Wednesday 6th May 2009 – Watching the Ballgame

I've found a reason for HD TV: it's possible to watch ice hockey and see (more-or-less) what's going on.  Of course TV does it it's way, and, as usual, gets it wrong.  The box which turns the numbers back into pictures will tend to favour bodies and faces when it can't keep up, fading the skates and sticks and puck into the background.  But it's still a good bit closer to being there.  I've decided that ice hockey is the American equivalent of the beautiful game. 

American games are all faster, sharper, more to the point.  American Football is like rugby, without all the boring bits.  Where the boring bits would be slogging on in rugby, nothing at all happens in American football, so the TV can show adverts, and we can go to the bathroom (I'm back to using the original expression from my childhood), or get more beer. 

Baseball is like cricket, without the endless hours of bowler trying to outsmart batsman.  Baseball is the man-to-man confrontation: the pitcher is allowed four mistakes, and the batter is allowed three: within that, the batter has to get to run, or the pitcher has to get him out.  And ditto for the boring bits: there are plenty of beer and comfort breaks.  Baseball also has statistics.  Every time anything at all happens, the screen is covered in a blizzard of figures.  If you say some team or other is doing well, or badly, someone will respond with a number.  I told the cab driver, who claimed to be a Twins fan, that they didn't seem to be doing too well (They've just been hammered twice).  He responded instantly by saying they were "point five", and the season had over a hundred games to go.

But it seems to me that ice hockey is the one that most closely mirrors soccer (sorry, not a word I normally use, but it's the only way to avoid ambiguity).  These guys really can bend it like Beckham.  And they can dish it out like Roy Keene as well.  And it seems to flow fast and furious, with hardly a break.

 

Well, that's what you get from sitting in a bar of an evening.  Any self-respecting bar has all three going on TV at the same time, with basketball probably being added.  But for me, basketball is where they've put all the boring bits.

Tuesday 5th May 2009 – Sneaking Out for a Pint

When you come to Minneapolis, you have to go and look at the Saint Anthony Falls.  These are the last proper falls on the Mississippi, and must be, looking at the map, at least 1200 miles from the Gulf.  The river is already of awesome proportions.  The falls have a turbulent history, due to a combination of the geology under them and the rapaciousness of late nineteenth century industrial man.  The water power the falls made available was used to destruction.  In the 1860's, the falls, essentially, fell down.  Dams of varying durability were built, until, nowadays, it is in the charge of the Army Corps of Engineers (the whole Mississippi is in the charge of the Corps of Engineers, as is the great dam on the Missouri at Glasgow, Montana, which we shall be visiting SOON).  It now looks like an army engineer's idea of a waterfall.

Just below the falls is a fine stone bridge, built to carry the railroad into Minneapolis.  The Inaugural Plaque on this bridge carries the name of the railroad company president, James J Hill.  He is the man who became known as the 'Empire Builder', the name now given to the trans-continental train which brought me from Chicago.  This train runs on to Seattle and Oregon, stopping at the afore-mentioned Glasgow, Montana.  It was his company which named the sidings along this route, allegedly by stabbing a finger at a spinning globe of the world, with siding 45 becoming 'Glasgow'.  I really want it to be true that he, personally, produced this name.

Did you know Longfellow was an American?  Of course you did.  It's only me who didn't.  Well, it's not that I didn't know: it's more that I never thought of it at all.  But he's big stuff here in Minneapolis.  They have a real pretty waterfall called Minnehaha Falls, in Minnehaha Park, at the junction of Hiawatha Avenue and Minnehaha Parkway.  And there is a fine bronze statue of the pair of them overlooking the falls.  I think they have merged Longfellow's nonsense fiction with the history of a charismatic 18^th-century native-american leader who had a similar sounding name, and placed the poem here: and why not.

 

Left to my own devices, recidivism set in late in the evening, driving me south to Rosemount and a bar.  A series of happy accidents led me to 'Shenanigan's'.  The barman asked me what beer I wanted, and because I couldn't make up my mind, laid out a row of 'taster' glasses in front of me.  I picked one called 'Finnegans'.  "How much?" I asked.  "It's free", he said.  It was 'Gentleman's Tuesday', first drink free. 

The drunk at the next stool started chatting.  As usual, I froze.  Then I thought that this was not what I was supposed to be doing, so I chatted back.  And he turned out to be fascinating, if hard to follow.  He made custom furniture out of expensive wood.  He was currently working on the hospitality suites at the new Twins (baseball) stadium.  And he had all of all of his fingers.  When he left, the man one stool away fixed my eye and said "he's been here since lunchtime": a sufficient explanation,

When I ordered the next drink, the barman said "that'll be a dollar": a dollar!  It was also 'Tapper's Tuesday'.  I began to understand why the joint was jumping.  I could also see trouble ahead.  But this is the sort of place where they call you a cab, so I got back OK.

Monday 4th May 2009 – Plans? What Plans?

