Tuesday 2nd September 1997

New York

0037hrs (Eastern Time) [Technically Wednesday]

Well, here we are at last. Most of today was spent on the plane, reading and watching TV (every seat has a tiny telly in the back, which is very twenty-first century). We then got in a cab which brought us to the youth hostel - New York by night by car did at first seem much the same as any other city in the world under those conditions, but towards the end of the journey the mammoth skylines and flashing neon hinted at what's to come.

The youth hostel seems all right. As soon as we entered it a fellow traveller recognized Colin from university, crushing immediately any ideas we might have been forming that we're doing anything remotely original or intrepid. The bathroom facilities exist, but not much more can be said of them, and I must confess, as I sit rather uncomfortably up in bed, blanketed only by little more than an oversized tea towel, to a yearning for home comforts, and a small part of me is asking whether this was all such a good idea. But according to my body clock it is a quarter to six a.m., and that part of me is very tired, and I look forward to the morning when I expect it to be fully invigorated, and anticipating the next three and a half weeks with a new enthusiasm.

They have weird toilets here.

Wednesday 3rd

New York

1721hrs

Our room has two bunk beds, or four, depending on how you look at it. I'm above Colin, and next to me on top of the other bed is the first of our two roommates. Whenever I've been here he's been either asleep or absent, so there's not much to say about him, but he doesn't snore when he is here, and he leaves things tidy when he's not, so that's fine.

The guy below him is a raving madman. He turned in last night at about four a.m., but of course he didn't go straight to sleep. He sat in bed with the light on for at least fifteen minutes, rabbitting on moronically to his own bunk-mate and Colin (myself avoiding inclusion in the conversation by pretending to be asleep still, though it must have been very hard to believe). Apparently he's convinced that Prince Charles had Diana assassinated, and his views on other subjects are similarly well informed. He's staying at a youth hostel because his girlfriend threw him out of the house, and if it weren't for the fact that she dated him in the first place I would have the deepest respect for this woman's intelligence.

Colin reckons we went out this morning at about half eight, which sounds right. We took the metro to the coast, where we went for a ride on the Staten Island Ferry, this being the best way of seeing the Statue of Liberty short of the boats going out for that express purpose, which were infinitely more expensive, the Staten Island Ferry being, for some reason, free.

There's not much to see on Staten Island, so we took the next ferry back.

In order to go across the country on Amtrak trains, as is the plan, we require a national rail pass, and the next thing we did was go to get them. Colin had been led to understand that you could get these from the World Trade Centre, so this was our next stop.

What the original purpose of this building was, I failed to ascertain. It's a bit like a shopping centre (sorry, mall) and a bit like a hotel, and a bit like all kinds of other things. We couldn't find anything to do with Amtrak, so we went in a shop selling perfume and asked. The woman there didn't think you could buy Amtrak tickets in the building - she went on Amtrak all the time, she said. If you could get tickets there she wouldn't have to keep going to their HQ. We could try down that way, she said.

We tried down that way, and sure enough there was the Amtrak desk. We got our passes and booked on a train to Niagara Falls tomorrow, and trains from there to Philadelphia on Saturday. Are you British? she asked us. We replied in the affirmative. Would you have gone to Diana's funeral if you were in the country? Did you like her? The natural answer to that one was that I didn't know her, but I took that to be fairly obvious, so just mumbled something about being able to take her or, on the other hand, leave her. Then we went to tell the first woman (the one that sold perfume) that she didn't have to go to the Amtrak headquarters any more. As it happened she wasn't selling perfume at that time, being as she was on her lunch break in the cafe next door. So round we popped with the good news, and got chatting. Like everyone else we've met (including the raving madman), she seemed genuinely interested in our travel plans. It seems odd that in a country where half the residents would shoot you as soon as look at you, the other half treat you like an old friend on sight. Neither of these extremes exists to the same extent in Britain. Possibly the larger the percentage of a population that stabs passers-by on a regular basis, the friendlier everyone else, in order to maintain something resembling civilisation, or, to look at it another way, possibly not.

But back to the perfume woman. Were you upset about Princess Di? she asked.

The fact is, I'm not, particularly. But you can hardly just say, No, not really. So I just gabbled for a bit about, well, no, I mean yes, it was terrible, of course, but I mean, no, well, I think a lot of people were very, weren't they, yes, anyway, must be off, bye.

We went to the Empire State Building next. Big place that. We didn't think you could just go to the top on your own initiative, as it were, and we hadn't planned to bother if you had to pay, but there didn't seem anything to stop us going up for free, so we thought we'd have a go.

Six lifts took us to floor 79, but it wouldn't let us go any higher from there, so we took a seventh lift down a couple of floors, and got on lift number eight to see if we could reach floor 80 from there. But someone else got in with us, pressed another button, and the next thing we knew we were back on the ground floor.

Our plan foiled, we asked a man, and were told we had to buy a ticket. By now we wanted to go up, so we bought a ticket, and were taken higher than floor 80, but still not quite to the top. You had to queue for that, and the view couldn't have been that much better.

Things are never like they are on the telly. Usually it's because the TV people take dramatic license, but one thing about New York they couldn't possibly depict on Friends is the smell. It's very distinctive. Whenever I stick my head in a tip behind a butcher's shop that's been closed down for selling bad meat, I'll remember this place.

Another thing that's different to on TV is the people. Some of them are ugly. All tourists, no doubt.

I went to buy a salad from the cafe here at the youth hostel at around five, and the man said, not until the barbecue at six. How you barbecue salad I don't know, but it's twenty past now (good lord, I've been writing for an hour), so I might wander down and take a look.

We're going to Central Park this evening.

Same day

New York

2050hrs

By the time we got to Central Park, it was getting dark, so we didn't go far into it, we just sat on a bench and had some tea, which we'd bought on the way from a grocery shop. We went in a couple, they're very odd. We had to leave the bag of stuff we bought in the first shop with some kind of doorman in the second shop and pick it up at the end, and you have to pay a bottle deposit on anything in bottles. Our bags were packed by some kid, who we were probably supposed to tip, but we didn't. They both fell far short of the standards of Tesco or Sainsbury, but they were only little shops so it's probably not a fair comparison. Even so, they were more like something I'd expect to find in some impoverished Eastern country than the home of the brave and the land of the free, unless that should be the other way around.

The raving madman's just come in. He seems very quiet so far, but I have confidence that he'll soon be reminding us why this is the city that doesn't sleep.

That's all for now. Tomorrow, Niagara Falls.

Thursday 4th

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.

Friday 5th

Niagara Falls

1838hrs

I've finally got this place worked out.

Firstly, the Niagara Falls isn't just one waterfall. There are three of them, two in America and one in Canada. Secondly, the town Niagara Falls encompasses them all, being half in America and half in Canada, which is weird. So far today we've explored the American side - we're going to Canada this evening.

The town itself comes across as a very close-knit community, untouched by the advances of the last thirty years. You get the impression that about eleven people live here, and none of them lock their doors at night. They don't even have bin men, they just have metal trashcans, and burn the rubbish when they fill up. Actually that might not be true, we just guessed, but it should be.

Some guy came up and asked me to give him some money. I didn't hear at first and had to ask him to repeat it twice, by which time we were practically old friends and I couldn't really refuse. I gave him seventy-five cents. "Thanks, man, but what can you buy for seventy five cents? Can't you make it a dollar?" Happy to oblige, I made it a dollar.

"That's great, man, but what I really need is three dollars. Can't you make it three dollars?"

I told him to settle for the dollar. Cruel, perhaps, but I think for the best.

My first impression of the falls, I must admit, is that they were a bit on the small side. Huge as waterfalls go, true, and if I'd happened to stumble across something similar while rambling in the countryside it would have taken my breath away, certainly, but even so I'd expected them to be about four times the height, and I couldn't overcome a vague feeling of disappointment. But size isn't, of course, everything, and it wasn't long before my disillusionment was replaced by awe for their magnificence.

We saw the falls from countless perspectives, all along the banks, up the observation tower, on a walking tour past the bottom where we were forced to wear ridiculous yellow plastic sheets and makeshift shoes, and got very wet, and on the Maid of the Mist boat cruise where we got even wetter. This went right past the bottom of the falls, and at its closest was much like being in a monsoon. The mist in the air and the water pouring down my face (as well as those of everyone else on board) did nothing to help visibility, and taking photos to record the occasion for posterity was a real battle against the elements. By the end I, my clothes, and my camera, were totally drenched. That was fun.

We never did have to do a chore.

Same day

Niagara Falls

1946hrs

As well as the waterfalls themselves, there's a lot of natural beauty round here. There are a few islands, Goat Island (which doesn't seem to have any goats on), and the Three Sisters Islands (which don't seem to have any sisters on). They've all got loads of trees to explore and rocks to scramble across, and the weather's been ideal. Warm, but not too hot, with a gentle breeze to dry you off when you've been too close to the waterfalls.

It is, I think, a well known fact that squirrels only come in brown and grey (and occasionally red), but obviously no one told that to the squirrels, because they're black round here. Not all of 'em, but a lot of 'em.

Saturday 6th

Niagara Falls

0839hrs

Here we are on the train, which will take us back to New York City, where we catch another one to Philadelphia. All in all, that's a long time on trains.

Going to Canada was remarkably easy. We got to customs on this side, where there were rows of cars driving past booths and across the border. We asked a customs official what to do, and after recognising our accents and praising our fine beer, he told us that the pedestrian entrance to Canada was round the other side of that brick building over there.

His word proved reliable, and we went through the turnstile expecting to be strip-searched, or, at the very least, made to walk through a metal doorway with a flashing light on it.

In fact we found ourselves on a long path, and we just walked down it and into Canada. And that was it.

True, there was a customs of a sort at the other end of the path, but by that point we had for some time been separated from the Canadian street by but a short wall, the stepping over of which would have been an easy matter indeed. We didn't want to smuggle any drugs, bombs or rabid dogs into the country, of course, but if we had, it wouldn't have been difficult.

Customs consisted of a man at a desk asking to see our passports.

"Have you been to Canada within the last six months?"

"No."

"How long will you be in Canada for?"

"Oo, about twenty minutes."

As it happened, we were there for over an hour. I could probably be done for entering the country under false pretences.

The only other thing we had to do was put a quarter in a slot, and once again on the way back. A two-way trip to Canada, then, cost us fifty cents each, compared to £350 to America. But by my calculation that's about a tenner a day either way, so which was the better value for money all swings on which is the nicest country.

Naturally, having only experienced her hospitality for a little over sixty minutes, I can't speak about Canada - or, more specifically, Ontario - with much authority, but my first impressions of the place are favourable. There are rows of neatly trimmed trees and painstakingly planned flowerbeds all over the place, and not a piece of litter to be seen. It's just generally very neat, and the impression you get is that Canada has a very strict mum.

We didn't see any Mounties, but that can't be helped.

You supposedly get a better view of the falls from that side, but we didn't, although we didn't go as close to them as we did in America. Neither do they look particularly spectacular lit up; there's just a bloke in the house over the road shining flashlights at them in all different colours, as if they're boring in white, which is a bit like drawing humorous moustaches on the faces in Mount Rushmore to add a bit of interest.

