Highway to hell

29 A.D.

We arrived at the Albuquerque bus station at 2.30 on Wednesday afternoon...we left it at 11.30 p.m. I used the time productively to write half of the script for a sitcom pilot that me and a friend devised back in Blighty. Tim played guess-the-logo on his phone. During our time in what, to be fair, is one of the nicer bus stations (only because Amtrak also uses it), we came across the following people:

• A cowboy-clad Mexican grandfather who sat right next to me and had several conversations on his phone...with it on speakerphone.
• A sinister-looking jailbird-type with tattoos across his face and a metal leg.
• A meek young man who insisted on sitting on the floor and reading from two bibles.
• An elderly lady who called herself “Amazing Grace” and who used to be an audio typist before she developed [some condition that I missed] and was very impressed with the way I furiously tapped away on my laptop.
• A suspected crystal-meth head who came into the toilet singing loudly as I was taking my turn, who flushed the stand up toilet without taking his turn, then went to wash his hands, still singing as I left the toilets. Later on he approached us while playing cards and correctly guessed that the game was rummy.
• An elderly native American lady who asked Tim to guard the door while she went to the toilet. She got him to walk into the Men’s with her with the view to him guarding the door, but because the one cubicle she wanted did not have a lock on the door (even though all the others did), she decided not to go. Yes, this really is a true story.

The woman behind the counter who’d given us the bad news about the earlier bus being overbooked assured us wholeheartedly that we would be able to board the 11 o`clock one, but rather scarily we only just managed to get on. As it pulled away, I was not sorry to be saying goodbye to Albuquerque – a damn difficult place to get out of!

Previously while in the queue we’d spent nearly an hour talking in broken English to an elderly Chinese guy called Kwan about how much travelling he’d done. He was very friendly, but quite hard to understand at times, and I wasn’t sure how much of our words he actually understood in return. We’ve become wary about getting stuck with enthusiastic conversationalists when it’s a night bus and we need to sleep – they sit next to us and keep on and on and on until finally they take the hint that we’ve closed our eyes. As mentioned earlier, there were a lot of people already on the bus, so our conversation with Kwan did not continue. However, I didn’t sleep great, which is unlike me, even on the buses. I blamed it on the endless coffee refills I had in the diner.

At 4.15 a.m. (we are now on Pacific time), those of us switching to go to Vegas alighted at Flagstaff, Arizona. Tim and I were hoping to get some extra shuteye, but the place was the size of a broom cupboard, definitely the smallest terminal we’d been to. Oh well, better get our heads down anyway...but no sooner had we closed our eyes and bearhugged our bags, the clerk announced that the terminal closed at 5. It doesn’t open again until 9. So what do we do until then? He said there was a 24 hour diner down the road and, bless him, he even offered to give us a lift there if we hung around until he clocked off. Along with Tim and I was a young Italian guy called Gabriel who had couchsurfed exclusively around America. The only other person who’d got off the bus was Kwan, also heading to Las Vegas. He talked to/at me for another 20 minutes, but by this point I have to admit that my joie de vivre was at a minimum and it was all I could do to smile and nod.  

The clerk ended up giving this unlikely foursome a lift to the diner, which happened to be in the back of his truck (Kwan sat up front on account of his age). This was actually pretty cool and we whizzed along in the open air, celebrating Arizona’s relaxed laws on riding in the rear of a pick-up. This had to be the best Greyhound staff member we’d met so far!

Once at the diner, we sat at our table for four. Opposite each other, Tim and Gabriel talked football, leaving Kwan and I to continue our disjointed discussions. Don’t get me wrong, he was a great fellow, but after a crap night’s kip on the bus I found him rather hard work. Plus I swore that we were repeating conversations we’d had barely an hour ago. When his ice cream sundae arrived, I made my excuses to go for a what-carcass-moment.

[Kwan gives me a map-based tour of all the US cities he's visited (a lot!)]

An aside – I should probably define “what-carcass-moment”. There is an episode in the popular television sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf called Quarantine in which Rimmer has gone insane and unreasonably imprisoned Lister, Cat and Kryten in...errr...quarantine. This trio are all male and Kryten is concerned that them being cooped up together and unable to leave will cause serious problems. The conversation in question goes something like this:

KRYTEN: Sir, it's a scientific fact that the human male needs to spend time by himself!

