No one knew where I was including me

Kangaroo Island Ritz Carlton.....not! No deluxe accommodations were part of this 2 day pure adventure. I was picked up at my hostel in Adelaide at 6:00 in the morning & was feeling a bit hungover from the night before. Had a 2 hour drive ahead of me in a small van, did i mention I'm 6'5"? Self induced so i just tried not to hurl. I'm half way around the world & the hot little Asian girl in front of me is from Knoxville,TN which is where i went to college. I was half expecting her to be a hit woman & do me right there so i could escape this hangover. We boarded a ferry & headed for the bar at 8:00a.m. I had 4 beers before we made it to the other side. I was told by one of our guides & the bartendress that i tied the record for such a short trip. I'll do better next time. Kangaroo Island is a must for anyone wanting to see unspoiled Australia. It gets very little pressure from the mainland & the wildlife is everywhere. We saw koalas, fairy penguins,enchinidas, fur seals,wallabies,kangaroos & possums. My group was alot of fun & the guides were entertaining to say the least. I was the farthest away from Nashville that i had ever been & i was LOVING it! I will go deeper next time. The picture is of our overnight accommodations. It was basically a bunkhouse with one bathroom & the animals just came & went when they wanted to. A couple people slept outside but I didn't see the need as i was already out in the middle of f____king nowhere. Had a blast & give Kangaroo Island my ***** rating!
Cheers,
Rip

Some things are better if you wait

I was involved in a wreck in 1992 & received only $2,800 for my mangled mess of a car. My roommate & best friend threw a Wheels & Deals down on the table. He pointed to a 1972 Olds Cutlass Convertible for $2400 & proclaimed"You have to buy this car, it is so you Rip" I had no idea how big of a moment this would turn out to be in my life. 1 of the top 10 for sure & i'll tell you why. First, this car personifies my laid back, easy going attitude. When i drive the Cutlass i am never in a hurry & i'll get there in due time. I try not to drive it in the rain as the top should be down always. Second, this car was a mess in reality & desperate need of restoration. The previous owner had wrecked it probably more than once & repaired it with Bondo. It is a convertible so water damage was also a factor. There was massive areas of rust throughout the car. I have a list of a 100 things i will do before i die & restoring the Cutlass was way up at #2 but it took me 14 years to begin the long & expensive project. The guy in the picture is Yancey Hale, husband of my former processor Jackie Hale. I'm 6'5" 280 & he makes me look small. Big men were needed for this job. Yancey advised me to sell the car for parts & with the money i was about to spend, he could buy me another Cutlass. I said Hell No, i've given up on many things in my life & i was never giving up on this car. He understood & set out to restore my YeloSub to as new as he could. It was the best $15,000 i've ever spent. This experience taught me that vision & persistence are 2 necessary traits that can help me in life. I was patient & driven to get the YeloSub where it needed to be. People can have their Mercedes, Lexus & BMW's but I'm an all American muscle car kind of guy & this car will flat out get it. If you ever see me driving around Nashville in the Cutlass; you'll understand. #2 restore the Cutlass-Done
Go topless whenever possible,
Rip

Treasure from Down Under

I have always enjoyed going to flea markets as an adult....not so much as a child, it bored me. Everytime that I travel to Australia i get excited at the possibilities of finding new, one of a kind
treasure at the many flea markets in just about every city. The picture shows some Huen pine treasure from Salamanca market in Hobart, Tasmania. Huen pine only grows in Tasmania & it has a incredible smell to it. It can be very expensive but no one I know has any pieces. Whether it be opals from Coober Pedy, Aboriginal art from Kuranda or Popglass jewelery from Sydney; you will have unique treasure from Australia. Let's face the facts, less than 1% of the population of the U.S. will ever travel to Australia or New Zealand. This is the basis for my company OnMeWay,LLC. Nashville is a great city but very trendy. Everyone is trying to keep up with their neighbhors whether it be houses,cars or which private school their kids attend. I look forward to bringing back one of a kind treasure & reselling to the Jones so the Smiths will have to have the next bigger & better thing I import. Have you been someplace that has great treasure & maybe scuba diving too? Let me know & if I import from there, I'll give you a cut. Gotta run. Until next time...remember treasure is everywhere. Cheers, Rip the treasure hunter

