Today I’m joining the blog tour for How To Avoid Getting Mugged In Rio De Janeiro By Singing Songs By The Police. I’m sharing an extract from the book with thanks to Rachel Gilbey at Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me on the tour and to the author for providing the extract.

Blurb:

Book 2 of a hilarious series of travel misadventures and dubious personal introspection by Australian author Simon Yeats, who from an early age learned that the best way to approach the misfortunes of this world is to laugh about it.

Simon shares his comedic insights into the unusual and uproarious elements of living life as an Aussie ex-pat and having a sense of Wanderlust as pervasive as the Bubonic Plague in the 1300s.

From what to do when several people converge to rob you after midnight on a deserted Copacabana Beach, to how to save the Sierra Mountain Range from a wildfire outbreak due to a lack of quality toilet paper, to where not to go in Tijuana when trying to locate the origins to stories of the city’s mythical adult entertainment, to how to save yourself from drowning when caught in a storm while sailing off the California coast.

Simon Yeats has gone into the world and experienced all the out of the ordinary moments for you to sit back and enjoy the experience without the need to lose an eye or damage your liver.

Extract:

There are moments when a person travels to an iconic destination that are hard to put into words.

 

Yosemite is so unbelievably stunning I just took a deep breath typing the word Yosemite. It is absolutely balls to the wall spectacular. This is the one place on the planet that could make me believe in a God. Only an omnipotent deity could create a valley so timelessly awe inspiring. But if there truly is a God, then how would it explain making other parts of the world such uninhabitable shitholes: The Atacama Desert in Chile? The Bonneville Salt Flats? Tijuana?

Still, to whatever deity or aberration of tectonic plate upheaval and erosion that created Yosemite Valley, I say, well done, sir.

I first laid eyes on Yosemite on the back of my brother’s bedroom door. The Ansel Adam poster of Half Dome. Yosemite National Park’s signature formation iced in winter’s cream cheese frosting. Even two dimensional, there was something undeniably compelling about it. I had stared at it for hours. Lost in deep contemplation. Wondering if I would ever be deserving of seeing it with own eyes. The concept that I would one day have the power and freedom to go whenever I chose was lost on me for my entire youth.

A trip to Yosemite could only happen by luck, magic, or divine intervention.

There was no greater contrast in geography than between Townsville’s flat, dry landscape and a towering mound of pure granite salted with fresh powdered snow half a planet away. As famed conservationist John Muir wrote, it is by far the grandest of all the special temples of Nature I was ever permitted to enter. Writing like this reinforces that it is an honor for an individual to experience Yosemite.

The first time I see Yosemite in person is from 30,000 feet. Flying back from Japan directly over the Sierra Mountains. It struck me as unusual that on the first leg to Tokyo from Los Angeles, the plane flew over San Francisco. Tokyo was to the West, San Francisco to the North. Every world map shows Japan as being directly West of California. My first thought was the plane had been hijacked. My second thought was that the pilot was drunk. My third thought was that I had wasted a ton of money on a yearly subscription to the Flat Earth Society.

It is due to the anomaly of the curvature of the earth’s surface, that to travel the least amount of distance from LAX to Narita, planes must fly in an arc heading in a north, north-westerly direction. Only if a CEO wanted their airline to go bankrupt, would they instruct their pilots to fly in a direction that consumed more gas than necessary. Even if it looked shorter on a map. Pan Am, Continental, and Northwest, must all have catered to flat earthers.

On the day my flight from Tokyo flies South down the spine of California, I have visibility to infinity. Not a cloud in the sky. At 30,000 feet, I can see from the pure, blue waters of Lake Tahoe all the way to the smog encrusted gloom of L.A.  The moment I lay eyes on the furrow of Yosemite Valley in the granite countertop of the Sierras, my mind is made up. I am only 30,000 feet away from the dream at the back of my brother’s bedroom door. I had been living in Los Angeles for almost two years, overseas for five.

Time for me to realize the only thing stopping me from going to Yosemite was me.

I make up my mind to go there this coming week.

I had just taken off a week and change to go to Japan. Now I wanted to go back to work and take another day or so off at the end of the week to go to Yosemite. This was gainfully employed madness.

Often living a full life and madness are separated only by a thin margin.

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How To Avoid Getting Mugged In Rio De Janeiro By Singing Songs By The Police is available from Amazon.

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