Post #574106 by Club Nouméa on Tue, Feb 1, 2011 5:11 AM

Part One: I set off...

At Auckland Airport, a friendly Customs officer took me aside in order to explain the inadvisability of taking a machete to California. While it was true that the citizenry of that land did indeed regard it as a God-given right to bear arms, it was, he said, a right that they guard jealously for themselves and do not see fit to bestow on outsiders, whom they look down on as "non-citizens" or even as "aliens".

What's more, the friendly Customs officer explained, there was an elite body of guardians protecting California who call themselves "Homeland Security" who make it their special job to isolate outsiders who they might consider to be "undesirable aliens" or even "enemy aliens" and subject them to inquisitorial practices above and beyond the criminal fingerprinting and mug shots they normally subject all foreigners to on the wise grounds that, being foreigners, none of them can be trusted in the slightest. Any such non-citizen foreign alien type person found in possession of a machete would doubtless at the very least undergo the arcane ritual known as the Anal/Rectal Search and would be kept under close scrutiny until he passed stool, which their seers would then examine closely for signs of portents from the Gods. If the reading was not good, the suspect traveller would then be incarcerated in one of Cali's many rapidly-expanding penal establishments, where he would make interesting new friends and would likely receive the opportunity to become personally acquainted with the California Bear lifestyle on an intimate basis...

I gulped, thanked the good man for his sage advice, and left my machete at his counter.

It was an arduous Pacific crossing, fraught with turbulence, spilled cocktails, and perilous toilet use. Regarding this incident, I need not say more.

My contact in San Francisco, my port of arrival, was Ms. Nouméa, who was to serve as my guide and interpreter. Whilst she had grown up in the land of Cali, she was nonetheless descended from New Zealanders and, although their good stock had been diluted through several generations of intermarriage with indigenes, and her family had long since lost contact with their gentle land of origin, down through the generations they had nonetheless managed to retain some vestiges of the speech and mannerisms of their ancestors. The upshot of this was that, when conversing with Ms. Nouméa, I had at least a 50/50 chance of understanding her weird utterances and, with any luck, could prevail upon her in fractured pidgin to request a Mai Tai or other essential provisions from one of the locals who, I suspected, would consider my vocalisations with much the same attitude of bemused intolerance that they would adopt when dealing with the local village idiot or a passing Canadian.

Ms. Nouméa was aghast at my explorer's clothing, and professed amazement that Homeland Security had not automatically "ARSed" me based merely on my appearance the moment I had disembarked. Thus I came to learn the critical importance of "profiling" and blending into one's environment in order not to arouse suspicions. She told me that if I was going to enter tiki bars dressed like THAT, then my chances of successful interaction with the natives would be very slim indeed, if not impossible. I was told in no uncertain terms that I would do better to burn my uniform whilst she set about acquiring accoutrements which she referred to as "hipster's gear". Dressed in this apparel, strange though my mannerisms may be, locals would assume I was merely a dreadful bohemian rather than an undesirable alien, and thus I would only be the butt of occasional derision and drollery rather than the target of suspicion or even outright hostility. "And", she added "you're not going anywhere till you grow a matching goatee!"

Thus my fate was sealed. I was to enter California's tiki kingdom disguised as a hipster...

CN