My second in command set out last night with a blister on his left foot, and promptly fell down a pothole injuring the right one as well. However he's making good recovery, and morale is high, as are food supplies. Conditions are favourable, it being another lovely day with not a cloud in the sky (except all those ones up there, but they're lovely and fluffy and don't really count).

Same day

Approaching Syracuse

1135hrs

The Stars and Stripes are everywhere in this country. Almost every house has the nation's flag protruding from it somewhere, which is presumably patriotism but almost seems like just the reverse - it's as if they consider their country so unmemorable, they'd better keep reminding you where you are.

See, there's another one. Look, out the window, on that building there. No, you missed it.

Another funny thing about the houses here is that most of them are made of wood. Possibly the parable of the three little pigs has yet to reach these shores, but you'd have thought that in a place where earthquakes rip the town in half as a matter of course, these things would be built to last.

I like long train journeys. You get to sit there, watching the world go by, reading for hours and thinking lovely thoughts. Me, I'd be quite happy to spend the whole holiday on a train.

Same day

Somewhere between Newark and Philadelphia

1811hrs

The train arrived in New York on time, and we've changed without incident to the one to Philadelphia. I've finished reading another book. I refuse to start another one this journey, I must try to make them last. I'd write a postcard, but I'm not sure where I put them and I don't want to go rummaging around in my bag.

All of which means I don't have a lot to do. "But you said you like just sitting on trains and admiring the view," I hear you cry, detecting the flaw in my reasoning. Nor do I deny making any such statement. That was, however, almost seven hours ago, and if anything productive has been accomplished today (and very little has), it is the proof by experimentation that you can indeed have too much of a good thing.

Long train journeys, as a rule, if the voice of television is anything to go by, are enlivened by all the lights going out as the train passes through a tunnel, followed by a shot, a scream, and all the lights coming back on again, at which point one of the passengers is dead, and our heroes get to spend the rest of their journey working out whodunit. So far, however, not a single passenger has been murdered. Very inconsiderate, if you ask me.

I suppose I'll just look out the window for a bit.

Same day

Philadelphia

2241hrs

Here we are at last, booked into another youth hostel. It's rather on the outskirts of Philadelphia, but on the other hand there's not much to see in Philly anyway. We came here in a taxi, which makes four such rides so far, enough, I think, to compare and contrast.

The problem I have with cabs is the tipping process. Not an ethical problem, you understand; I've nothing against giving people more than they charge for their services for no reason whatsoever, though it makes very little sense to me. Tipping's never really entered my life much before - not because it's particularly an American thing, I think, just because I don't usually go in cabs.

The problem I have with tipping is more of a logistic one, or rather one of etiquette. How is one supposed to go about the process?

The first cab we went in, being inexperienced, we failed to tip. The driver tried to hint that perhaps we might like to - his angle centred on the fact that there was a flat rate from the airport, and he pointed out with unconcealed significance how much more it would have cost if the meter was running. His hints, however, fell on deaf ears.

Our next cab was shared with a couple of people we met, and the problem of tipping was solved by the fact that the easiest way of splitting the fare between us meant giving the driver several dollars more than he charged.

Nor was tipping a problem in cab number three - the fare came to five dollars; I handed over six $1 bills. The fare was paid, and the tip was included with an appropriate subtlety.

The problem really only arises when you don't have the exact change, as was the case with cab four. I had no option but to hand over a $20 bill for a $9 ride; I clearly didn't mean for him to keep the lot, so of course the driver gave me $11 in change.

This is where I had a minor dilemma. The fact was that this was the best driver we'd had - he'd been friendly and polite, and I would have liked to have tipped him. But what could I do? Hand some of the change back? Possibly this is the protocol, or possibly not. I don't know, so he went without a tip.

I'll figure it out one day.

Sunday 7th

Philadelphia

0907hrs

Chamounix Mansion, this youth hostel's called, and while on the small side as mansions go, I'd say it lives up to the connotations of its name. It's a nice building in large grounds, which I have yet to explore. I even saw a cat wandering about last night.

We'll be having a look round Philadelphia today, though from what I gather there's not a lot to see. The reason we came here is twofold - firstly, one of Colin's many friends-he's-never-met lives nearby, and today, though nothing's official as yet, either she'll be coming up here or we'll be going down there.

The other reason we've stopped at Philadelphia is that its youth hostel is cheaper than Washington's, and the two are close enough that we can commute. We'll be going there tomorrow.

Not long after that the plan becomes more vague. There are a couple of other friends of Colin's we'll be visiting, and then there are things all over the place we'd quite like to see, but most of which are pretty inconvenient.

A case in point is Mount Rushmore. It's not often that you see four giant heads glaring down at you, hewn from the living rock, as one of the Bronté sisters would put it, unless one of the other Bronté sisters beat her to it, but it's way up there in the Black Hills, the Black Hills of Dakota, anywhere which no train goes. At least, no Amtrak train, and if we went on anything else we'd have to pay.

Besides which, we have to ask ourselves, is it worth the time? The longer we spend travelling across the country, the less time we have in our final destination on the west coast, and there's so much to see on the west coast we really ought to try to get there as soon as we can.

But that's the future, and when one's life is tearing past at such a speed, living for anything but the present is a very dizzying experience.

Back, then, to Chamounix Mansion. Last night we slept in room 31 (where I am now), but owing to them not having any single room available for three consecutive nights, we're migrating all the way to room 32 today.

One thing I've not got round to in this busy whirl of holiday is postcards. I managed to buy a load (six for sixty cents in New York, so far the cheapest we've seen anywhere), and I've even got round to writing a couple, though it's not easy. What can you say in about seventy words? You have to either abridge to the point of meaninglessness, or write about two proper sentences. The other problem is that you can't ever say the same thing on postcards to different people. It's not like any of them might exchange notes, and reveal me as a fraud; nevertheless there is, I feel, some kind of natural law stating that everything you write on a postcard must be completely original, and bear not a passing resemblance to anything you've written to anybody else, and it is a law you disobey at your peril.

But despite these restrictions I have, as I say, written a couple, and I even managed eventually to buy some stamps. Since then, however, my luck has run out. I've been searching for a post box for days, and found not a one.

Today, then, I will search for a post box if it takes all afternoon. In the meantime I'll write a couple more postcards to stick in it.

Same day

The Independence National Historic Park, Philadelphia

1540hrs

Colin's friend's working today or something, so we won't be seeing her after all. It being a Sunday, of course, there wouldn't be much to do anywhere, but here in Philadelphia it isn't just any Sunday. This is Super Sunday, the last day of the summer vacation.

As I remember the last day of the summer holiday, it was always far from super. The knowledge of school the next day after weeks of doing nothing made whatever you happened to be doing feel like the last whatever-you-happened-to-be-doing before the execution.

It is perhaps for this reason that in Philly a diversion has been invented in the form of Super Sunday. There's a big parade (actually, as parades go, it's quite a small parade, but it's still a parade) and all kinds of stalls doing everything from selling pretzels to preaching the virtues of celibacy. One guy was handing out sidewalk chalk (I don't know why. I think he was mad), with which I've done a few doodles on the pavement. I've not seen any by anybody else, though. I don't think it will catch on.

The public transport here is fast, convenient and cheap, which for someone from Britain is quite a culture shock. In Britain, the government and the transport authorities have got a nice little racket going. Every budget, the chancellor announces that he's increasing petrol tax to encourage use of public transport, and sure as Frosted Flakes (of corn) is Frosties, the buses announce that because petrol tax has gone up by 10%, they have no choice, pained though they are by their obligation, to raise bus fares by 30%. Everyone's a winner, except the public.

But there's none of that over here. There's even a display telling you where you are, knowledge which the British bus operators appear to believe is none of the public's business. If we adopted a public transport system like the one over here, there might actually be a slim chance of the planet surviving to the end of the millennium.

Same day

Philadelphia

2031hrs

Philadelphia seems like a nice enough place, but there's not much here for the tourist. At least, not this tourist. It's got loads of museums and historic sights; a lot of things here are connected to the Liberty bell, which is here somewhere itself. We didn't see that. I still don't know what it is, other than a big bell.

We were, I think, quite fortunate to be here on Super Sunday - on that day of the week I don't suppose there's much to do anywhere; the carnival at least made it a bit interesting. As far as I can tell, Super Sunday is unique to Philly. I suppose they might have it nation-wide, but I don't think so.

A word on my diet. I don't know how many of the four basic food groups it contains, but I'm guessing at least three are absent. We've been living off bread rolls (me with a cheese slice, Colin plain), crisps, M&M's and various soft drinks. At first we made the mistake of buying the likes of Coke and Dr. Pepper, but of course when you're not keeping them refrigerated they go flat pretty quick and taste disgusting. We're now going in for orangeade - that way, when it goes flat it's just like orange juice. It might, I suppose, be healthier to buy orange juice in the first place, but how healthy can you be within the spirit of holidaymaking? Not very.

I finally found what, as far as I could tell, was a post box, and got rid of my postcards. It was roughly the shape of R2D2, and didn't explicitly say that it was a post box, but it had the name of the mail service on and a slot, so I guess it was okay.

Speaking, as I was, of health, I've not had a shower since the start of the holiday. Tonight, though, I've been playing Ping-Pong and sweating heavily, so I suppose I can't put it off any longer.

I just watched The Simpsons, the first TV I've seen here. It's sponsored by Snapple, and has two commercial breaks.

The train to Washington leaves tomorrow morning at 9:14. Since this hostel's quite out of the way, that means leaving at eight and getting up even earlier. In Britain that kind of time would seem horrific to me, but I'm still not quite in sync with this time zone and it shouldn't be too bad. Even so, I'd better not go to bed too late. I think I'll go and have that shower.

Room 32, by the way, is much like room 31, but a bit bigger.

Monday 8th

Approaching Delaware

0958hrs

First of all, reviewing the minutes of our last meeting, I see that I described last night's shower as the first I've taken all holiday. This wasn't strictly true; a couple of days earlier I'd taken the ultimate shower, passing under Niagara Falls.

That cleared up, let us move on now to Any Other Business, and this morning's topic is: People Are Unreliable.

Bus fares in Philadelphia can be paid in cash, like anywhere else in the world, or with bus tokens, which can be purchased at the hostel. The advantage of using tokens is that A, you don't need the exact change, and B, they're cheaper ($1.15 instead of $1.60). Our intention was therefore to buy a couple of tokens this morning before coming out. However although the place claims to open at 8 a.m., and we waited until at least ten past, had it opened? Had it? Alas, no. If we'd known, we could have got them last night, but we didn't, so we didn't. So that lost us forty-five cents each way. I didn't even have $1.60, so had to borrow eleven cents off Colin. But, what's $1.60? I mean to say, if the service is good enough, isn't it worth that?

Very possibly, but unfortunately the service wasn't good enough. The bus was ten minutes late, with the result that we missed our train and had to get the next one.

I take back what I said about the public transport in this country. The planet is doomed.

Weather conditions are still fine. We booked this holiday slightly off-peak to get a cheaper fare, at the expense of holidaying in the sun. But since summer lasts longer here, we still get perfectly good weather, and the conditions we're missing in Britain are that much worse. So in fact I would say that this is about the best time to come, and it's cheaper too.

