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.

Slide Rock

First stop of the day was to a Catholic church in Sedona, AZ. The Chapel of the Holy Cross is a building on top of a mountain, with windows shaped into a crucifix. It has no steeples or any other indication on the outside that it is a religious building, but it is still quite a sight.

After the church we went swimming in Slide Rock. The place is a creek, with a natural slide in the middle, due to a long point with very shallow water and a slippery bed. The slide was fun, albeit not ideal as it wasn't designed for sliding. Our first trip down the slide Ed went first and I followed. It was an unwise order to choose. For some reason I went a little faster than Ed, and struggled the whole way not to knock in to him, failing at several points. The ending being the worst part. When I came off the slide I knocked into Ed. In front of Ed was a little girl who had also just done the ride. After my knock, Ed followed through and knocked into the girl. Trying to get up, slightly dazed, he slipped and knocked into the poor girl one last time. We left the sliding area before anyone starting accusing us of bullying children.

We had a lovely Mexican meal for lunch, probably one of the most up-scale Mexican meals we had on the trip. Not that it was particularly fancy it's just that our Mexican meals had tended towards cheap take-away type meals.

Finally we were able to rent a car online. But not for Arizona, we had to wait until after we had gone to Vegas and then gone and picked the car up in San Diego.

Whiskey Row

We had arrived in Arizona amidst a passionate, nationwide debate regarding new laws making it a requirement to carry documents identifying one's right to be in the US. But it didn't seem to matter when we arrived. It was possibly the most beautiful state we visited.

First on our tour was Tuzigoot, a US National Monument according to Wikipedia. Excavated ruins that I believe had housed some Native American tribe a long time ago. Just as Montezuma's Castle had been. A small dwelling build in the middle of the face of a cliff. They believe that the Native Americans had abandoned the sight one hundred years before the first European settlers arrived. The causes are unknown but there are some suggestions: War, famine, drought, they fell off the side, Starbucks bought it to put up a store.

After a day of touring we were off to relax with some jazz in a park in Prescott. It was by a street called Whiskey Row. The street was reminiscent of New Orlean's Bourbon Street but it had a more western vibe. It was lively, but I imagine one hundred and fifty years ago it would have been even more lively, and much less touristy.

Then we walked across a highway. Apparently, some politician (maybe a senator) had gotten very drunk one evening, and nearly been killed trying to cross the highway. Careful to avoid a future fatality, this politician installed a crossing so that it was safe to cross. A highway.

We ate dinner at a brewery. Very much British themed, although with typical Americanised fare as well. I had nachos, and bangers and mash. Which I couldn't finish. The portions were still American sized. The beer was pretty decent as well.

The evening consisted of more time failing to find a suitable car to rent, and Ed making his first contribution to finding us some accommodation. He found a cheap room at Harrah's Casino for our one night in Vegas.

Crossing the Border

4AM wake up to catch the early bus. Check out. Walk with our heavy bags to the greyhound station. Get told that the our bus is an hour late. It is also full. Back to hostel.

They won't let us back in our rooms because we have already checked out. So we go down and sleep in the common room. We get back and get the 1:30PM Americana bus. The Americana bus is a subset of the greyhound company, and I believe it starts its route in Mexico. Spanish is the first language on the Americana bus, occasionally they follow with an English translation. Ed and I were probably the only ones the English translation was relevant for.

A little while after crossing the state border of Texas and New Mexico the bus was stopped by police. They came on and gave instructions at the front of the bus. I couldn't hear a word they were saying. I tried calling "what did you say?" to them. They ignored me. The other passengers looked at me as if I were insane. In the end it was just a passports and papers check. Everyone on the bus had their papers in order so we were allowed to continue.

All I really remember after that from the journey was that there was a very pretty woman working in the McDonald's where we had lunch. The rest of the journey was just staring at desert.

After arriving in Phoenix we took a shuttle van for another two and half hours out to Prescott. A suburb about two and a half hours away from Phoenix. While I had gotten used to hearing too much about other passengers lives, I wasn't prepared to learn everything about our driver. Her troubled relationship with her father, the pains of menopause, why she had a smokers voice (anyone could have guessed why, she smoked). Another case of unintentional eaves dropping making the journey a little more uncomfortable than it already was.

We arrived in Prescott around 10PM. We were fed dinner. Then it was straight to Fox and then bed.

