Leftover Chili and Eggs

This was a meal I ate post-workout last Saturday afternoon. I had some leftover chili in the fridge, which I wasn't sure what to do with, and I was getting sick of eating it with bowls of rice. So, taking a little inspiration from a shakshouka recipe I wanted to try a long time ago (but never did), I threw a few big spoonfuls of chili in a pan on a medium heat, let it reduce until most of the excess liquid was gone, dug a few holes in what was left, cracked a few eggs into the gaps, and let it all cook on a low-ish heat.

The house was smelling amazing, it was cold, and I was starving, so I ate the whole thing straight out of the pan with a few slices of heavy, doughy bread.

The chili wasn't from any specific recipe; just a bunch of red beans, onion, garlic, cheap beef, crushed tomatoes, cumin, Mexican chilli powder, cayenne pepper, paprika and salt thrown in the slow cooker for 12-16 hours.

I Love Food

I love food. Shocking, I know!

I've briefly blogged about food before. I often reblog pictures of food on my tumblr. I occasionally mention food on twitter. I frequently post photos of food I'm eating on instagram.

I come from Italian and Greek family where we've bonded around plates of pasta and spit-roasted lamb since forever.

Some of my favorite memories of Christmas Eve involve sitting outside with my cousins with plastic cutlery, no table and paper plates filled with warm pasta al forno (made by one of the nonna's), next to a few slices of honey ham, a few spoonfuls of extra cheesy scalloped potatoes, a few morsels of roasted vegetables and a ton of conversation about whatever's going on in our lives at that moment. My cousin, Matthew, and I both agree that tonight will be the night where we finally succeed in leaving no leftovers by the end of the night, although the result always suggests otherwise. Dessert is always creme caramel - a traditional favorite provided by my great aunty Mary at almost every family occasion for as long as I can remember - and Norma's Christmas speciality; pudding with some warm cream poured over the top and a spoonful of ice cream.

When I remember being sick as a child, I don't remember how long it took me to get to sleep with a blocked nose, or how many days off I had to take, or what medication I was prescribed by my doctor. I remember my nonna giving me a mug of warm milk with a spoonful of honey to help soothe my sore throat. I remember having slices of toast with ricotta cheese on top and a coffee for breakfast. I remember my mum making tons of rizogalo for me to eat throughout the day. And I still, as a 28 year old, crave these things as soon as I need to take a day off work for being sick.

My first thoughts when Orthodox Easter comes around are about eating magiritsa after midnight mass on the Saturday night/Sunday morning, cracking red-colored hard-boiled eggs at the church with my Greek family while standing outside in the cold because the church is tiny and there are hundreds of Greek's trying to get in, eating spit-roast lamb with rice and vegetables on the Sunday afternoon to the point of nearly exploding, and spending the next week or two eating a couple of slices of tsoureki with every coffee (and sometimes just having a coffee, so I can eat more tsoureki).

When it's time for the Christian/Catholic Easter, I think about eating fish and lentil soup with my mum and nonna on Good Friday.

Before he passed away, one of my nonno's favorite places to eat out at was the buffet at the Templestowe Hotel. The year after he passed away, on what would have been his 78th birthday, my nonna, my parents, my brother and my uncles and aunties and their children, and myself of course, all enjoyed a buffet dinner at his favorite place in his memory.

Nonna's riso al forno. My girlfriend's lamb stew (the first thing she ever cooked for me) and shepherd's pie. Mum's lamb chops with okra. Dad's soutzoukakia and seafood platter of calamari, scallops and mussels. Whenever I get the chance to request a meal, these are what come to mind first.

My girlfriend and I have had countless conversations about food; what to cook for ourselves, what to cook for our friends and family on XYZ occasion, what our favorite restaurants are, what our favorite childhood meals were, why I hate green peas and corn kernels (but not corn on the cob) so much.

I'm not sure what the entire point of this blog post is, other than to just talk about food. Maybe there isn't one. I was just thinking about how food is firmly ingrained into my life and memories. I may not remember the conversations, but I remember where I was, who I was with and what we ate. It's not just the food that I love, but also the memories that accompany the food.

The Little Moments

Thursday night is bin night. I often go to the gym on Thursday night's after work, so it's usually about 10pm by the time I get around to taking the bins out. At 10pm it's dark, it's pretty quiet - none of the neighbours or their kids are making much noise - and the air is fresh and cool. For those few moments, my feet are bare, my head is clear, my eyes are relaxed, I'm breathing in nothing but cool, fresh air and it is, without a doubt, the quietest and most relaxing few moments of my entire week.

Lately I've been finding myself having little moments like these more and more, from eating a sushi roll while waiting at the end of the train platform at Southern Cross Station after work to slowly walking around the supermarket late at night when there's barely anyone else around to enjoying a coffee before dawn in the backyard just prior to leaving home to go to work.