Same day

Washington DC

1501hrs

Washington seems like a nice place. We started off walking through something which may have been a park, or it may just have been a place with a lot of trees. There were also fountains and waterfalls. There are a lot of those here. There've been a fair few of them everywhere we've been, but in Washington especially.

Then we arrived at the US Capitol, which seems to be their version of the Houses of Parliament. We sat on a bench in the grounds for a bit and fed M&M's and Cheese Curls (like Wotsits, but less curly - straight, in fact) and nuts to a squirrel. When he was full up, he took the last couple of M&M's away and buried them for later.

We went to the Air and Space Museum after that, which had all kinds of aeroplanes and spaceships and stuff. It was free. Everything in this city seems to be free. We're currently waiting in line to go on a tour of the FBI, and after that we're going to the National Museum of Natural History, both of which are also free. The only things that aren't free, are very expensive. I bought a 591ml bottle of orange juice (or, rather, 'enriched citrus beverage') and an ice lolly, for four dollars, which is a huge rip off, but overall our day in Washington looks like it will be pretty cheap.

They told us we'll be in this queue for an hour, the same length as the tour. Fortunately, there are benches, and I've bought a book, so it should pass fast enough.

Same day

Somewhere between Washington DC and Marilyn

1910hrs

The FBI tour was easily worth the no money it cost. A woman who pronounced 'violent crimes' as 'vollent croms' took us round a load of displays and told us stuff, only we went too fast to be able to listen to her and read the displays as well, but no matter. Then Special Agent Something did a firearms demonstration. He shot a cardboard cutout with loads of different guns. He got it right in the heart every time, and everyone was duly impressed and gave him a round of applause, until the woman told us that the screen he was behind was soundproof and he didn't know we were clapping. Which is just as well, because when he came out he told us that he always aims for the centre, so actually he was way out.

We didn't have time to go to the other museum, so we headed straight for the White House. En route we were accosted by a guy trying to sell us a camera for $10. We told him we'd already got cameras, and he went down to $5. We told him we really didn't need a camera, so he asked us to give him a couple of dollars anyway. We told him that under no circumstances were we going to give him any money. He still followed us down the street for a bit making a nuisance of himself.

We went in Planet Hollywood for Colin to use the disabled toilet, having failed to see all the signs on the door saying 'This is a disabled toilet. Do not use this toilet unless you are disabled'. They had a latex model of Arnold Schwarzenegger with half his face missing and all the androidy bits showing, as used in Terminator 2, which was pretty cool. Their prices were silly, but we didn't buy anything so it doesn't matter.

I think I saw Bill Clinton at the White House. At least, I saw a big posh car with a flag sticking out the bonnet go up the drive, and a load of trumpeters playing what sounded like the tune from Star Wars, so I reckon he was in it (the car, I mean, not Star Wars).

Then we got on a metro to the train station so we didn't miss it. We got there in time, but the train didn't, so we could have saved the fare. But we didn't know it was going to be late, so we couldn't really.

Tuesday 9th

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 Caésar 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.

Wednesday 10th

Detroit

1045hrs

The train from Pittsburgh was late, so we had to wait around for a while. Colin tried phoning his friend who we've come to see (she was out - he's trying again now), and while I waited for him, I inadvertently listened in on the bloke on the next phone's conversation. I couldn't make much sense of it, but he mentioned a friend of his called Skeedo, which has got to be the best name I've heard in my life. Imagine my excitement, then, when he said that Skeedo was coming to pick him up.

It was a long wait, but Skeedo finally arrived. I snuck outside to see him, but he was helping the other guy put his stuff in the trunk, and his face was obscured from view. When I finally saw him, though, he looked just like a Skeedo should. He was a short old man with a baseball cap and pale, loose skin, grey hair and a wispy moustache. I'll sleep soundly tonight, I thought.

I didn't, though. By four thirty I'd had almost no sleep at all. We then changed to the coach which brought us here, on which I got no more.

We went and used the bathroom of a cafe called the White Castle, where we shared a bag of French fries for breakfast.

After that we came to the youth hostel, which meant a three-mile walk through the centre of Detroit. There is precisely one good thing about Detroit, which is the manholes. In other cities, particularly New York, I've seen references to the fact that steam comes out the manholes, but no evidence to back it up. This is the first place I've seen a steaming manhole, and there are hundreds of them.

Other than that, the place is a dump. Most of the buildings look like they were last used fifty years ago, and then as targets by the Germans. I really can't stress strongly enough: never go to Detroit for pleasure. It's a complete hovel.

The youth hostel showed no sign of raising the tone of the place. It's in a dodgy looking side street and from the outside looks like a dodgy looking bar. Unperturbed, we entered.

Behind the reception desk was a large man with a shaved head. In my memory he was wearing a string vest and covered in tattoos, but he probably wasn't really. He had a stereo on the desk, which was playing a tape of an amateurish and particularly tasteless reworking of Candle in the Wind, with lyrics relating to the death of Princess Diana. We approached the desk, and he turned off the tape.

"We're looking for the youth hostel."

"U-hu."

"Is this it?"

"Yeah, this is it."

"Can we book in now, or do we have to do it between certain times?"

"You can book in now."

We booked in, and came up to the room. A French woman, who appears to be some kind of chambermaid, joined us on the landing. She showed us which room was ours, and Colin tried to unlock the door, with little success. The woman gave it a shove, and it opened stiffly.

The first thing she did was look in the bathroom.

"This is a mess!" she said. She said she'd clean it, after she'd made the beds. While she was making the beds, she expressed surprise that we'd come here, as if you'd have to be mad to stay in this youth hostel.

"There is nothing here, no bus, nothing," she said.

"Don't argue with a black. Just leave," was her advice for surviving in the city, where, she tells us, there are more guns than people.

Colin rang his friend, but she was asleep (she works nights). We're now just waiting for her to ring us back. We could go out for a bit, but considering what Detroit has to offer, it doesn't really seem worth the bother.

Same day

Detroit

1331hrs

It's wet and nasty and cloudy and misty here, which according to the chambermaid is always the case in Detroit. Colin's friend still hasn't called, and since she works nights it seems reasonable to assume she won't be up until about 10 p.m. This whole part of the trip seems very badly organised to me, but no doubt it will all work out for the best. The one good thing about this youth hostel is that we have an en suite bathroom, which isn't that dirty since that woman cleaned it. The rest of the room's pretty dodgy though - all of the doors stick, and there's a lamp with a cord to turn it on, and if you pull the cord too hard the lamp comes apart. The windows, in contrast to the doors, are too loose, and if you're not careful, one of them at least would shoot right down on top of your skull, which I imagine (though I haven't tested it) would be painful.

Same day

Detroit

2032hrs

This afternoon we went out and explored Detroit. We found a phone box and Colin called his friend again. He's now spoken to her mum, her dad and her sister, but not her. She'd woken up and gone out by this time. We've only got one more day in Detroit, but we should manage to contact her tomorrow.

We went on the people mover to the shopping centre. The people mover is a train service, with trains running on a track high up around the city. It only has one route and only goes in one direction, but it only has about eight stops so that's all it needs. It costs fifty cents to use, although you could easily step over the barrier and use it for free. It's entirely automatic, it doesn't seem to have a driver.

The shopping centre had a W.H.Smiths, but it was far from the big stores that sell everything we have in Britain. It was really little more than a sweet shop, with a couple of shelves of magazines thrown in. We bought a book of crosswords and other puzzles, which should keep us entertained on a few train journeys. We've got a couple of long ones coming up.

Detroit is the most boring, pointless city on the face of the planet, and if you replaced it with a rotten cabbage while no one was looking, it would be weeks before anybody noticed.

Thursday 11th

Detroit

1808hrs

Detroit is a disaster; both our stay here, and the city itself. We've still not managed to contact Colin's friend, and have pretty much given up hope of doing so.

Nearly everything here is closed down, and looks like it has been for years. Everything else is decrepit, overgrown, doesn't work (in the case of most of the phones), or is completely insane (in the case of most of the people).

We've met more weirdoes in Detroit than anywhere else in America, which is quite a feat. I couldn't possibly mention them all here, but I'll tell you about a few.

A woman yesterday gave us a leaflet about the Bible's views on the end of the world (Christian, I ask you!), and a couple of other people tried to give us something about 'Watching the Elderly', or, to put it another way, 'Spying on Old People'.

A couple of other people have been mad in less interesting ways, like walking past and mumbling at you, and then there was a bloke today who accosted us in the street and started asking who we were and where we were from, which was pretty odd for a start. Then he said to Colin: "You're quite good looking, did you know that?" Colin didn't reply (it wasn't really a question, he tells me. Maybe I phrased it wrong). Then he said: "I bet you're a good kisser as well, aren't you?"

"I don't kiss blokes," said Colin, which wasn't very friendly, but there you are.

"You don't kiss black people?" said the man (he was black).

"No, I don't kiss blokes."

He seemed to take the hint at this point, and said goodbye.

He didn't say anything to me. As an isolated incident, I wouldn't have read anything into this, but there's no ignoring the fact that it is the latest in a long line of similar incidents.

Just last year, on holiday in Amsterdam with my friend Jon, we were wandering late at night around the red light district, not completely lost, but not, on the other hand, entirely sure where we were, when a number of men gave him looks as if to suggest, he reckons, that they hoped to solicit his services as a prostitute. How many similar looks did I receive? Not a one.

And just a few years earlier, I had a P.E. teacher who was later alleged to have had a habit at the time of sexually assaulting male students. I never heard the result of the trial, so I suppose he may have been innocent all along, but he never so much as looked at me.

A pattern, then, begins to emerge, and we have to ask ourselves why it is that I do so little to turn on perverts and madmen. Is there something wrong with me? Am I that hideous? Is it so much to ask that one weirdo molests me, assaults me, or tries to get me to kiss him? Very offensive, I call it.

But moving on. What else did we do today? We spent a lot of it on the people mover - we did a whole lap just for the sake of it. We also spent at least an hour trying to buy a phone card - one bloke was sold out, another misheard and directed us to the rack of phone cords, and most just didn't sell them. But we got one in the end.

As it became increasingly obvious that we weren't going to see Colin's friend, and our time in the most depressing place on earth (not Detroit's official slogan, but it ought to be) had been for no good reason at all, I came up with a plan to leave early. The idea had been (and still is since my brainwave didn't come to anything) to get a train tomorrow morning to Chicago, where we'll have a couple of hours before we catch another train to Flagstaff, where we arrive late on Saturday evening. Looking at the train timetable, I saw that there was a train to Chicago this evening, which would get there at nine o'clock. I thought, then, that we could get that, stay in the Chicago youth hostel overnight, and have ages to look around tomorrow.

So we rang Amtrak and cancelled our tickets to Chicago tomorrow, and got ones for tonight instead. That done, we rang the Chicago youth hostel, which was full. So we rang Amtrak again, and changed back to the train we'd been going to catch originally.

