New York
0940hrs
We've been to Central Park again this morning and come back, and our two roommates are both still asleep.
Carlos, the raving madman, is restless, but quiet. He often snores, and it sounds like a person sucking jelly up their nose. I've still never seen the other guy awake. If he wasn't sometimes not here, I'd assume he was dead.
Anyway, Central Park. It's just a big park, really. I'd expected to see people doing speeches warning of the rise of communism, like in Hyde Park, or jugglers and sword swallowers, as in the Vondelpark in Amsterdam. But, no. It's just a big park. Even so, it seems out of place, a sprawling reserve of trees and lakes in the heart of a city so obviously designed rather than evolved. New York is incredibly logical, you can work out where you are and in which direction you're heading by the street numbers alone. It's really a huge grid, more like a circuit board than a city.
As a matter of fact, my comment about the park more or less applies to New York as a whole. It's just a big city. Apart from the occasional world-famous landmark, and the layout that makes it seem to have been designed by a man who couldn't find a pencil so he did it on an Etch-a-Sketch, it's just a community of people going about their business like anywhere else on earth. When a place is so famous as being, more or less, the centre of the world, it's easy to forget that to its residents it's home, and they're not going to let the fact that they live in the shadows of some of the most well-known buildings on the planet make one jot of a difference to the way they live their lives.
Same day
Somewhere in Hudson
1401hrs
So much for New York. Actually we'll be passing through again on the way to Philadelphia, but we've left it behind for now. We're on the train to Niagara Falls, it takes eight and three quarter hours, or thereabouts, so there's a lot of time to kill, which is why I'm writing this even thought I have very little new to say.
We're going past a huge river, and have been for most of the journey, which is two and a half hours so far. I think it's the Hudson.
I never did see that guy awake.
Colin's been having a nap, but he's woken up now. I'm quite tired too, still suffering as I am the effects of jet lag. Actually, it's technically not jet lag. That term implies that your body clock is lagging behind local time, but that only works if you're going east. Ours are, in contrast, leaping ahead. I'm jet-leaped.
I think I'll read for a bit, and maybe write a postcard or two.
Same day
Somewhere between Syracuse and Rochester
1809hrs
Well, the train's still trundling along. There's not much to do, it doesn't have in-flight telly like the plane, so this is probably as good a time as any to mention how we came to be doing all this in the first place.
Originally, if I remember rightly, Colin suggested we went to France for a bit in the holiday. It would be something to do, of course, and not too expensive, and many people would have agreed readily. Many people, but not I.
It goes back, like all good psychological disorders, to my childhood. I never liked French. In fact, I will go further. I despised the subject. My personal Hell would be an eternity learning about irregular verbs. I once calculated the percentage of my life that I've spent in French lessons, and the result justified my deep mental scars. It wouldn't be so bad if I'd got anything out of it, but even today I can't say much more in the language than 'I eat a small banana', and I couldn't tell you what a past participle is if my life depended on it (which is an unlikely, but not entirely inconceivable scenario).
As a result of all this, I have over the years developed a healthy xenophobia for France and all things French, and it was for this reason that I turned down Colin's suggestion so firmly. "I wouldn't go to France if you paid me," I said (which, I gather, had not been his intention). "But I'll tell you where I would like to go..."
A few months earlier I'd watched a programme on TV. I'd seen others in the meantime, you understand, but none of them were germane to the issue. This one (the germane one) was called Seven Wonders of the World. Each week they had some scientific type come on and describe what he would consider the seven W's of the W. This one week, the scientific type chose (among other things) the Grand Canyon. It's a huge hole in the ground, he said, and of course I knew that much already, but had never felt the urge to drop what I was doing and go for a look-see. What really sold it to me was what he said next.
Apparently, as you make your way down towards the bottom, you can see quite clearly fossils in the rock. And the further down you go, the simpler they get. You can see, in other words, life evolving in rewind before your eyes. And when you get down so far, they just stop. You've gone past the beginning of life itself.
This idea struck me as incredible, and I thought to myself, that is one thing I have got to see. And that is why, having rejected the idea of popping over to Paris, I suggested the Grand Canyon instead. "But that's in America," said Colin, and from there it was just a short step, and a total incomprehension of how much it would cost, to a plan which hasn't changed much since, namely to take trains across America and see the lot, the canyon included.
Of course, that being on the west and us having started on the east, we won't be seeing that until towards the end of our time here. But in the meantime there's plenty else to see, not least the Niagara Falls, at which we'll be arriving in a couple of hours.
Same day
Niagara Falls
2212hrs
The train was three quarters of an hour behind, and then it started going backwards, but we got here in the end. The whole town's called Niagara Falls, rather than plain Niagara, even though most of it doesn't really do any falling at all. Of course, technically we're still in New York, but that's New York State - whenever I've talked about New York before I meant New York City. Which we have now left.
This youth hostel's less professional than the one there. That was clearly designed as such and run as a business; this is more a case of, now the kids have left we've got a couple of spare rooms, and since Ted was made redundant we've had a lot of free time - why not open a youth hostel? Every morning you have to go and ask for your daily chore, which sounds a bit ominous. I have visions of being forced to dust the house from top to bottom, but with luck we'll just have to wash a spoon or something.
Another thing about this place is that you have to pay extra for the duvet cover. I wouldn't mind, but it is a completely different shape to the duvet. Luckily it looks set to be a warm night.
When I signed in, the woman at the desk claimed to have been to my home village, Houghton-on-the-Hill, which I find very hard to believe. No one's been to Houghton. I think she was lying.
I've already finished the first of the four books I bought. They'll never last me three and a half weeks, I may be forced to buy some more.
Touching once more on the subject of where we are. As I said, we're now in Niagara Falls, which isn't, as the name suggests, a waterfall, but a town, although it does have a waterfall in it. This town is in New York (the state), although we've left New York (the city). What I didn't mention is that in fact only half of the Niagara Falls (the waterfall) and the Niagara River (the river) are in Niagara Falls (the town). The other halves of them are in Ontario (the state) in Canada (the country), which we may very well be visiting tomorrow, temporarily leaving America altogether.
Bedtime now, I think.
