Donate Today!

As a direct result of the US election today, the "Bring Liam Home" fund has opened for donations. All monies raised will be spent on a cheap, no-frills, lose-your-luggage, rudely hostessed flight on a crippled US airline back to the UK. If you donate enough maybe I’ll be able to fly Courtney back too. But let’s bring me home before I get drafted.

Of course, once I’m out of the US, I’ll be a victim of its foreign policy again. Excuse me if I don’t blog for a while. I think I’m off to plan a violent revolution. Maybe I should think about using the "Bring Liam Home Fund" to buy explosives from Iraq.

Help.

A Taste of San Francisco

Gosh, I’m getting behind with this blogging malarkey. We must get an internet connection at home soon.

A couple of weeks ago Courtney’s parents took us to San Francisco. What a city! We got a couple of snaps, and this one seemed to give capture one of the many flavours of the place.

People, sealions, San Francisco, 25th September 2004.

Arf! Arf! Arf!

Road Trip: Epilogue

So what have I learnt from this 4000+ mile excursion across the USA? A multitude of things, to be sure, but one in particular keeps begging for attention, and now we’re settled I’ve had time to reflect on it properly.

Regional stereotypes in Europe and the UK are disproved by the people you meet often as they are reaffirmed. There’s the man from Edinburgh who can’t stand whisky and the Man Utd. fan who doesn’t live in Surrey. In America I’ve found this not to be the case; people conform to the stereotypes more often than not. While England is a small cameo piece, delicately and minutely detailed, America is painted in bold colours and broad strokes on a wide canvas.

I think much of this has to do with the way America communicates with itself. TV and film, especially, have formed as well as informed the public consciousness, and more than anywhere else. Hollywood has its ready stereotypes of each state: the elderly Kentucky gentlewoman, the crunchy Californian, the Texan Cowboys fan, and astonishingly, these people exist in real life as if formed by the silver screen. In many ways they have been. In America more than anywhere else I’ve been, the TV is a mirror. This is not to say American TV is realistic, because it’s not. American program making conforms to none of the conventions of documentary realism; it’s pure fantasy which seeps out of the tube and takes hold of American reality.

How is this possible? I think mostly because of the sheer distances involved. Outside the major cities there are large patches of isolation, and isolation breeds differences, in some cases huge differences. The TV negates some of this distance, brings a far larger circle of acquaintances into the living room than would normally come visiting. Imagine, for example, the culture clash that would occur between a Bostonian banker and a Texas farmhand.

In the UK we have a centuries old class system, antagonisms and alliances which define us as part of the same lump of people. Whether we love or hate another group we are inextricably bound to them. America does not have this socio-historical mesh; instead it has a powerful national myth. It’s there in the endlessly repeated fluttering stars and stripes, and it’s there in Hollywood movies and on TV. Its message is “We are all Americans.” So what if you’re a Boston office worker and wear $800 designer Italian shoes? So what if you’re a Texas rancher with a ten-gallon hat and work-roughened hands? So what if you can’t agree on politics, sports, or religion? There is always one thing you can agree on. You are an American, and so is he. The myth, the stars and stripes, and all that go with it are a mental cement to unite the people of these diverse and remote states.

If Europe were ever to unite to the same extent a huge amount of time and money would need to be expended in creating a unifying myth strong enough to convince Sicilian olive-growers, Dusseldorf brewers, London bankers, Cork farmers, Parisian chefs and Marbellan hotel managers that they are all citizens of the same country. It would need to be strong enough to conquer the smaller national myths and also to conquer a history of rivalry, squabbling, feuds and wars. Before I saw America I would have said it wasn’t possible to brew a myth that strong. Now I’m not so sure.

Road Trip: Day Fifteen

Day 15: Curry Village, Yosemite to Davis, CA.

We wake at 7am, having slept for twelve hours straight, and head up to Glacier point. The air is crisp and sweet at this height and the view is breathtaking. We’ve seen many of America’s natural wonders on this trip, from the Mammoth Caves to the Grand Canyon. We’ve seen small patches of intense prettiness and, more often, large swathes of imposing magnificence, but Yosemite has both.

