Everywhere you look, there are party goers with plastic yard glasses (yes I realise how impossible that is) filled with frozen cocktails walking in and out of bars. Each bar has a live band playing funk music, or funk versions of non-funk songs. Some songs are originals, but many are covers. Some bands throw in a few minutes of improv in the middle, and some don't. There really is some funk for everyone.

In the earlier hours of the night, while the sun is still setting, there are employees outside each bar trying to lure you in. Often bars try to lure you in with offers of 2-for-1 or 3-for-1 or sometimes even 4-for-1 drinks.

Later in the night the people make their own fun in the street. While standing on the balcony of one bar, down on the street we could see two guys had brought a piece of cord with flowers woven from end to end for people to limbo with. This bit of fun was occasionally interrupted by Christian protesters walking down the street with a giant cross. I'm sure we're all going to hell. If Cherie hadn't been there to stop me, I had a pretty good shot of hooking some bead necklaces over the tall, wooden cross.

The only negative thing about Bourbon St is the smell. Every night at around 4am, after the last of the nighthounds have been ushered off the street by a stampede of police officers, the big clean up of spilled alcohol, dropped food, piss and vomit begins. And it leaves a foul stench the next morning, which doesn't always disappear before the next night begins. But it only passes in small quaffs, so it's not as though the smell is constantly in your thoughts while you enjoy your night.

At the end of Bourbon St there is a small burger joint, Clover Grill, with some of the best burgers you will find in the area. Over the four nights we were in New Orleans, I had my fair share of burgers with bacon and chili stuffed inside. The burgers can also be served alongside tater tots, or one of my personal favorite inventions, chili cheese tater tots. It quickly became our favorite way to cap off a good night's drinking, having started from one end of Bourbon St and making our way to the other.

The bar we probably had the best time in was The Swamp. It was suggested to us by our airboat tour guide, which I'll talk about further down. We weren't sure if we'd been lied to as the bar was completely empty when we walked in, although it was still early in the evening.

However we quickly made friends with the DJ, whose name I never picked up, and the MC, Bobby. The DJ was awesome enough to play whatever we suggested, and Bobby was helpful enough to give us suggestions of bars in cities we still had to visit after New Orleans.

They had also mentioned that there was another Australian group who were just in the bar before we arrived. I didn't believe them at first, but then they walked back in; Vicki and Sam from Perth. They were with a DJ from Baton Rouge, whose nickname was Jager (yes, after the drink), and his girlfriend, or very close female friend, Chelsea, who was Australian.

This was pretty much the point where the night got messy.

The tube shot girls were feeding us plenty of booze, as were the 3-for-1 beers, the DJ was satiating our hunger for music we hadn't heard since being back home, and meeting other Australian's got us excited to have a big, long night. And we did.

At some point a few of us, including yours truly, rode a mechanical bull, which was just sitting just out the back of The Swamp.

The rest of the time at that bar was a bit of a blur, but we did move onto The Cats Meow for some karaoke, where James was praised for his performance of Under the Bridge by RHCP, and then back to Clover Grill for more buttery, tasty burgers before heading back to the hotel to sleep.

Aaron had suggested to me that we visit Frenchmen St, just outside the French Quarter, for a similar, but more relaxed version of Bourbon St.

The first thing we heard was a full brass band playing some jazz in on a corner. In the middle of the intersection a crowd had formed and a handful of people were dancing to the music. The music played almost the entire time we were on Frenchmen St.

We ate at The Praline Connection. Our meals were fairly typical creole and southern dishes; cornbread, Shaun had the jambalaya, I had the etouffee and Cherie and James shared a sample platter with a bit of everything. The quality was definitely above what we had experienced so far though.

We all enjoyed our meals with a couple of bottles of Abita's Turbo Dog and Purple Haze beers. Turbo Dog ended up being my favorite for the area and Cherie was happy to finally find Purple Haze in a restaurant.

Afterwards we wandered around Frenchmen Market, a small arts and crafts market. The market featured everything from jewelry to paintings to household ornaments, all handmade. The market was lit up overhead by lines of hundreds of fairy lights and some soft music played in the background. In the middle were a couple of white couches, lit up to make them glow.

We spent most of the night at Cafe Negril, just across from the market, listening to a live band play mostly their own music, with a couple of covers thrown in. Because we liked the band so much, I bought their latest album for some road trip listening.

We didn't just go to bars and restaurants though. We did an air boat tour one afternoon, which undoubtedly ended up being one of the highlights of the trip for everyone.

