Opotiki, New Zealand

Opotiki is pronounced with the stress on the second syllable, so that it scans with 'a prodigy', rather than with 'proper cheeky'.

Since my last blog I've had two full-day scenic drives: the Forgotten World route (highway 43) and the East Cape Pacific Coast Highway (highway 35). The weather has been a bit grey and foggy, which makes it much harder to get good photos, but it still looks spectacular to the naked eye. I've been staying in another AirBnB, this time a distinctly plush lakeside one in Taupo.

On the subject of AirBnB, I have quickly made the full journey from novice to convert to enthusiast to proselytiser to prophet. Lots of people have spare rooms: it's an absolute no-brainer that they should be rented out to people who have a need for them. In San Clemente I got a lovely big en-suite room, with its own balcony overlooking the Pacific, for roughly the same price that I very nearly paid for a tiny Motel 6 room three miles inland where every bedsheet is a Turin Shroud of somebody else's skidmarks.

Hotels don't like AirBnB, just like taxi firms don't like Uber. Tough. Launderettes didn't like it when people started getting washing machines in their own homes! And blacksmiths didn't like it when people started driving cars instead of riding horses. There is no trade to which the rest of humanity owes a permanent living. And more importantly there's no particular reason why all our economic transactions should be intermediated through big corporations. Those big corporations certainly have their uses (nobody is going to ethically hand-craft you a flatscreen TV, or a smartphone, or an MRI scanner), but the whole point of living in a free market economy is that things change: corporations can either adapt or die, whichever they prefer.

Here endeth the sermon.

My journey through New Zealand, 2000 miles driven in 6 days, finished with a rather severe traffic jam going through Hamilton en route to Auckland airport. Message to New Zealand: you have more land than the UK but only the same population as Yorkshire. You're not allowed to have traffic jams. Sort that sh*t out.

(I'm a bit behind with my blog and I left New Zealand before the weekend's football. Therefore this is not quite the right place to say anything about Sunderland utterly destroying N*wc*stle for the sixth consecutive derby match in a glorious, if slightly jammy, 3-0 home win. So, not a word from me.)

Only Poms use namby-pamby euphemisms like 'fertiliser'.

Napier

Chumbawumba Bay

Cowabunga Bay, seen from Mount Bananarama.
OK I admit it, I can't remember where I took these photos, so I'm just making names up.
In my defence, I'm pretty sure that's what the Maoris did in the first place.

Edd vs Food #29
Berber lamb & rice with mint tabouli at Ali Baba's Tunisian Café, Rotorua.

Wellington, New Zealand

Kiwis must be big on psychoanalysis. Everybody here calls me 'id'.

All of my readers, even those to whom I haven’t spoken recently, will be aware by now that this journey is another round-the-world; indeed it’s my third RTW in seven years. I think what I like most about RTW trips is the fact that there’s no return journey. You never have to turn back.

I've visited New Zealand before, on my first RTW trip, but that time I missed out on everything in the North Island south of Auckland. So now I'm setting that to rights, with the help of another rental car (see pic below). Oh God oh God oh sweet lord Jesus how I miss that Chevy V8. Excuse me. Anyway, I drove east from Auckland, around the Coromandel Peninsula, and south-west to an AirBnB in Hamilton. There I went out for a 7.30am pub visit with my AirBnB host to watch the French rugby team get turned into filet mignon by the All Blacks. I'm not usually a fan of rugby - in fact, with the possible exception of the 2003 World Cup Final, this was the first rugby match I've ever watched from beginning to end - but it's always good to see the French take a pasting.

Then south again, to the Waitomo Caves. These have been formed over the past 30 million years but were only explored properly in 1887. (New Zealand contained no humans at all until the Maoris arrived from Polynesia, some time between 1250 and 1300 AD). If you like stalactites, stalagmites and glow-worms, then it's the place to be. I was in a group with about two dozen camera-laden Japanese tourists, and they were stunned into silence - you could almost hear their hearts sink - when the tour guide announced that there was no photography permitted in the caves. Not just no flash photography, but no photos at all. Asking a Japanese tourist not to take photos is like asking a fish not to swim. For the rest of the 45-minute cave tour they were like lost souls in the underworld, eyes glazed and staring, camera fingers twitching at thin air whilst their Canons and Nikons dangled uselessly by their sides.