Road Trip: Day Fourteen

Day 14: Somewhere on Route 178, CA to Yosemite National Park, CA

07.00am
The petrol station attendant arrives, we fill up, and off we go.

11.00am
Sleep deprived, I dozed most of the drive this morning. I don’t know how Courtney has managed to stay awake. Now it’s my turn to drive while she dozes. This is our penultimate day on the road. I wish we were enjoying it more.

Road Trip: Day Thirteen

Lake Havasu City, AZ to Red Rock Canyon, CA

11.15am
Lake Havasu is waiting for a population explosion. We entered the town last night on a fresh new four lane road studded with junctions to avenues that are yet to be built. In the distance the lake shimmered, oasis-like.

Lake Havasu City is famous for being the home of London Bridge. In 1973 the City of London, unable to stop it sinking, decided to replace the bridge and put it up for offers. A businessman, keen to promote Lake Havasu as a tourist destination thought he was getting Tower Bridge. He made a successful offer of $2,400,000 and spent a further $4,500,000 to transport and re-assemble it at its current location. In the intervening years a number of "English" style buildings have mushroomed up around the bridge, the lamentable inaccuracy of which is clear in the photos. Streets have been named in homage to England; Lake Havavsu sports a Windsor Beach, a Dover Road, and a Hyde Park (yet to be built, right next to a landfill).

Road Trip: Day Twelve

Grand Canyon Village, AZ to Lake Havasu, AZ

12.32pm
My sleep was interrupted twice last night by the deranged “yip yip-yip waaoohh!” cries of coyotes. Courtney woke me this morning with the question “Do you think that family ever got out of the canyon?”
“Nah,” I reply, “the turkey vultures are picking their bones clean as we speak.”

We can fit in another quick hike before our check-out time this morning, so we take one of the rim trails. Walks along the rim are the easiest and most touristy thing to do. Shuttle buses deposit their human cargo at the most scenic points; people amble to the guard rails, snap a few snaps and amble back to the next bus fifteen minutes later. We get off at Hopi point, five stops out, and walk back. We see a monument to the first man to map the canyon, an abandoned uranium mine and lots of startling views, which aren’t as satisfying as yesterday’s because we haven’t earnt them.

Road Trip: Day Eleven

Grand Canyon Village, AZ

We have the whole day at the canyon today so we sleep in a little later than normal. Most tourists restrain themselves to walking along the rim of the canyon, while some will dip into it using the popular Bright Angel trail. More experienced hikers use the more challenging routes. I decide we’ll take South Kaibab trail down into the canyon; it’s secluded but it won’t kill us.

Mule train, Grand Canyon, AZ, 10th September 2004.

Almost immediately we see a couple of mule trains. The first carries tourists, the second carries their baggage. This near the rim we’re sheltered by a curve in the canyon and walk mostly in shade. Three quarters of a mile and 600 feet down the trail is a bundle of huge rocks which are our first stop, “Ooh Aah Point”, doubtless named because you say “Ooh" when you see the view and “Aaargh” when you slip over the edge. From here we can only see the upper canyon, the river is shyly hiding in the inner canyon.

We get talking to a pair of hikers who we heard well before we saw them. They are heading down to Skeleton Point, three miles along and 2040 feet down. Do we think we’ll go that far? Maybe. It depends how we feel at the next stop. Most of the folk on this trail are friendly, almost everyone says “Hi” as you pass. Sometimes they tell us how far down they’ve been and we tell them where we’re going. There’s a kinship between those who walk the trail out here.

Road Trip: Day Nine

Santa Rosa Lake State Park, NM to Holbrook, AZ

06.15am

Sunrise over Santa Rosa Lake, NM, 8th September 2004.

Courtney wakes up early, desperate for the bathroom. She returns to the tent urging me to get up. The sun is about to rise over Santa Rosa lake. New Mexico bills itself as the “State of Enchantment” and I’m starting to see why.

Road Trip: Day Eight

Day Eight, Palo Duro Canyon, TX to Santa Rosa Lake State Park, NM

08.00am
Courtney finds a gobble of eleven wild turkeys outside the bathrooms. They’re pecking about in the half-light because although the sun has risen, we’re sheltered from it by the sandstone walls around us.