We ordered our tickets via phone call and went to pick them up just off Decatur St, a good 5 minute walk from Bourbon St. Well, somebody somewhere stuffed up because they thought we were on the 12pm tour, which was a little impossible since we called at 11am and the bus pickup would've been at 10:30am. But after a little screwing around, we got our tickets, jumped on a shuttle bus and travelled about 30 minutes out of New Orleans to a place called Jean Lafitte, a place very likely to see floods judging by the fact that almost every house and trailer is raised 10 feet above ground.

These air boats travel up around 90mph, and just before we got onto the boat, it started to rain. Well, when you're travelling at high speeds, even a light rain has a bit of a bite to it, but this was a little more than a light rain, although not quite torrential rain. But there we were, 5 minutes into the tour and already soaking wet. I'm just glad I had sunglasses on, so I could enjoy the view! About 10 minutes later the sun was back out and it got hot again.

Our tour guide was fantastic. He was a mix of about 5 different cultural backgrounds, which he told us is quite common for the local creole folk. He called out often to alligators in a French-Creole dialect, and was succesful on a few occasions. We were pretty lucky to see a very large alligator, the size of which our guide hadn't seen for a few months.

After pulling out a baby alligator from a container he brought on the tour, he gave us a dirty little explanation of how to tell whether it was a female.

We all got a hold of the gator. Except me. I got, what was referred to as, a Louisiana Mohawk.

Needless to say the swamp tour was great. Last year Cherie and I did a swamp and bayou tour on a regular boat instead of an air boat and we saw most of the same stuff, but doing it on an air boat was worth the extra money. The tour guide also made it worth the money too. We all tipped him well.

This post is already a bit long, so I'll finish up with a couple of restaurants that need mentioning.

One of our early dinners was at Acme Oyster Co. The boo fries - fries covered in cheese and gravy - were a great appetizer, as were the char grilled oysters - oysters with cheese and butter and probably some other tasty toppings - were the best oysters I've ever had. Even Cherie and James, who don't usually go for oysters, loved them. The main fare was mostly made up of po boys.

Another dinner we had, our last in New Orleans, was at Restaurant R'evolution, a much fancier and more pricy restaurant than what we were used to. Cherie and I ate there last year and the food and service was top notch. We were hoping it still was, after how much we boasted about it to Shaun and James, and it was. The food was amazing. My appetizer was a very tasty gumbo with a perfectly boned quail and Cherie had crab cakes. Our main meals were fish, filet mignon and porterhouse steak. Shaun was a little peeved at the size of his serve of fish, but the rest of us were more than happy with our steaks. It always makes me happy when you ask for your steak to be cooked rare, and it actually comes rare. Dessert was a couple of plates of hot fudge cake and chocolate beignets.

The next day, after what had been amazing four nights, we headed westbound toward Texas.

Vicksburg, Mississippi

When planning our road trip, Cherie wanted to spend a night in Jackson, Mississippi.

So we did a little research and quickly found out that it wasn't the safest place to visit. I think one of the reviews for what was supposed to be a safe hotel had a story from a woman whose son had been shot in the head twice while in the lobby. So we didn't book a hotel for that night and left it as a "mystery night", in case we decided to stay somewhere else.

Add to that, we had locals in San Francisco, Chicago and Nashville all tell us how bad Jackson is, so the night before our mystery night, we started searching for other places to stay that were on the way-ish to New Orleans

We came up with Vicksburg and Oxford. We decided on Vicksburg.

And after our trip to Graceland in Memphis, we took off for an easy 3-4 hour drive.

On the way to Vicksburg, we followed some signs to Clarksdale, MS, to see of we could visit the Delta Blues Museum, but we drove around and found nothing. The signage just seemed to stop. Every store was closed and the locals looked fairly dodgy. So we skipped the museum and kept on to Vicksburg.

That day was very simple. We did some shopping at the outlet mall and had dinner at our hotel.

The next day we visited Vicksburg National Military Park for some civil war education, and, of course, stand in front of massive cannons to make our junk look cartoon-like.

All jokes aside, it was a pretty interesting experience. It's funny when you realise you don't actually know a lot about what was a very significant piece of history for a country like the US.

In the park are a lot of statues, dedicated to various soldiers and officers from various states. Among the statues are many cannons and the occasional building, which may have been used as a command post during the war.

There is also a museum dedicated to the USS Cairo, a very primitive, by today's standards, ship which was sunk during the war. The remains of the ship are also on display just outside of the museum.

And that was our quick, mystery stop in Mississippi.

After the military park we took off, once again, southbound down the interstate towards Louisiana for four nights in New Orleans!

Memphis

While in Nashville, we'd heard from local bartenders that we were going to be killed in Memphis. Not exactly a comforting thought to go on, but we drove to Memphis anyway.

