Ride Like Hell and You'll Get There (19 page)

‘Let’s watch this,’ he said, holding up Alan Parker’s
Angel Heart
.

‘Nahh,’ I said and he returned to the shelves.

‘How about this? The first
Alien
movie.’

‘Nahh.’

Clay gave me a look. ‘Okay, you choose then.’

But there was too much to choose from. ‘Let’s watch telly,’ I optimistically suggested.

Clay laughed. ‘That comes down to three things: the time of day, the channel and the state of the nation.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘The news is on, but that’s it. After that it’s a depressing slide into mass commercial unimaginative mainstream structured reality slop.’

I grinned, knowing full well that he’d just shot a TV show and several ads of the mainstream slop kind in the last few months.

The phone rang; it was an Indian telemarketing call centre and in a sudden flurry of activity Clay hit the speakerphone button, raced into his office where he has an impressive mountain of editing and sound-mixing equipment, and instantly through the surround sound there was the background noise of people, movement and intermittent radio chatter.

‘Identify yourself, please,’ Clay said in a voice that was perfectly authoritative and slightly intimidating.

There was a brief pause. The call-centre chick sitting in Mumbai was probably a bit baffled but she tested the water anyway. ‘Hello, my name is Jody and I am calling you today from Sydney. How are you this evening?’

Clay hit another button and there was a burst of shouting and a siren. ‘Well, Jody,’ he said, ‘my name is Detective Sergeant Addams. Listen carefully: there’s a crime scene at this address, so I will need to know your full name and residential details in Sydney, and the reason for your call.’

And she was gone faster than our super in a government bond.

‘Well played, mate,’ I said, suitably impressed.

He grinned. ‘I’ve got a few different scenarios, in different languages.’

The phone rang again. ‘Good evening, The Savoy Grill, Adam speaking,’ Clay’s voice went up five octaves.

We settled in for the night, watching the sun set on his balcony. My bike was getting freighted back to Perth and tomorrow I would be on a flight home, then a week later another one to San Francisco, then Houston for the annual Offshore Technology Conference, the biggest conglomeration of all things oil and gas on the planet, and four days of total mayhem.

Perth blasted me with heat and paint-stripping sun as I walked out of the airport and headed straight to my office. The rest of the day was meetings followed by a bizarre phone call from my agent.
National Geographic
was about to shoot a television series on the history of Australia called
Australia—Life On The Edge
and they wanted me to go and do a screen test as one of the presenters. I had been approached for a screen test once before with
Top Gear Australia
, and in retrospect I’m lucky I was ‘too British’ or ‘not Aussie enough’ as the show was axed after going through two different versions with two different networks. But I agreed to this as it sounded exciting; it was different, the budget was huge, they had seven one-hour episodes to shoot involving helicopters, a two-man submarine, diving, rappelling, all kinds of vessels, shipwrecks, desert and bush adventures—shit, I didn’t need any more convincing.

Two days later I was sitting in a survival suit strapped via a four-point harness with a rebreather on inside a helicopter fuselage mock-up dangling over a large pool about to do HUET (helicopter underwater escape training). Five very nice people were there, the director, cameraman, soundman, the runner and the makeup lady. They wanted to see if I could remember my lines while doing something challenging.

Could I deliver a nice piece to camera about how important safety and training is in the modern world of oil and gas exploration? Could I keep talking and maintain eye contact with the camera while the helicopter landed, water poured in and the whole thing started to sink and invert until it was completely upside down and submerged? Could I keep talking while the water rushed over my head, then unlock the door and open it, undo my harness, make my escape, inflate my life vest and break the surface correctly orientated towards the camera, spit some water out of my mouth and continue my monologue to the camera like nothing has happened? Could I hold the audience’s attention, project my voice over the chopper rotor sound effects, gesticulate enough but not too much and not look like I just got flushed down the toilet?

No, I could not. I forgot my lines, inhaled water, choked, popped up on the wrong side of the chopper with half a pint of snot hanging out of my nose and delivered my lines to the microphone boom not the camera. But they were patient, explaining that the large thing which looked like ‘Chewbacca’s penis on a stick’ was in fact the sound recording device, and eventually I got it right. They shook my hand and said, ‘We’ll be in touch,’ and with that I went home to pack for the United States of America.

ENGLISH CARS,
SCOTTISH WHISKEY,
AMERICAN
SERVICE

I FLEW EMIRATES
, and that’s it. No horror stories, no dramas, no loss of bowel control or missed connections, no screaming kids or fearful moments, no crazy people, nothing. It was a business-class bullshit-free experience and I loved every minute of it.

I arrived in San Francisco mid-afternoon. I was there to visit two old friends; they sent me instructions to catch a bus, and there it was right opposite the entrance to the airport. That was so easy it was just weird. I got on the bus and the driver launched out of his seat in shock because I was carrying my bag.

‘Sir, please, let me stow that for you,’ he said and bolted off to put my grip bag in the luggage hold, then leapt back on the bus and showed me my seat, asked me if I was familiar with San Francisco, gave me a tourist brochure, smiled and told me we would be off in five minutes and it would take 45 minutes for us to reach my stop at Larkspur Landing, all ending with another big smile, not fake, just a big ‘Welcome to the US’.

Holy shit. I’m used to the lack-lustre half-arse attitude you get about 50 per cent of the time in Australia, especially in Perth. Where I come from ‘Just fuck off ’ is visible in the thought-bubble hovering over the heads of everyone who deals with the public, from the dude in my local video store and the woman who brought me the wrong coffee, to the guy who came to do the termite treatment on our house last month; he was about to start drilling holes all over my place, until I reminded him that our house sits on cement pillars. There’s the woman who tried to sell my wife a mobile phone, the guy who was supposed to be selling me a leather sofa last week, and so on.

