The 20-seater, twin-prop American Eagle flight is a long way from the comfort of seat 34C on the Qantas 747. I'm on the final leg of the journey, Dallas/Fort Worth Texas (via LA) to Wichita Kansas - dead centre of the North American continent. It's 20hrs since I left my house in Sydney.

We land and de-board on a deserted tarmac in Wichita and have to walk about 100 metres from the plane to the terminal building, a small fibro building with fly-screen doors and a corrugated iron roof. As we approach the building a baggage handler comes out of no-where on his cart. He's belting along. A few other passengers and I have to pull ourselves up to avoid him. He zips by and pushes a couple of bags off his trolley without stopping, one of them is mine. At this point, I'm too tired to care.

Entering the terminal is simply a formality. There's nothing to see or do in there, let alone any space for those waiting to greet passengers: just a couple of counters and a set of scales. It's much like flying into Melbourne via Avalon Airport.

Exiting the building, it's clear who's waiting for me. A big man, about 6-3, with a mustache that covers half his chin, and a 9mm pistol strapped to his waist, pushes himself off the bonnet of a huge red tray-back pickup. There are three Mexicans sitting on the tray with their backs against the cab. They don't look up.

The man takes a couple of big strides toward me and puts out a hand comprising a thumb, two fingers and a couple of stubs.

“Howdy!”, “I’m Stubby. I’m your boss, your mummy, your daddy and your lover for the next eight months”. “This is for you”, he says handing me the pistol from his holster. I was startled enough to see the thing in the safety of it's pouch. “What’s this for?”, I ask. “Everyone can find a use for one of these in this part of the world". He belly laughs and re-holsters the firearm. "Just messin' with ya! Welcome to Kansas!”

All of the above is bullshit. It's one of the scenarios that I constructed in my head at about hour 18 of the journey. Reality was quite a lot different! Big planes all the way. I tracked down the other bloke that I'm working with over here at Dallas Airport. After an hour long flight we landed at quite a sizable Wichita Airport. We were picked up by the bosses wife, a petite blond woman in her 30s.

Despite my porky-pies, there were a few things that correlated to the stereotypes floating around in my head. The woman was driving the biggest, plushest, 4WD I've ever seen, and there were instructions at the baggage carousel explaining where to pick up firearms.