The first thing we did was go down to our hotel bar and have a few pre-drinks before moving on to Beale Street. We also asked the bartender how safe it was to walk around Memphis and he gave us a four square block radius where we would be fine.

The only way to describe Beale Street, when I first turned the corner and looked down is it's like Bourbon Street in New Orleans, only it's cleaner and smells better.

We must've been there on a special day because there were Harley's parked all the way up and down the street, which also meant there were a lot more people, and that was great!

We started off at the Rum Boogie Cafe. The atmosphere in this place was amazing. There were guitars hanging from the roof around the entire bar, with labels naming the various musicians who owned them, or so I assumed. And the blues band that was playing was brilliant!

I didn't think they could be topped, and then we venture a few doors down to Beale St Tap Room. In there we found my kind of blues/funk; play half a song, do improv for 15 minutes, play the other half of the song. We also had the friendliest, funniest bartender than anywhere up to that point. And for that, he got a great tip from us.

Memphis is particularly famous for its BBQ, so that's what I wanted to eat more than anything.

My cousin's wife, Carla, recommended the ribs at BB King's. Given that I'm a BB King fan as it is, I had no problems taking her up on that recommendation, and it didn't disappoint! The meat practically fell off the bone and it was very juicy! We washed that down with a 54oz Long Island Iced Tea, which is to say we left the bar a lot drunker than when we entered.

I should also mention that the guy out front of BB King's was not a happy man. The look on his face was like his spirits had been broken. After we'd tried to change from sitting outside to inside, he was a bit short with us and after we apologised to him, he just tried to keep his head down, told us it was fine and moved on, as if he was scared he was going to blow up from, what seemed like, a stressful night. I actually felt sad for the guy when I saw the defeated look on his face.

I can't mention Memphis BBQ without mentioning Rendezvous. Cherie and I had seen the place mentioned on a TV show about a week or so earlier, so we just had to try the open pit BBQ ribs.

We all had ribs and either brisket or pork shoulder. The ribs came without any sauce on it, giving us the choice of two or three BBQ sauces on our table, which was a nice, as many restaurants put more BBQ sauce on than I personally want.

The surprising part was how fast they got us in and out; thirty minutes from when we walked in the door to when we stepped back out into the alley. The security guard outside joked about it being time to go back to the hotel to sleep. And that's exactly what we did! A short nap in the afternoon seems to be good for the soul.

We stopped into the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King was assassinated. I was amazed by how much I didn't know about his death; the conspiracy theories surrounding who may have wanted him dead, the assassin shooting from a hotel window across the street. But it did make me smile to know that he had a pillow fight the day he died.

To keep with the famous deaths theme, we just happened to be in Memphis during Elvis week, and with the last day being the day before Elvis's death, we just had to go to Graceland.

Although our tickets allowed us to see six or seven exhibits, we only had enough time to see Graceland, Elvis's cars and do some souvenir shopping.

Graceland was fantastic! The really retro designs and the colors and patterns of the house were exactly what I imagined the 70s to be, and more! I mean, what other era would lend itself to having a room called The Jungle Room, covered in green and brown with a water feature at one end, and mirrors on the roof?

There was also plenty of that quintessential mission brown and orange. And a room with a bright yellow bar top. And of course, more rooms with mirrors on the roof!

We had to cut our Graceland visit short to take off to Mississippi and then New Orleans, so off we went down the interstate!

Nashville

I'm not a huge fan of country music, but I was more than happy to spend a couple of days in Nashville to enjoy its live music scene. Cherie is a fan though.

That morning, while sitting at La Guardia airport in New York, we introduced James to Five Guys burgers. He was in heaven. Personally I think they're the best burgers from a chain restaurant, right up there with Smashburger.

We already had James with us at this point, but we were about to add Shaun to our travelling group.

We flew into Nashville a few hours earlier than Shaun, so we checked into the hotel early and hit up Broadway quickly for some food and drinks.

The first thing that hit us was the humidity. It was overwhelming! It was a five minute walk to Broadway and the three of us were drenched in sweat by the time we got there.

Honky Tonk Central. The name just says it all really. There was a live band going on with all of the doors and windows wide open so you could hear the music from the street. And everyone who walked past certainly had a look in.

Throw in some strong southern accents and I could tell we were in country music city.

After lunch, we headed back to the airport to pick up Shaun, and the car that we would drive through the south for a couple of weeks; an SUV that just barely fitted the luggage for all four of us.

Shaun needed lunch, so we all ate again. And then the drinking started, firstly with some live music at Robert's Western World.