After emerging from the caves I cruised down the west coast to another AirBnB in Whanganui, and then had a day trip all the way south to Wellington, which is pretty nice. It's funny, New Zealand is about as far from home physically as an English person can get, and yet it feels more like England than any other foreign country in the world. Until, of course, the locals open their mouths. 'Plinty of prissure on the Frinch', someone said to me during the rugby. 'Yis,' I replied, trying to fit in, as always.

New Zealand rental car.
It's old, white, stays on the left, and will probably be taken out of service within a year or two.
I've called it Jeremy.

Coromandel Peninsula

Stalactites in the Waitomo Caves
(they let you take photos after you get outside)

Wellington, seen from the top of the cable car.

Mount Taranaki.
Named after the Maori god of chicken seasoning.

Los Angeles International Airport

After 2200 miles in ten days, I took Beyoncé the rental car back to the parking lot at Dollar Auto Rentals, and we said our final goodbyes. I don't want to go into detail about that, though. I'm not ready to talk about it yet. It's still too raw.

This has been my shortest ever visit to the USA. Only five weeks. It may be some time before I go back, because I'm starting to feel like North America is a continent I've explored overmuch at the expense of other continents, notably the one I live in.

My highlight of the past five weeks was undoubtedly getting the chance to drive a V8 convertible down the Pacific Coast Highway. But the whole of rural California contains sites to satisfy the sight. Every so often on the freeway you see a sign saying 'Vista Point', and you don't always get any clue as to what exactly that vista is, but nine times out of ten it's worth the gamble to stop and find out. Plus, after you've taken your photos, you then need to get going back up to 60mph cruising speed again. Purely for reasons of safety on a busy freeway, I always did this as quickly as Beyoncé could oblige. (About five seconds, since you ask.)

Lowlights? Well, the United States Postal Service gets a big fat raspberry for leading me a merry dance all over California trying to collect a letter sent from England. I won't bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that in future I'll be using UPS or DHL, or carrier pigeons if it comes to it. A few blogs ago I conceded the merits of having a nationalised railway service, but the USPS is a good example of just how bad things can get when organisations and their miseryguts employees know that their customers have nowhere else to go.

Another raspberry goes to the information desk at LAX for assuring me that the nearby Sheraton hotel offers shower facilities for non-residents at $10 a go. They don't. They really, really don't. In the process of discovering this, I wasted about an hour, and made a total tit of myself; and what's worse, lugging my backpack around on a hot & humid LA evening left me totally drenched in sweat. I couldn't get on a plane in that condition. I had to have a mineral water sponge-bath in the disabled cubicle of the gents' toilets at LAX. (Oversharing...sorry...)

Now I'm leaving on a jet plane, and I think it's gonna be a long, long time...

'Farewell: thou art too dear for my possessing...
...Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter;
In sleep, a king; in waking, no such matter.'
(Shakespeare, sonnet no. 87)

Edd vs Fast Food #7
(this is separate to the main Edd vs Food series)
Carl's Jr
Quite tasty, but way too oily from the deep-frying.
Those waffle fries were all crispiness and no potato. It left me feeling kind of sick,
Like in England when you eat all the batter and leave all the chips.

Cachuma Lake, just west of Santa Barbara

Edd vs Fast Food #8
Denny's
I reviewed them last year and gave them a thumbs down for their breakfasts.
They have earned a partial reprieve with this, their Meat Lovers' Omelette.
Although it may look disgusting, it's actually OK.
Also Denny's is always good for the authentic USA 'diner experience'.
Booth seat by the window, free coffee refills, etc etc.
All served up by a friendly but frazzled woman in her late 40s...
...who's finally admitted to herself that she's probably not going to make it as an actress.

San Clemente, from my AirBnB room balcony.
This was just after dawn. I had to check out and get going before the sun had risen properly.

