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Adoradora β Three Cent Bullet
Published: 2013-12-28 02:11:44 +0000 UTC; Views: 7296; Favourites: 117; Downloads: 58
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Just over four years ago I took a three month solo trip around the US, traveling mainly by Greyhound, and once back in Australia I compiled a few doodles from my travel diary into a little photocopied, hand-stitched zine. I'd forgotten all about it until my mum recently mailed me an old copy she'd found. The drawings make me cringe a little (okay, more than a little), but it's nice to have a record of what was a pretty formative episode in my life.
All quotes were taken down almost verbatim. Some were condensed, but none were enhanced or embroidered in any way.Β
Sorry for the quality, this is like a scan of a photocopy of a photocopy of a pretty beaten-up, beer-stained notebook.
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Comments: 36
It's a class in characterization. What a fantastic way to document a travel.Β
Also, greyhound buses are a fantastic place to gather bits of people's lives for future use. I haven't ridden in one for a long time.
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that last picture sparked a very clear memory in my mind.
WHen we live in florida we had a family of rattlesnakes decide to move into the front yard. All of us kids were playing in the yard when my mom saw a rather irritated snake get close to one of us. SHe calmly told us to go wait in the driveway for a few minutes.Β
Then my mom took her shovel and started to chop the snake into bits with a shovel, and then smashed all the eggs. The mate snake came around soon after and saw the damage and my mom and him had a show down. It flew up at her like lightning, fangs extended and dripping with poison. With one fell swoop she decapitated it, but quickly saw it was still MOVING. She chopped it up more and more. I remember watching from the driveway as she cut away at what I thought was just dirt, flying up around her all the way up to her head until the deed was done and nothing was left but rattlesnake egg soup and meat.Β
So yeah. My mom is pretty tough.Β
Also I live in the Southern USA and this posts speaks to me, I love it. XD
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Had to find my old DA login just to tell you OMG AMEN LADY. Her and her kid and sometimes that dude used to sit outside my old apartment in the Quarter for like 18 hours straight. And clap and sing amen over and over and over. And strap that poor girl into the stroller and not let her up for HOURS. GAAAAAAAAAHHHHH.
They're still there by the way.Β
Also I love your art style and bus sketches!
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Oh wow, I was sure I saw her again a couple weeks back, but I thought it couldn't be the same woman -- the walleyed gentleman she was singing with that first night I met her in 2009 seemed to think they'd be getting out of town as soon as they had enough cash for bus tickets. I dunno, maybe that's just the spiel they give tourists. I did think it seemed a little rough on the poor kid, she was going crazy in that stroller.Β
Thanks so much for taking the trouble to log in and comment, it was really interesting to hear that it was in fact the same gal (although it's kind of sad that her situation evidently hasn't improved).
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These stories are fantastic to see. Thank you for sharing!
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I'm amazed, apart from your style which is beautiful, with the people you encountered and met. Must have been an awesome trip.
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Amazing work!Β Kinda makes me think of Tom Wolfe . . . .
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This is wonderful. All of it.
I am so in favor of a Global Matriarchy! In fact, I have a grandmother who'd be perfect for the job.
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I know, I really want to see this grandmother squadron happen! I know some grannies who could probably sort out the entire Israel/Palestine conflict before tea.
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And then badger everyone about why they're still single while baking cookies.
That's playing to stereotype; my own grandma would go back to her garden and horses in a huff, muttering "Why didn't they just do that in the first place?"
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Listen to Lou Kingman there. Β Armed citizens are what prevents tyranny.
Your caricatures are very impressive. Β Did you go to school to learn to draw like that or did you just figure it out?
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Well, Lou from Kingman and I may have had slightly differing views on that point, but the man was a gentleman and a scholar and I had immense respect for him. I mainly illustrated the scene because, as someone who was newly arrived from Australia at that point, seeing people so casually display their firearms was still a huge novelty (I'm much more used to it now!).Β
And thank you for the kind words -- I guess I just figured it out myself, although I won't pretend it didn't take, y'know, most of my life to do so 
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To be honest, true Americans are hard to find anymore. Β It's nice to encounter a gentlemanly gun toter.
I'd really like to learn how to do caricatures proficiently, myself. Β Thanks for taking an interest in the US!
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What a marvelous, if slightly dry & moldy, cheese-sampler of America!Β I'd swear I've met some of these folks -- or their 'types' -- along the way.Β You have captured their best (if slightly whacked) sides perfectlyΒ here.
If I may blovulate concerning one of the characters I've encountered -- a few weeks back, I had the opportunity to visit lovely old NYC for the first time in over twenty years.Β On the way through Central Park on my way to the Metropolitan Museum, I met a homeless fellow picking through a drained pond, searching for coins.Β While specie were few, he had found a clip-on earring, which seemed to have some value.Β I examined his prize, and to my amazement found it something worthy of his effort.Β It might not have put a roof over his head for the month, but it certainly could have gotten a hot meal into his belly -- at my suggestion, he hustled to one of the pawn shops nearby.