Later that night, after a couple of bars, we ended up at The Wheel Cigar Bar. It was a quiet night, so we had the pleasure of chatting to bartender, Michelle, the entire time we were there enjoying our cigars and whiskey.

Apparently some other Australians had given us a bad name when they were hauled out by the cops one night, so we had to redeem the Australian reputation, which Michelle assured us that we had by the time we had left, after a couple of hours of jokes and banter.

The greatest moment of the night came during the short walk back to the hotel. A man wanted some money from us, so I, to simply get rid of some coins, went to hand him about 75 cents, and Cherie went to give him a dollar. But James decided that for our trouble, he should get a cigarette off the man, so he snatched it right out of his hand, while he was still smoking it. The look on the guy's face was utter disbelief. He just stood there with his $1.75, not quite sure what the hell just happened. The rest of us were in hysterics!

We had breakfast at Loveless Cafe the next day. It may seem like a long way out of Nashville, but it's worth the drive for some of the best southern cooking I've had. Between the four of us we had biscuits with preserves, bacon, eggs, turkey sausage, fried chicken and country gravy and it was one of the best breakfasts I've had in the US, only matched by Hollywood Cafe in San Francisco.

And that night we went to the Grand Ole Opry.

If I had been a big country music fan, this would've been my wet dream come true. There were thousands of people, most up on their feet screaming for their favorite country music artists.

By the time the intermission came around, Shaun, James and I were actually enjoying it, having first been very skeptical about whether we could handle a couple of hours of country music. Cherie is a fan, however she wasn't able to come along with us.

The next day, before taking off down the interstate towards Memphis, we stopped into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Again, not being the biggest fan of the music, I wasn't quite sure who many of the artists featured were, but I could certainly admire the guitars they all played! Sweet looking semi-hollows and resonators everywhere!

Portland, Maine

On Cherie's wish list was Maine. Mostly because she liked to read Stephen King novels, whose stories, I found out, are often set in Maine. It was too far by train to do in one day, so we worked out an overnight trip for the day after our trip to Philadelphia.

To get there, we had to jump on an Amtrak train to Boston's South Station and then on a short bus ride to Portland. I think it was about seven hours of travel all up, including a one hour layover in Boston.

When we arrived in Portland, the first thing we did was clean ourselves up and chill for an hour. Then we headed out for dinner and drinks at Buck's Naked BBQ.

I, of course, ate more than I should've. But come on! A plate of fried chicken, pulled pork, brisket, sweet potato fries, mac and cheese and cornbread... I've gotta have a bit of everything!

Once we were done, we sat at the bar for a few more drinks, chatting with the bartender before we headed back to the hotel, me with a food baby in my belly.

A couple of hours later, while watching Hot Fuzz on TV, the fire alarm at the hotel started going off. I decided I just needed pants and tried to evacuate without a shirt, but Cherie threw one at me as we headed down the stairs.

Of course, once we got to the street, there were plenty of idiots who were still in their hotel rooms staring down at us and five fire engines and a police car. You'd think seeing the emergency services would be a sign that it's probably time to go downstairs, but no.

Turns out a hot water pipe had burst and had the steam had set off the fire alarm, or so we were told, so nothing too serious thankfully.

The next day we had coffee at Speckled Ax, the most hipster coffee house I've ever seen, including what I've seen at home, which is saying something being from the pretentious coffee capital of the world, Melbourne. Drip coffees, flannel shirts, thick frame glasses and MacBooks everywhere! But the coffee was good!

We walked down towards to the piers and stopped in at Duck Fat, a highly regarded and small and cozy restaurant about a block away from the piers. Being close to the Canadian border, poutine was on the menu, which we immediately decided to go for. Along with that, Cherie chose a pork belly panini, we shared some duck fat fried chips and drank the best damn milkshakes I've ever had.

The walk down Commercial Street afterwards was beautiful. Portland has a lot of little alleys full of shops and cafes, almost resembling Melbourne, and it pulls off the "seaside city" image really well. It gives it a warm, relaxed, laid-back feeling, which was a nice change from the bigger cities we'd been visiting.

To add to our relaxing getaway in Portland, we did a cruise of Casco Bay for a couple of hours. In that time, it went from hot and sunny to windy and cold and back again. But the views were very pretty, and we got to see a lot of lighthouses and islands while learning a little history about the area.

Before the day was over and we had to make our way back to Connecticut, we stopped into Eventide for some oysters, clam chowder and lobster rolls. The food was a bit pricy, but it was brilliant. The lobster roll was the front runner for us. It came on a steamed roll, which was fluffy and doughy, but in a good way, and it was no more than three bites big, so we ordered two before catching a taxi back to the bus terminal.