A couple of good things have come out of our stay in Detroit. I finally got my washing done today, which was well overdue - this is at least the third time I've worn this tee-shirt, and the fourth these jeans. Actually I only bought the one pair of jeans (shorts take up so much less room in your rucksack), so if we have more cold days I'll be forced to wear these again, still unwashed. But after tomorrow we'll be way out west, where, for reasons which my limited understanding of geography goes no way toward explaining, it's lovely and sunny and never rains. Well, a lot less than in the east, and it's hardly rained yet. Once for about two minutes in New York, and once when we were on a train. There was also a constant shower of very fine water in the air in Niagara Falls, but that wasn't actual rain from clouds, just droplets in the air being blown about. I should think it's always like that there, which must get a bit annoying.

If I can clean out the sludge in the bottom, I'll also have a bath tonight, so that's another of the few useful things in this place. The bathroom door doesn't lock, of course, being too stiff to quite shut, but you can't have everything.

I'd like to end by mentioning that I saw a dead cat in a skip earlier, which sums up Detroit perfectly. It should be their logo.

Same day

Detroit

2120hrs

Lots of interesting things happen when you're bored. I've recently taken to saying 'Well, yeh' a lot, and a while ago Colin bet me I couldn't last until LA without saying it. Five minutes later I owed him a dollar.

There's a door in the wall behind one of the beds here, and I wondered what was behind it. Knock knock knock, I went, and to my surprise I got a knock knock knock back. Knock knock, I went. Knock knock, came my reply. Knock, I went. Knock, replied the mystery knocker. A bit later the bloke from next door who'd done the knocking came round and introduced himself, smoking something suspicious-looking. He's called DJ, and from Marilyn.

There are a couple of bunk beds in the room, which I've passed a fair while clambering around. Yesterday, having put myself in an impossible position, and failing to recover from it, I fell to the floor and hurt my knee, which I have twice since hurt again walking into things. It's very sore.

I suppose Detroit hasn't been that bad, now that we're about to leave and I am in a position to edit and dramatise the memory. It gave us a chance to recuperate from a week of late nights, early mornings, and little sleep in between, and gave us a couple of days of calm in the middle of three weeks of running around doing things all the time.

Colin bought a book by Einstein about the theory of relativity a few days ago, which we've been reading together and failing to understand, or, rather, to see why it's not a load of gibberish. He just asked me whether I think that we just don't get it, or we've spotted a flaw in the reasoning - or, to rephrase the question, are we idiots or was Einstein? I can't be sure, but I think I know the answer.

I'm not going to have a bath. It's full of gunk.

Friday 12th

Leaving Detroit (thank god)

1032hrs

We're now on a train to Chicago, which gets there in five or six hours (there are time zones involved, so it's hard to be sure). We'll have a couple of hours to look around there (that chambermaid was going on about how great Chicago is) before we get on another train.

That train is a completely different teapot of turnips. It takes us across most of America, there being very little worth seeing in the middle (Mount Rushmore would have been nice, but it's too hard to get at, and Dodge City might have been worth a look, but we'd have had to stay twenty four hours for the next train out). In fact it takes us all the way to Flagstaff, Arizona, near the Grand Canyon. It gets there at 9:20 p.m., or thereabouts, tomorrow, so our whole journey lasts at least 35 hours, but with all the time zones it must be even more than that.

By the sound of it, though, that train has all kinds of things to do on it, including movies and I don't know what else. The view should be good, anyway.

In theory we'll be sleeping on the train tonight, then, but I don't suppose I'll get much sleep. Last time we took a night train, any attempt to drop off wasn't helped by the fact that we had to change trains at half past four, but even with the promise of an uninterrupted night, I should think I'll get about six and a half winks at most.

I have (or, rather, had) a little bottle of water with a spray cap, which I used to wet my hair with before brushing. Without my little bottle of water, my hair goes all over the place, and is very unruly. Unfortunately, I left it on that other night train, and my hair hasn't been the same since.

It's going to be a long, long journey, but I've got plenty to do. I've got a few short stories and a novel to read, the theory of relativity to get to grips with, a book of crosswords, plenty of gorgeous views, the promise of movies and a diary to write. And with any luck, someone will be murdered when we go through a tunnel.

Same day

Going through Westmont

1731hrs (Central Time)

I suppose it was expecting a lot that we could see all the sights of Chicago in two hours. My main image of Chicago previously, apart from that of gangsters running round and shooting each other, comes from Due South, which is set in Chicago but filmed in Canada (been there), so probably isn't that reliable a guide, although it has some gorgeous establishing shots, which really are filmed in Canada, and I'd been expecting to see something similar.

Most of these establishing shots have involved trains running along on rails suspended above the streets (which is how I know they're filmed in Chicago, because they have those in Chicago), and we did indeed see plenty of those, but in real life they look much more practical and less romantic. Chicago does have some nice buildings, including Sears Tower, which we went in - like the Empire State Building, we didn't go all the way to the top. We went up as far as the lobby. The skyline as a whole, though, failed to put across the same ambience As Seen on TV.

It seemed like a nice place though, but without much for the tourist. I think the mad French chambermaid in Detroit overdid it a bit, but on the other hand, if Detroit is her only other experience of the US of A, I can see how Chicago could come across as the next best thing to Heaven. Which makes the comparison particularly appropriate, given that I've worked out why there's steam coming out of the manholes in the nation's motor capital - it is the steam from Hell, which is directly under Detroit. The residents of the latter, I think, are escapees of the former.

While we're comparing the two cities, they both have an abundance of a particular type of establishment - in Detroit, every other building is a beauty salon, which is the exact opposite of a shop selling camouflage gear; whereas, in Chicago, most places are fast food restaurants - on one corner we saw a McDonalds next door to a KFC, and opposite a Burger King. From the fact that, despite such fierce competition, they can all apparently stay in business, it would seem reasonable to expect the locals to all be hugely fat, but they weren't that I noticed.

We're now on the South West Chief, the train on which we will spend roughly twenty-seven hours. It's a Bi-Level Coach, and we're upstairs, so the view should be good, and we've had confirmation that there will be at least one movie tonight, possibly two (my sources are conflicting - one voice over the tannoy distinctly used the phrase 'a couple of movies', but another spoke of only 'a movie'). What movie (or movies) it (or they) will be, has yet to be announced.

Same day

Between Galesburg and Fort Madison

2004hrs

The movie paradox has been resolved; they're showing the same one twice. It's 'Father's Day', with Robin Williams and Billy Crystal. I've never been much of a fan of Robin Williams films, so I'm giving it a miss. They're showing it on the plane home, so I can always catch it then.

My potential illness never came to anything, by the way.

The scenery so far has been less than thrilling - fields, mostly, with the occasional town - and it's dark now, so I suppose that's it for tonight. We'll be passing through Dodge City in the morning at something past seven. I'd like to see that, so I'll try to be awake. I expect I will be.

I've been having another stab at Einstein. He seems to be making more sense today.

Other than that, there's very little to report. Life aboard the South West Chief is good, but so far largely uneventful. Looking back through this journal, I seem to write almost as much on trains as off, which I suppose makes sense; there's less to write about, but there's more time to write about it anyway.

I'll tell you one odd thing about this country. A lot of the bill posters and adverts on buses are for TV programmes, or often whole line-ups. This seems strange in itself - you don't get that extent of competition between TV stations in Britain, where television is, relatively, a cottage industry (trust me. I know all about relativity now). The really odd part, though, is that the programmes advertised are American (well they would be, wouldn't they), and mostly sitcoms which have been on in Britain, usually in the middle of the night, and which I have watched at some time in my life. Where I come from these are obscure, unheard of programmes, and it's weird to see them advertised on buses.

Saturday 13th

Between Dodge City and Garden City

0822hrs

Thanks to the rather brilliant idea of putting my pillow on my pull-out table-cum-tray and laying my head on that, I got a pretty good night's sleep, unlike all the other chumps on the train who laid back against their chairs and stood no chance. I've got neck cramp now, but a small price to pay.

I woke up this morning at about half past six, and was drifting in and out of sleep until about seven. During the bits where I was awake, I sat and watched the scenery go by. Unfortunately it was still dark, and the glimpsed images of vast desert landscapes and the silhouettes of strange-shaped trees were enough to fuel my craving for gorgeous views, but fell far short of satiating it. By the time the sun came up we'd gone past the best bits, but there was still time to witness a couple of views which will stay with me forever.

Two horses, mother and foal, galloping together in the thin morning light across great dusty, sandy plains, sweeping to the horizon in every direction.

And then again, an oasis, within an awesome, lifeless desert. I'd never given oases much thought before, and was surprised to see it surrounded by an area of dark, damp sand. It would be, of course - an oasis in dry sand would just seep into it - but they're never like that on TV, my only previous source of desert images.

Television has also let me down with its depiction of Dodge City. There wasn't a single shoot-out, not one cowboy. It's just an ordinary small American town.

We're somewhere around the border between time zones. It's half past seven again now.

Same day

Between La Junta and Trinidad, Colorado

1100hrs (Mountain Daylight Time)

Here we are, somewhere in Colorado, running on Mountain Time, and you can see where the time zone gets its name. It'll be because of all the mountains everywhere. The landscape is all very barren and dry, and I'd love to get out and climb all over it but I suppose I'd better not. We've been on trains for almost 27 hours now (I think), bar our time in Chicago, but I've not got bored yet. It's amazing how you can sit in a seat on a train for hours quite happily, whereas, in contrast, when you're in Detroit and have the entire city at your disposal, ten minutes seems like a year.

Last night I made up a poem to remember which way the sun goes through the sky, since I can never remember it and always have to work it out from first principles.

The sun, that orange, fiery beast,

Each morning riseth in the east.

It arcs the sky and doesn't rest,

Until it setteth in the west.

Just thought I'd mention it. The driver's been telling us about all the wildlife coming up. It's gorgeous round here.

Same day

Between Las Vegas and Lamy, New Mexico

1422hrs

Not the Las Vegas, another one. We never did see any wildlife, but we went right through the Santa Fe Pass, which I think is quite famous. The driver was telling us all about it over the intercom, he's doing it again now. I think he's got a guidebook, he's been telling us all about the history of things.

This Las Vegas we went through was just a run-down little town, consisting by the looks of it of about twelve buildings. I reckon they thought that if they called it Las Vegas ('which, as you all know, means The Meadows' - our driver), people would get confused and go there on holiday.

Since Detroit, apparently, we've gone 1951 miles, or will have by the time we reach Flagstaff. If you went that far in the other direction, you'd be in Russia or somewhere. You surely can't go that distance and find the place just the same - there must be respects in which the two sides of America are practically separate countries, and it's almost as if our first holiday is over and we're about to embark on another one in a totally different culture. It's taken about three times as long from Detroit to Flagstaff as it did from Heathrow to New York, anyway.

I'm talking as if we're almost there, but there are still eight hours of this journey to go. A bottle of orange juice, which I purchased some time ago, made a hissing noise when I opened it earlier, as of gas being released. Wisely cautious, I gave it a sniff. I'll not be drinking any more of that.

Which means that for the rest of the trip, whenever I want a drink I have to buy one from the cafe, which of course is hideously expensive. Oh well, it can't be helped.

There are some good views around here. I only hope my photos come out - there's a window between me and my subject, and the scenery is whizzing past. Not ideal conditions, but hopefully I'll get something decent back from the developers.