This is America. (I hope)

The heat was amazing. Twenty one years living in England is poor preparation for experiencing the desert heat in the southern part of America in the summertime. Every new place we experienced was hotter than the one before it. The sticky Houston heat had made it one of the hottest cities I had ever been to. And El Paso made it seem mildly warm.

El Paso is definitely in the USA. Wikipedia will confirm it. But when you are half delirious from heat, groggy from flu medication and in a city where everyone is Hispanic and many houses in your current neighbourhood look like South American slums, it is easy to believe that you are in Mexico. And not a very nice part. Everyone also seemed to be on a siesta as we wandered around looking for lunch. Eventually we came to an all you can eat buffet. It was exactly like New York's Sbarro but with a Mexican twist. The food was just as bad but at least there was plenty of it.

Then came the highlight of our day. Fifteen years since the original film had won the hearts of children and adults worldwide, Toy Story 3 came out. This would the first ever feature length film I would watch in 3D. Many movies have been filmed or set at least partly in El Paso. Many westerns. That was part of the reason for visiting and it made a great location to watch Woody and Buzz in their latest adventure.

Ed preferred El Paso to Houston as soon as we stepped off the bus. Despite the dilapidated housing there was an eerie beauty about the city. It is surrounded by several mountains and there is a real sense that if you got fed up of city life you could easily head out for a few hours of peaceful isolation.

Breakdown on the Texas Plains

On the bus from Houston to El Paso I saw an amusing sign on the front of a church that read, "Get off facebook and get into my Book". That was the peak of the journey. The large Samoan man wanted us to chat with him and the back of the bus, but we wisely went for the handicapped seats near the front with the legroom. A move of pure genius.

In New Orleans I had had the foresight to buy flu medicine. Not that I was ill, but I wanted sleeping pills to knock me out on the longer bus journeys. I couldn't find any pills designed for just sleeping so I took the flu medication designed to help people sleep through high fevers, chills, runny or blocked noses and nasty coughs. It was perfect, medication made for experiences as uncomfortable as the greyhound.

The journey was supposed to take about 15 hours. We expected that to mean about 17 hours. Around one o'clock at night I took my pills and prepared to doze off, hoping to wake up in El Paso. Right before I fell asleep we were parked at a petrol station in the middle of nowhere, Texas. The bus driver announced that two of the lug nuts had come loose, or disappeared, or something. I can't remember exactly, I was drowsy on flu medication but there was definitely a serious problem with the engine, or the wheels.

I woke up seven hours later in the same petrol station. It was around 7am. Having been half-asleep at the time of the announcement I didn't quite understand what was going on. It slowly dawned on me that this bus was going nowhere soon. A young latina woman told us everyone was going to go eat at this cafe. We followed her to go get breakfast. It was a Mexican cafe and we didn't understand the menu at all. Worst of all there were flies and bugs everywhere in the cafe. It was very off-putting. We decided not to eat there. I walked about ten minutes to get to a supermarket we could see in the distance. I bought six muffins and some chocolate milk.

Our new bus showed up around 9am. The bus station in El Paso had been contacted around midnight and they had sent a new bus out around 4am. We arrived in El Paso around 2.30 in the afternoon. The whole journey had lasted about 25 hours.

Do Cheap Texan Hostels Bring Out The Philosopher in a Man?

Conversations about Jacques Derrida, Dante and a former nun turned spiritual writer are not what one typically expects when a man walks in to make sure you are leaving a cheap hostel. Nevertheless, that is what happened. A hostel worker we hadn't seen the night before was very interested to learn that I had studied philosophy at university and was currently trying to read the Bible. An effort which I eventually failed at. Eventually, after much discussion, he realised we needed to be checked out and on our way.

We ended up getting a taxi ride to a book-store near our bus station. Our taxi driver was a middle-aged black man with a booming voice who you could just picture giving inspirational advice to some young sports star in a Hollywood film. He asked us where we were going, but seemed to realise at once that we were on an epic journey across the country. So after every destination he would ask "then where....then where?" He said he'd done a similar thing when he was "wide-eyed and innocent" like us. He said we were becoming "one of the elite", so we can tell our children about our experiences when they wanted to go out and explore. Then he asked us about our journey and we told him what had happened so far. He had lived in New York and found it hilarious that we had accidentally found ourselves in Harlem. "125th Street? Harlem! You know after 110 street that's spade city."

Eventually we found ourselves at yet another greyhound bus station. I started talking to a massive Samoan guy. Ed thought he was from New Orleans because he was wearing mardi gras style beads. He thought we were Italian but I have no idea why. He was a military man on his way to a base in El Paso. This was his first ever greyhound bus journey. His first bus journey would be our worst.

