Fruit and Loathing in Western Australia
March 5th, 2008 by Isak Ladegård
Forbidden fruit
In one of his well known stories, the great doctor of gonzo and bad craziness Hunter S. Thompson is on the road with the trunk stuffed by illegal cargo. The car which is blasting through the Nevada-desert is getting dangerously close to the state border and he has to get rid of the goods. However, it’s decided that the wide range of hard drugs he’s carrying is altogether worth too much money to be just thrown out of the window. The problem is solved by sniffing, eating and smoking all of it.
Closing up on the South-Australian border I find myself in a similar situation.
Dead kangaroos are laying bloody and destroyed alongside the dusty highway, the sun is going down, Joni Mitchell pours out of the car stereo and I’m eating fruit like a madman. The road from the West to Adelaide is long and my Ford Laser’s stuffed by food for 72 hours. Three days with cookies and donuts isn’t too tempting, so walking the healthy way I pack up big bags of apples, bananas, pears and carrots. In the next three days I can make up for all the greasy & easy meals. Then I pass a roadside-sign which tells me that a $2500 dollar fine is the price I’ll have to pay for my fruity truckload. It is illegal to carry fruit across the Australian state borders, and all of a sudden I have 12 apples, 10 bananas, 5 pears and maybe 15 carrots to get rid of in half a day, before the end of WA is reached.
Thanks to the Australian fruit police my road trip in this country mutates into an experiment. This is my hypothesis: Will I physically turn green? As in, what will happen when the body is force-fed with this veggie-overload? Will I turn green, or will I grow 10 inches closer to the roof, will my vision reach telescope level, will muscles build me up overnight in the same way Peter Parker turned Spidey?
Time will tell.
One Response to “Fruit and Loathing in Western Australia”
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June 23rd, 2008 at 4:51 pm
noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!