Edd vs Fast Food #9
In-N-Out Burger
The burger was the tastiest of any American burger chain I've tried yet.
The fries were a big let-down though. Bland, and served pretty much cold.
Apologies for the poor photo. Had to eat this on the move.

Lingerie shop in San Luis Obispo.
I didn't dare go into the shop, but the photo is going off to Viz magazine.

Big Sur, CA

Me and Beyoncé (the rental car) took a slow ride down the legendary Pacific Coast Highway, from Monterey through Big Sur to San Luis Obispo. The weather was bright and breezy so B went topless the whole way.

Regular readers of my blog will know that I can waffle with the best of them, when the mood takes me. But with some places & experiences, as with great works of art, words are not adequate to the task of description. If they were, then we wouldn't need the places or the experiences, or the art. Big Sur is one of those places: all I can do is point you below to my feeble attempts at capturing the drive in photographs. No need even for captions.

I think I will remember this day for the whole of the rest of my life.

Monterey, CA

That last blog (the one about American football) was a bit out of sequence. I just needed to get a few things off my chest, as you could probably tell.

I've decided to christen my rental car Beyoncé, because she's black and she has a wide rear end, ha ha. Anyway, after leaving Chico, me and Mrs Z headed south and visited Sacramento, Petaluma and the Napa Valley (where the wines come from). I ended up in Pleasanton, a smallish town just east of Oakland, and that was my base for the NFL match. NFL may not be my cup of cocoa, but Pleasanton itself is aptly named. It was also my inaugural AirBnB experience, and a very positive one. I'll certainly give this a try again soon.

Now I'm in Monterey, which is *spoiler alert* a very prominent stop on the Pacific Coast Highway. Beyoncé has to go back to LA before too long, and I might as well make the most of getting there...

Monterey

California State Capitol building in Sacramento, at sundown.

Beyoncé (see explanation above), parked outside another cheap motel, this time in Sacramento.
You can just make out the photographer's hairy shins reflected below the car's left headlight.

Note the detailed address on the sign. Wacky.
Lagunitas IPA is one of the more distinctive beers of its kind.
But otherwise, these guys don't really compare with Sierra Nevada or Brooklyn.
Nonetheless a photo is a photo, and a souvenir T-shirt is a souvenir T-shirt.

Vineyards in the Napa Valley, plus car.
Baby Got Back.

Denver Broncos 16 - 10 Oakland Raiders

Contrary to what the title of this blog might suggest, I'm still in California, and not in Denver. In American football scorelines, the away ("visiting") team is listed first.

I tried baseball in 2008 and hated it with a passion, but I have since remained open-minded about American football, and I've always wanted to give it a try. Today I did so, at a cost of about $90, and it took me less than half an hour to ascertain beyond all doubt that I hate American football even more than I hate baseball.

Good God, it's awful. The matches last over three hours, and they only contain 60 minutes of sport; but even that doesn't tell the whole story, because the clock ticks between plays. The average amount of actual play in an NFL match is literally just eleven minutes. People run into each other, then other people run into other people, and an egg is briefly chased before being dropped and then all the people who were previously running into each other stop running into each other, and jump on top of each other instead. Then a man in a stripey top blows a whistle and everyone goes woop woop. There is plenty of whooping and hollering, but no singing, other than yodels of 'Rai-ders! Rai-ders!' and - in a rare moment of lyrical inspiration - 'F*** the Broncos!' I turned up twenty minutes early but I still missed the start of the match, because I had to queue for airport-style security and turn out the entire contents of my pockets - along with 56,000 other people, most of whom were morons and/or obese. (When the camera went round the ground for fans to get their moment on the big screen, one woman waved a big fat arm with bingo wings so pronounced that they were still wobbling long after she stopped waving.)

The only reason I stayed as long as I did (one hour out of the three) was that I kept thinking miserably to myself: "Well, I've got nothing better to do". But then I remembered that I had plenty of California left to explore, and a V8 convertible to do it in...That's when I cheered up. And left.

The one positive from today's game was that it involved Peyton Manning, who is in some corners regarded as the best quarterback in NFL history. He's a bit past his prime now, but the important thing is that in decades to come I can impress younger Americans by telling them I saw him play.