Same day

Between Winslow and Flagstaff

2049hrs (Mountain Standard Time)

We spent a couple of hours going through what I think was the Rocky Mountains, which were gorgeous, like everything else around here. Having passed through three time borders in the last couple of days, my body clock still thinks it's Eastern Time, and about ten to midnight. Since I awoke this morning at six thirty, I am therefore pretty tired. Of course, going by my body clock I really woke up an hour later, but I also went to sleep an hour later so it doesn't make much difference.

There's nothing I'd like more right now than to curl up in a lovely soft bed, but it will be another 45 minutes before we reach Flagstaff, and then we have to find the youth hostel and check in before finally getting some sleep.

Sunday 14th

Leaving Flagstaff

1445hrs

By the time we got to the hostel last night I felt like a zombie. Downstairs it was a bar, the youth hostel seemed to have been added as an afterthought, which has been the case in most places but New York, come to think of it. Even in this time zone it was pretty late by then, and there were people in our room already asleep, so we had to get ready for bed in the dark. Which meant that when we woke up this morning, we were seeing the room where we'd spent the night for the first time. But it was nothing special, and we left after about ten minutes, so there's not much more to say about that.

We were planning on staying there again tonight, having spent today exploring Flagstaff, then going to the Grand Canyon early tomorrow, spending the day there, and either going straight on to LA or staying in Flagstaff another night and having one more day to explore the canyon. But even the best laid plans o' mice an' men, we are told, gang aft a-gley, and our plans weren't particularly well laid in the first place.

They first showed signs of ganging a-gley when the woman at the hostel told us that there were no beds spare for tonight - at least, not in male rooms. There was an empty female room, and if no more females booked in today she'd give it a sex change for us, but she couldn't guarantee as much. Not to worry, we thought - we'd already seen that there were hundreds of hotels and motels in the area, we could always go to one of them.

That sorted, we went to explore Flagstaff, having deposited our bags in a room set aside for that purpose at the hostel.

It seemed like a nice little town, and very hot. I'd have worn a tee shirt, but I couldn't seem to find any clean ones. They must be in my bag, I'm sure I can't have left them anywhere. Nevertheless, they managed to stay elusive, and I put on a shirt instead, which didn't go at all well with the shorts I'd donned originally, so I changed them for my jeans. These are the same jeans I wore in Detroit, New York, and probably other places too. I really must wash them at some point.

The most striking thing about Flagstaff is the background. Huge hills leap up on every side - to the north, the San Francisco Peaks, mountains rising into the clouds, which I wanted to climb but Colin didn't. In other directions, more impressive hills - a local was telling us he climbed one of them recently, which took about three hours. He didn't say whether that included the return trip, but I think it must have been just one way.

One thing there is the Lowell Space Observatory, of which we both liked the sound. It wasn't hard to find, being visible from some distance on top of one of the more modestly sized hills.

We climbed up to that, which was fun in itself, and had a look around the place. You could go on tours of the telescopes, or something, but we didn't bother with that, choosing instead to just look around the displays and interactive exhibits (which also happened to be free).

We then went back down the mountain, myself sustaining several grazes to the upper body, doing something between sliding and falling down a craggy slope. There were elements of accident involved, but I did it more or less on purpose just for the fun of it, and a good time was had by all.

There are a couple of other things around Flagstaff we'd have liked to see. There's a meteor crater (the biggest in the world, I think) which seems to have lost its meteor, and Montezuma's Castle, a castle (hence the name) carved into the side of a cliff. These are both close to Flagstaff by American standards, but in real terms the distance between them is probably about the length of Wales, and difficult to access when you haven't got a car. No problem, we thought, we just won't bother with them.

This is the way it should be, of course, and we have to be ruthless. You couldn't see all the sights in America if you were there for a thousand years (which we're not), and by far the best scheme is to have in mind more than you can possibly fit in, and plan all along to miss a lot of it out. So long as you have plenty to fill the time, it doesn't matter what you don't get around to.

The problem we were now faced with was the realisation that, in fact, we didn't have anything to fill the time. Other than the observatory, there is nothing of any interest in Flagstaff, or in walking distance of it.

Luckily, at this point I had an idea. We had already dismissed the idea of going to the Grand Canyon for the afternoon, since in order to get the bus back we'd only have had about an hour there. We had also ruled out the possibility of actually staying at the canyon, as it would be far more expensive. However, I wasn't entirely happy with this, since I would have liked to watch the sun setting over it. But the thought occurred to me that it probably wouldn't cost that much more - with the extra time we'd gain to see the canyon by not having to commute from Flagstaff, we could see it all sooner and stay in the area for one less night. Therefore it was either one night at the Grand Canyon or two in Flagstaff - even then, the latter would work out cheapest, but not by that much. It would also solve the problem of not having anywhere to stay if the hostel couldn't take us.

It was, I thought, a good plan, and thankfully Colin agreed. We had at this stage about three quarters of an hour until the coach to the canyon left. We hastened back to the hostel, picked up our bags, went back to the train station (to all intents and purposes, the coach is a train), got our tickets, and hopped aboard.

We should get there at around four thirty, which will give us hours to look around today, and tomorrow evening, according to the current plan (subject, as always, to change), we take a train to LA, where we stay with my aunt until we go back to Britain on the 26th.

Food supplies are low. I have a couple of small boxes of raisins and some crackers, and about 200ml of something artificial pretending to be orange juice. My only other food is a few cheese slices and something that used to be bread.

What happened was, I bought a bag of bread. Rolls, they were. And I kept them, like everything else, in my rucksack. It might have been an idea, I can see, to keep them on the top, but a person can only be so organised.

It is now, therefore, a bag of crumbs, and after some disastrous attempts at making sandwiches I plan from now on to simply toss a slice of cheese in the bag and grab handfuls.

Primitive, but, I hope, effective.

Same day

Tusayan

2034hrs

We arrived at the Grand Canyon National Park without incident, having stopped in a little village just outside it called Tusayan, to drop off people staying in hotels there (all right, so it wasn't without incident).

I glimpsed a cliff-face through the trees, which I suppose must have been the canyon, but it could have been anything. That's all I've seen of it so far.

First of all we had to secure somewhere to stay for the night. We went into the least expensive hotel within the park, which cost about sixty dollars a night between the two of us. It was, as might have been expected, full.

We rang some of the other hotels in the park. All full. The next thing to try was some of those in Tusayan.

Due to the nature of our phone card, you have to type in the area code even when you're in the area. Since we'd been calling within the park we hadn't needed it before, but we did now, so I went to find it out.

Unable to locate anyone else who might know, I queued to ask at reception, and had been there a while when I thought to inspect a leaflet on the desk about the hotel. Of course it gave their number, along with what I took to be the area code.

I reported back to Colin and he tried a couple of the numbers, but apparently they didn't exist. It was obvious that the area code was wrong, but we didn't have time to find it out - with nowhere to stay, we'd have to go back to Flagstaff for the night, and the coach was about to go.

I then noticed a telephone directory tucked away, and pulled it out. Its cover gave us the correct code, and there was just time to try a couple of the numbers again.

We booked a room at the Best Western Grand Canyon Squire Inn, and had been hoping to have a look around and watch the sun setting over the canyon before retiring. But they warned us that if we didn't get there soon they might give the room to someone else. We called for a cab.

Ever since we'd found out that the hotels in the park were all full, I'd been making clear what I considered our best move, namely to camp there. Not that we had tents or anything, but I figured that we could put all our clothes on and find somewhere sheltered, and we'd probably survive the night.

A terrible idea, of course, and Colin saw it as such immediately, which is why we found a hotel. At the time it struck me as a bit of an adventure, and it wasn't until the rain and the lightning started that I saw the error of my ways.

By the time we got in the taxi we were soaked. Apparently the weather here is like that every day, during this, the rainy season, but only for a few minutes. That's what the driver said, anyway.

Whenever I walk into the lobby of a posh hotel (and it's not something I do often) I feel as if the management would rather I wasn't there. When I am also dripping heavily onto their plush, red carpet (I don't remember what colour it was, but it was probably red), I expect at any moment to be dragged off by large men in suits and Dealt With.

As it was, we checked in without a problem. The hotel is so big, they even gave us a map to our room.

I could go on for hours about the room. Even to someone who's used to living in a normal house, this would be about the best place in the world ever, but when you've spent the last fortnight sleeping in youth hostels and on trains, this is basically Heaven.

The room is huge. You've got a wardrobe on the right when you come in, which in itself is about as big as the rooms we usually stay in. After that there's a little sink area, and an entire bathroom on the other side. A bathroom! I had an actual bath tonight, I'm actually clean now! It's a strange experience.

Come out of the bathroom, and there are the beds. The beds are huge. They are clearly both double beds, but I think they're supposed to be single. And they're only queen size, so they must have even bigger ones.

Then you've got a little table, and a chest of drawers, and then, opposite the bed, the telly! The telly is huge, and has twenty-eight channels. We watched a double-bill of The Simpsons (both ones that have been on in Britain, but still good), which even has adverts between the end of the programme and the credits, like anyone's going to wait around to watch the credits. It's Emmy night, so we've been watching that on and off too.

We've booked a place to stay within the park tomorrow night, so we'll be able to see the sun set then, and rise on Tuesday morning. We'll also now have two days to explore, and tomorrow, with any luck, we'll climb all the way down. I don't think Colin wants to, but I'll persuade him.

It's still raining. Camping in this would be hell.

Monday 15th

Grand Canyon Village

2103hrs

We had a bit of a lie-in this morning, and didn't get up until about 9 o'clock.

We hung around the room for a bit, looking at leaflets and nicking the soap. Then we went out to the grocery store. It being the only one in the area, they can basically charge whatever they like, and they do. We didn't even get proper carrier bags, but dodgy cardboard jobs without handles. I think they do that a lot here, but it's the first time we've had them.

Then we went back and had a look around the hotel. They had everything there, a games arcade, a bowling alley, a swimming pool... it was like a whole world in one building.

When we were ready to go, we called the concierge from our room and told him to call us a cab. He said it would be there in about twenty minutes.

We went and waited outside, when it began to rain, rather heavily. Eventually we went in and waited in the lobby, but by then we were soaked anyway. I was, at least. Colin had an anorak.

It was now over half an hour since we'd asked for a taxi, and it was pretty obvious that it wasn't going to come. I asked the guy at the desk, and he said that it had come, and the driver had asked him who it was for, and he'd said he didn't know. He called us another one, which he said would be here in 25 to 30 minutes.

A lot more than thirty minutes later, the cab finally arrived, and brought us to the National Park. I might now have finally seen the Canyon, but it was very foggy and the background was a blank white sheet.

We booked into the Maswik Lodge, where we're spending the night. The room wasn't ready yet, so we left our rucksacks in the safe.

We were finally in a position to see the Grand Canyon. But it was lunchtime now, so we hopped on a free bus which does a continual circle of the village, and went to a little cafe. I had a salad and some chips, and very nice it was too. The first proper meal I've had in weeks. Colin just had chips. I also had a Coke, in a small cup. You could also get large ones, for more money, but since you get free refills anyway it's hard to see why anyone would bother. We shared the drink and had three refills, so got good value for money. There were two Coke dispensers, and the one I used originally dispensed Coke that was a bit flat, but I rather stupidly refilled from it twice. It was only on the third refill, when that was in use, that I tried the other dispenser, which dispensed colder and fizzier Coke altogether.

