It's pretty cool to be able to hang out with the President and have the race-winning car on the South Lawn.

I think there's a suspicion in the South of people putting on airs. You see it in most successful Southern politicians but you also see it in someone like Richard Petty who may be a multimillionaire stock car driver but he's also beloved because he has a nice self-deprecatory way about him.

And we turned off and 30 miles south they're standing in the middle of our road blocking our way stopped the car got out took us through the path in the woods where the craft was on the ground.

I rememeber one time we were getting ready to go to South America and everything was packed up and in the car ready to go and I hid and I was crying because I really did not want to go I wanted to play. I did not want to go.

Family trips to Yellowstone and to what are now national parks in Southern Utah driving the primitive roads and cars of that day were real adventures.

As far as those kinds of things I also played at the concert to call for the release of Nelson Mandela when he was a political prisoner in South Africa. We were celebrating his 70th birthday and calling for his release.

Shortly thereafter some friends encouraged me to try out for the Miss South Carolina World beauty pageant. To my surprise I won - and was sent to New York City to compete nationally.

I'm from Canada and New Zealand feels like you took all the best bits of Canada and squished them onto a tiny island like Hawaii. I was absolutely blown away by the beauty of the South Island.

The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here and have lived here are so ugly.

If you take the contempt some Americans have for yuppies and multiply it by 10 you might come close to understanding their attitude towards the City as they call it - London the people of the south.