Anyway, this is just a brief sporting interlude. My next blog will be a lot cheerier. In the meantime I remain open-minded about basketball and ice hockey; but I think they can wait a few years yet.

Between plays, the teams mill around aimlessly on the pitch.
This is of course totally different to what happens during the plays.

Another angle. (This time during a play. I think.)

Eleven dollars for a Bud Light. OMMFG.
Never, in the field of human drinking, was so much paid, by so many, for such piss.

Cameras going round the crowd for random fans to wave at...
I don't think this one was random.
James Hetfield out of Metallica.
\m/

Chico, CA

Now that I've got the car, I'm moving around rather more often than previously, and so these blogs will become a little bit more frequent for a while. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Chico is a small and unremarkable town in northern California. (If anybody saw the title of this blog and thought "It's Chico Time!" then please do me a favour and never, ever speak to me again.) The reason I'm here is that it's host to the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company.

In my eyes Sierra Nevada comes second - an increasingly close second - to the Brooklyn Brewing Company in the ranks of the best purveyors of top-notch beers in America, and perhaps the world. It's now the seventh-largest brewing company in the USA, but it's still independent, being 100% owned by the founder, Ken Grossman. Every dish in the Taproom restaurant contains at least one ingredient home-grown in the Sierra Nevada Estate Garden. And the 90-minute brewery tour is free of charge.

I realise that most of my readers are not beer nerds like me, so I'll leave it there for today. All I'll say is that you can buy Sierra Nevada's Pale Ale and Torpedo IPA beers in any full-size Tesco; and that if you haven't already done so, well, you should. You'll never settle for Carling again. Life's too short for cheap beer.

Heaven is a place on earth

You know how there are some gift shops where you walk in...
...and it's not a question of finding something you'll want to buy...
...but more a question of finding something you'll not want to buy?

Edd vs Food #27
10oz bone-in wood oven pork chop, with parmesan and potato gratin,
Lacinato kale, estate carrots and apple cider reduction.
Washed down with Sierra Nevada Kellerweis. I've had this in the UK, in bottles.
It's available on tap here and, I imagine, in Heaven.

Edd vs Food #28 (next day)
Braised Sierra Nevada beef with San Marzano tomatoes, ricotta gnocchi and parmesan.
I think this is the grand champion of the Edd vs Food series so far.
From now on, I need all my tomatoes to be San Marzano tomatoes.

There's that rental car again!
(The disabled sign is for the next space along, OK?)
The motel put me in room 101. I hope they didn't mean anything by it.

Lake Tahoe, CA

After San Diego I went back to LA to pick up a car. Then I headed out east to take in a couple of National Parks, Joshua Tree and Death Valley. In my last blog I described the fortuitous timing of the Miramar airshow as 'one of Lady Luck's occasional little smiles': well, at Death Valley, I found myself subject to one of Lady Luck's occasional little silent-but-deadlies. Half of the park was closed due to flooding from heavy rains. In the world's hottest place! Bah, etc. But it was still worth the visit. See photo below.

Now I'm at Lake Tahoe, which isn't a National Park, it's just a very pretty freshwater lake straddling Nevada and California at 6,225ft above sea level. In the summer it's full of annoying holidaymakers and in the winter it's full of annoying skiers. Right now it's pretty quiet, apart from annoying English backpackers like me.

It was a long drive to get here - I did nearly a thousand miles in my first two days with the car. But in this part of the world, a long drive is a positive pleasure. Deserts gliding by; forested hills in the middle distance; snowy peaks on the horizon. Cloud-sliced sunbeams bristling like searchlights between the mountains as evening falls. Two years ago I had all this in Texas, then last year it was Utah and Colorado, and now it's California. And once you get the hell out of the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area, California is beautiful.

Oh, and did I tell you all about my rental car? I don't think I did tell you all about my rental car. All this talk of driving reminds me that I haven't mentioned my rental car yet. It's surprising that I haven't mentioned my rental car, because I'm very keen on my rental car. I think it's best to let everyone know about my rental car so that if anyone's interested in my rental car then they have the opportunity to find out more about my rental car. See below for pictures of my rental car.

Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe

South shore of Lake Tahoe

Has anyone ever, in the whole history of the world, drunk Newcastle Brown with food?

Death Valley National Park

Edd vs Food #26
Three-egg omelette with bacon, fresh garlic, swiss cheese and tomatoes.
Topped with alfalfa sprouts and fresh cream. Hash brown and flour tortilla on the side.
Fresh garlic is a bit unorthodox for breakfast...
...but the dish is called 'Ed's Best Omelette' and so I had to have it.
At the Driftwood Café, 1001 Heavenly Village Way, South Lake Tahoe, CA.

The rental car.
For the next 10 days, this is how we roll.
In your FACE, bucket list!

At Joshua Tree National Park: another picture of my rental car.

It's a Chevy Camaro Super Sport convertible. 6.2 litre V8, 400bhp.

It drinks a lot of gas, but that's how it washes down all the Ford Mustangs that it eats for breakfast.

Midlife crisis? What midlife crisis?

Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, San Diego, CA

Miramar MCAS is the location of 'Top Gun’, one of the greatest and cheesiest films of the 1980s. By one of Lady Luck's occasional little smiles, the annual airshow just happened to be on the weekend I was in town.

Autobiographical details don’t often worm their way into this blog, but I think a bit of background information is needed here. You see, at the age of about 11 I saw ‘Top Gun’ for the first time, and straight away I decided that I was going to be a fighter pilot in the RAF. This ambition, or should I say delusion, lasted several years before it dawned on me that there was no chance of me ever becoming any kind of military man. Those of you who know me closely – OK, anyone who’s ever met me – will know what I mean.

But I still think ‘Top Gun’ is a classic, in spite of the pulsing, throbbing undercurrent of thinly-veiled homo-eroticism that runs through the entire film. (That volleyball game…all the steamy towel-slapping in the locker room… Cruise and Kilmer flirting like kittens and pretending it’s some kind of macho rivalry…Indeed at one point the hetero-façade threatens to break down altogether, when a frazzled air-traffic controller starts yelling “I want somebody’s butt!”). I still know every line from the script and I still love the soundtrack. And I still love to see and hear fighter jets streaking past, 100ft above the ground, at near the speed of sound. So there was just no way I could miss the airshow. Obviously I did the tour of film locations around the city too. See photos below.

It’s more than 20 years since I abandoned my RAF ambitions. The F14 Tomcat was retired from active service in 2006. Kelly McGillis turned 58 this year, and it turns out she was a dyke all along anyway. But a man can still dream. He can still watch the sun set over the California desert, and see the jets roar overhead, and he can don a pair of imitation RayBans and whisper ‘your ego’s writing cheques your body can’t cash!’ to himself, and from somewhere in his brain he can hear an electric guitar playing that theme tune…Yes indeed, a man can still dream, now and always.

MCAS Miramar, nearing sundown.
Harrier jump jet just rising from a low pass at left.

Breitling L-39 jet team, earlier in the day.

I'd never seen a hashtag in the sky before.
The whole of the message was literally 5 miles long and it was quite spooky to see.
Details about #skytypers are here.

The Shockwave Jet Truck.
Americans...

Radio-controlled flying Elvis. Really.
Drone Be Cruel!
The same guy does a flying Snoopy (video) and a flying witch on a broomstick (video).

Intersection of Laurel and Union, San Diego.
In the film, Kelly McGillis narrowly avoids a car crash here.
(The yellow fire hydrant is visible twice in this clip at about the 1 minute mark.)
  She then has a brief argument with Tom Cruise, prior to their first snog.
Cruise is presumably standing on a crate. And thinking about Val Kilmer.

102 Pacific St, Oceanside, CA 92054. About 30 miles north of San Diego.
This is the house belonging to Charlie (Kelly McGillis) in the film.
Derelict now, and boarded up to keep the sad tourists at bay.

Edd vs Food #25
Chilli cheese fries, washed down with Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.
Nothing too remarkable in that...
But this is the Kansas City Barbecue, 600 W Harbor Drive, San Diego.
It's where Maverick and Goose sing 'Great Balls Of Fire' in the film.