Dallas to Little Rock – The Road Trip Begins


In the morning The Doctor visited Starbucks for a well-earned caffeine hit and the waitress admitted that no-one had ever ordered an espresso before - despite it being advertised on the menu - saying “but Sir that is just a shot of coffee”.

We visited the book depository which the Doctor’s brother had once referred to previously as the book suppository which sounds a little painful.

The depository contains a museum about the assassination of JFK (we still think it was the same Russians that took Harold Holt) which was amazing and The Don tearfully made it his business to read every word available next to every exhibit and listened to each second of video - and then followed it up by buying almost everything the gift shop had to offer.

After taking in Dealey Plaza and the spot on the road where Kennedy was shot, we made our way back up the road to meet our date with destiny. We picked up the legendary Truck of Justice which instead of a Dodge Grand Caravan with a table in the back unfortunately turned out to be a Honda Odyssey without a table in the back.

It does however have a full 16 cup holders which seems a bit strange – why didn’t they just go to a bit more effort have enough holders for a full slab? We also struggled with the basic concept of opening and closing the electric doors. Passers-by could already tell we were 'not from around here'.

Once we worked out how to open the doors, we made a quick stop to Wal-Mart where we discovered the delights of American retail. Thanks to their anti-worker policies everything’s cheap and everything's there under one roof including banks, fast food and plenty of junk in the trunk.

With the road trip now under full swing the Doctor tried to lighten the mood by inventing a new car game. The concept involved taking a photo of a body part on Pam’s fancy digital camera, handing the camera to the opposing player and challenging them to identify it.

Unfortunately JT was not keen on this game at all and insisted that swapping seats in the Truck of Justice TM every 30 minutes was more entertaining which shows what a total loser he really is.

We crossed the state line out of Texas which we have delighted in telling the proud Lone Star locals is about 1/5 the size of the state that Skuzzlefark and The Doctor were born in back in Australia.

Despite Dallas being a Democrat town Texas hasn’t voted Democrat since a young Karl Rove met a young George W Bush. Considering that in all the time we were in Dallas we did not meet one white person who told us they were voting for Obama this doesn’t look like changing. They were either GOP’ers or not voting at all.

By late afternoon we pulled off interstate 30 to drive though a place called Hope. Our main motivation for visiting a small town in Arkansas was to pay our respects to a town that gave us William J Clinton.

We arrived in Little Rock at 9pm and all a little weary. To be fair, the late nights, jet-lag, 500 kilometres worth of driving on the wrong side of the road and Fox News’s Sean Hannity’s radio program took its toll on us all.

We checked into our hotel and headed up the main street to grab a bite to eat and sample some more local ales. As opposed to Dallas, Little Rock really seemed more like how a southern city town should be. While it is a small town, its wide streets and grand architecture of its government buildings seemed more like the movies than Dallas seemed like the TV series.

The local bar, The Flying Saucer, was packed for a Monday night and had a great young vibe. It was appropriately named as the roof was adorned with plates across the ceiling of those who had drunk more than 10 pints (including many from Australia) and over 100 varieties of beer on tap, it was a good way to end the day of travelling – something we’ll have to get used to.

The Doctor was particularly taken with a local Pale Ale named Doggy Style. He said drinking it makes you end up on all fours. Interestingly this joke in very poor taste was completely blown out of the water by the table of crew-cut blokes next to us who cheered and wolf-whistled at every woman who walked past. In their defence no less than two lots of women stopped and sat down with them for a chat in response.

The night ended on closing with the group keen to get some sleep for the trip into the wild unknowns of Missouri.

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