As I shower in the bug-ridden bathrooms I notice a large shadow on the shower curtain. I decide to ignore it for the moment. Later, dried off and with contact lenses in, curiosity gets the better of me. I go back to the shower curtain and draw it back to reveal a large locust, five inches from tip to tail.

08.15am
The sun rises over the rim of the canyon. Apart from the wild turkey, everything is asleep: the deer, the woodpeckers and roadrunners, even the flies are slumbering.

08.50am
Courtney and I set out on a hike through the canyon. The guidebook tells us that Palo Duro means hard wood, so the canyon was named after the mesquite trees that grow within it. It’s a week day, so we have the park entirely to ourselves for a couple of hours. The only noise is the sound of our feet on the dusty canyon floor.

Road Trip: Day Seven

Day Seven, Dallas, TX to Palo Duro Canyon, TX

10.00am
Dee’s place – her Dad’s place really – is addictively calm and quiet, but it’s time to get back on the road. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us, possibly the longest of the trip, and very little reason to stop until we get to tonight’s camp site.

Almost as soon as we’re out to the west of Dallas the scenery changes again. It’s even drier, but not quite arid, and the ground lies flat. It’s so sparsely populated that the air is clear, and we can see almost thirty miles in every direction. I’ve never seen a place like this before.

Road Trip: Day Six

Day Six, Dallas, TX

Dee takes us on the commuter light railway to downtown Dallas. Like many American cities, downtown is a collection of tall office buildings and little else. We’re headed for the sixth floor of the book depository on Dealey Plaza.

We pay our admission, $10 each, and take the elevator up. We spend the next two hours peering out onto Elm street and reading the history of JFK’s assassination. The museum is good, but there’s one big omission. Despite selected stills, the famous Zapruder 8mm movie of the assassination isn’t present. According to the late comedian, Bill Hicks, the Zapruder footage shows Kennedy’s head snapping back and to the left at the moment of impact. If he was shot from the book depository window his head would have fallen forward.

Ignoring the grizzly mechanics of who shot him and from where, it’s indisputable that he was shot, and fairly well accepted that he died as a result. What has never been discovered is why he was killed. The museum offers up all sorts of theories: the right wing, the mafia, pro-Castro factions, anti-Castro factions, but all of them have been disproved. Lee Harvey Oswald was not mad. The man who shot Reagan did it, Dee tells me, to impress Jodie Foster. There was no woman who Oswald desired to impress by killing the president.

The museum strives to provide so much information that the lack of resolution to the story is disguised – or to saturate the visitor so that she no longer cares. But getting your money’s worth isn’t quite the same feeling as knowing the truth.

Road Trip: Day Five

Day Five: Hot Springs, AK to Dallas, TX

09.30am
We leave the Comfort Inn, which we chose because it has wireless networking in the lobby, to find out exactly what it is about Hot Springs that brings people here. Last night all we saw of town was five miles of strip mall: buzzing neon, rattling air conditioners and four lanes of traffic. Chain hotels, chain restaurants, chain stores and lots of pawn shops, including the intriguingly named Boll Weevil Pawn.

By day Hot Springs hasn’t changed. If anything, it looks worse. What were blank gaps in the neon last night are empty shops and abandoned cinemas this morning. Apparently once we’ve picked our way through this detritus there will be a national park maintained by the government.

Road Trip: Day Four

Nashville, TN to Hot Springs, AR

Nashville is known locally for two things. Firstly, the publishing and printing of bibles and theological books. Secondly, its substantial number of "Gentleman’s Clubs." Straddling this contradiction between the pulpit and the pole dance is the phenomenon which has made Nashville world famous, country music. From just a brief walk on the sultry streets it’s easy to see how feverish passions, both devotional and lustful can quickly take hold. Nashville air is humid, even at the beginning of autumn.

Cat and Adam, recently-weds originally from Courtney’s home town in New York, have made Nashville their home. Cat did her MA at Vanderbilt, one of the five universities in town, and became a school counsellor. Adam teaches Maths. Seeing their charming, eclectically furnished home makes Courtney and I excited about the apartment which is waiting for us in Davis.