But there is also a definitive gap, as abrupt and apparent as the class system in Britain in the 1800s. Luxury items, for example. You can go and buy a Jaguar and there will be service with a fully vetted and approved smile, you will get tea and cake, they will come and pick up the car from your home and service it, clean it and bring it back, leaving another Jaguar for you to drive if you need to go out and receive shitty service.

My car told me it was having a problem with an engine fluid level the other day, so I just drove to the dealer, arriving unannounced to tea and cake and a nice chat, and would I like to read today’s paper or do I need a lift back to my office? The good people at Roadbend returned the car to me two hours later, having fixed the problem, and they cleaned it, I mean properly cleaned it inside and out. And here’s the good part: no bill. I was flummoxed by this because in the usual scheme of things, you check in for the service and check out with a bill the size of Somalia’s national debt, but, no, Mr Tony Percival said, ‘Not at all, Mr Carter, it’s our pleasure.’ Why can’t it all be like this? He knows I’m now in love with his business and will purchase another car soon, not just for the tea and cake but for the service. Try that shit with your phone provider or the people you just purchased all your white goods from and they’ll piss themselves laughing at you.

I knew our levels of everyday customer service were lacking, but it’s been some years since I was last in the US and I had forgotten how service-driven they are over there. Wages obviously are a big part of that, but this dude was a bus driver. Do you tip a bus driver? Minimum wage is very low so people rely on a ‘gratuity’ when you pay the bill and as a result you do get the most phenomenal service. In Australia the attitude is completely different; your employee will arrive on time feeling like you should be grateful because they actually turned up in the first place. I know this because I have eighteen employees and it took two years to find the right ones, none of whom are Australian, which is sad and even embarrassing to say, but true and probably not all that surprising.

I arrived at Larkspur Landing, hopped off the bus, gave the driver a tip as he handed me my bag and sat on a park bench overlooking a clean, almost empty car park next to the terminal for the ferry that perpetually transports people to and from the city across the impressive bay. I heard the car before I saw it. Sally and Simon Dominguez’s battleship-sized 1979 Special Edition ‘Bill Blass’ Lincoln Continental. Even though they weren’t deliberately driving like maniacs, the massive 21-foot-long two-door coupe’s tyres squealed like dying rabbits as they hurtled rounded the corner and pulled up in the car park grinning like a couple of outpatients. The Lincoln was all blue leather, the hula-hoop-sized steering wheel sat in front of the hilarious instrument cluster; all chrome and long with a Cartier clock at the end, it looked like my grandmother’s silver service. Simon sat in the back sprawled out like a pungent bum in a leather dumpster. The car was bigger than the flat I grew up in. The best part about seeing old friends after a few years is picking up right where you left off. We went straight to their local for, according to Simon, the best margaritas in town.

The Silver Peso was busy. Simon introduced me to the barman, telling him I needed a margarita.

‘Welcome, Aussie,’ the barman said, shaking my hand. ‘Would you like an eight-dollar or ten-dollar margarita?’

I went for the ten-dollar option and by the time I’d finished shaking a few other hands the barman passed me a bucket of margarita and, once I’d finished it, I was wrecked. Sally was on fire and making me laugh so hard I was crying. She’s golden, firing at full pace and volume from the moment she opens her eyes every day. She complements Simon’s laconic, almost lucid lethargy; if he was any more laidback you’d think he’d suffered a stroke. But that’s just Simon, and he’s not at all how he appears. He’s supremely fit, smart and very level-headed, just lucky to be able to switch it all off and relax. Two hours later I stumbled through their front door, managed not to vomit on their children and passed out on the couch to Simon telling me something about their house being in the liquefaction zone should there be another earthquake.

San Francisco in the bright glorious Californian sun is a wonderful city. I jumped on the practically empty mid-morning ferry and sat on the main deck with a bloody mary as we motored through the massive bay, devoid of the famous fog, past Alcatraz, with the Golden Gate Bridge providing an impressive backdrop. It’s a huge sprawling place where steep hills descend through a myriad of eclectic but perfectly preened multimillion-dollar homes that tumble down the hill and up in price as you get closer to the water. It’s the kind of place where I could live if circumstances allowed, but nothing is impossible. Sally and Simon are mates from Sydney. They went to San Francisco on a holiday years ago, then one day they just said, ‘Fuck it, we’re moving.’ Now almost six years later they have a successful business, two very happy children and a really nice life in this place.

But there is more to the city than nice bridges and expensive hillside real estate; I was lucky to have Simon and Sally to introduce me to all kinds of different people. San Francisco is the birthplace of Levi’s jeans and the martini, and it’s been the mecca for every bright young mind who turned over a billion on a dot-com since the late 1990s. It’s trendy high fashion that’s affordable, it’s the epicentre of the hippy and the earthquake. I rejoiced in all she had to offer by spending up big, mincing out into the late afternoon in a nice off-the-rack Tom Ford two-piece navy blue suit, British cutaway collar, Alden handmade polished black brogues and silk-knit black tie; they even threw in a glass of brandy and petal-soft matching socks.

Retail therapy, as they say, was working for me. I felt wonderful, having just dumped the clothes I left the house in that morning in a bin outside the boutique like the remains of my former self. I was going to enjoy a bar-hop stroll, I was going to have a martini, shaken, and not by the earthquake. I turned from the bin, adjusting my cufflinks, and ran straight into a polite but shabby hippy.

‘Hey, hi, can I have your clothes, brother? I see you’re tossing that bag.’ He looked like a cross between a cocker spaniel and Elmo, right down to the badly dilated sad eyes.

‘Sure, mate.’ I reached back into the bin and handed him the big paper bag with the boutique logo and my former skin.