The Lone Star State

Another day, another greyhound bus. There were a few intimidating looking men, sporting tear-drop tattoos and suchlike on their faces. Everyone generally kept to the unofficial bus rule of keeping to themselves or just their close friends. I slept through most of the journey. Then we were in Houston.

We arrived at our hostel a couple of hours early. The Houston hostel, the cheapest accommodation we could find, was more of a glorified house. There was no-one there to check us in when we arrived. So we lay down on the couch and waited a couple of hours before the hostel workers returned from their break.

What we eventually did in Houston amounted to very little. It is a very boring city if you don't have a car. However, the characters we met were very interesting. First there were three pretty Czech girls on their way to Florida to sell toys. They generally kept to themselves. Then there was Patrick. A military man who offered to drive us out to get some proper Texas style ribs. He had some interesting stories having been a driver for an alcoholic colonel. When we saw the restaurant from the car, we were in the far left lane and the restaurant was on the far right. We had to go past it. Then there was no turn for miles. We ended up being taken to eat at a Subway. While Patrick went to a smoke shop to buy a legal marijuana substitute. He couldn't smoke the real thing because the army drug tested him every so often. It smelt like the real thing though, whatever it was. He drove us back to the hostel and then went out on his own to find a pool bar somewhere.

Then there was the guy that worked at the hostel in an official capacity as the internet guy. His job seemed to consist of signing people online after they had paid the internet fee, then just sitting around chatting and hoping his "eye-candy", the Czech girls would come down. He told us a sad story about some 15 year old Eastern-European girl that had come with an older bloke who had paid for their room. He said he found her crying in a corner one day because the man had taken her passport. He told her to go to the police and that was the last he heard of the girl or her captor.

We went out to go to a few bars. Until it became painfully obvious that the closes thing to a bar we could reach by walking was a 7-11 store. Ed got himself a slushy. I had an alcopop which I had to sneak back inside because the hostel didn't allow alcoholic beverages on its property. I was practically 14 again.

Sodom and Gomorrah, Louisiana

We arrived in New Orleans two hours late and got to our hotel where we had two lovely beds we didn't have the time to sleep in. We want to visit a jazz bar. Completely unnecessary, as soon as we got on to Bourbon Street there was a jazz band playing on the street.

We had dinner at a restaurant, delicious shrimp and calamari that had been fished out before BP's oil had ensnared them. First bar had a three for one deal on Budweiser. I should not drink beer after a large meal. As I may have already mentioned. So we went home.

Ed complained as I lay on the bed, trying to recover some sense of well-being. Then he nearly fell asleep. The beds were comfortable and we could have easily gone to bed. We would have woken up feeling fresh and with completely clear consciences. That wouldn't have been fun.

We had been told that New Orleans was going to be loads of fun. A bit weird for such a tragedy stricken city. We had been told that New Orleans was like a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah, places of such great perversion that God turned the entire populations into pillars of salt. With great determination we heroically got out of bed and set out to discover this side of the city. For educational purposes only.

Bourbon Street. Every other bar is a strip bar. The non-strip bars are often highly sexually charged as well, with the shot girls offering body shots. We avoided the strip clubs and focused on the drinking. At least at first. After several drinks we started drinking something called a hand-grenade. Some kind of melon liqueur influenced cocktail served in a plastic container shaped like a grenade. They don't tell you the ingredients but they do come with a warning on the limits. I can't find them at the moment but regarding your fifth drink the warning was: "You’re on your own. We don't recommend having five".

I had 3.5 deciding to leave the final half so one of us was sober enough to get us to the bus. Ed had between 4-6. I can't remember, he definitely won't remember. Then we went to a cabaret club. Not a real cabaret club, it just happens to be a New Orleans euphemism for a strip club. Which Ed and I had never been to, so I was curious to visit one. For educational purposes only.

The club was actually pretty nice. Like an upscale cocktail bar. Except there were naked women dancing on the stage. It was certainly a good way to keep two drunk people up. We had to stay awake because our bus left around 6am and we wouldn't wake up with any intention of leaving our beds if we went to sleep. Ed started panicking. "I'm a feminist" he declared passionately, "this goes against everything I believe in". Having never heard Ed describe himself as a feminist before in my lifetime, I had no idea how to react. I hadn't forced him to come into the strip club and I certainly didn't plan on trying to convince him that it was compatible with a feminist viewpoint. We left when it closed a little later.

