NB: This page was added after we returned.

As we rapidly ran out of time in the USA, I realised I’d not taken any images of some of the more amusing items in Walmart, so at 4:30am in Fishkill, New York, I went for a wander through the Walmart Supercenter.
The items that amused me most were the range of cereals, (none of which appeared to be healthy), other foods of convenience, and of course, the guns and ammo section (see related articles).

If you take a look at the larger versions of all these cereals (in order to read the packets more clearly), you’ll note that they are all contain either chocolate flavouring, or extra cinnamon. Not what you’d consider to be a healthy option for children, and while there are a lot of cereals similar to these on Australian markets, the proportion of unhealthy / healthy was definitely unusual.

While Corn Flakes and Rice Bubbles (aka Rice Krispies) were represented in the aisle, for the most part, every cereal was designed to appeal to the sweet tooth.

The Cinnamon Toast Crunch was the worst cereal we tried in the US. Not long after we arrived, we decided to buy a small collection of cereals in multi-pack form. Typically used for people on the go or campers, they were a handy size to try before we decided which cereal we’d end up eating while travelling. The sugar and cinnamon in the Cinnamon Toast Crunch was actually so plentiful, it refused to dissolve, leaving crunchy granules of sugar all over my teeth and gums.

Cheerio’s were less sweet, but perhaps too bland for regular consumption, but there was no in-between range that we could find. In the end, of course, we began our day with two chocolate donuts every morning, so we are hardly excluding ourselves from the collection of sweet-tooths in the population…*wry grin*

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In 1692, it was all happening in the township of Salem, where 19 people were hanged and one was crushed to death with stones - all because they were reputedly witches. How did the good folk of the town know this? Because some young girls got a healthy dose of dementia and began firing off accusations and backing it all up with “spectral evidence”.

Today, over 400 years later, people are still suffering dementia, but it’s mainly due to the heat. Right now, we’re escaping the sun inside the lovely cool air-conditioned library, but outside, it’s a mere 98F/37C. We’re really looking forward to the stint in London where the average temperature in summer is only half of what we’re in right now…

The downside to that is that we have to lug backpacks across the countryside of Spain and Italy first, and that’s just not a pleasant thought…

It’s a weird feeling as we run down the last few days of our stay in North America - strange to think so much time has passed already, and that we’re technically on the fast-track home now.

Categories: Travel, Odyssey 2001
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For those of you who know us well, this will not come as a great surprise, but we’ve just made a bit of a detour for the PhD. No doubt some of you have read one of the other travelogues on the website for a trip to Sydney in 2000, but for the benefit of those that have not, here’s a quick summary.

To pay the inter-library loan fees for photocopied journal articles was going to be a higher expense than personally flying to Sydney with Diana and collecting them ourselves, so we did the latter and had a holiday as well.

This time, we’ve gone to Wooster, Ohio specifically to collect some journal articles from a pretty obscure (at least in Australia) journal. Sure, it’s not like we flew here directly to get them, but it probably does fall into the “only Trav and Di are weird enough to do that” file…

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NB: This page was added after we returned.

After reading about this town on RoadsideAmerica.com, we decided we should pay a visit. Obviously it was of interest to us, as we sought out ducks all over the place anyway. To see them walking on fish would be even more exciting.
Yes, walking on fish…

Linesville seems to have created a completely unnatural balance in nature where a larger number of fish than normal can be sustained through tourism. Presumably the fish population was high for some reason once, and the tourists feeding them since then have allowed the situation to remain?

In any event, there is a weir where literally thousands of large fish (~ 2 foot long) teem so thick that when you throw bread into the water, the resident ducks walk over the backs of the fish rather than swim to get the bread. The fish, for their part, obviously go after the bread as well.

We ended up going here twice, as part of our loop around Pennsylvania, simply because Diana was feeling rather unwell the first time we visited, and was not able to fully appreciate it.

As the bread hits the water, it is a remarkable sight to see so many fish frantically trying to reach it, to the point where some are being pushed entirely out of the water, supported by other fish below the surface. A very diverting way to spend an hour or more…

Categories: Travel, Odyssey 2001
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Spent the last few days checking out the Columbus scene and even discussing certain amounts of spatial distribution analysis. Certain amounts. We got a little distracted by, well, pig racing.

Yes, pig racing has reared it’s head once more at the Ohio State Fair, and this time I had my camera to record the excitement. One of the funniest things was that to encourage the pigs around the track, the crowd was urged to “root them on”. Five people were selected from the crowd to be “special pig rooters” and if their pig won, they received a little flag, a blue ribbon and a badge that read “NUMBER ONE PIG ROOTER”. Di and I were the only ones there that were bilingual enough to be rolling in the aisles.

We also noticed the care and attention given to sheep at the Fair. There are a few strange things done with sheep here in Ohio (hey! get your minds out of the gutter!) and one of them is to show a sheep by removing all the wool. Of course, they get a little dirty and cold then, so often they have to wear little coats to deal with this. Most of the coats are kind of dull, but there are a few farmers that feel their sheep really need to stand out from the crowd.

In other news from the Fair, we encountered an interesting phenomenon with sticks. It seems that if you can get a food and attach it to a stick, you’ve got yourself a winning snack to sell. There were the usual suspects like the Hot Dog On A Stick, and Cotton Candy On A Stick, but there were a few interesting variations. Things that had no place being on a stick were also being sold - Steak On A Stick and Cheese On A Stick as a couple of examples. This is what we both define as “wrong”…

Today we went on a bit of an outing to check out a couple of things in Columbus that are worth a detour for those in the area. Firstly, there is a field in Dublin (an adjoining suburb of Columbus) where 104 giant concrete corn cobs stand proudly.

Secondly, there is a park downtown where a large topiary display is recreating Georges Seurat’s famous painting “A Sunday Afternoon On The Ile De La Grande Jatte” which is of interest. There’s still a little bit of growth to go in some places, but it’s definitely interesting to see such a big topiary area devoted to one theme.

Categories: Travel, Odyssey 2001
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