John Robb

Consciousness greets me in the morning with the satisfaction that last night I had sorted all the miscellaneous bits of my travel stuff into neat collections – lest I arrive back in San Francisco in two weeks with an unmanageable pile of junk.

My first challenge of the day is to master the waffle maker. I’ve seen them in the motel breakfast area quietly mocking me – “hey you foreigner! Can you handle the hot cast iron and get to the waffle glory?”. I carefully re-read the instructions and work the magic to get a quality waffle – I am almost a citizen at this rate.

I drive out of Torrey and decide I need to visit Hillary – I saw her last night as I was driving past and decided that she needed my attention. I take several shots of her curves at several angles and experiment with a few exposures. She’s got a wonderful look and you’ll see more of her soon.

In Fruita I go to school and shoot the national park ranger writing lines in a 110 year old single room school house. What a life in the middle of canyon lands with no one around except a few pioneer families.

On the way back to Torrey I stop for another experiment in North American espresso coffee and trip up over pronunciation of mocha. After a few smiles with the beautiful waitress international relations were resolved and coffee was served. Interestingly the mocha wasn’t as sweet or chocolaty as expected.

Off to Bryce Canyon national park. Stop and look and explore at the several places along the road. Interestingly some others manage to pull up their transportation, get out, look at the magnificent views and get back in – even before the engine has stopped spinning. You have take some minutes to read and walk down a trail or two when you’ve come so far.

Now I must say that when you are at 9000 ft the lack of oxygen can impair your judgement. I can also add that the Ford Mustang is wonderfully responsive and just cruises along down slopes without a worry in the world. It also cruises a little too quickly past the park police SUV coming in the other direction.

Now when pulled over by police in a foreign country all sorts of things come to mind – including not to try the first two excuses. I wonder, for a brief few minutes as they check my details, if I’m going to be sharing a cage with an angry brown bear or just a guy called bubba. Thankfully a cautious reprimand saved the day and my constitutional need for one phone call – mind you this could put potential citizenship back a bit.

Travelling to Richfield in the afternoon a wonderful person called Kara greeted me at the Fairfield Inn and a comfortable room was found. A quick conversation revealed the best Chinese food around and an extra serving of sesame chicken for Kara. It also revealed that shopkeepers have little markers for checking for forged notes – black bad, yellow good. Aussie plastic notes don’t need these marker tests.

A little shooting on the gun range while waiting for the Chinese revealed I needed to improve my technique. Just have to trust the gun sight a little and carefully squeeze the trigger. Sorry no stuffed toy for me from the Richfield Fairground.

At the end of the meal the fortune cookie said “your next week will contain something new” – today contained several new things.