This is the End

Welcome to the conclusion. The beginning is sadly way at the bottom, due to the terrible formatting blogger insists on. It is a format that works well for essays and typical blogs, with the most relevant at top, but is not ideal for a continuous story. Nevertheless, this is the format they insist on so here ends the blog. I must first take this moment to congratulate myself, having not done a dissertation this is the longest thing I have ever written, and I never really believed I would finish it. The journey finished for me on July 4th, American Independence Day. And just over a year later the blog is finished, just as momentous an occasion.

Of course, plenty more happened after Ed left, I was in California until September. There was a world cup final, a tour of California, a visit to vineyards, to a Budweiser factory, shooting in the mountains, local San Diego bars with 75 cent beer, two days of door to door marketing, another car crash and the eventual return to the UK. However, this blog was simply about the journey across the country. On July 4th 2010, I returned the rental car early in the morning, sold my uncle's parking spaces for an exorbitant fee to revellers with cars and watched the fireworks.

The trip certainly had it's problems. The breakdown in Texas, the England vs USA football match, Ed's shoes, car crashes, all that crazy stuff you know happened in Las Vegas and plenty more. However, it was still an amazing trip and I hope I can make a similar journey in the future. Hopefully, with less time on the bus. So I shall end by saying thank you to the people that offered us hospitality and friendship, thank you to these United States of America for having this beautiful and diverse country and finally, a thank you to the Greyhound Bus. While far from perfect, the bus offered us the only affordable way across these lands, we could not have done it without you.

California Here We Come

After Vegas I drove us to Orange County. I was much more confident behind the wheel after eight hours driving experience the previous day. Although there was still a dangerous incident while leaving Las Vegas. Not seeing the first set of lights, I had slowed down to stop the car at a light that had just turned red. I had run a yellow that I hadn't seen. This would have been all right if I had kept going, but I stopped. In the middle of an intersection. Luckily, the car behind me had seen the problem and left enough space for me to reverse back into an almost legal position. I reversed and sat there calmly waiting for the light to change, when a car pulled up beside us. He called through the window "Hey buddy, you know you're still in reverse?" Other than that near calamity, the trip to O.C. was without incident.

My notes end around here so the rest of the OC trip will be summarised. We didn't do anything particularly exciting over our 4 days here, we went to Laguna Beach, watched some films, watched more World Cup action, met Ed's family friends, had some theological discussions from our host who has, over a lifetime, gone from atheism to Hinduism to Christianity. I was too scared to drive into LA, so Ed left by shuttle for LAX and flew back to England.

Of course, before he left we had to visit Disneyland. A tiring day indeed. At the end of the day we went through a tunnel filled with dolls with the song "it's a small world after all" playing. I found it horrifying. The song was supposed to be about inclusiveness, we are all in this world together. But most of the puppets were white, and the few black ones were semi naked dolls living amongst the doll lions. The Asian ones were just the white dolls in Asian dress. But to it's credit, there is a large number of good looking women roaming around the lands of Disney, something for everyone.

Las Vegas

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.

Highway to Hell

First, we had a lie in. Then, I bought a massive pack of water and shoved it in the freezer. I had visions of a breakdown on the desert in the middle of nowhere and knew that a cold tank of water would be a wonderful thing in such events.

Am I capable of driving us to Vegas unharmed? The voice in the head that always doubts one's own ability wasn't even talking to me. It just sat there smiling smugly in the brain, whispering "I don't even have to get involved in this one, you know you're useless, no point me telling you." Needless to say, I wasn't confident about the journey.

However, I decided it was a must. We had gone from one end of this huge country to the other. Seen great and unknown sights, met the weird and the wonderful, eaten the divine and the disgusting, drank the fine wines of the vineyards and the piss-water of the breweries, heard the music of the muses and the wretchings of the gutter. It had been an historic trip. But what it had lacked was real danger. We had seen no muggings in New York, no hurricanes in New Orleans, no shoot-outs in Texas, no drug overdoses in California. Wonderful as the trip had been, we had not yet faced our mortality. The drive was as close as we would get.

