Walnut, LA County
1432hrs (Pacific Daylight Time)
Continuing where I left off, my prayers were answered when just further up the track I found a little hut with a drinking fountain. I drank about eight pints from it, refilled my bottles, and carried on.
The final one and a half miles seemed to take forever. We had to catch a coach at five, and at one point it had looked doubtful that we would make it. By now it was fairly certain that we'd have reached the top by then, but even so we must have spent about as long resting as walking.
Eventually, miraculously, we made it to the top. By now it was 4:30, nine hours after we'd set out.
Remember how I wanted to see fossils? How I was hoping to see live evolving backwards before my eyes? How that was originally the whole reason I came to America?
I saw one lousy fossil. And that was only some little shell, like you see all over the place. I could have probably found the same thing in my back garden.
We caught the coach back to Flagstaff, waited two hours for the train to LA and got on it. When we reached the top of the canyon, Colin wasn't feeling too good, no doubt as a result of having walked so far and drunk so much and eaten so little. On the coach to Flagstaff he was sick several times, and several more at the train station, and several more on the train. He didn't look good at all by this point, and certainly wasn't in the best condition to sleep on the move.
By this morning, though, when we arrived at LA, he was feeling better. But we were both aching all over and pretty tired, and vowed to do as little today as possible.
We were picked up from the train station by my cousin Darin, who I haven't seen since the last time I came to America, when I was four. He's a lot bigger now.
He brought us back to my aunt's house, our base for the rest of the holiday. It's pretty big, and the only thing I've seen so far that rings any bells is a table round which Darin chased me all those years ago. He must have been about nine, and was enormous, and I was terrified.
Darin's gone to work now, and his sister Keri's husband Peter, who works nights, has woken up, so we're not completely alone. We also have Socrates the dog and Cyclops the one-eyed cat to keep us company (though I don't know where Cyclops has gone), as well as a very big television, which we've been watching for most of the morning, and I for one intend to continue to do so for most of the rest of the day.
Same day
Walnut
2155hrs
Tonight we all went out for pizza - Pauline, my aunt, my uncle Ron, Peter, Keri, Colin and I. Darin stayed at home. I had a Coke, and when I'd got to the bottom found a fly cryogenically frozen in one of the ice cubes. By this point it was half melted, and when I removed the ice cube to examine it further, the fly fell out onto the table.
Presuming this to be a quaint American custom, much like putting pennies in the Christmas pud, I didn't think any more of it. Shortly thereafter, glancing at the corpse, I noticed that it was licking the table.
It wasn't very long before it was walking around and flying onto the salt shaker. I assume that it had contracted an incurable disease, and been frozen until fly scientists discover a cure.
My body still aches all over, but is recovering. Tomorrow, if we're up to it, we're off to Hollywood.