I remember, many years ago, standing at the top of Kill Devil Hill, beside a hang-glider which was preparing to take off.  Kill Devil Hill is on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, facing out into the Atlantic.  You might know it better as Kitty Hawk, where the Wright Brothers made the first flight.  It's an obvious place for fragile flying, or at least fragile taking-off: it's a huge soft sand dune, sloping down to the sea, with strong winds blowing straight off the ocean.  The way it seemed to me, the hang-glider pilot kept the nose pointed firmly towards the ground until he was ready to go, and when he felt ready, he lifted the nose and was whisked up and away by the powerful winds.  What stuck in my mind over all these years was the similarity to a cat about to pounce: the pilot was constantly flexing and swaying, working up a commitment that synchronised with the conditions.  It was almost as exciting as doing it myself. 

Opening a bank account, sorting out a visa application, buying a vehicle, is not like that at all.  The big difference is that there is no wind: I can get myself ready, I can observe the conditions, but when I lift the nose, nothing at all happens.

If this was Africa, or Asia, or the South Pole, I would be writing letters home bemoaning the fact that I'm stuck in base camp because my agents have not completed the necessary details to equip the expedition; claiming how frustrating it was not to be tackling Everest, or the Limpopo, or the breaking ice, or whatever.

Fact is, I should have my first Glasgow under my belt by now.  But I'm still stuck in the comfort of Minneapolis, having quite a good time.  And I'll be here for about another week, continuing to have  quite a good time.  Money is nearly organised; the visa thing will just take time, but is not on the critical path any more; and I may have a van organised by tomorrow.  If so, I will probably be on my way early next week, provided I can organise payments and insurance.

What I'm seeing may be light, and it may be the end of the tunnel.  We're certainly approaching the end of the beginning.

 

Reality is disappointingly different from the plan.  I would really like to have gone to Montana, Oregon and California on the train, but it would have left me stranded in various places with problems I would have to throw money at.  And I would still have left these big problems behind, to be solved later.  This seems to be a much better structure.  It's just going on a bit, isn't it?  But doing it myself means doing it this slowly.  It's part of the fun.

Of course, it will be difficult to remember all this at the end.  Although, in a sense, all this is what it is really about.  The adventure was never to slip smoothly from Thomas-Cook-point to Thomas-Cook-point, with couriers waving me past every difficulty.  The adventure was to sort everything out and get to the end by myself.  Just to prove I can.

 

But I am glad I didn't choose Everest, or the Limpopo, or, God help me, the South Pole.  At least the plan had some sense of my limitations.  And I'm getting there.

Sunday 3rd May 2009 – Playing Second Fiddle

It's hard to be the centre of attention at a funeral.  Unless you're a small child.  Which I try to pretend I'm not.  So it's an occasion for mature behaviour: listening to other people, being polite, stuff like that.

I had occasion to go up to "The Lakes", a couple of hundred miles north.  Minnesota car plates say "10,000 Lakes" on them.  The northern half of the state is made of water, and the roads skirt carefully through it.  The occasion, unfortunately, was a funeral. But it gave me the opportunity to visit "The Lakes", and also to check out my new satellite navigation system.

The deceased, who was, as is the custom here, on open display, had been the school principal, and elected County Commissioner.  He was definitely very popular.  People had come a long way to pay their respects.

The necessity of behaving maturely, and listening politely provided a useful lesson: how to achieve this level of popularity.  Obviously, one way is to die: everyone speaks well of the dead.  But apparently this man liked everyone.  As a result, they thought he was wonderful: "The first thing he always said to you was a compliment".

So if you want people to think highly of you, you have to tell them how highly you think of them.  Tough stuff, eh?

Sunday 3rd May 2009 – Poisoning Pigeons in the Park

I'm gaining notoriety with the Audubon Society.

I take a picture of an unfamiliar bird in the garden: pretty, isn't it? "What kind of bird is this?", I ask (aren't digital cameras just wonderful?).

"It's a Robin".

"Get out of here, I know what a robin looks like. That's never a robin. You're having me on." This bird is clearly a kind of thrush, about maybe 10" long, from beak to tail. With an orangey-brown breast.

"It's a Robin".

"Oh, no, it isn't".

"Oh, yes it is".

And so on until a neighbour is dragged in who possesses the Audubon Society's 'Field Guide to North American Birds', which we consult. And there, in picture 400, is the bird we're, eh, 'discussing'. And what does the caption say? 'American Robin'! I don't give in without a fight: in the small print, way on at page 548 (I know how to prolong an argument), it confesses that the creature is of the family 'thrushes'. It's latin name is 'turdus migratorius', which is rather how I think my hosts were seeing me at that moment.

So when Al Jolson was singing "When the Red, Red, Robin comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin' Along", this must have been what he had in mind.

In towns, which is what I'm familiar with in America, you only ever notice pigeons. But when you get out to the country, there are a myriad of unfamiliar birds. I'm not much of a photographer, so I couldn't capture too many, but here are just a couple from the kitchen window.

These two are determined to build a nest in the front porch. They get a bit shirty when anyone tries to get in or out of the front door. Fortunately, nearly everyone except me comes and goes by car, and the garage door opens by radio, so the front door is rarely used. They're Barn Swallows: or so I'm told. And I'm in a mood to agree now.