If it were to turn out badly, so what. It had been one hell of a trip, a full speed collision would have given it some finality at least. Below is a quote from one of my favourite authors:

"The ambiguous role of the car crash needs no elaboration—apart from our own deaths, the car crash is probably the most dramatic event in our lives, and in many cases the two will coincide. Aside from the fact that we generally own or are at the controls of the crashing vehicle, the car crash differs from other disasters in that it involves the most powerfully advertised commercial product of this century, an iconic entity that combines the elements of speed, power, dream and freedom within a highly stylized format that defuses any fears we may have of the inherent dangers of these violent and unstable machines."

The late JG Ballard has written extensively about the eroticism of the car crash, blending ideas from psychoanalysis, his observations of reactions to crashes, and his own warped mind. His ideas make a fascinating and disturbing read. However, having knowledge of the intellectualisation of the car crash is never a comforting thought when driving one of these violent and unstable machines.

Just as a religious persons faith may be tested when they are visited with great misfortune, so an atheists faith is tested when they must face their own mortality. But what happens when you are an agnostic, sitting on the fence, not ready to commit to one side or the other. Facing death forces one to pick a belief. Logic dictates that you pray to whatever god you might choose. If you're wrong, so be it, it was worth a shot. If you're right, maybe you just sneak your way into a lovely afterlife. This was my dilemma on the roads. Missing several turns on busy roads, the panic began to set in. Am I going to make this without divine intervention? Is it right to pray to a God I have no real faith in? In the end, I decided prayer was less important than focusing on the roads. Pretty soon we were on the highway/motorway. After getting out of San Diego, the route to Vegas is pretty much a straight road. It's very calming to be told by the GPS that you have no turn for 50 miles, and for that turn not even to be a real turn. Going 90 on quiet desert roads is much easier than going 60 on busy city ones.

Ed was very helpful with the helping explain the GPS. He was less so with the radio. The constant channel flipping had an infuriating effect on my already fragile psyche. Eventually he settled on a station with some country music. Which he doesn't even like, though I do. It was fairly repetitive and there were some ridiculous songs. "Our houses are protected/by the good Lord and a gun, and you might meet 'em both if you show up here not welcome son," was the main lyric of my favourite one.

After four and a half hours on the road we rested in Barstow. The Mexican waiter didn't understand when I asked for water. Or agua (I pronounced it wrong). Luckily a patron behind us ordered it for me. Then, after stretching, it was back out on the road again.

We came upon a brightly lit town in the middle of the desert. But it wasn't Vegas. Or at least it wasn't the main part. It was very confusing. We got past it and arrived safely in the city of sin.

The King is English Too

Garnet Avenue was supposed to be an exciting place. It had been recommended to us the night before. It was too far to walk, so we gave up after a short attempt.

Then we got a taxi to Fox Car Rentals, which is near the airport. About five minutes after getting to the rental place, I realised I had left my favourite aviator sunglasses and my gps device in the cab. C'est la vie. Ed was surprised I wasn't more pissed off at the whole thing but I was calm. I think I was just more focused on getting the car. We had several options, the cars at the level we had paid for had all been taken, so we had a pick of cars from the next level up, which were much nicer. We wondered around the lot looking for a good choice. I liked the look of a large white Jeep, but I knew I wouldn't feel comfortable driving such a large car and that the petrol would cost much more. So we grabbed a lovely black Chevrolet Malibu.

I had not properly driven a car for nearly a year and I had only gotten my licence just back then. I was fairly nervous with my limited experience I was going to be driving on roads that killed many far more skilled drivers every year. I thought I would probably crash the thing before leaving the rental companies parking lot, and then they would demand the car back. As it happened, the car handled beautifully and I drove the car back to the house without incident. Well...almost back to the house without incident.

Turning on to my uncle's street I was brimming with the pride and confidence from a successful drive where I had been more than comfortable and safe. My uncle has a garage and a large space outside the garage to park his cars. No-one in America uses their garage to park cars, they generally use it as storage space. Outside his garage my uncle had a Toyota pick-up truck parked all the way to the left of the space. On the other side he had a silver Mazda sports car. I turned into the drive way hard and fast, eager to finalise the successful journey.

"STOP. NO!" screamed Ed. But he was too late. I had driven our car into the side of the Mazda. I tried to reverse. It didn't work. I tried to go forward. It didn't work. I had stuck the Chevy to the sports car. Now I was worried. Ed and I tried to push the Chevy away from the Mazda. Then we tried to lift it. Then we tried doing the same things to the sports car. Nothing worked.