Peg Leg Porker for Life

Here I am taking a cheap shot at one of my favorite guys.....Carey Bringle of the Peg Leg Porkers. Carey lost part of his leg when he was young but he has an amazing attitude that is truly infectious. We are charter members of the BBQ cooking team The Peg Leg Porkers. I do the heavy lifting & run the Ice Luge during our annual Memphis in May World BBQ cooking competition. We were 17th in the WORLD last year! If you have never been then you are missing one of the great spectacles of our time. It is nothing but the B's for mez.Beer,BBQ,baseball & babes(disclaimer-I'm engaged now) No one wants to know how many calories of Que or how many cold beers are consumed. Every year i walk down to the banks of the Mississippi River & proclaim "I'm going to swim across this river". Every year Warren Sanger proclaims "You will drown you dumbass". So I walk away until next year. Every year is a different chapter with new stories of fun, horror & embarrassment. We compete in shoulders mainly but we have some real serious sponsors including Lobel's of New York. They provide steak "that would make a rabbit smack a hound dog" it is that good. Check out our sight & read more about Carey Bringle The Pitmaster.www.peglegporker.com Cheers, Ripper

Football Time in Tennessee-SEC Championship

Since I was a small child I have told people that I bleed Orange for the Tennessee Vols! There are few things that inspire me to the passion level that UT football does. Some of the best days & worst days have been the result of these football games. Our team is 9-3 0verall & 6-2 in the SEC East, tied with Georgia but since we thumped their ass early in the year; we are going to Atlanta to take on the LSU Tigers!
The picture is of Neyland Stadium which holds in excess of 107,000 screaming brain dead rednecks all hopped up on bourbon. What a sight i can tell you. Our stadium is a vertical stadium meaning it goes up instead of out; this makes it amazingly loud. I have been coming to games in this shrine since I was 9.(32 yrs) I have traveled around throughout the SEC & no one has a stadium as impressive. Yeah Florida, Alabama & LSU are loud but their stadiums don't intimidate opposing teams the way Neyland does. There is NO place I would rather be on a Saturday in the fall than Neyland Stadium....home of the University of Tennessee Volunteers. GO BIG ORANGE!!!!!!!!!!!!

I dare you to come in here....

Back to Australia. Growing up in the South, you see all kinds of crazy looking animals. You also see some pretty crazy ones on Saturday morning cartoons as well. This little fellow is the Tasmanian Devil & he is ferocious. You won't find many tourists getting close ups or cuddling with this carnivore. He is nocturnal as most Australian creatures seem to be & when he feeds he lets out a piercing scream that is disturbing to say the least. This one was taking at a wildlife park on Phillip Island about an 1 1/2 hours southeast of Melbourne. Phillip Island is also home to a fairy penguin rookery that is a must if you make it to Melbourne. Every night at dusk thousands of tiny penguins come ashore from a day of feeding at sea & waddle back to the same nest. The park ranger advised us not to take pictures as it frightens the birds....so....i took a picture & it was the only one on the roll(old days) that didn't turn out. As Earl would say...."Karma is a bitch" The opportunity to see such incredible animals changes my itinerary every trip. I love saying I saw a Tasmanian Devil or fairy penguin, not many people ever will. There were Tasmanian Tigers(yes it's true) until around the 1940's but they were killed off by hunters but some people in Tasmania believe they still exist in the mountains of "Tassie" I hope so, maybe I'll be lucky enough to see one of those one day.

Cheers,

Rip

Happy Thanksgiving to all & especially our troops!

My name in neon...looks real GOOD!

I grew up the son of Leo, he was a pharmacist by day & night club owner by night. He had Leo's & it was the place to be in Nashville back in the 70's & NO it wasn't a honky tonk. Through the years I've run across 10-12 places called Rip's but never a straight up pub, that is the kind of bar i would like to own. Serve Schlitz regular as the main draft selection, which incidently you can't get in the Southeast U.S. anymore. Have all the crap I've collected over the years hung up everywhere. Have really good food & make the prices reasonable as well. Every 1000th customer gets his tab paid for & on your 21st bday...we buy you a shot & throw you out cuz you are gonna get out of hand anyway. No coffee, no clove cigarettes & i have the right to refuse service to anyone. I would have hottie bartendresses & 1 day a week i would get behind the bar & serve the masses. I bar tended a couple time back in the day & really like it for the most part. Add Rip's to the list of shit i will do before I die.
Cheers,
Rip

Australian beer is good!