Finally, it was time to see the Grand Canyon. The suspense by now had been building up for over twenty-four hours - it was a lot like Jurassic Park, where you don't see any dinosaurs until halfway so you appreciate them all the more. It's a cheap artistic device, but it works, and by the time we had our first sighting of the canyon, I was more than ready to appreciate its splendour.

To date, there has been something predictable, almost formulaic, about my descriptions. I described New York as just a big city. I described Central Park as just a big Park. I described Niagara Falls as just a big waterfall.

I will not be describing the Grand Canyon as just a big hole.

It is without doubt the most incredible thing I have seen in my life. When you stand on the rim and look out at the giant, sweeping gulf in the scenery before you, with rocky towers and pylons hitting the sky with defiant disregard for human scale or perspective, the desire to transmute into a raven and leap out into the void with wings outstretched, is very great indeed. Thankfully, I resisted the urge.

I took about twenty photos of what was basically the same view, from slightly different angles. As a wise man I overheard rather eloquently put it, "It's just whichever way you look, woo-hoo-hoo!"

Until this point, Colin had been quite clear on the fact that he wasn't hiking all the way to the bottom. He just wanted to go around it in a coach.

His resolution began to break down as soon as he saw the view.

"Maybe I'll go down a little way," he said. It was the same view which established in my mind the stone-cold certainty that I was going all the way. Colin could do what he liked, I'd go on my own if I had to.

Having looked around there for a bit, we went to collect our rucksacks and brought them to our room. It's not exactly a hotel, this, more like a load of mini-hotels scattered around the place. Cabins, they're called.

Our room isn't as nice as the one we stayed in last night, but it's still a big improvement on youth hostels. It's still got an en suite bathroom, and huge beds, and a telly. It's a fine room.

Once we'd settled in here for a bit, we went to watch the sun set over the canyon. We strolled a little way down the path we'll be taking tomorrow, and met a man coming the other way in a tee shirt stained with sweat. He'd been all the way to the bottom. He'd set out at about nine, he said. It was now just gone six in the evening. Tomorrow we're planning on rising early to see the sunrise at 6 a.m., so if we set out then we should get back in plenty of time to leave for LA at five.

By this point, Colin was admitting that he'd quite like to go a fair way down, and saying maybe about five miles. Since it's only about nine to the bottom, I'm pretty sure he'll agree in the end to go the whole way. We'll see.

We then went back to the top to watch the sunset. Unfortunately there was a big cliff in the way, so we didn't get a great view, and the film in my camera ran out before the best bit anyway. We shouldn't have either of those problems with the sunrise.

But that means an early start, which means an early night. I'd better get ready for bed.

Tuesday 16th

Flagstaff station

2011hrs

Sunrise over the Grand Canyon.

A sky ablaze with yellows and reds, as the glowing ball of the sun raises its head proudly over surely God's greatest creation. Shadows as long as time tear across the landscape, almost bursting from the straitjacket of three dimensions.

At least, that's what I reckon it would have looked like if it wasn't so cloudy.

Even though the sun wasn't up yet, it was light when we arrived at six a.m. Since the horizon was blanketed in cloud, we didn't actually see much of the sun rising, just a red tint to the clouds moving roughly upwards.

We checked out of our cabin, left our backpacks in the safe, had some breakfast, and set out into the Grand Canyon.

At this stage, which was half past seven, I had every intention of going all the way to the bottom, and Colin had every intention of not doing. He planned at least to get to the Indian Garden, about five miles down, and possibly further.

I had brought with me two bottles of orange juice, Colin something along the lines of lemonade. We had most of a large bag of crisps, eight bread rolls, a tube of squeezable cheese, a box of crackers and two packets of Skittles. Most of these were being carried in a plastic bag, and it was perhaps inevitable that after five minutes, one of the handles snapped. Not long after that, a bottle fell through the bottom, and the bag no longer looked much like a bag at all.

Shoving as much as we could into pockets and holding the rest, we continued undeterred. At half past five, when we'd got up, it had been pretty cold out, and taking this to be a good indication of the day's conditions, I had put on a tee-shirt, a shirt, and something which is a cross between a jumper and a coat, as well as my still unwashed jeans. Of course, it is probably pretty cold out at that time of morning on even the warmest days, and as the morning progressed it got hotter and hotter, until we were both very inappropriately dressed.

We arrived, without much in the way of further incident, at the Indian Gardens. What was Indian about them, and in what sense they were gardens, I don't know. It was just a load of cacti really.

Somewhere around there, or possibly a little later, Colin said that he planned to go as far as the end of Plateau Point Trail, namely Plateau Point. This isn't far from the bottom of the canyon, and offers a good view of the Colorado River at the bottom.

I still wanted to go all the way down, but this would have meant splitting up and me taking a different route, one and a half miles longer. Instead I agreed to continue to Plateau Point, hoping to find somewhere where I could scramble down to the bottom.

By the time we reached Plateau Point, it was very hot indeed. My shirt and jumper-cum-coat were completely inappropriate, but I didn't want to have to carry them, so I sweated on.

The drop down to the river was very vertical. I searched around for something bearing any resemblance to a staircase. The best I found wasn't very good, but I had a go, and scrambled a little way down. Soon I came to a long drop with no means of descending. It went down to a fairly small platform, beyond which were more vertical rocks. I convinced myself that the drop wasn't that far, and the platform wasn't that small, and jumped.

The drop looked a lot further from the air than it had from the top.

I managed at least to land on the rock below without breaking anything, though the impact was greater than I had anticipated, and I hurt my knee.

Reminded of man's mortality by this near-death experience, I wisely decided not to go any further, and went to climb back up to Plateau Point, only to find that the wall of rock past which I had jumped, had no more handholds going up than coming down. I thought that I might very well be stuck, but I somehow managed to scramble back up.

The view from further down would have been too close anyway, and this was a pretty good vantage point from which to view the Colorado.

I can't understand how a river that small can carve a canyon so big. It's one of life's unexplained mysteries.

I saw a couple of tiny lizards down there, scuttling between the rocks. The guidebook we bought promised sheep on Plateau Point Trail. I didn't see any, and I think they would have been difficult to miss.

Other than these lizards, the only wildlife we saw in the canyon was the occasional raven and a lot of squirrels.

There were signs everywhere saying not to feed the wildlife. The animals become dependent on human food, these signs said, swallow containers which get lodged in their stomachs, become unable to eat and are shot. Actually the signs were really taking about deer, but the gist applied also to squirrels, and it was made very plain that you shouldn't feed any of the wildlife.

Nevertheless, I saw several people feeding squirrels, and if their habit of begging is anything to go by, the practice is common. It's hard to believe that none of these people saw any of the signs, but I suppose we should give them the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps they were blind. Certainly an inordinate number of hikers were walking with sticks, but if this were the case, we must ask ourselves how they knew the squirrels were there in the first place, or indeed why they'd come to the Grand Canyon.

Whatever the case, the people we passed were certainly friendly. Nearly everyone said hi. I don't think I've had hi said to me so many times in such a short period ever before in my life.

The return journey was fraught with difficulties. We were exhausted, our legs were aching, it was uphill, and pretty soon we ran out of drink. At great length, and after about a hundred rests, we arrived at the Three-Mile Resthouse, where we were finally able to refill our bottles from the tap. Not orange juice this time, but water's more refreshing than orange, and by now refreshment had infinite priority over taste.

I had by this point at least taken off my jumper, but it was so hot and we were so tired, and the going was hard. From the Three-Mile Resthouse to Two-Mile Corner took well over the odds, and from the Indian Gardens to Three-Mile Resthouse, supposedly one and a half miles, had taken an hour and a half.

It was therefore nothing short of a miracle when from Two-Mile Corner to the Mile-and-a-Half Resthouse took just ten minutes!

By now I was completely out of water, very thirsty, and greatly in need of the loo. This at least I knew they had at Mile-and-a-Half Resthouse, having used it on the way down, and I was banking on water as well.

When I saw the sign saying 'No Water Here', therefore, I came close to hurling myself into the canyon and ending it all (which, incidentally, is how I'll commit suicide if I ever do. The only way to go). So desperate was I for liquid that I seriously considered combining the two processes of fulfilling my bodily needs - drinking urine is supposed to be very good for you, after all, and it wasn't as if I had any alternative.

In the event I couldn't quite bring myself to resort to that, but it did seem such a waste to watch so much perfectly good liquid trickling away.

Wednesday 17th

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.

Thursday 18th

Walnut

2132hrs

Change of plan. We're going to Universal Studios next week, so we can see Hollywood then. Apparently there's not much to see there, and it's not really safe to walk about, so we'll just drive through, and get out to look at the good bits.

Tomorrow Ron and Pauline are going to Las Vegas (the real one), because someone's going to a wedding and they've got to baby-sit, or something, so we're going to see that. You're not allowed to gamble until you're twenty-one, which is more or less the whole point of going to Vegas, but Peter reckons there's plenty else to do there.

We'll be staying there until Sunday. Then we've got Hollywood and Universal Studios on Monday, and Disneyland on Tuesday, or possibly the other way round, which only leaves Wednesday before Thursday, when we catch the plane back to England. So the rest of our holiday is mostly planned, and really almost over. There's still a week left, but it does seem like there isn't long until we go home.

It's just as well that we're off to Las Vegas tomorrow; after travelling for so long, it feels good to be living for once in a normal house with normal people, of which we have previously met very few. Were we to stay here any longer, there would be considerable danger of wasting the rest of the holiday, sitting around and relaxing and watching TV.

That's pretty much what we did today. We went into Walnut this morning, but there's not a lot there, just a few shops. A plaza, no less. We then came back to the house and, as yesterday, just watched TV. We did play a couple of board games too, but mostly it was just TV.

They have a huge number of channels here, but during the day it is still often impossible to find anything watchable, which is surely a low they can only reach by trying really hard. In the evening, though, the situation is reversed - from about seven up to midnight, there is always something good on, which I wouldn't like to miss if it was on in Britain. They're mostly repeats, but not that I've seen, so it's easy to find yourself watching TV all night.

Peter's British, but has been living here for several years, and when my sister rang me this morning (Peter having answered the phone), she expressed surprise at how American he sounds. Perhaps she's right, but I hadn't detected any American lilt to his voice - in fact when I first saw him, I was struck by his strong English accent, and still haven't quite got used to it. Maybe I've been in America too long. She didn't say anything about my accent, though, so presumably I'm not infected.

Ron has a rather unnerving habit of laughing at things you say, when you have no idea what's funny about them. It seems very unfair that you don't get the joke when you're the one that told it.

Friday 19th

Las Vegas

2257hrs

We came here this morning in a minivan borrowed for the occasion. Everyone kept saying how little there is to see en route, the scenery being mostly desert. But to me it was gorgeous, I could have watched the barren plains roll by for hours. Which I did, in fact. At one time we saw Death Valley on the left, the hottest place on earth, which I would have liked to have visited had we had more time. Meanwhile a strong contender to its title went by on the other side, as we passed a car up in flames. It was being towed (or had been until it caught fire), so presumably no one was inside. You could feel the heat as we drove past, it was very intense.

