Latin American Diaries - 7 March 2002

The King and I

Hi all and welcome to Memphis,

Day 15 and the time is flying. Boston saw me staying with relatives on my mother’s side and in true fashion, I spent most of my time eating and drinking, before moving down to NYC.

Here I am lucky that I have a few mates living and working currently and I stayed with an old mate from Uni, better known as Tank. Suffice to say, he’s a thirsty pup and for the next four days, we blew the froth off a few.

You can’t come to NYC and not visit Ground Zero. A few years ago I visited a mate in his office, some silly number of floors up in the sky in one of the Towers and being so far up, it scared the bejesus out of me then. If you have been there and looked at the Towers, let alone been in them, their sheer size was mind-blowing. To see the same area reduced to a hole in the ground is devastating.

What particularly annoyed me, were those folks who wanted their piccy taken with the site as the back-drop. Quite crass really. Even the Japanese tourisits, who believe everything outside Japan is fair game to be snapped, merely took a few snaps of the site and left it at that. I shudder to think if the same individuals were here on that fateful day, what they would have asked to be captured in the back-drop.

From here I moved on to Chicago. Its called the windy city and that does it no favours. Its been more like the ‘bloody freezing to the bone city’ and I have not felt so cold for a long time as its the type of cold that rattles the fillings in your teeth. Here I met up with Kev, whom I will be travelling with until November, who himself had been on the road for a few months before hand. We caught up over a few beers, only after a few cups of coffee to warm up

A key part of my pre-travel preparation has been to bulk up prior to the crossing of the border into Mexico next week, after which the Honney constitution has to be treated with great care as I am sure its going to go through all sorts of ‘emotions’ shall we say...that’s my excuse for looking so lardy.

I write to you from Memphis, which has seen me wondering the streets singing Elvis tunes, much to Kev’s annoyance. Its easy to see why the King bloated up so much before he died, these boys ain’t big on worrying about their cholesterol or mine for that matter. Gracelands was a sort of homecoming and remains a monument to 70’s excess. The obligatory gift store allowed you to buy the Elvis essentials, such as those thick sunglasses the King wore.

A must buy for JH, I was trying them on when these girls from New Jersey asked to have a piccy with me!! As Kev pointed out, “there weren’t being complimentary” So a diet and haircut required and maybe the spangled jump suit will have to go back into the ruck sack.

Today if I have time, its off to Sun Studios, where you can cut a record for $15 where Elvis and other stars of the era cut their first records. Tomorrow its New Orleans -the Big Easy as they call it round here, before staying with more, newly found relatives in Houston.

All going well and looking forward to getting down to Central America. Hope all is well with you.

Cheers

JH