I think as I've gotten a little older I've come to appreciate the little things a lot more. They're not life-changing, but they're pretty cool.

Being a Groomsman

Last Saturday, I stood alongside my cousin, Julian, at his wedding as one of his groomsmen. Now, aside from the wedding being a fantastic day, the part of the wedding I really enjoyed was being in the inner-circle; the group of people who don't just attend the ceremony and eat and dance at the reception, but spend an extended amount of bonding time together in support of the bride and groom and their families.

I feel like the best part of being a groomsman, apart from being by the groom's side during the ceremony and the reception, is about creating memories. Things like spending a few hours on the Friday afternoon at a barber getting beard trims and cut-throat shaves while enjoying complimentary beers. Or eating pizza at a bay-side restaurant while shootin' the breeze.

Or drinking coffee after coffee and chowing down on awesome food that Julian's mum, Norma, provided early on the morning of the wedding, including the best quiche I've ever eaten. Or, when getting into our suits in front of the photographers, having to re-tie our ties multiple times because only Adam and Julian knew how to actually tie a tie properly and were then forced to teach the rest of us. Or receiving another present from Julian; super-hero cufflinks for our French cuffed shirts with Dan as Superman, Adam as Spiderman, Dillon as Iron Man, myself as the Hulk and Julian, of course, as Batman, his childhood favorite superhero.

Maybe the beautiful view of Melbourne on that sunny Saturday morning while getting photos taken on the rooftop of the apartment complex before heading to the church.

Or head-bopping along like an idiot to every song on the radio while the limo drove us to the church. Or constantly asking Dan if he still had the rings in his pocket; a question we'd continue to bombard him with even long after the ceremony was over.

Or sitting in Fitzroy Gardens eating ham and cheese sandwiches that Leah, the bride, had prepared for all of us while we eyed off another wedding party whose bridesmaids also had purple dresses and were thus, our enemies. Or standing outside the reception with our bridesmaids, ready to walk the room to the bridal table, across the dance floor to the left of the wedding cake, only to realise that none of us knew what direction the dancefloor was in, or where the cake had been placed, let alone where the bridal table was.

I could go on and on (and I feel like I have), but it's the small things that made the day that much more memorable and I am grateful that I was asked to be apart of it.

More "Go To" Workouts

A while ago I posted about some of my "go to" workouts; what I do in the gym when I have no plan or limited time in the gym for some reason. Here are a few new ones.

Axle Clean+Jerk and Farmer's Walks

I like this combo on an events training day when I'm on my own, and the thing I like most about it is that it's easy to setup; the axle is just another bar to use on a platform, and farmer's bars are easier to carry than the monstrosity of a yoke we have at my gym. Both of these are common events in amateur competition around here too, so it's no waste of time. Of course, it's easy to replace the axle with the log or monster DB, but I find the axle keeps me feeling fast/explosive due to it being easier to get a good jerk in, compared to the log.

Each rep on the axle is cleaned, as my continental clean is a bit less than what I can get over my head. Doubles and triples are the name of the game here.

Farmer's walks are a great finisher. Moving events are one of my bigger weaknesses, so whether I decide to go heavy and hard, or scale back the weight and go for speed or volume, these are never the wrong answer. When my grip is fried and I struggle to hold onto the implements for the set distance, I'll whack on my straps and keep going; this is the mental-strength builder. Because the straps will continue to hold onto the handles long after my grip is done, I'll only finish/fail when my traps, upper-back and abs are screaming in agony.

The hard part is bringing all the weights back inside after I'm done ;)

Atlas Stones and Beltless Front Squats

Nothing much to say here. Stones are done heavy and hard over a low bar, or lighter and explosive over a high bar. The beltless front squats are a nice compliment to the stones, or any other event where the weight is out in front of me, more so if I pause for a couple of seconds in the hole. Sets of 2-4 reps seem to work best for me.

Main Lift and Complexes

Back in January, my gym had reduced hours for a few weeks, and it worked out that I was only gonna have about an hour at absolute max to train, depending on what time I got home from work, so what followed 20-30 minutes of work with the main lift (which was either squats or push presses) was 20-30 minutes of complexes. The complex I was using at the time was: row, RDL, front squat, strict press, back squat, behind-the-beck push press, but any complex will work. I would end up doing 3-4 sets of 5 with around 60kg, and the last set of complexes usually ended with me laying on the platform for a further 10 minutes before carrying myself to the car.

Complexes are a painful experience, but there's no denying their effectiveness when short of time.

Squats and Sled/Prowler

An easy go to for me. Squats are awesome because they're squats, a heavy prowler is great unilateral strength work and a lighter prowler is awesome conditioning. The bang-for-buck ratio is huge here. The quad-death from backwards sled drags is nuts.

Done. Hopefully I can post more of these later in the year.