Even though it was only a three-hour drive, we stopped halfway for lunch. 'We' is my cousin Lee and his wife Shari (pronounced Sheri), who are going to a wedding, their baby son Tanner, who they could hardly leave behind, Ron and Pauline, who will be baby-sitting Tanner when Lee and Shari are at the wedding, and me and Colin, who just came along for the ride.

When we arrived in Las Vegas, we came up to our two adjoining rooms on the top floor of the hotel, floor 22, except it's really the 21st floor because there's no floor 13, and went out for a look around. Las Vegas is right in the middle of the desert, with nothing else in sight. There's just one long road going all the way through, with casinos on either side, and the rest of the place just seems to have grown out of that. You never see adverts or bill posters here for anything not in Las Vegas, or not to do with gambling - the town is completely self-absorbed. In fact you don't see bill posters at all - any advertising is done in flashing lights. I was disappointed that we didn't get to see Times Square in New York, but by night Las Vegas is like one giant Times Square.

We went out tonight to another hotel, called Treasure Island. All of the hotels have casinos built into them, so if you've only come here to gamble, as most people have, you never need to leave the building. We had some tea at this place, where for a set price you get all you can eat. I stacked my plate full, and struggled to finish it, but you have to get your money's worth.

After that we watched a show outside the hotel. It was pretty impressive; they have two big ships, one a pirate ship, one not, which fire cannon balls at each other. There are loads of fireworks and explosions (piratechnics), and it ends with one of them sinking. But we'd been told the ending beforehand, and expected it to go all the way under, and it didn't, so that was a bit of a letdown really. It was still good though.

Pauline's spent most of the day gambling, and is actually in the black. She started with $20, and is now up to about $250, but she's down there again now so I expect she'll have lost it all shortly.

This hotel even has its own TV channel, which is insane. It's just promotional stuff, of course.

Saturday 20th

Las Vegas

2052hrs

This morning we went to Caésar's Palace, one of the really famous casinos here. It's really big, and has a whole shopping centre built into it, all in the style of ancient Rome. There are big statues and fountains, and it's rather cleverly made to look like it's outside, with stone fronts to the shops and a fake sky.

Because we aren't twenty-one yet, Colin and I aren't supposed to hang out around the gambling machines. We did get thrown out once today. Someone suggested that Colin might be able to get away with it - his birthday's the 5th of the 11th, but because in America they write their dates the wrong way round, had he shown them identification they would probably have thought it was the 11th of the 5th, which has already been. But the only identification he has says 05 Nov 76, so that didn't work.

We got some lunch in a little cafe there, which was very dodgy. The fries were cold, they sold Pepsi even though it wasn't on the menu, and I asked for an orange juice, advertised at $1.50, and was charged $2.75. When I pointed this out, I was given the explanation, "No, that's something different." Since I'd already drunk it by this time, there wasn't a lot I could do.

In the afternoon, Colin and I explored some of the other casinos. There was one called New York New York, designed in the style of New York, and one called the Luxor, in the shape of a giant pyramid, with an Egyptian motif.

We had to come back to the hotel then, so Ron and Pauline could babysit Tanner while Lee and Shari went to this wedding. On the way, we were stopped by the police. Apparently the van's license had expired. They have to get a whole new license plate over here, like we have to get a new tax disk. The van had been borrowed from Shari's mum, who you'd think might have mentioned that the vehicle was illegal, but it was only a month overdue and he only gave us a warning, so that was all right.

Pauline has now lost all of the $250 she won yesterday. There was a time when I almost thought that she might actually leave Las Vegas with a profit, which would have destroyed all my preconceptions of the place.

Sunday 21st

Walnut

2139hrs

Today we had breakfast in the hotel. I had what was described on the menu as 'fat-free yoghurt with fruit'. The yoghurt was lovely and creamy, with chunks of apricot or something in, and the fruit was a bowl of some of the nicest strawberries I've ever had. You get what you pay for.

Not that I did pay for it. The rooms had already been paid for (Colin and I had to share a bed, but you can't complain when it's free), and everything else was bought for us. We'll give them some money when we go, if they'll take it. We must have cost them quite a bit already.

Not least in phone calls. International calls from Britain are a horrendous price, but Pete told me that because of all the competition between the different phone companies here, it's only about 2p a minute. I therefore felt no guilt in phoning home, and called my mum.

Instead of connecting immediately, I found myself speaking to an operator. I'm trying to call England, I explained, and was put through.

It was the first time I'd spoken to my mum all holiday, and we had a long chat. But that was okay, I thought. It can only have cost 20p or so.

Later on (or possibly the next day) I rang my sister. Once again I was spoken to by an operator, and began to explain the situation.

On this occasion, Pete happened to be in the room, and heard what was going on.

"Don't call via the operator!" he cried. "It costs hundreds, just hang up!" Apparently, in order to talk for 2p a minute, you have to dial some other number first which he had previously failed to mention. That first call home must have been very expensive.

We spent the afternoon driving back to Walnut, and didn't do a lot this evening, although we did plan out the rest of the week. Tomorrow we're going to Universal Studios, on Tuesday it's Disneyland, and on Wednesday we're off to San Diego. There's a big zoo there that Colin wants to see, apparently one of the best in the world. Presumably it has some legitimate purpose and isn't just a prison like so many zoos. With its reputation it must have.

Then on Thursday, we catch the plane back to Britain, where we arrive on Friday. And that's the plan for the whole of the rest of the holiday.

So, it really is almost over. In a way I'm quite relieved - we've seen and done so much already that we both feel like we've had quite enough holiday, and it will be nice to return to an ordinary existence. Of course, by this stage I've got quite used to American life, and the first day or two back in Britain will feel like a foreign holiday in itself.

Monday 22nd

Walnut

2100hrs

We'd arranged to go to Universal Studios today, and Darin had said he'd leave work for a bit to take us there, and pick us up this evening. But his boss said he could have the whole day off, so he came round with us. I think he's coming to San Diego Zoo on Wednesday too.

The first thing we did when we got there was go on the Jurassic Park ride. This was better than most of the rides they have at places like Alton Towers, where the philosophy seems to be that the sicker you feel at the end of the ride, the more you enjoyed it. The Jurassic Park ride was pretty smooth most of the way, with big model dinosaurs leaping out of the water and climbing around. They were about one percent as realistic as the ones in the film, but it was good fun.

Then at the end, the ride falls down a ramp into a pool of water, which shoots up and completely drenches you. I was on the outside, and got wetter than Colin and Darin, who got pretty wet themselves. But of course it was a baking hot day, and we dried off quickly.

Then we went on the Back to the Future ride, which was totally different. The whole thing was computer generated - you sit in a DeLorean, which veers from side to side in synchrony with the virtual landscapes you travel through on a big movie screen up front. The effect is pretty convincing.

We went to Universal Studios when I was here before sixteen years ago, and it's one of the few things about which I have any clear memories. One of these is the Backlot Tram Tour, which we went on next. This goes through sets of old movies, and a few special effects. We saw the house from Psycho, the town hall from Back to the Future, and went over a collapsing bridge as used in Quantum Leap. The thing I remembered about the ride was a huge model of Jaws leaping out of the water and attacking the tram. Perhaps the memory has been exaggerated over the years, or maybe it's just that I was only four then, but this time it seemed a lot less impressive. Still good though.

Shortly after that, we saw the World of Cinemagic show, which I also remembered the 1981 version of. My memory concerned a demonstration of that cinematic technique known as filming-something-in-front-of-a-blue-screen-and-sticking-something-else-in-afterwards. After so many years of progress I'd expected to be shown a more state-of-the-art technique, but in fact all that's changed is the film they use, to an even older one. Last time, they re-enacted a scene from King Kong, or possibly Superman. This time, it was some Hitchcock film. Then they got some members of the audience to add sound effects to a scene from Harry and the Hendersons.

Then we saw the Wild Wild Wild West Stunt Show. I remembered this as well, and it at least more or less tallied with the memory. A lot of cowboys shooting each other and falling off high buildings. It was pretty impressive at the end, when the whole front of one of the buildings collapsed. It was much the same sixteen years ago, references to the Spice Girls notwithstanding.

By now it was gone six, and the sun was starting to set, so we decided not to bother seeing Hollywood. Hopefully we'll have time to go there again on Thursday, before we catch the plane home. We saw the Hollywood sign on the way to Universal Studios, but I'd like to see it closer up, and maybe get a picture of me sitting in one of the O's. You can do that.

We drove home through Hollywood, but didn't really see anything.

While I think, one interesting thing they have in America is Adopt-a-Highway. Different groups of people, the scouts or whatever, adopt a road and have to pick up all the litter. We once had something similar at school but that wasn't voluntary. I don't think it would have been very successful if it had been.

I've been having a bit of trouble with postcards. First you have to find somewhere to buy them, then you have to find somewhere to buy stamps, then you have to find a post-box. When you're travelling from place to place, none of that is easy, and all holiday I've been struggling to get them off. I'd been wanting to send three to everyone - one a week - and have so far got two off to everyone but my friend Dave. When I wrote the second batch, I didn't have enough stamps, and by the time I got more stamps, I'd lost his postcard. Now there are only three days left of the holiday, and clearly I can only send him another one in that time. Maybe I'll get an extra large one and write loads in it.

And that's another thing. Very few places actually sell fifty-cent stamps for as little as fifty cents.

Universal Studios was fun. Tomorrow, we're off to the happiest place on earth.

Tuesday 23rd

Walnut

2128hrs

On the way to Disneyland we stopped off at some Lamborghini dealer. Colin's brother's a Lamborghini fanatic, so he picked up some leaflets and took some photos for him.

Then, Disneyland. Darin dropped us off outside the Disneyland hotel, just outside Disneyland itself. There's a monorail from there into it, and you can buy your ticket when you get on, thus bypassing the queue to buy them at the entrance.

We started in Adventureland, and went on the Jungle Cruise. There were two queues.

"The left queue is shorter than the right queue. Please get in the left queue," said a voice over the Tannoy. Shortly afterwards, the voice spoke again.

"Due to the last announcement," it said, "everyone has got in the left queue. There is now no one in the right queue. Please get in the right queue."

The line moved further forward.

"Because of the previous announcement, everyone has joined the right queue, and there isn't anybody in the left queue. Please get in whichever queue is shorter." We got in the left queue.

The Jungle Cruise is pretty self-explanatory. It's a cruise. Through a jungle. Not a real jungle, of course. Like everything else in Disneyland (except for Mickey Mouse, obviously), it's all fake.

I remembered the Jungle Cruise from when I was here before. I didn't remember the Indiana Jones^TM Adventure, but none of the Indiana Jones^TM films had been made then, so I don't suppose they had it. The sign said there'd be a half-hour queue, but there was nothing of the sort. It took about ten minutes to get at the ride, but that was just walking through the maze of underground (fake) caves and (fake) chambers that lead to it. They believe in making queuing a part of the ride at Disneyland, and quite right too.

That was a really good ride, in the true spirit of the Indiana Jones^TM movies. Falling rocks and rolling boulders, all kinds of good stuff.

