‘Allo!

At long last, the final show day has arrived. Last night’s RAW show was MUCH smoother than the previous week in Milan. Ah… Milan… it seems like we were there months ago.

Here is most of the audio crew responsible for the success of the European ‘Wrestlemania Revenge’ tour (Except for that French guy on the far right… he’s mostly responsible for undermining the success of the show – the rest of these blokes made me look good! Thanks, Mates!) :

Tonight will mark the end of this two week Blitzkrieg of Europe, and if all goes well, I will be on my way HOME tomorrow at 9:15 AM!

And now for something completely different.

Here are a few random stories and pictures from the past two weeks that didn’t really fit in anywhere else.

1 – Instead of calling me ‘Frenchy‘ this week, most of the guys in the above picture took to calling me ‘Le Grand Fromage du Jour‘ since I was filling in for Randy.

2 – The day we landed in London happened to be the Queen’s 81st birthday. At lunch at the pub across from the arena, I offered a ‘Long live the Queen” toast, which was met with quizzical stares from the UK audio crew. Then I informed them, “Today is the Queen’s 81st birthday. How come I know this and you guys don’t?”

“Simple. You’re a tourist.”

3 – Saturday was not only the Queen’s birthday, it was also the day of the London marathon. Joff and Max, pictured above, had a friend that trained for a year to run the marathon. His goal was to finish in under four hours. On the way to the start line, the train he was on derailed. He was unhurt, but a half hour late, forcing him to start behind the ‘punters’. He had to pass 10,000 people, including a guy dressed like Darth Vader and another guy that was running the whole marathon in imitation slow motion. He finished in four and a half hours. He was, in their words, ‘gutted’ by the experience, especially the fact that he would now have to run the 2008 marathon.

4 – Vince McMahon took advantage of the time off between shows to tour Rome. When I bumped into him on Sunday, I asked what he thought of his vacation. He said, “It was all great, especially the Coliseum, man that place is just INCREDIBLE! Hell, I’m actually considering doing a show there!”

Frighteningly enough, it looks like there is already a stage inside.

Special thanks to longtime Faithful Fifteen photographer Jason Robinson for these Coliseum pictures.

5 – The fastest way to walk from our hotel to work was a path through the creepy Brompton Cemetery.

I didn’t have enough time to check out everything, but most of the headstones I saw were from the 1800’s. Not quite as impressive as all of Prague’s fourteenth century stuff, but there’s still a lot of history in this place.

Of the headstones I read, this was my favorite:

An aeroplane accident? In 1928? Poor Little Jimmy indeed.

6 – In Prague on Friday, Abi received some bad news. His friend called to tell him his house had been broken into, his back door was wide open, and his new flat screen HDTV was gone. In London he got more bad news. Evidently, while the back door was open, a cat wandered in and delivered a littler of kittens under his bed!

7 – The UK must have had a big problem with dog shit in the past. Signs like this were everywhere:

If that’s too polite, this might do the trick:

8 – Warning – Motorcycles jumping cars ahead. Have cameras ready.

9 – London is probably the only place in the world that a guy can use the world ‘Lovely’ to describe something without sounding like a ‘tosser.’

And that’s really about it. What a fantastic time I had, even if I did have to WORK for it instead of just coasting through. Prague was incredible, as was Milan and really, everything else on this tour (well, except the first two shows, but those have been mercifully erased from memory.) The pictures don’t do justice to the places I visited. Though I’m tired and ready to go home, I honestly had a great time. I just found out last night that the WWE is coming back to Birmingham in October, but there’s no word yet on whether Rome will be on the schedule. Either way, I can’t wait!

Cheers mates!

June 5th, 2007

A New Post

For those that are sick of looking at the ‘backpack’ in the Baja post, here is a NEW backpack to look at for the next several months.

Seriously, how many of the Faithful Fifteen are still around?

March 14th, 2007

And Finally… Death Valley

The morning before we went to Death Valley, I managed to lose my keys. I looked for the damn things EVERYWHERE, including retracing the whole route to dinner we walked the night before, no to avail. It wouldn’t have been a huge problem, I had a spare motorcycle key, but I had a U-Lock on my front wheel, and no spare key for that.

I decided to load the bike up, then go see if I could find some bolt cutters, a saw or maybe some dynamite to fix my little situation. As I picked up my tankbag, I found my keys, stuck to the magnets under the bag!

Abi swears he had NOTHING to do with it… Yeah right! Keys found, it was time to hit the road on teh last day of the trip.

You sure see some weird things out in the desert. The heat must make people crazy or something.

And finally… after the morning’s slight delay… Death Valley National Park! (Passport stamp number four of this trip.)

We headed to Badwater Basin. At 282 feet below sea level, Badwater is the lowest point in the US. (The shoreline of the Dead Sea which borders Israel and Jordan is the lowest point of dry land on earth, at 1300 feet below sea level!)

My GPS almost agreed with the sign… close enough for me!

Salt as far as the eye can see!

After Badwater, we aimed our machines Southwest towards home. Fortunately some of the best roads of the trip awaited us.