Dammit, I should have gotten a picture of him with the earring...
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So you think all of us Americans are fat blobs or insane freaks? I'll have you know that only half of us fall into those categories.Β
Seriously, great stuff, and I know a lot of these "types."Β You see a lot while traveling on public transportation.Β Thanks for posting.Β
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Ha ha, oh no, I'd count many of the people I've quoted above among the nicest and most interesting folks I've ever met. A scribbly caricature and a single quote taken out of context really doesn't do them justice!
But you're right about public transportation. I always travel by Greyhound for long-haul trips, and it's always a memorable experience. I've been seated next to newly-released prisoners three times now -- as in, still in their brand new prison-issue tracksuits and sneakers (I wonder what happened to the clothes they had when they were first imprisoned?) and with all their possessions in a little ziploc bag. All three were very nice. I've also seen police come on board and drag fellow passengers off the bus twice now (not the newly-released prisoners, although one did shriek, 'Oh no, don't you put your hands on me, I only just got out!' when she saw them coming).
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If you go on another trip, you should do a sequel. I'd like to see what else you can journalize with your hands.
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I'd really love to document all the weird and wonderful things I encountered on my cross-country bicycle rides, and hopefully I will before they completely fade from memory, but oh jeeze -- I'd have to draw SO MANY bicycles. There are few things I hate drawing more than bicycles!Β
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Then simply, draw not the bicycle. 
(I enjoy your inkwork immensely. I'd comment on every other drawing too, but one must start somewhere! best wishes - a follower over from tumblr.
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As long you're comfortable with your art, that's all that matters.
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She actually turned out to be quite lovely, but my first glimpse of her was kind of alarming! It didn't help that the room was almost completely dark and that it was one of the seediest-looking hostels I've ever visited (which is saying something).
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fdsdkjfskf this is hilarious and frightening XD
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That's great. Lou seems kinda legit, though xD The man tans rattlesnakes in antifreeze, and believes in personal protection.Β
The other guy from AZ who worked for the CIA was probably the coworker of one of the guys who lived across the hall from me when I still lived on campus. Don't even get me started on how FOS this guy was...
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Lou was terrific. I wish I could find him again -- I can't find so much as a trace of him online, which I guess makes sense given that he lives in an unpowered shack in the middle of nowhere. He was a former air force pilot and used to run the tiny airstrip in town. Had some fantastic stories.Β
As for the other bloke, a few other guys vouched for his CIA story, so who knows! Taking this one quote out of context kinda does the guy a disservice.
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That guy may have been in the CIA, then, but I know for a fact that my friend wasn't, seeing as he was barely 21 years old xD.Β
I have met a lot of people, though, that say they've done so many things that they put the Dos Equis guy to shame, and you just have to know them to be able to tell if they're telling the truth or not.
For example: my step-grandpa said he took out a loan for a car once, and I called BS because he always paid cash upfront for everything (I was correct).
Then he said that when he was 14, he took a truck with no headlights through several backyards while he was driving away from the cops after he and his friends saved a few colonies of honey bees by stealing them (another story in and of itself)... Now, THAT, I would not have put too far past the man, and found myself correct, once again.
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Oh man, these are awesome! And to think they're real phrases
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Well, pretty condensed! Some are just a sentence or two taken from an entire conversation. Bit worried that I misrepresented some of these folks a little -- they were all very friendly, even if they espoused some slightly odd opinions. As it was, I got along famously with all of the people I've quoted here, with the big exception of the girl who threatened to smash my face
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But you captured the essence of them, that's what counts
I don't think they're misrepresented or anything. One can usually condense the philosophy or life's outlook of a person within a couple of sentences.
And I just read the story about the Jekyll/Hyde girl... Wow! 
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What was her story? Was she just an angry drunk?
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Oh man, hers was the most dramatic Jekyll-to-Hyde transformation I've ever witnessed. She was a British backpacker, a perfectly normal girl, then after downing not more than two or three margaritas she turned into this screeching, wild-eyed harpy. My roommates and I had to drag her bodily back to the hostel while she attempted to claw at the eyes of strangers passing in the street whom she accused of 'ogling' her. Once back at the hostel, she tried to climb over the registration desk and strangle the poor night clerk because she claimed he'd been stealing from her. Then we finally wrestled her into bed, she made the 'voodoo curses' accusation about a girl sitting on the next bed over, threatened to smash my face, vomited on herself and passed out.Β
The only other thing I remember about her is that she claimed to have once forced an Indonesian taxi driver to carry her from the cab to her hotel because she'd seen a frog on the ground and was deathly afraid of frogs.Β
Sorry, that turned into a rather long and not-terribly-interesting anecdote. I guess the take-home message is steer clear of frozen margaritas. And don't trust people who don't like frogs.
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Yup, angry and sinister drunk. And people who force taxi drivers to carry them aren't all that nice. Besides, who could hate frogs?
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A-Yup that is pretty much modern day American-A...(shudder)
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