So much for Adventureland. We went to New Orleans Square next, where we went on another ride called Pirates of the Caribbean. This was pretty atmospheric, with huge fibreglass scenes (everything in Disneyland is made of fibreglass) and fibreglass pirates running around. Actually the pirates probably weren't fibreglass, but they might've been.

We went in the Haunted Mansion next. First we walked through a couple of rooms, and thought it was just a haunted house, but then it turned into a ride. There were skeletons and Pepper's ghosts (an old theatrical trick where concealed models reflect on a glass screen and look all ghostly), and all kinds of really clever things that it's hard to see how they did. At one point there was a screen with coloured lights flashing across it, and we seemed to pass right through that. Magic.

After New Orleans Square we went to Critter Country. We saw a ride called Splash Mountain from the outside, with the cars zooming down a steep drop and being engulfed in a wave of water. That looks fun, we thought, and we queued up. This was the first ride where the queue lasted more than a few minutes - only a couple all day lasted for half an hour or so.

We got on the ride, which trundled around a bit and went down a bit of a slope and there was a bit of a splash. That's nothing, everyone said, just wait for the big one at the end. Then it stopped. Apparently, that was the big one at the end. It looked a lot better from the outside,

That was the only thing worth doing in Critter Country, so we moved swiftly on to Frontierland. There was even less to do in Frontierland, so we went to Fantasyland.

Mr Toad's Wild Ride was your basic little-car-going-round-lots-of-sharp-corners-and-looking-like-it's-going-to-hit-a-wall-but-not-quite-doing. Good fun, though. We then moseyed over to Mickey's Toontown, by which time our feet were starting to get tired, so we hopped on the Railroad train for a tour of Disneyland.

Disneyland isn't actually that big, but it's very compact and gets a lot of stuff into a fairly small space. Which means that even with stops, it didn't take that long for the train to go all round the border of the place. It went through a few tunnels with stuff in them, and in one was 'the Grand Canyon'. This was made largely of cardboard, and looked exactly nothing like the actual Grand Canyon did a week ago.

"This is how the Grand Canyon looks today," insisted the announcer. It's lost a lot of its beauty in the last seven days. It looks like we got there just in time.

The same tunnel also included a reconstruction of how the world might have looked when dinosaurs roamed the earth, but given the unreliability of their depiction of the Grand Canyon, I couldn't help but view the accuracy of this vision sceptically.

We soon arrived back at Mickey's Toontown and disboarded. We went on a rollercoaster called Gadget's Go Coaster, whatever that's supposed to mean. This lasted for roughly fifty seconds, and basically went round in a circle, with a slight dip. Not the most terrifying ride, but fun.

Actually, by this point I'd bought my souvenir. Travelling across the country, I'd gotten into the habit of not buying anything, since whatever I did purchase would increase the load for the rest of the trip. But I had to buy something at Disneyland, and noticing a rather neat Mickey Mouse beanie hat, I kept it in mind for later. I didn't want to buy it then, since I'd have to wear it all day, but as the heat continued to beat at my brow, it occurred to me that this might not be a bad idea, and we went up to the nearest stall to see if they sold them. They didn't, but the man told me a couple of places nearby that did. We thanked him and proceeded to the nearest, which sold nothing of the sort. Declining to trust him further, we returned to the original stall and I got it there. We did, incidentally, visit the other place he'd mentioned later on. They didn't have them either.

We went on Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin, which had a long queue and wasn't that great, but it was okay. You sit in a car that moves along and spins around, surrounded by props and scenes from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Nothing too exciting.

Outside in Toontown was Donald Duck, who Colin wanted to be photographed with, so we queued to see him. It wasn't much of a queue, just a load of people milling around, and before we'd got to the front Donald pointed at his wrist to indicate that he'd spent quite enough of his day being hugged by little kids, and left. Fortunately I had already photographed him, content with a picture of Donald and somebody else's family.

Mickey Mouse is quite another matter. I wanted a picture of me with him, and was prepared to queue for it. It wasn't a long queue, and I got my picture. It was the last one in the film, which Colin reckons means it might not come out, but I hope it does. You had to go all through Mickey's house to get at the queue, which was pretty cool, and mostly fibreglass.

In Tomorrowland we went on Star Tours, and Submarine Voyage. Star Tours was a lot like the Back to the Future ride at Universal Studios, i.e. virtual, but rather than having lots of cars with a few people in each, it was a whole cinema with moving chairs. Based loosely on Star Wars, you're supposedly in a spaceship which flies through asteroid belts and the like. Those rides where your seat moves but nothing else does are quite fun, but not the same as the real thing.

Submarine Voyage was something else I remembered. You climb in a submarine, which supposedly goes deep underwater, except at no point does the top half go under, and you see loads of fish and mermaids and monsters through the portholes, except they're made of fibreglass. I did actually see one real fish, which is probably more than most people. Are the ones on the other side called starboardholes? Just a thought.

It was pretty dark now, and there wasn't much more than half an hour until it closed at eight. We'd been in all the areas, and gone on everything we wanted to, so we decided to go back to Main Street. We'd started there, but it was just shops, so we'd gone straight on to Adventureland. Now, though, we liked the idea of looking in shops, besides which I needed some postcards.

We went in a few shops that didn't sell postcards, then one where Colin wanted to buy a plate for his mum. Since we were short of time, I arranged to go and get postcards and meet him back there when he'd paid for his plate.

There's no way postcards I send now will get home before I do, but for reasons I mentioned yesterday, I'd better send some more. I went all back down Main Street on the other side, and part way into Frontierland, but still couldn't find anywhere that sold postcards. All day we'd been past places that sold them all the time, but now I needed one they were nowhere to be seen.

We didn't have long before the final monorail train, so I admitted defeat and returned to Colin. We left for the train, and immediately reached a stall selling postcards. I picked up a few hastily and paid, and we left.

Having taken a few wrong turnings, we managed to locate the train stop in little less than the nick of time, and left Disneyland on the last train of the night.

It differed significantly from my memory. I remembered a lot more Disney characters wandering around. I'm sure you could meet Mickey in the street before, but now you have to queue. And I remember more shows, there was one thing in a theatre with a revolving stage. They probably still have that, we just missed it. I also remember a light parade down Main Street, with carriages parading along in the dark, each lit with a thousand lights. That looked gorgeous, I'd have liked to have seen it again. But no matter.

Darin picked us up where he'd dropped us off, and we went to a drive-through McDonalds on the way back. We did the same yesterday, when they misheard our order and gave us the wrong thing, which is I believe a constant source of irritation to Americans. You haven't been to America until you've been annoyed by a moron at a drive-through McDonald's.

Indeed, going to a drive-through at all is one of those very American experiences, without which the holiday wouldn't be complete. Actually there are a couple of others which I still haven't done - I haven't seen any tumbleweed, and I haven't been shot. It would have been nice to have been shot, being as it is an integral part of American culture. I'd feel like I'd really been accepted; a tourist being shot by an American is, I think, a lot like a baby cuckoo being fed a slug by the lady of the nest it has intercepted. Not a pleasant experience in itself, but a rite of passage. Symbolic.

There's still a day or so left, of course, but I can't see it happening now. I must be strong, and accept the loss. One can't do everything one wants to.

Wednesday 24th

Walnut

2018hrs

Another thing I never did in America was eat a pretzel. The saddest words of tongue or pen are these: it might have been.

We went down to San Diego Zoo today. It's 120 miles, but Darin got us there in one and a half hours. They have car pool lanes here, which you can only go in if there is more than one person in the car. The idea is it moves faster, encouraging people to car pool and saving the world. Apparently it doesn't work, which doesn't surprise me because it didn't seem much quicker than the other lanes.

The maps we got on entering the zoo had on them a coupon for three dollars off admission to Universal Studios. Oh well.

There's not much you can say about a trip to the zoo. You just walk around and look at animals. A lot of the best ones weren't there - the Komodo Dragons won't be back until the fall (which surely this is, but there you are), and the pandas had been taken away to be experimented on, or something. But we did see a snake eating a rat, which was pretty cool.

Whenever anyone visits the zoo, their thoughts turn to the morality of such establishments, which is a bit like debating the ethics of cannibalism over a nice manburger. Most of the animals there have got a lot of room, though of course it can't compare to living in the wild, and many of them are endangered species, which they are helping to preserve. But there's a big difference between the good of the species and the good of the individual, and it's doubtful that it would be much comfort to the elephants to know that their imprisonment will ensure the continuation of their race.

If you don't think about it, you might expect the animals who suffer the most from their enclosure to be the intelligent ones, like the monkeys and the pigs (they have pigs all over the place in that zoo. More exotic pigs than the ones they make pork out of, but pigs nonetheless). But if you do think about it, these are animals which lie around doing very little in their natural habitat, and indeed they seemed quite content to do the same in an artificial environment. It was the creatures more inclined to spend their time stalking prey - the tigers, the polar bears - which seemed more bored out of their minds, and some of these normally more active animals were pacing up and down like expectant fathers. Possibly the zoo has had a particularly successful year, and they all were expectant fathers, but I doubt it.

Almost as odd as pigs, they had cats. Not just big cats, but things only one step away from common moggies. I don't know why some of these animals were in a zoo.

On the way back we stopped at a little cafe for some French fries. Like everywhere else here, they offered free refills of Coke. Such a service would be unthinkable in Britain. They had mini-jukeboxes on every table, and you could make them play a song over the speakers. It cost five cents, but the waitress gave us each five cents for that purpose. You never get service like that in Britain.

Thursday 25th

Over Ontario

2108hrs

I'm still going by Pacific Time. I'm planning on turning my watch forward all eight hours at midnight, thus bypassing the night altogether. If I can then stay awake until night-time (British Time), I should be able to successfully reset my body clock.

We didn't do a lot this morning. When I woke up it was raining outside, which is the first time that's happened since we hit the west coast. Apparently hurricane Nora's about, so I think it's her fault.

Darin drove us out to Hollywood, where we drove down Hollywood Boulevard and saw those stars on the pavement. Apparently you're not allowed to go up to the Hollywood sign - you could probably do it, and I'd have been tempted, but getting arrested just hours before the flight seemed too risky. In the end we didn't go to the sign at all, but just drove through Hollywood and looked.

We went to another Lamborghini dealer, where Colin took some more pictures for his brother. This one was in Beverly Hills, and I thought they might be too posh and not let him, but they were fine about it. Then we got some early lunch at a Jack-in-the-Box, a fast food chain, and went to the beach.

It had stopped raining by now, but was still hardly weather for sunbathing, and we didn't stay long. Just long enough for the tide to come in suddenly and soak my and Colin's shoes and socks. They dried eventually.

By then it was pretty much time to check in, and Darin dropped us off at the airport. They hadn't got any window seats left, but it's dark out anyway so we're not missing much.

The seats have tellies again. There's one channel which just shows a map with the plane over it, so you can see where you are. It also tells you some information about the flight, like how high you are and how far there is to go. We'll be landing at Heathrow in 5 hours and 53 minutes.

So that's it. Back to the UK, with just a week left of the summer holiday. In seven days I'll be back at university for my final year, and then, who knows? The future, as they say, is not ours to see. I hope I can come to America again some day, but who can say? Whatever will be, will be. Que sera sera.

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