Those US visit ‘attainment goals’ - the results

Remember those ‘attainment goals’ I set myself when we first landed on US soil back in December? Well here’s the results:

Goal: To meet someone called Chuck or Randy (particularly if their name also includes the suffix ‘Jr’ )

Not met really, though I did hear of many. A friend also knows at least two people called Hank. Who are women.

Goal: To eat a Corndog

Not met. I’m sorry. Friends were happy to chow down on this bizarre hunk of fat on a stick but I just couldn’t do it…

Goal: Visit a High School and look inside the students’ lockers

Not met, and wisely so, given the stories I heard about High Schools.

Go to a live recording of a chat show

Achieved? Yes - visited recording of the Jimmy Kimmel Show in LA. Instantly forgettable. Why did I agree to this in the first place?

Watch an Ice Hockey match

Not met, due to the extortionately high price of a trip to watch the Minnesota Wild. However I did better than this and attended the Roller Derby in St Paul. A great evening out.

Visit a space centre

Not met - Houston had a problem, namely the amount of traffic (and our tight schedule to reach New Orleans).

Get admired for my accent and asked if I'm from 'Scotsland' / Denmark etc

Easily surpassed. Our accents drew attention and often admiration on countless occasions, particularly in the south.

Australian tops the charts as the nationality I was most mistaken for. Others included Irish, Dutch and even more bizarrely, Ukrainian.

Persuade someone I am Prince William’s cousin

Not achieved. But I did persuade someone that the Queen regularly pesters me, inviting me round for tea.

Collect bizarre questions about my home country, e.g: ’Do you still drive a horse and carriage?’

Achieved? Yes plenty, though even more Americans seemed more interested to hear about the present state of the UK’s economy.

Hear some Mississippi blues, preferably on a rickety old porch in the rain

Not achieved exactly, but I like to think I managed far better when I met Frank and his 1932 steel guitar up in the Great Smoky Mountains. I’ve never heard the blues like that before…

Hear something referred to as ‘aloadabaloney’

Sadly not. But I did collect a great deal of interesting new expressions I’d never come across before. “I wouldn’t take you to a dawg fight…”

Eat pizza in ‘Noo York Cidy’

Tick. Pizza in the village - one dollar a slice. However the great Chicago’s deep pan pizza vs. New York thin crust debate has still to be settled.

Buy a ten gallon hat

Not met. But perhaps I went one better, returning home the proud bearer of a genuine mountain man’s hat, a hillbilly headpiece from Civil War days.

Meet a stressed-out, coffee-guzzling cop like the fat one off ‘NYPD Blues’
Not met. They were all too relaxed, somewhat disturbingly. Nor did I get hold of one of the collectible playing cards with their name and face on - something I was told all cops have.

Go to Mardi Gras in New Orleans

Met. And I will return.