Ed, ahead of me on the street, called out "come in here there's no cover charge". I looked over at the dodgy looking strip club. They don't even bother to call it a cabaret club. Clearly, the Bourbon Street smell, a perfume of vomit, salt-water air and desperation, had gotten into Ed's nostrils and overpowered his newly discovered desire for equality. I was resistant but Ed was led in by one of the women so I felt I had to follow. We both had virtually no money at this point and I explained this to be told, we have a cashier in the building. I still tried wanted to leave. Genuinely I did. Ed, slightly unsure of himself, gave me the responsibility of decision maker.

"I'll do whatever you whatever you want to do."

"I want to leave."

"Right," then Ed turned to the cashier "100 dollars please."

I won't go into further details but I am proud to say I did nothing illegal. Despite the offers. I will also say that a lap dance where a naked woman bounces up and down just above your pelvis when you're dying for a piss is extremely uncomfortable and awkward. It is not sexy and is enough to put one off strip clubs for life. Despite all Ed's early protestations on the grounds of feminism, we probably felt the most degraded. After all, we had indulged in the seedy world of a city overrun with real tragedies and problems. We also spent far more than we intended. Ed compulsively washed his hands when he got home. But you can't get a sense of sinful shame off with soap.

We hadn't quite been ruined by the house of the rising sun. But at least we had found our Sodom and Gomorrah.

Sweet Home Alabama

New Orleans can be pronounced either Norlans, nu (as in shoe) orlans, nu orleeen or if you are me new (as in you) orleens. All depends on where you are from, all seem to be acceptable. But before we got there we had to get out of Georgia and go across Alabama and Mississippi into Louisiana.

Ed made a vital discovery on the bus. The seats near the front, technically reserved for wheelchair use, had great legroom.

We got off the bus at the stop in Alabama, I could feel my face wrinkling in the heat. We went to a fast food place called What a Burger. They push the words together so it sounds more like saying wuddaburger. They were highly amused as I slowly asked "could I have a what a burger burger please." One person dropped their milkshake. His friend turned to him and said

"you know why you dropped it?"

"Why?" asked his friend, eager to learn the source of his error.

"Cos you a bitch."

Ed and I had a brief conversation with them, they told us that the "greyhound bus sucks." We already knew it. And it became even more apparent as we returned to an announcement of a delay on our bus.

Even worse, every time I stood up on the bus, I hit my head on the ceiling. Every time. Probably my unconscious mind trying to lose more brain cells so that I wouldn't be as keenly aware of the discomfort I was in.

"The bus is nice, you'll get to see America as you go past." Someone had told me. But you don't see America, you see trees. I was pretty sick of trees. "It's such a romantic notion, travelling America on the greyhound" I had read somewhere. It might seem that way when you nostalgically look back on some trip you made as a fresh faced youngster out to explore 20 years ago, but the reality of riding the bus across such a massive country is about as romantic as having sex in the disabled toilets of a McDonalds.

Sweet Water and Gringo Food

For dinner Ed and I went out with two lovely girls from Atlanta who were family friends of our (absentee) hosts. It was apparently Ed's first experience of Mexican food. Or more accurately, mexican inspired food for non-mexicans. We also tried the local beer, Sweet Water, that one of the women recommended. On seeing Ed's expression after trying the beer I could tell it wasn't brilliant. But I wanted to try the local stuff as well so I asked for "one more Sweet Water please",. It was pretty poor, though I believe I've had worse.

Then it was back home to Fox News and light beer for the fridge. The food had been good, the results after dinner on a digestive system not accustomed to the food were not good. Also, I should really have learned by now not to drink beer while feeling full, the results are uncomfortable every time.

Brief sleep. Then it was up at 3.30am to make sure we were packed and ready for our 4.15am taxi to the greyhound bus station. That took our total taxi expenditure to over $110 so far.

And we were sick of the greyhound bus. As I may have already mentioned. It was often brought up but despite a desperate search for alternatives we found no other affordable routes across the country. So it was off to wait an hour in a queue, get asked if I was at Prince Charles' wedding and get a bus to New Orleans.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Coke

Our only full day in Atlanta. We walk to Starbucks to get internet. Simply walking out of an air-conditioned house into Atlanta's June heat leaves you drenched in sweat. The morning shower felt redundant.