(I must point out that if any Fox Car Rental employee reading this is wondering if there was any damage to their car I must categorically state NO THERE WASN'T. When I returned the car at 5am one morning in July it was inspected for damage and passed that rigorous 30 second inspection. Any damage to said car must have been picked up after my return. Do not question Ed about this, firstly his name is a cunning pseudonym to protect this man's true identity and secondly, this man is a liar and a drunk.)

Eventually we got help from the neighbours. A kind stoner jacked up the Mazda and let it roll back so we could get our car out. That was my confidence gone. I was supposed to be driving to Vegas the next day. How was I going to take us for an eight hour drive when I couldn't go half an hour without an accident? I tried to sleep to calm down. However, it is very hard to sleep when the sun is shining brightly in to a room and you are hyped up with adrenaline from an accident. I took the car to the beach and tried to practice parking the car to regain a little confidence. I came centimetres away from getting the car stuck a second time. Also, there were police just cruising around the parking lot that stopped to watch me, curious as to why I was just sitting there re-parking a car. Then I looked into booking plane flights to avoid having to drive to Las Vegas. As it turns out, return flights would have cost a similar amount to the car rental. Sadly, most of our money had already gone on the car (well my money, Ed was just borrowing at this point).

We went to the theme park. The park had been there since 1925, and the rides had not really been improved upon since. I rode the roller-coaster I had always been scared of as a child/teenager. I don't think I ever really like the free fall feeling as much as most people. Secondly, any adrenaline rush from these rides was nothing to speeding down a motorway in a rented car knowing you barely know a thing about driving and have two lives at stake, including your own.

After the theme park, we go back to the house. The neighbours invite us up. We end up getting a Mexican dinner, drinking wine (boxed and bottled, at one point a combination of the two) and chatting a while. We were told a story about an old baseball player that had become a radio show host. Apparently, though he was a quality player in the pre-steroids era, he didn't have a strong grasp of the English language. One day a woman called up to complain, "Sir, I must complain, you don't know the Queen's English." To which the presenter replied something like,

"Old Duke knows the Queen's English, Old Duke knows the King is English too."

Then we watched Wrong Turn 2. That is, until the woman tried to sleep and couldn't because of the noise. Several arguments ensue as the man, slightly drunk, continues to strive to watch this classic. Until she gets angrier and he sobers up a little, then we are gently forced out of the house.

I decide we will have to leave for Vegas a few hours later than planned. Driving with no ability is bad enough, there was no point driving while possibly still a little drunk.

The Bus, We're Done, We're Actually Done, We're Done with the Fucking Bus

Day five in Arizona. We have now spent four nights in Prescott, Arizona and four nights in Winston Salem, North Carolina. We have only spent three nights in New York, one night in Atlanta and one night in New Orleans. Perhaps I'm not as much of a city lover as I had thought. Perhaps deep down I yearn for an idyllic rural environment, a place where I am surrounded by nature and no-one calls me lazy, they just see me as enjoying a laid-back country lifestyle. Of course then the laziness would become a problem regarding any land I would have to look after or animals I might have to deal with.

Did I mention that we no longer had to deal with the greyhound bus. We took a shuttle from Prescott to Phoenix, the shuttle was delightfully void of any conversations regarding menopausal hot flashes and smoker's coughs. Then the plane.

So many loud conversations, it took me by surprise. I'm so used to flights were people sit in uncomfortable silence, quietly battling over the arm rest and trying to watch the one-dimensional films which, if they were any good in the first place, would be ruined by the miserably small screens and captain's interruptions. But not on this flight, everyone seemed to get along like old friends. Except Ed and I, sitting there in the airplane inspired silence we were raised in. Nevertheless, at the end of the flight I asked someone a question about a conversation I had overheard. It struck me as a very American thing to do, perhaps I was becoming assimilated into the culture.

Having been punched in the mouth on my last night in Leeds due to a drunken attempt at banter with with an extremely sensitive friend of a friend. As a result, one of my front teeth was now an attractively dark shade of grey. I feared this was nerve damage and simply wanted to find out how much it would cost to fix in San Diego.