Here was our whole 9 day, 2215 mile route:

Ah yes… all good trips must come to an end. At least we ended strong!

Alaska, Nova Scotia and Nashville are next…….

March 14th, 2007

Arizona – Lake Havasu

Leaving the land of Mariachi, Margaritas and Pain Kille’rs we traveled to Phoenix and Tucson for work. But before work ruined our trip, we detoured to a few National Parks – specifically Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and Saguaro National Park. This would be a perfect opportunity to add a few stamps to my National Parks Passport.

Saguaro National Park

Abi had never seen a cactus before, or touched one apparently.

But he had no problem riding through a huge field of them, he even took time to wave at other riders.

We saw some Indian graffiti. Or maybe they are cartoons, not really sure. Perhaps ‘The Adventures of Lizard Man?”

We stopped off to air mail a few postcards. (Yes, Abi climbed up there, that’s what riding buddies are for after all!)

Then we had to go and make the money that pays the bills that lets us do these trips in the first place. How sad.

After that miserable money-earning period was over, it was off to Lake Havasu… yes… THAT Lake Havasu of a certain… ahem… fame. You know, like New Orleans ‘gimme beads’ fame? Yeah… THAT fame!

On the way to Havasu, I saw this on the side of a building. Not really sure what to make of it.

Damn! Look at that dam!

Unfortunately, Lake Havasu was so boring I can’t even BEGIN to describe it. Spring Break starts next weekend. Of course.

Even though there weren’t any drunken naked college chick on boats, the sunset was nice to look at. Hey, you gotta make your own fun sometimes.

The next day… on the road again, sans hangover… Ah well……

And what a road it was. Amazing!!!

We stopped off at Rhyolite, a ghost town in Nevada.
I saw this cool old bicycle in the ghost town. I think it was a Schwinn, from around 1950 or so. Abi was petrified of that bicycle for some reason….

In fact, come to think of it, Abi seemed spooked the whole time we were in Rhyolite… not too sure why. I never saw any ghosts… but it was still pretty cool, for a ‘ghost’ town.

This site finally calmed Abi down…

There… much better!

March 14th, 2007

Baja – Part II

The rest of the road to San Felipe, Mex Route 3, was tremendous, with only a few minor potholes to keep things interesting.

For $100 a night in San Felipe, a beachfront bungalow can be rented at the fantastic El Cortez hotel.

$100? Beachfront? Ah yeah…. I LOVE this place!

El Cortez has a beachfront restaurant as well. Their $7 seafood soup was TREMENDOUS!

This whole dinner cost $28 US. Amazingly fresh and really good.

Unless you are a vegetarian. Abi swears the next time he will know the Spanish word for vegetarian.

During dinner we were treated to an authentic Mexican Live Sex Show, as these amorous sparrows got frisky on the table next to ours. Maybe not quite as good as the shows in Tijuana, but still pretty damn funny.

After dinner we walked a few blocks to the center of San Felipe. Picking a good bar for some invigorating adult beverages was easy.

The one with the dirt bike parked in the middle, naturally!

Couldn’t resist… had to get some ‘street meat’ on the way back to El Cortez, and it was good! Four dollars later I was so stuffed I thought I would explode.

The next day it was time to leave Baja. But first, I wanted to experience a famous Baja Sunrise.

As stated before, true adventures include hangovers. In that case, today was a true adventure as well. But the sunrise was still worth getting up early for.

A nice Mexican mobile home??

On the way from San Felipe on Mex Route 5, we had to go through a military checkpoint. It was kinda funny, actually. There were three wooden mockups of very angry looking soldiers on the side of the road, holding up red flags. We had to stop and open our saddlebags for the real soldiers.

Fortunately, smuggling dirty clothes isn’t yet illegal, so we got through without too much hassle.

Seriously though, how much drugs could we possibly smuggle on motorcycles in the first place?? I guess doing these searches gives the soldiers something to do.

We crossed back into the US at the Mexicali border crossing, along with about a thousand others. Saturday at 11 AM is probably not the best time to cross the border. People were peddling all sorts of junk between the rows of cars, at one point I saw a glowing neon Jesus for sale, I swear.

There was a lane marked ‘Motorcycles’, so we jumped into it, bypassing about an hour of stop and go traffic. Towards the end of the special lane, a guy next to us yelled, “Hey! If you don’t have a red security card, they’re going to send you to the back of the line!”

What?

Sure enough, as we got to the crossing, there was a sign instructing people to display their Red Security Card. Uh oh.

So we did what any sane person would do… we cut into the next lane and snuck up to the border crossing. Again, border crossings make me nervous… you never know if the guy is going to expect a bribe, inform you about the warrant for those thirty unpaid parking tickets, or pull out a rubber glove to look for hidden drugs…

The guard asked me for ID, then asked me where I was going. I replied, “Phoenix.”

He then asked if I lived in Phoenix. I said no, but by then he’d lost all interest in me and simply waved me through.

And with that, we were back in the good ol’ USA.

Frenchy's Rant

Ride – Rant – Repeat

Cheerio From Jolly Ol’ London

A New Post

And Finally… Death Valley

Arizona – Lake Havasu

Baja – Part II

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