Texas Method and Strongman?

Before my next strongman competition was announced, I wasn't doing any strongman training at all except for a little bit of light atlas stone work if I had time. Instead, I was pushing my gym lifts using a Texas Method setup. Why? Because my gym numbers are undoubtedly still intermediate and I decided there was no reason why I couldn't push new PRs on a weekly basis. The other reason was that I had just started back squatting again (after a shoulder injury left me front squatting last year and for a while before that too) and my back squat was low enough that going to a monthly progression would've been an incredibly stupid idea. Then a competition was announced...

Firstly, a very simplified explanation about the Texas Method:

• Lift 2-3 days a week.
• High volume early in the week.
• Light day in the middle of the week. Somewhat optional.
• Work up to a new 5RM at the end of the week.

The idea is that the volume day earlier in the week pushes the heavy day each week, given your recovery, and thus your adaptation, is optimal. For much more information, buy the books from 70's Big.

What's the problem with trying to push your gym lifts with the Texas Method and train strongman events at the same time? Events days often end up being fairly high volume and beat your body up more than gym lifts.

So can you do volume day and events on the same day? Only if you're insane, or very new to strongman. I can't think of anything more painful than doing 5x5 (or even 3x5) squats and then doing yoke walks or farmer's walks and finishing up with some stones. But if you keep the volume and events days separate, you risk not being properly rested to hit a new PR on your heavy day. And doing volume and events one day after the other also sounds like a horrible, masochistic idea.

If events days are high volume, can we use that volume to push the heavy day and forgo having to do 5x5 squats and bench? Theoretically it sounds like it could work, and it might work for some people, but I couldn't get volume on the yoke walk to adequately feed into my heavy squats, and my squat is low enough that I would think it should go up from even a little stimulus. This may have just been a consequence of getting back into squats are a long lay-off, but either way, this wasn't gonna work for me.

So what can you do?

Something that does work is programming an overhead lift with the Texas Method; volume upper on Monday (plus accessories), light upper later in the week, and a new PR on either the log or axle on events day (Saturday). Incline bench and strict overhead presses translate pretty well to the log.

What about the deadlift? Theoretically you could do volume squats (or RDLs) on Monday and hit a PR on your deads on Saturday before doing events, but are you going to be adequately recovered from yoke/farmers/tire/stones/whatever from Saturday to do your volume squatting on Monday? If you move the volume day to Tuesday, or maybe even Wednesday, it could work.

So clearly the issue is with recovery. Volume squatting and strongman events can be hard to recover from, but if you're confident that your recovery practices can facilitate that, then it's possible.

But should you? Let's get philosophical for a minute...

By trying to push your gym lifts and your events training at the same time, you're trying to serve two masters at once, something many strength training coaches and athletes advise against, especially as you get more intermediate/advanced in your training. So maybe it would be best to just use a low volume program, like 5/3/1, to push your gym lifts during the week, and save most of your energy for events training. You're training for a strongman competition after all, and your gym lifts are really just GPP for the events; there is no max bench event! After the competition, or in the off-season if you have one, you can push your gym lifts while backing off from events training.

The other problem is that it's just too difficult to think about and is likely to change from competition to competition depending on whether there are max weight events, max reps events, longer distances, shorter distances, medleys, 2-day comps and every other variable that can be tweaked for a strongman competition. Whether or not the weights are heavy or light for you is also going to change things.

It's just too hard.

New Year

This is my first post of the new year, so some introspection is required!

As a very occasional blogger, I've become content with my blogging over the past year. Since making the decision to not just make this about programming and tech-related stuff, but also about many other aspects of my life, I've found it much easier and more natural, and less of a chore, to write.

Will this change? Am I going to start writing about other facets of my life that I don't already write about? Perhaps, but I don't feel a need to just yet.

Am I going to write about the same things but change the coverage? Probably.

I'd like to blog more about food. Partly because I love eating it so much, but also because it's something I like reading and thinking about aswell. I like to plan meals. I like to mix certain foods together. My girlfriend is an awesome cook, and if she won't share her own recipes and ideas on a blog, I will god dammit!

What about lifting weights? Strongman? Powerlifting? Olympic weightlifting? Bodybuilding? Well, I'm currently in preparation for my next strongman comp and am taking a different, smarter (I think) approach to my comp prep this time, which I'll write about soon along with other thoughts about programming for strongman, since there are so many ways to do it. But also, after the next comp, I'm going to take a bit of a change in direction with my lifting, which I'll write about once I figure out some more details.

Travel? Well, my girlfriend and I have done a bit of travelling over the past couple of years to the US, and now we're trying to save a bit of money, so the travelling is more likely to be domestic. Although, now that my brother is moving permanently to the US (if he can get a job and a visa) and my girlfriend's brother and his wife are expecting a child in June, another trip to the US may happen sooner than expected...

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.