In Boston, we got the most detailed sob story from a guy who wanted money to get home. Apparently he had the absolute worst string of bad luck any human being in the world could ever have.

The train ride home was mostly quiet and peaceful. We'd had a few long and busy days, so we were both looking forward to having a much slower day to recharge a bit and catch up on some sleep.

Philadelphia

In the middle of all of our day trips to NYC, we decided to fit in a day trip to Philadelphia.

Last year I did a day trip on my own, but all I did was go to Iron Sport Gym in Glenolden to meet Steve Pulcinella, lift some weights, and the eat my fill of food back at 30th Street Station before heading back to NYC, so I never got to see any sights or explore anything else Philly has to offer.

Because we didn't try to book them in advance, Amtrak tickets were ridiculously expensive for just a daytrip, so we decided to take the scenic, more adventurous route: local trains.

The first train was from Stamford, Connecticut to Grand Central Station. We then took the subway shuttle across to Times Square/42nd St.

Then the 1 train downtown to Penn Station/34th St where we bought New Jersey Transit tickets to 30th Street Station, Philadelphia.

The next train got us all the way to Trenton, New Jersey, where we had to quickly swap onto a SEPTA train to go all the way to 30th Street Station.

Five trains, one way. On the upside, it was about half the price of Amtrak tickets, and only an extra 30-60 minutes of travel. It was also more fun ;)

30th Street Station is beautiful, and probably my favorite train station of the ones I've visited. It has a similar style to Grand Central, only with a lot less people running through it.

So we quickly grabbed a map and started walking down Market St towards the downtown area.

From there we bought tickets to a hop on hop off bus tour and made our way through a lot of Philly's history; the museums, the Rocky steps, old town Philadelphia and the Liberty Bell.

If there's anything that surprised me, it was old town Philly. The old style buildings were a sight worth seeing, as was hearing the history behind some of the plaques and markings on the buildings. It's a very pretty area to explore. And Benjamin Franklin had his hand in a lot of its history.

Unfortunately all the pictures are on my camera and not my phone, so I can't upload any here at the moment.

And of course, we stopped to chow down on some awesome Philly cheesesteaks at Carmen's Famous Italian Hoagies and Cheesesteaks in Reading Terminal Market before heading home, catching a local train back to 30th Street Station, and five more to get back to Norwalk.

So eleven trains, a bus tour and some Philly cheesesteaks later and we had experienced beautiful Philadelphia in one very long day.

As tired as we were, we had an early start the next morning for our overnight trip to Portland, Maine.

New York

Cherie and I spent about 12 days at her brother and his wife's place in Norwalk, Connecticut, so any time we wanted to go to New York City, we had to jump on a Metro-North train to get into Grand Central Station.

Grand Central is beautiful and ridiculously chaotic with the hundreds of people who are moving through the main concourse at every time of the day.

I never really realised just how big Central Park was until we did a bus tour of uptown Manhattan. It's huge! A ridiculous 51 blocks long, and 3 blocks wide. The bus tour was two hours long and went from the south-west corner of the park all the way up to Harlem, across to the upper east side and back down to the hectic downtown area again.

It was actually really nice to just sit back for a couple of hours and enjoy the ride without trying to get from one place to another via the subway.

Oh and about the subway; if you're ever visiting NYC and need to get around, learn the subway. It's really not that hard with a map, even though it seems overwhelming at first. On our last holiday to the US, I let Cherie get us around on the subway. This time I actually took the time to figure it out for myself.

Times Square was amazing in the evening, as always. I got to see it last year, and I knew what it was like, but the pure magnitude of everything still surprised me.

We hit up a few bars, McSorley's Old Ale House probably being the highlight of the lot for me. In a nutshell, it's a very old Irish pub where you get two choices of beer; light or dark. And each round is two glasses of beer.

We ended up having about five rounds each, which sounds like a lot at two glasses a round, but the glasses are small.

The great part about the bar is you're seated wherever you fit, even if it's with complete strangers. We got to chat with a couple who were crawling a bunch of the oldest pubs in the city for the guy's birthday.

Food was always great, as it usually is in the US. The highlight was definitely Crif Dogs in NoHo. By far the best hot dogs I've had in the country. I had two chili dogs, and Cherie and James had the chihuahua, a bacon-wrapped dog topped off with avocado and sour cream.

At some point Cherie's friend, James, arrived to travel with us, so the last couple of day trips were with him aswell.

Those were the highlights of New York for me.

I've still gotta catch up on Philly and Portland, Maine. We're currently road-tripping through the south, heading to Mississippi tomorrow, so hopefully while on the road, I can catch up a bit!