Last night we arrived late, due to traffic jams in the interstate. “The trouble with Nashville,” says Adam on the way to the "Weird Al" Yankovic concert, “is that no-one here knows how to drive.” People start waving at us and flashing their lights. Cat says “Isn’t this a one-way street?” and Adam pulls a u-turn.

Road Trip: Day Three

Cave City, KY to Nashville, TN

10.45am
After breakfast, ablutions, striking camp, that sort of thing, we went underground for a tour of the Mammoth Caves. As far as anyone knows, there have never been mammoth in or near the caves. Originally called Flat Caves after the original owner, they gained their current monicker when a visiting New Yorker forgot their name, and described them to a friend as “Mammoth holes in the ground,” which of course they are.

Road Trip: Day Two

Cleveland OH to Cave City, KY

10.34am
We survived the night at Delaware Lake state park, despite Courtney’s fears. While checking in, a slow-talking local sparked up a conversation with us. Pat had scraggly long hair, a paunch, manbreasts and a pitted yet slightly effeminate face. Courtney was eager to get away from his unwarranted attention.

As we were setting up camp in the empty campground, Pat drove his enormous truck and caravan past and parked up a couple of sites away. Courtney looked worried, but we carried on as if nothing was up. A couple of minutes later she said, “Don’t stare, but he’s coming over.”

Pat ambled up to us, smoking a cigarette and carrying photos. “D’ya wanna see ma office?” He enquired, offering me the photos. “That’s ma office,” He said, pointing to the top photo, which as far as I could tell was a snap of two portable toilets in a forest. “See, ma office is portapotties!” he snorted.

Road Trip: Day One

Geneseo, NY to Delaware, OH

The car is packed, campgrounds have been reserved, our route is set. Today Courtney and I set off on our epic cross-country drive from Geneseo, NY to Davis, CA.

Lots of people say they want to drive across America, but many never do. We’ve said it ourselves several times, but now we really are doing it because later in September Courtney is starting her PhD in English Literature at the University of California, Davis. If we’re going to move all that way, we thought, we should see a slice of the country.

When Courtney first mentioned the idea I agreed, but with one condition: I wanted us to average four to four-and-a-half hours per day on the road. For an American a drive of such duration is trivial, but I’m not American. I come from an island so small that in certain places four hours is ample time for a journey from the east coast to the west. Split into Englishman-friendly chunks, our road trip will take just under two weeks to complete.

In his book, Roads, Larry McMurtry writes that rivers used to be the arteries of America. Now the big roads, the interstates, pump its lifeblood of commerce and migration. Life on the roads, like life on the great rivers of less industrialised countries, is very different to life a few miles away from them.

… villagers living only a mile or two from the Ganges know almost nothing about it, while the river men are similarly ignorant of conditions even a little distance up the shore. River and village, roadway and forest are two realities that seldom merge, however close they may lie to each other geographically.

For the next two weeks, Courtney and I will be as McMurtry’s river men, caught in the flow of petrol and the spinning of the wheels. Our focus will be on what lies to the sides of the road, its tributaries and diversions, but nevertheless we will be travellers, strangers, a degree removed from the settled communities we pass through.

Courtney’s Words of Wisdom

Courtney's fridge poem, August 23rd 2004.

In vino veritas? In Courtney’s case, I hope not. This is one of the many results (the others being four full stomachs and an atmosphere of bonhomie) of our friend Amy’s drunken dinner party last week.

My green card interview happens later today in Buffalo. Tomorrow the road trip begins.

Update: The Green Card interview, even though they kept us waiting three quarters of an hour, was a breeze. The officer “slam dunked” us through (his words, not mine). I am now a permanent resident of the USA, just like Kelvin.

Lapse in Service

Courtney’s laptop died just before we went to the UK. We’re back, but the computer hasn’t been resurrected. I’ll be blogging again in full force (and some style) when our lovely new Mac iBook arrives in a couple of days!

Caption Competition #1

The other night Courtney and I were photographing her cat, Skunk, in the hope of capturing an image worthy of mycathatesyou.com. We think we’ve achieved it. All we need now is a caption.

Courtney's cat, Skunk, July 25th 2004.

Use the comments system to leave your caption. I’ll give you… um… until we return to the US. That’s two weeks. Get captioning!