"About $1200. Did you deserve it?"

"Probably." Though I probably didn't deserve any violence for my behaviour in Leeds, I'm sure there are enough transgressions in my life for karma to try and land a few right hooks on me.

(As it later turned out, my tooth was just bruised. $1200 dollars was the exact price quoted to fix it, but it would just be a cosmetic fix. The alternative would be to spend my life with a very dark front tooth, as I was told it would never heal its colour on its own. In the end, I didn't have any surgery and the tooth did heal itself.)

We arrived in San Diego airport. after collecting our luggage, it dawned on me that I might not have the address of the house we were staying at on me. I could definitely access it online, but we had no internet access at that point. After about ten minutes of searching, I did eventually find it written down.

We got a taxi and made our way down to my uncle's house. My uncle wasn't there, instead he was off vacationing with his girlfriend. He had left a long list of things to do to make his house inhabitable. As an inventor, he tended to fix everything himself and as a result, simple utilities in his home could be very complicated if you didn't know what you were doing. Luckily, his instructions were clear, and beyond running water and a place to sleep, we didn't need much.

For dinner, we bought cheetos and vodka. We mixed the vodka with American lemonade and enjoyed a gourmet supper. Then we took a few beer down to enjoy by the beach. Now technically, one isn't legally allowed to enjoy any alcoholic beverage by the beach or really anywhere in public that isn't a bar or restaurant. We took paper bags in true hobo-like form, but I felt horribly ill after my first sip of Stella. It may have been the vodka lemonade, jetlag, the beer may not have gone down terribly well after the cheetos dinner, whatever the reason I felt horribly ill at that moment. I had to lie down. There was a bench right there. I laid down. For a long time.

So the dinner of cheetos and vodka, drinking from a paper bag and resting on a park bench might not have been the classiest of starts to our visit to San Diego. It did mean that it could only get better. On our return to my uncle's house we met his neighbours. Though this was only a brief chat through a window we would come to have a very entertaining experience with them the next day.

The Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon is supposedly one of the wonders of the natural world. To get there in the morning we had to leave by 4.15am. We arrived at 7.00am. I was wearing a hoody which I was very uncertain about. Being the morning it was fairly chilly, but having been in Arizona long enough (ie 3 days), I knew it was going to get very hot pretty soon.

The Grand Canyon is a breathtaking place. 227 miles long, 2 billion years old, or so they tell me. It is hard to describe the sense of awe it can inspire. We walked up and down a few trails. We were pretty breathless. Partly because we had done no exercise since playing a little basketball in North Carolina. Mainly because of the altitude. They offer mule rides down a few of the paths near the top. We happened do be down one when a whole group of riders on mules came down the narrow path for a short trip. I got as far over to the side as possible, my back up against the rock.

"You don't have to move away." The tour leader leader called out. Being severely allergic to horses I was fairly certain I did have to move away. I have no idea where the nearest hospital to the Grand Canyon is and had no intention of finding out.

Then we left. Even breathtaking natural wonders get boring after a while. Another Mexican lunch followed by two world cup games, Holland versus someone else, (I think Cameroon) and Japan vs. Denmark. Then we're ready to say goodbye and get a ride to the bus station. Next stop Las Vegas.

The bus is full.

"The next bus leaves at 1.10am". We are told at the bus station. It's the middle of the afternoon. Fine, can we have tickets for that bus then?

"No, it doesn't work like that, you'll have to come try again at midnight."

We go to another house to collect. We meet our hosts family, her daughter, son-in-law and her two grandchildren. The path eventually decided on is that we will fly to San Diego and then drive the rented car to Vegas and back. This creates a new problem, we have to cancel the room at Harrah's Casino Ed had booked for that night. Harrah's are not amenable to refunding any money. Eventually though, we rebook the room for the next Monday and everyone leaves happy. Our plane tickets cost $300 total and we fly the next day from Phoenix airport.

Our hosts two grandchildren are very playful, the youngest boy having a strong interest in tools. It is slightly weird seeing a four year old playing with proper tools, luckily there was nothing sharp and no power tools and he seemed very comfortable and safe with them.

We go back to our hosts house for our actual last night in Arizona and relax then prepare for the next day's trip to California.