San Francisco and Chicago

We're almost half way through our holiday in the US now and I figure it's time for a couple of posts. I'm typing this all on my phone so there's bound to be a few mistakes.

First off; San Francisco.

We spent a few days in San Francisco and it was amazing. Our first meal at Lou's Fish Shack was crab and fish tacos with black beans with some local beers to wash it all down. The taste of it all, even with the jet lag barrelling down hard, was amazing for a first meal after nearly 24 hours of mind-numbing travel.

The Golden Gate Bridge was breath-taking. I know thousands of people drive over it everyday and probably think it's just a hunk of metal, but I was blown away by the magnitude of it. The lingering fog added to its appeal, just barely covering the tops of the bridge.

We also did the typical touristy shit, like walking around Pier 39, a hop on hop off bus tour and we spent almost every night battling jet lag. I also managed to get a cold, which made sleeping just a little bit harder.

Chicago was as beautiful as I remember from our last visit.

As a result of slight time zone differences and bad traffic, we only ended up with two nights and one full day in Chicago, so we didn't get to do all we had hoped to do, but still ended up having a great time.

Our first meal was a cajun feast at Heaven on Seven for a late dinner. We filled our bellies with crab cakes, gumbo, BBQ and pecan pie and chased it with more beer. Cherie had finally found her favorite American beer, Abita Purple Haze.

The next day, we walked around North Michigan Ave, shopping and eating.

That night, I was lucky enough to meet up with my brother, Aaron, who has been travelling around the US since early June, and Erik, our life-long friend who currently lives in Boston. We went on a bit of a pub crawl in the uptown area with a couple of Erik's friends. At some point we stopped into Portillo's Hot Dogs for some food.

In the meantime, Cherie caught up with her friend Megan, who is travelling around the americas with her boyfriend, Scott, for a few drinks of their own.

By the end of the night, we had all caught up at the Kerryman Hotel for yet more beers.

The next morning Cherie and I hopped on another flight, very hung over, bound for her brother's home in Norwalk, Connecticut.

"Go to" Workouts

This was originally posted on my tumblr, but I decided to put it here.

I was chatting to a guy at the gym the other day about what our “go to" workouts are for those days where you walk in with no plan other than “I’m benching today", or when you don’t have enough time to do what you had originally planned, but still want to get something done that could be considered good training.

These are a few of mine.

Max Out, Back Off

This is my usual “go to" for benching and overhead pressing and is something I took from the Iron Sport Strength Method; max out, and then drop the weight to 80% and do three AMRAP sets.

The only “twist" I put on this is that on the last AMRAP set, I must hit more reps than on the second AMRAP set. I’m usually a bit lazy on the second set, so this is my punishment.

Maxing out can be for a 1RM, 3RM or 5RM.

Assistance work is always pretty standard; lots of DB rows and maybe some direct triceps and biceps work if there’s time.

5x5

I started lifting on a 5x5 program, and probably stopped using it sooner than I should have. None the less, occasionally I’ll look at what I’ve done around the 6-8RM mark and have at it.

Leaves me good and sore for a couple of days.

Front Squats and Deadlifts

I like this combo a lot. The front squats aren’t hard to recover from, and doing them first seems to prime me for deadlifts.

There isn’t much to it; I usually do the front squats for triples, and the deadlifts for sets of 3-5.

If I do anything else after this, it’s usually kettlebell swings until I’m nearly dead.

And that’s all I can think of off the top of my head at the moment!

Sandwiches; The Ultimate Manly Food

There's something special about meat and vegetables and cheese wrapped in some kind of bread. I think it's because you hold in you bare hands while you tear it apart with your mouth. By that logic, I guess ribs and wings fall into that camp too. It's just downright manly.

A few years ago, when I first started lifting weights, I used to train on Sunday mornings with a couple of mates for anywhere from from 2-4 hours, doing everything from lifting weights to sprinting and all kinds of cross-training at a nearby school.

And every Sunday afternoon, while totally exhausted and dying from hunger, I would fill one piece of lebanese flat bread with anything I could find in the fridge; ham, chicken, avocado, tomato, lettuce, greek yogurt, olives, cheese... anything! And I would eat it, right there in the kitchen. I wouldn't even go and sit down. I still don't.

Sometimes, we'd all eat together and buy a vienna loaf and fill it with bacon and eggs while we chatted about how painful our legs felt after doing walking lunges up and down a basketball court for half an hour.

It was a favorite post-workout meal in the beginning, and it's a favorite meal today. After strongman events training, there's not much more satisfying than a burger with a couple of beef patties, bacon, cheese and ton of lettuce stuffed into it.