After Starbucks we headed off to another great institution of American big business. The Coca Cola Factory. The staff were very smiley and very enthusiastic. Great for kids. A nightmare for a bitter and cynical person such as myself. They made a half-hearted threat so that we would try all the drinks they had on offer at the end of the tour. That would come back to haunt us.

We experienced the 3D and 4D cinematic masterpieces they had on display. 4D being 3D with a special chair that does stuff to you. In America's 4D cinemas the chair always seems to hurt you. A little strange considering that causing a little discomfort to anyone here seems like it could land you in an American courtroom.

Most chilling of all in the factory was the World Cup inspired film about football (soccer). It was fine until they envisaged a match in 2025. A team of superhumans, seemingly genetically engineered by Coca Cola themselves, took on another superhuman team. If you want your child to support a successful team, switch allegiances as soon as Coca Cola FC make their debut appearance.

Then, before we left, we tried all the drinks Coca Cola sold around the world. It was disgusting. Ed and I felt sick. Do not try Coca Cola product sodas in other countries. They are not good. Ignore the warnings and drink the local water instead. You will be better off.

Then we walked to the Martin Luther King Jr. museum. You don't have to pay for entry. It was another world entirely. A fascinating world of peaceful and intelligent struggle for equality. A wonderful world where I could read about some of the civil rights movement in America's 1960's and no patronising film would tell me that I (the consumer) was the secret ingredient in Coke.

On the Road Again

10:30 AM departure from greyhound bus station. Very civilised. Until we got onto the bus and a woman from New York was intent on saving comfortable seats for three Russians who missed the stop. She then complained loudly about the bus leaving to everyone around her until the next stop. Then the Russian youths got on, having gotten there by taxi. They didn't really appear pleased at the reunion and generally ignored her like the rest of the passengers

until they all left at their next stop.

A heavy storm was raging as we came into Atlanta and a wrecked car at the side of the road could only provoke that most egotistical of thoughts. It could have been me. With my inexperience on the road and the dangerous driving conditions it might be more reasonable to say that it probably would have been me. And Ed of course, but who cares about that when you're having egotistical thoughts.

There was a quite pretty girl on the bus around our age. She seemed to be constantly looking around for someone to talk to. Being antisocial Brits, Ed and I carefully avoided almost all conversation. It was a long bus ride and though she was attractive and probably quite nice, I didn't want to risk being stuck in a conversation for several hours with someone who could be insipidly boring. Greyhound buses are bad enough.

We finally arrived an hour late. That probably makes it one of the greyhound records. Most of the other passengers then had to scramble to get their bags and get on the connecting bus to Texas, which was just about to leave.

We got to our home, a lovely house with a swimming pool around Atlanta suburbs. Just me and Ed and a fully stocked refrigerator. And a large television with Fox News, easily Ed's favourite channel. It seemed a shame we only had one more night here.

We'll Take the Next One

Day 4 in Winston Salem. Hangover number two. Time to get up and get to our bus to move on to Atlanta...nah, we'll just take the car. After all that was our drunk consensus last night. Now to sort out insurance, I have a year-old Massachusetts license and a spotless record that comes from a year of not driving. Insurance for one month going out of state however, is not easy to find.

My first conversation with an insurance agent over the phone was ok with fairly standard questions until I was asked about my university grade point average.

"Did you maintain an average of straight B's or better at college?"

"We didn't have A's and B's at my university."

"Did you maintain a gpa of 3.0 or higher?"

"We didn't use a gpa at my university."

"Did you maintain at least 80% throughout your time at college?" No-one gets 80% or higher as an average on my university course of English and Philosophy, if you wrote essays that scored 80% or higher you could probably publish them in an academic journal.

"Um...we didn't really have a percentage score at my university."

"Fine, what did you have?

"First, upper second, lower second, third. I got upper second the second highest score possible."

"OK...I'll put you down as all B's then."

"Excellent news." Good grades are somehow synonymous with good drivers, I suppose they feel the people failing their courses are more likely to get behind the wheel drunk or stoned.

But eventually she could not provide me with a useful insurance policy, neither could any insurance company we called in Massachusetts, or any online policy. We resolved to try again the next day.

Then to get some practice when we went out to see a film, I was told to drive the car for some experience. Slightly nervous because I knew that people selling cars tend to keep the petrol tank near empty but more so because I knew I was a fairly shaky driver. The car certainly took some getting used to, in that I didn't really get used to it. After witnessing my performance behind the wheel it was decided that the bus was probably the safer option.

Now we were a day behind schedule, not the end of the world but it did mean we would have to rush the Atlanta trip a little.