St. Patrick's Day; a rope of sand...

Trying to filter through the jumbled memories of the last 2 or 3 days… I guess it has to start with another delayed bus trip from New Orleans back to Tallahassee… It started roughly on time, but we lost an hour and a half at one of the stops. Funny things happened – as they tend to – first thing – sitting in the Bus terminal in New Orleans – well rested and refreshed after a good nights sleep… actually after a good recovery day the day before where I hardly left the hotel room… anyway… two guys walk in and go get their tickets for the bus and I knew instantly even before I could hear them talking, that they were Aussies. So I went over and had a chat to them and we talked most of the first hour after we got on the bus… was good fun. One of the guys was here to try out for college basketball apparently 10 teams were looking at him from all over the country, so he must be pretty good. The other guy had done the summer camp thing and was traveling around afterwards using up the money he’d made. Both of them were from WA.

Anyway at the next bus stop which was the one that we lost all the time at, I met a girl who was enthralled with the fact that we were traveling around America, and more so with the fact that we were Australian. Funniest thing she said was “so Y’all flew here?”… I looked at the other guys and said as dead pan as I could – oh, no, we caught the bus. I think it took her one moment to realize what I’d said, and then another moment to process it, and then another couple of moments to realize that I was kidding… by then we were laughing at her… Then there were a couple of older guys – one who had gotten on at the previous stop and I had a bad feeling about him – he just looked wrong… you know? Anyway, there was him and another older guy talking shit, which normally you laugh off as dirty old men trying to impress young girls… but they’d been filling in some of the wait with alcohol and one of them said something to the other one, and they ended up taking it outside and had a little fight. Hilarious. I’m like – well there’s two empty seats anyway. Good thing too, cause the bus was packed. Then the next stop we had 3 people get off and about 8 people wanting to get on… Was the busiest bus I’ve been on this trip. All cause of spring break.

So, because I got in late to Tallahassee Bart – Caroline’s boyfriend offered to have me stay on his couch which was very nice of him. Caroline has a 10pm cut off unless she’s drinking, and Bart was up anyway… So I passed out on his futon and woke up to the day before St Patrick’s day – which apparently is almost as big a drinking day as the day itself. Maybe its just the fact that Tallahassee is virtually a college town, and they just like drinking. The plan for the day was that a group of people were going to drive for an hour and check out some caves that a lot of people had heard about, but not too many of them had been to. There ended up being about 9 of us; a good sized group and we took two cars – they were divided into the “hungry car” and the “not hungry right now car” I went in the latter of the two. The caves were good… not the biggest or most interesting I’ve seen, but the guide knew his stuff… *Shrugs* I met a lot of Caroline’s friends, all of whom are very cool… I’d go into that more, but I’m not going to. That night we went out to check out a couple of bars… met some really cool people including a group of people from Panama at the first bar. Bart was very helpful by saying as loudly as he possibly could at every apparent opportunity – “THIS IS MY AUSTRALIAN FRIEND” Funny stuff. Oh, and they had Australian beers – but not Coopers that I’ve found everywhere else, they had Toohey’s New and Boags Premium… awesome… Boags is great beer… but I wasn’t allowed to try it, I had to try some American efforts. They were OK. I’ve had better… From there we went to another bar which was absolutely packed… Right at the end of the night 1.55pm I was on my way to the “bathroom” and couldn’t open the door – a girl was on the inside holding it shut. They appologised as they came out and at my response stopped to talk to me for a good 5 minutes. Apparently one of them’s favourite things is guys with red hair… Anyway, they let me use the facilities and when I got out they were still waiting for me… they were like “we know this is a bit forward, but can we have your number?” Hilarious. That’s another first. Anyway, I gave Meredith my phone number… more on that later…

St Patrick’s day… wow… I think this is the biggest St Paddy’s I’ve ever experienced. So, we woke up at about midday and headed out for lunch, then I went back and thought it would probably be a good idea to pack my bags since I didn’t know where I’d be sleeping and there was a good chance I wouldn’t have the time or energy to do it in the morning. So that out the way we went and had dinner at the Outback Steakhouse. Hilarity. Waited for a table for about 45 minutes at the bar – managed to down a Coopers sparkling, and a Boags Premium (and well onto my second coopers) in that time… I had decided that I was “virtually” in Australia, I was allowed to drink Australian beer. Sooo much better than American beers… crazy. Anyway, 2 of Caroline’s friends arrived, Mary and Kirsten who I’d met when we went to the caves the day before. Good times. And we ate. We ate SO much… the food was actually really good… I wouldn’t call it Australian cuisine, but – I mean… what WOULD you call Australian cuisine? Kangaroo? Everyone does steak… I think we decided that it was mostly just American food with Australian names. Including the ‘Blooming Onion” which is an onion chopped but left connected at the bottom – and then coated in something and deep fried. Great. Not so good for the breath, but tasted really good. The waitress was great too… had been working there for a whole year, and I was her first bonafide Australian… pretty funny. She got wind (thanks Kirsten) that my birthday was coming up, so they brought out a candle for my icecream and a bunch of people got together and sang “Bonza Bonza Birthday” such a crack up. Then we went back to Barts place for a couple of pre-drink-drinks. A warm-up if you will… while sitting there, I got a phone call from Meredith – the girl who’d got my number the night before… I was hoping for the call, but not entirely expecting it… its hard to describe her… gorgeous doesn’t really cover it. She is beautiful… really amazingly beautiful… anyway, we chatted for a couple of minutes – she was at Wal-mart getting “St Patrickified” and planned for me to call her when we got to the bars at about 11. Which I did. And spent the rest of the evening with her and her friends – completely ditching Caroline, Bart and Mary… which I feel bad about. But only a little bit (sorry Caroline… but you saw the photos…I know you understand). Was a really really fun night… I had my first “Sex-on-the-beach” (IT’S A DRINK, MUM!) and actually, my second, third and possibly fourth as well… I’m not sure… chuck in a few shots and accidentally skulling a whole bunch of terrible green beer… needless to say I had a pretty bad headache the next day. Meredith and her friend dropped me off at Barts where I passed out fully clothed on his futon

And woke up at 10am to catch the bus to Jacksonville. That was fun. When I got to Jacksonville, I walked out the front to where the Taxi’s were, and I got approached by a guy who asked me where I was going… I told him that I was going to the Amtrak station, and he said that he’d show me how to get there, and started heading off… I was like.. so its in walking distance? And he said something unintelligible… I had some doubts, but I walked with him to the bus depot, chatted a bit along the way. He was homeless and had hurt his hand so he couldn’t work, so he just needed some money to stay at the shelter that night… He got me there safe, and we had a laugh, so I gave him about $8… still heaps cheaper than the taxi would have been – it turned out that it was a fair way – probably a $20 fare, and the bus was only 75c. so I got to the Amtrak on $8.75. Not bad. Plus I was the last one on the bus and the bus driver started to have a chat to me… so that was cool too.

And now I’ve been on a train for nearly 18 hours… Thinking of going to see a movie once I get in to NYC and have dropped my stuff off at the hostel. Get rid of the rest of my USD.

I don’t think I have much else to say right now… spending tomorrow (Birthday) mostly on a train should be fun… but with real fun at the end with ANOTHER pub crawl in the awesome Montreal. Can’t wait for that. I will relate what I remember in my next post…