That's about all I have to say. On Saturday morning I fly over to the US, the land of sandwiches, for a holiday with my girlfriend, and I've been hanging around in /r/eatsandwiches a little too much lately, so I have sandwiches on my mind.

Everyday Carry; A New Hobby

A few years ago I stumbled across a reddit thread in which a bunch of users detailed what they would do in the case of a zombie apocalypse. It was fascinating. Some of the detail that users went to was astonishing, and it got me thinking about how unprepared I was for any kind of disaster situation. Not that we experience a lot of natural disasters in Melbourne, let alone zombie apocalypses, but it's always good to be prepared for anything.

So, as you do when you read stuff about the impending zombie apocalypse, I went a bought a bunch of stuff; a big backpack (too big, of course), multi-tool, first-aid kit, various tools and containers etc... I watched a bunch of videos on YouTube about survival tips and techniques ("I'm Dave Canterbury with the Pathfinder School, and I thank you for your support") and read more and more stuff about bug-out bags and preparedness for various situations.

Eventually I came across the everyday carry (EDC) community. The basic premise behind EDC items are things you carry with you everyday (maybe for a particular period of time) in an effort to be prepared for particular situations; camping, hiking, work, school, holidays, etc...

Of course, I already had my own EDC, although without purposely having it; phone, keys, wallet, phone charger, bottle opener, water bottle, pen, USB drive, etc... all in my pockets or backpack, which I take with me almost everywhere.

Putting the usefulness of these tools aside, there was also a kind of aesthetic beauty attached to it, whether the owner was going for a tactical look, a smart and classy look or a vintage look.

So how bad is this new obsession? Let's just say it could be worse. A lot worse.

Since February I have bought four flashlights; a Fenix E05, a Petzl Tikka 2, a Fenix LD12 and a Klarus Mi X6. Who the hell needs to buy four flashlights in the space of 5 months? And there are two more flashlights that I'm eyeing off too; the CountyComm AAA copper flashlight and a Foursevens Mini ML. I guess I'll have to wait until later in the year, or even next year, for those. A titanium flashlight would be nice aswell...

I'm just glad Australia has some laws that make it tough for me to carry knives around for no reason, otherwise there would've been a few purchases from Spyderco too.

Multi-tools. I don't even know where to start with these. I'd love to buy a Leatherman Skeletool CX, or a regular Skeletool with a non-serrated knife if it still existed, to keep in my backpack, but they're stupidly expensive in Australia! I guess I'll stick with my Leatherman Fuse and Victorinox Spartan for now. I'm carrying a Pry Bar from Tofty on my keychain at the moment, but I'd love an Atwood tool, like a Weevil, except it's stupidly hard to get these from Peter Atwood's site, due to the timezone difference and how fast his batches sell out, and they are marked up a lot if you want to buy them from a third party.

And bags. At least I can justify buying bags because I carry one every day. That's a good enough reason, right? If I get the 5.11 MOAB 10, I can carry it to work every day, and also take it overseas as carry-on luggage, since it easily fits the size limitations. That's pretty doable for $100 AUD. Or I could get a GoRuck GR1, for nearly $300... Or maybe I should just settle on a REI Flash 18 for a much lower price tag.

Or maybe I should just get out now, before all of my money disappears...

Melbourne's Strongest Man 2013

Yesterday I competed in my first strongman competition at Definition 352 in Doncaster, Melbourne. It was a long day, with about 20 athletes competing across 4 men's divisions and 2 women's divisions.

I was one of 4 heavyweights.

Sled drag. Drag 100kg for 10m on a flat, deload 25kg, drag 15m up an incline, deload 25kg, drag 15m up an incline. I was a little worried about this one. When I trained for it, we dragged the 100kg up an incline aswell, and it was slooooow to move for all of us. Since they changed it to be flat for the heaviest weight, it made it a lot easier. Came 3rd.

Deadlifts. 75 seconds for biggest total tonnage. 3 regular bars loaded with 175kg, 200kg and 225kg. All the heavyweights opted to just rep out the lightest bar. These were supposed to be dead-stop deadlifts, but ended up being touch-n-go, which I'm not used to at all. I still managed 15 reps with the 175kg bar to take 3rd place.

2" Axle Clean and Press. 75 seconds AMRAP with 90kg, each rep cleaned. This was the event I felt the most prepared for, since I was doing reps on the axle every week, sometimes twice a week. In training, I managed 8 reps when I was fresh, and 6 reps when I was slightly fatigued, so I wanted 6 reps for this, and if I'd gotten it, I would've taken 2nd in the event. But the bar was a lot more slippery from all of the previous competitors, and lost concentration and dropped my last clean and ended up with 5 reps for equal 2nd place.