I got off track a bit with the 2 articles...i apologize & let us talk about Aussie beer. I'm a big fan of almost all of it except Foster's, the Australia beer brewed in Canada for us. I did see a guy drink one in Adelaide i think. Well when in Sydney I always wander into the Fortune of War....it has been around forever. It has that old time feel & when you walk in everyone turns & stares at you or maybe it was because i'm BIG! Australians are very loyal to their state's beer with every single pub has it displayed. New South Wales is Toohey's, Victoria loves VB(Victoria Bitter),Queensland is XXXX, South Australia has Carlton & Tasmania has 2 Cascade & James Boag. This last adventure i stuck with Carlton Lager, it is crisp but fairly light & went down real nice. Met the bartender Greg who was a fairly stout fella as well. He played rugby & actually toured thru the states last year with Savannah, GA for St. Patrick's day being his highlight. Like the fine southern women as well. I live in Nashville & haven't been to Savannah....soon. I had a Memphis rugby team shirt back at the hostel that i promised him. I bought one of their shirts in XXL....more like a L to me after it was washed. Spent the afternoon drinking with a son & dad coal miners. They were alot of fun & bought me numerous rounds. Dad had actually been in Nashville back when Hank Sr was alive. I limped out of there around 5 & hit the subway for a return to the Bondi Beach Hostel. When in Sydney....go to the Fortune of War & tell Greg I said hello!
Cheers,
Rip

i've been published!

I retired from the mortgage business & decided to decompress for 40 days in faraway Australia. I arrived in Sydney & proceeded to Bondi Beach to be with all the pretty people. As this was my third time in OZ, i vowed to see harder to reach places which translates into using ferries & more air travel. It is worth it ! The mistake we make when it comes to visiting Australia is we don't take enough time to see this amazing country. I recommend no less than 3 weeks & plan on flying from city to city as Australia is approximately the same size as the U.S.
I took day trips to Magnetic Island from Sydney, Kuranda from Cairns & a 2 day overnight trip to Kangaroo Island from Adelaide where this picture of The Remarkables (a cluster of gigantic granite boulders) was taken. I boarded a tri-engine speedboat to jet around Bruny island in Southern Tasmania....what a thrill ride! I get a kick out of being sooooo far off the beaten path & that noone knows where i am. Another added feature is the abundant amount of creatures you get to view truly in the wild. You will see kangaroos, wallabies, koala & yes even Tasmanian Devils. 40 days & i'm decompressed.
Cheers.
Rip Pewett,Nashville
as seen in the travel section of the Sunday Tennessean...pretty cool stuff

Pulitzer prize winning article...NOT!

Get Off the Front Porch
By Rip Pewett


As a small boy I too, like Columbus, knew the world wasn’t flat but I believed it was a triangle. Nashville, Tennessee was at the western point, then Knoxville, Tennessee to the east and closed up by Destin, Florida in the south. What a wonderful pointed world it was! My parents showed me the round globe and this rocked my world almost as much as the no Santa Clause disclosure. Oh well, I still had the Easter bunny (oh right banished to Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean). A dysfunctional childhood for sure, but I like to think of it as a period of disinformation. I remember sitting on my front porch watching the same view everyday wondering what else was out there.

World History I and Geography quickly showed me all I needed to know: the world was vast and there were billions of people just waiting to meet me. I took baby steps at first by getting out of my own state. I immediately fell in love with the decadence of New Orleans, the sunset celebration in Key West, the lights and glitter of sin city Las Vegas and the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. The latter I credit for inspiring me to become a scuba diver. I saw thousands of different species of saltwater fish, rays & sharks that hooked me for life. This was also the first time I encountered penguins and to this day I still think they rock! The problem was, if I never traveled outside the United States I would never get to swim with most of these beautiful creatures.

The first order of business was acquiring a passport. This was easily accomplished by the good folks at the Acklen Avenue branch of the United States Postal Service. Four to eight weeks later I had the legal instrument to traverse the globe. In the next 10 years I would put that baby to good use. I traveled to Australia twice and dove in the Great Barrier Reef each time. I watched the fairy penguins of Phillip Island return at dusk from the sea to their burrows. (that was amazing). In Sydney I drank cold VB’s (Victoria Bitter) in a pub watching the USA play Australia in Olympic men’s basketball. I was the only Yank and the only winner in that place by games end. I spent seven weeks in Northern Ontario fishing for trout and dodging moose on the back roads. I visited Cancun twice and did some drift diving in nearby Cozumel before buying treasure at the numerous free markets. I got engaged on Andros Island in the Bahamas, got married on Grand Cayman, then honeymooned and scuba dived on Little Cayman.

I am currently planning my adventures for the year 2008. As always, I try to visit the old faithful destinations that I mentioned earlier. I will also embark on some new adventures, including at least one new major league ballpark. It is here, in the planning stages, that I truly find contentment. It took me 38 years of my life to realize that my business and my livelihood must be tied to the planning and execution of adventure travel. I am starting my own web based business to promote “Getting Off Your Front Porch” and finding treasure. Not sunken treasure per se but local treasure from all over the world. I will visit exotic and far off places like Papua New Guinea, Bali, Thailand, New Zealand and revisit Australia. When I get the green light, I will even discover the treasure of Cuba. You can follow my vision quest, as I like to call it, and see the treasure I discover on my website www.onmeway.com.

