Philadelphia
0919hrs
We got back to Philadelphia at about 9 p.m., and from the train station we had two hours to get back to the youth hostel before it closed its doors for the night. What, you might well ask, could possibly go wrong?
First of all we had to get a few tickets for trains we'll be travelling on today, which I'll come back to shortly. Getting these organised took a little while, and it must have been at least nine thirty when we left the station. The plan was to take the metro to the bus stop, and a bus back to Chamounix Mansion. But first we had to find the metro station, which took some doing itself. There a nice man told us that if you have a ticket stub from your Amtrak journey you can travel on the metro for free. As it was no one asked to see our tickets, so we could have anyway, but there you are.
Even leaving the subway took a while, but we finally located an exit and emerged into the street.
Finding a bus stop was our next assignment, and our least successful. We found a couple on the wrong side of the street, we found a bus shelter with no bus stop - what we didn't find was a number 38 bus.
But now it was half past ten, and obvious that we weren't going to get a bus back by eleven. It was therefore a choice between catching a cab or sleeping on the street. Colin phoned for a cab.
You remember the last taxi we went in? The one I said was good? The driver had given us his card, so we rang him. Unfortunately Colin's phone card ran out mid-conversation, so that was the end of that.
No problem, we thought, we'll just hop in the next cab to come along, and with the single bit of luck we had all night, one came by right then, and we hopped in.
"To the youth hostel!" we shouted, and the driver sped off. Well, there was a bit more to it than that.
"The what?" he said. We told him the address. He frowned. He asked a passing colleague for directions, and was given them. He frowned. We gave him a map with explicit instructions of how to get to the youth hostel. He frowned.
"Okay, I can do that," he said at length, and off we went.
It was rather startling to watch the speed at which the price went up. When we'd taken the same journey before, it had been $9. But that had been a set fare from the station, and we were expecting this one to be a little more.
But only a little, and when the price reached the teens and showed no signs of settling down soon, it got more than a little worrying, and we both sat transfixed to the taximeter, watching our fortunes drip away.
When we finally arrived at the youth hostel it was up to $17.70.
"What is this place anyway?" asked the driver. We said that it was a youth hostel.
"A what?" said the driver, and we proceeded to explain what a youth hostel is.
I don't know quite how it happened, since the car didn't, I'm sure, move at all, but by the end of the conversation the fee had gone up another thirty cents. $18, twice what we'd paid the last time.
We're currently on a train to Harrisburg, where we'll be meeting another one of Colin's friends (we really will be meeting this one. It's all arranged). After that, we go tonight to Detroit. It's a long journey, and we'll be sleeping on the train, except it's more than one train and we have to change in the middle of the night. I'm not looking forward to that much.
Same day
Leaving Harrisburg
1717hrs
I thought that Harrisburg was just a minor little town that no one had heard of, but apparently it's the capital of Pennsylvania. You wouldn't know it from looking at it, though.
We met Colin's friend, and a friend of hers, who were supposed to be at university but were having a 'personal day', at the train station. We went back to the friend of Colin's friend's house, where we were joined by a friend of hers, whose relationship to me, if I've kept count correctly, is a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend, a category which would basically include anyone in the world.
We then all went to Hershey's Chocolate Town, where my friends twice and three times removed work, driving the trams to and from the car park. Hershey's seems to be really famous in America, I think it's their equivalent of Cadbury, although they do have some Cadbury things too. Apparently Hershey's makes the chocolate that goes in M&M's, and from the free samples I've had (a mini Hershey's bar and some Kisses) it tastes about like that, which is to say, cheap. Basically, it tastes synthetic. I know that all chocolate's synthetic, but it doesn't all taste like it.
What are Kisses? you ask. Imagine chocolate, in its liquid form, coming out a tube and landing on a table. It would come out as a slightly flattened sphere with a point on the top, right? Now imagine a chocolate company that put no effort whatsoever into presentation, and just took blobs of chocolate as they came out the pipe and wrapped them in thin foil. This is a Kiss, and apparently a nationally recognized chocolate product.
So much so that a drawing of a Kiss with arms, legs and eyes is synonymous with Hershey's chocolate, and comes awfully close to being their trademark. A couple of days ago we saw a man in a ridiculous foil costume taking part in the Super Sunday parade in Philadelphia, and took it to be a badly made raindrop suit, the sort of thing a busy parent would make for their child to wear in an assembly on the seasons, in which the child in question is supposed to represent the British summertime. We now know, as all of America knew before us, that he was a Kiss.
At Hershey's Chocolate Town, we went on a ride, called 'The Ride'. In this, the visitors sit in carts, which trundle round various displays illustrating the production process of Hershey's chocolate, with models of the Kiss character (sometimes animated, no less) taking part. Meanwhile a disembodied voice tells you all about Hershey's chocolate. It wasn't quite as informative as the FBI tour, but on the other hand, the FBI tour didn't have little models of Mulder and Scully interacting with the displays.
We had some lunch in the Hershey's cafe. I had a Caesar salad, my first, which was nice, but hardly a uniquely American experience, although it did have enormous croutons. Apparently croutons are always enormous over here.
We went to a mall and a plaza. A mall is just a normal shopping centre, whereas a plaza - concentrate here, because the distinction is subtle - is a collection of shops without corridors linking them, so you have to go outside to get from one shop to another. It's basically a mall without a roof.
There wasn't much else in Harrisburg, but Hershey's Chocolate Town is by no means nothing special. It used, I think, to be where all Hershey's chocolate was made, but now some of it's done in other countries, where more relaxed laws mean they can exploit their employees to the full and so, in the true spirit of the American Dream, make more money at the expense of others.
Same day
Somewhere between Lewistown and Huntingdon
1846hrs
We've been to enough places now that I am in a position to correlate the facts and detect a pattern. You remember what I said about New York being a big grid? It seems it's not alone. This is also the case everywhere else we've been and, presumably, everywhere in America. They all have streets where the names are numbers, like 3rd Street or 42nd Street, but they never, ever, have a 1st Street. It always starts with 2nd Street and goes on from there.
I think I'm coming down with something. Just a cold I hope, but it feels a bit buggy. Anyway, I've finally bought some real orange juice, so I'll drink a lot of that, and hopefully it will flush any foreign bodies from my system.
When you're ill, of course, the important thing is lots of sleep, which is unfortunate under the circumstances. The train we're on now gets to Pittsburgh at 20 to eleven, where we catch a train to Toledo at twenty past. From then we just have to change one more time before Detroit, our destination. Unfortunately, that's at half past four in the morning.
The weather's not up to much. It's a bit cloudy and grey, and I wouldn't put it past it to rain. It almost looks like England.
Same day
Somewhere between Greensburg and Pittsburgh
2149hrs
Fifty minutes to Pittsburgh. It's quite exciting, this sleeping on a train, a bit like going camping. Not that I've ever been camping, but I imagine it's a bit like sleeping on a train.
I was quite tired earlier, but I'm not so much now. I hope I don't have too much trouble getting to sleep. They're good, these night trains, you get way more legroom than normal. We did ask how much a bedroom cost, but it was $256, which seemed a bit much. We'll be fine in seats, anyway.
All the lights are out in here, and most people are asleep. It's very atmospheric. My cold hasn't developed into anything worse, in fact I feel a bit better now, but my nose is all blocked up. But I suppose that will just reduce my intake of oxygen, so it will, if anything, help, not hinder, my attempts to sleep.