Medley. Prowler +100kg for 20m, 60kg keg carry for 20m, 200kg tire flip for 10m. The prowler was super fast, the keg carry wasn't too bad either, but man did my tire flips suck. I missed the first flip due to nerves, and had shit drops on 3 or 4 of my subsequent flips. Although I got a little practice with the tires, it wasn't enough and it cost me. Came 4th in this event.

Atlas stones. 75kg, 80kg, 101kg, 120kg, 130kg over a 1.2m bar in 75 seconds. I had done a bit of practice with these in the lead up, and a couple of weeks ago managed to get the 120kg stone over a 1m high bar without tacky, but man it gassed me. However this time I had tacky, which was my first time using it. My goal for this was to get the 120kg stone over the bar, and at least lap the 130kg stone. Well I got the 120kg stone over in epic, grindy fashion, but could only break the 130kg stone off the floor by mere centimetres. Came 3rd in this due to slower time.

Overall I came 3rd out of 4 heavyweights. I was the shortest and lightest heavyweight there, and the only one in his first competition, so I'm super happy with how I did, and I'm incredibly happy with how the competition was run. George Mariolis and the Definition 352 crew did a great job running, judging and scoring the competition and I'm proud to be associated with them!

A big thank you to my lovely girlfriend, Cherie, for supporting me for the past couple of months while I trained and ate as well as I could. Thanks to Definition 352 for putting on a good show, and thanks to my friends and family who showed up to support me!

I can't wait to do more competitions in the near future!

I'll upload some videos somewhere once I get them all together. They're all spanned across a couple of friends' phones.

Things Australia should steal from the US

Last year, Cherie and I went on a holiday to the US for nearly five weeks. I attempted to write a blog post detailing the entire trip, but once I got done writing up the first week, it was really long and I couldn't decide what to take out of it and I really couldn't be bothered proof-reading it again or writing equally long posts about the remaining four weeks, so I decided to scrap the idea, and instead opt for some shorter blog posts about the trip. This is one such post.

In those five weeks, we came across a lot of things I wish we had back here in Australia, or at least in Melbourne, in case other cities are smarter than mine.

Pedestrian Countdown Timers

We did a lot of walking and, despite initially being skeptical as to how useful it was going to be, it ended up being really handy. They need to make noise though; I don't remember exactly how many times it happened, but on more than one occasion, while out on my own, I almost missed the lights because I was looking in another direction.

Truck Stop Food

Breakfast burritos? 99 cent tacos? A seemingly endless selection of beef jerky? Drinks that are bigger than the size of my head? On our bus trip in the first week, there was nothing better than hitting the highway in the early morning with a cheap breakfast in-hand and a stash of meaty snacks to chew on.

Mexican Food Everywhere

The thing I liked about going into almost any restaurant was that there was always tacos on the menu. Sort of like the equivalent of our chicken parma. Except, you know, better.

Slow Cooked Meats, Better Sandwiches and Burgers, Sweet Potato Fries and Chicken Wings with Blue Cheese Sauce

Big Boy BBQ, in Caulfield, is the only decent place for slow cooked American-style meat in Melbourne, and it's awesome! We need more places like that. More Australians need to be into slow cooked meats. Slow cooked meats are better than a sausage in bread, and pulled pork tastes better in burgers than self-oiling rissoles from Woolies.

Speaking of which, the sandwiches and burgers here suck. The US loves their burgers. Whether it was in a restaurant in Chicago, a liquor store in Washington DC or an outlet mall in Nevada, the sandwiches and burgers were better than almost anything I've had here.

And they often came with sweet potato fries! We first had this (above) at Smashburger in St. George, Utah. Sweet potato fries are a golden idea and taste soooo much better than regular fries.

Now, ok. Sure. We have chicken wings here. But it's not the same. They're not cooked the same. They're not spiced the same (but we'll still call them Buffalo wings, anyway). And the blue cheese sauce is NOT blue cheese sauce.

Interstate Rail

On the east coast, we rode a lot of trains, with Amtrak, between New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington DC and Norwalk, and the longest train ride we had was 4 hours from Norwalk to DC. If I want to take the train to Adelaide, I'll be in transit for at least 10 hours, including lay-overs of anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes, and will pay a lot of money to do it, while it takes about 8 hours to just drive there, or 1 hour to fly there for about half the price.

Our interstate train system is craptastic!

Although, I've since heard that catching trains on the west coast is a very different experience.

That's about it! We're going back to the US later this year again, so I'll probably update this in a few months.