I want every reader to know that I am a native Nashvillian, as my father was before me. I truly love it here, but the world is a spectacular place and must be explored. Nashville will be the same great town when I return. I believe that every adventure helps us grow and see things through a different light. I make new friends in every new city or town I travel and they are kind enough to point me in the right direction and share their culture with me. Since Al Gore invented the internet (ha ha) it is simple to keep up with my new friends all over the world and maybe one day I can return the hospitality Nashville style.

The world is changing but we cannot live in fear of it. I firmly believe when it is my time so be it. I might just be lucky enough to see all the things on my list of 100 things to do before I die. I know one thing for sure and that is I absolutely must get off my front porch. Bob Seger said it best “these are the memories that make me a wealthy soul.”

Rip Pewett
Treasure Hunter

Welcome to OZ!

Well, i'm in Sydney for 5 days of decompression & the first thing i learn is...it is 8a.m., i've packed like a girl for the 45 days in Oz(Australia for the rookies) & i can't check into the Bondi Beach hostel until 2p.m. No worries. I throw my bag into the hostel storage, grab my traveling gnome Big Boy & head to the topless beach! Well let me tell you, this beach rocks & although it is the slow season, it is packed with people. Big Boy finds a board way too big for him but whatever floats his plastic boat. I don't want to damper his mood as he was tucked into a bag for the flight....it was rude but had to be done.
I decide that a little brekkie is in order so i pull up to a cafe & order eggs,big bacon, toast & potatoes. i order a beer & the manager informs me that his permit won't allow him to sell beer this early but he appreciates my zeal. I sit back & overlook the surf while reading the Aussie daily paper. My food comes quickly & i enjoy not having much of an agenda for the next 5 days. There is such a feeling of contentment when you realize your world is 12,000 miles away & no one knows where you are. Complete freedom.
I bought a 7 day combo pass(bus, train & ferry) after i cleared the Japanese customs agent(confused where i actually landed for a second), so i grabbed a bus, hoped a train & there i was at Circular Quay(pronounced key) with the Sydney Bridge on me left & the Opera House on me right.....next stop the oldest pub in Sydney, The Fortune of War!
Cheers,
Rip

change of attitude, change of latitude

Well, here is my logo.......perfect, but it took awhile for the graphic design guy to visualize my idea. Even though i gave him the link to find it, no customer service in the world anymore. Oh well, i've found if you keep moving forward then you forget most speed bumps pretty quickly. So, I retired from the mortgage business on March 15th & prepared myself for the decompression of a lifetime.....6 weeks back to Australia or Oz as the Aussies called it. This was my maiden voyage for treasure hunting. I had bought gifts the two previous times but never really thought about making a career out of buying Australian treasure for import to the U.S.A.

If you travel at all you know that domestic airlines suck with the exception of Southwest or Southbest as i call them. I would have to fly American(ugh) from Nashville to Los Angeles then hop on Qantas for the 14 hour trip over the big pond. I am pretty good at not thinking about being over water for 90% of the journey. Alcohol usually helps me forget this & many other things as well. The Australian phrase of "no worries" comes to mind. Half way thru the uneventful flight, the captain advises the waitress's in the sky to take their seats & fasten their seat belts....NEVER a good sign. So i sat their with my VB(Victoria Bitter) beer in hand & waited for the unknown & waited & waited. Nothing, not even turbulence. I was relieved & saw no more problems until my 747 way up in the sky touched down. Cleared customs without delay & found myself in Sydney International airport & 6 weeks to do whatever the hell I wanted to do. We will pick up there next time & I'll tell you about Bondi Beach where all the pretty people go topless! Cheers, Rip

Half way around the world & luvin it!

Well, i've been told to get with the times & share some stories! My name is Rip Pewett & i am a treasure hunter, not buried treasure but just cool stuff from all over the world. I have decided to dedicate the rest of my life to traveling around the world, meeting new people & buying treasure for resale back in the Southeastern U.S. I'm a huge fan of Australia(3 visits) & New Zealand is on my to do list. I will go just about anywhere that has good scuba diving, friendly people & cold beer. If you know of any such places, drop me a line & give me the heads up. I'll give you props & bring you back a piece of treasure for the effort. This picture is of me 10 yrs younger, 20 lbs lighter & enjoying the Cairns aquarium in Queensland, Australia. Not a big aquarium but who cares, i was 12,000 miles from home & didn't have shit to do for 5 weeks. It didn't suck. Till next time.
Cheers,
Rip