I couldn't resist this last one. There's a large wildlife refuge opposite. It's got several large lakes. This chap (they think) was in some dispute, very noisily, with another, almost certainly over you-know-what, and came to rest on the house next door. He's a Canada Goose, and you can see what size he is.

Saturday 2nd May 2009 – an Encounter with Love

I met a woman who thinks I'm more loveable than I think I am!  I tried to explain to Mary Ellen that there couldn't be that much love in the world, at least not since my mother departed and took a lot with her, but she thinks there is.  In fact, she is certain of it.  Which was very uplifting.  I could see immediately why all that love should be devoted to me, but I was surprised anyone else could.  I got my ear bent in what could only be described as a lecture.  And since, in this lecture, she displayed a fine sense of irony, I was left a little uncertain as to what was required of me to achieve this state of loveableness.  (I say this with some trepidation, since others may feel able to offer more direct advice than Mary Ellen.)

I have been lectured, so to speak, more than once by American ladies, and they have all displayed this rich sense of irony.  I don't know how it got about that Americans lack irony: some of them have it - in spades, doubled.

            I was at a fundraiser, in a convent, whose airy, polished wooden calm reminded me of my old school, possibly because it was of the same era and denomination.  Nothing has brought this to mind for a very long time.  The first thing I noticed, as I entered the room, was that it was simply stuffed with middle-aged ladies with grey hair.  It could have been an ante-room to heaven.  Better still, they all seemed to be of the same opinion as Mary Ellen. 

 

Which is a terrific attitude at a fundraiser.

Friday 1st May 2009 – Just Pay the Money and Shutup

"I tell you what I'll do for you: nothing.  Mind you, I can't do it straightaway."

 

The more literary among you, thinking of a source for this piece of lunacy, are likely to plump for Lewis Carroll.  But only if you've had the good fortune not to meet the United States Government at home.  Perhaps I shouldn't be unfair: it's likely you could hear it from any government, any time.  Me, I'm hearing it from the American Government at the moment.  And like characters from Lewis Carroll, they're maddeningly nice about it.  "We're glad to have been able to help you", they gush, as the tears of frustration fight the trembling lip for facial priority, "is there anything else we can do?"

The American Government is plotting against me.  For reasons I can't quite fathom, but my be to do with the fact that it's a government, and therefore doesn't care, it refuses to listen to me unless I give it $300.  Of course, they've been threatening for months now to buy Chrysler, and last week, they managed to scrape together the three hundred dollars needed, so maybe I'm the only person in the country with any money left.  They've persuaded the workers to put their pension money into it too, so, at least, I'm not going to come off worst. (When I was a boy, it was considered very foolish to put your savings into the company you worked for, because if the company went bust, you not only lost your job, you lost your savings.)  Mind you, my $300 is real cash money.

I have reached the end of the road with my visa extension.  Either I send them $300 dollars, or the FBI follows me about for six months then chucks me out.  I've taken my number and stood in line for the last time: I've lost.  Of course they always intended for this to happen.  They knew I'd come round to their way of thinking.  They just had to get their people to smile and jolly me along till the idea got through my thick head.

 

I have, however, managed to open a Bank Account.  The difficulties encountered here may only have been a diversionary action by the government.  All that traipsing round the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service was just to exhaust me.  I went into the branch in the local supermarket, just on the off-chance, and it was all done in a moment. 

They did manage to put the wind up me, though.  I have been spending all this time trying to complete my W-7 and W-9 forms.  The lady in the supermarket told me that was wrong: what I needed was a W-8.  I have to say I panicked for a moment.  "Don't worry", she said, "We'll do that".

And so they did.  And, at this very moment, cash is winging it's way from the UK to my pocket.  Via, of course, any number of intermediaries, all of whom are going to put a little bit in theirs.

And I have, grudgingly, found another hero: step forward the Internal Revenue Service.  They were my last visit.  Every government office I've been in, men with guns took off my clothes and looked up my bottom.  I'd got so used to it, I had developed a 'going to see the government' outfit, which I could slip in and out of like a ten-dollar whore.  When I got to the IRS, what was there? Nothing!  I opened the door, and there was a nice young lady receptionist sitting at her computer.  Of course, she still gave me a number, but when I asked for the rest-room, she simply let me into the office, and left me to it.

Now, the only serious threats to the life of government workers that I ever encountered were my father's ritual pay-day threats to take a gun to the tax office, a process he seemed to find simpler than filling out a tax return.  But not for them the airport-style security of lesser wings of government: a simple smile was all they had for protection.

 

By the way, I don't think the quote is Lewis Carroll: I think it's Jonathan Miller.  It's from his TV adaptation of (I think) 'Alice in Wonderland' from back in the sixties sometime.  It sounds just a little too brutal to be actual Carroll.  But it should be the motto of governments everywhere.  What would it be in latin: nolle facere; or, more adventurously, non facis faciendum?