LISTER: It is?

KRYTEN: Yes! The most popular pastimes have always been ones that males can enjoy alone: angling, golf, and of course the all time number one.

CAT: It's not just humans! Look what happens when two male tigers are locked up together! One of them winds up on the other guy's toothpick!

KRYTEN: Lions, tigers, scorpions, rats, even vultures when they're in captivity.

LISTER: What are you saying to me? Vultures need personal space? They need time alone if they're to put their feet up and read "What Carcass Magazine?"

Tim and I had discussed the possibility (or even the necessity) of us taking what-carcass-moments while we’re travelling. To be fair, despite a couple of tiny niggles over nothing much, we haven’t really clashed at all. This might change further down the line, but so far my what-carcass-moments have been more about getting out of cramped hostel rooms and having a walk around the block to enjoy the fine evening weather with some ipod tunes.

My what-carcass-moment this morning lasted nearly an hour. I wasn’t proud of it, but I just had to get out and do my own thing for a while. However, my hopes of seeing anything of interest in Flagstaff were dashed when I realised we were miles from downtown. So much for sightseeing in a fresh, new city! But the mountains look pretty cool in the distance, and so far the temperature has also been pretty cool.

I returned to the diner to find Gabriel and Kwan leaving, respectively, to meet his latest couchsurfing host, and to look for a bus into town. Tim told me that Kwan had generously paid the cheque for us all. Boy, did I feel guilty! Tim understood why I'd gone for my little walky-walk though – he’s a diamond, we won’t ever fall out with each other, I am sure I am not tempting fate in any way by saying that.

Now we’re back at the bus station and waiting for it to re-open. I’m not in any way certain that we’ll be able to get on that bus to Sin City this afternoon, and if that’s the case then the bright lights of Vegas will be looking dimmer than ever in the distance...

Stuck in the middle with you

28 A.D.

It’s exactly four weeks since we’ve been on the road and disaster has struck!

But more about that later.

Last night Tim wisely steered clear of the Steel Reserve, which meant that I was tasked with drinking it. I managed most of the cans, but had to leave one in the fridge for the maid. It was another slow evening in Albuquerque.

Next morning we left the luggage with the hotel manageress (who was still in her pyjamas at 11 a.m.) and scouted a couple of locations that were used in the excellent TV show Breaking Bad. That was pretty good, but it didn’t take up much time. The problem with Route 66 is that there is virtually no shade on either side of the street and consequently the back of my legs now look like two sticks of rhubarb. I’ve since switched back to jeans, which may come as a relief to many.

We needed to check our emails, so we covertly hung around outside the diner opposite Hot Yoga and leeched the wi-fi. After a while of sitting uncomfortably on the rocky wall, we decided we might as well go inside and sit down with a coffee (this had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that there was only one woman working out in Hot Yoga).

A few hours later and we headed down the hill to the Greyhound terminal. Our bus would be leaving at 4.40 p.m. and getting into Vegas at 5.30 a.m., after a late night transfer in Flagstaff, Arizona. However, when we got to the front of the queue the lady behind the desk told us that our bus was OVERBOOKED! Noooooooo! Desperate and shaking uncontrollably, we ran through our options:

• Amtrak doesn’t run to Vegas.
• We’re way too ugly to be picked up as hitchhikers.
• The next bus from Albuquerque to Vegas is at 7.30 the next morning and it gets into Sin City at 8.20 p.m.

Another night in Albuquerque? No way, Jose! We discovered there was a bus going to Flagstaff at 11 p.m., getting in around 2 in the morning. The next bus from Flagstaff to Vegas was the same bus mentioned above, only it left flagstaff at 2.30 p.m.,  naturally getting to Sin City at 8.20 p.m. (if you’re having trouble following this then think how we managed it while knackered, sweating and dying for a bite to eat!)

So, it looked like we had no choice about the arriving in Vegas at 8.20 bit, but at least if we took the 11 p.m. bus then we could see a bit of Arizona before heading north east to Nevada. And that’s what the Grayboys always try to do – put a positive outlook on every disastrous situation. We’d always feared being unable to board our bus, so now that we’d experienced it, it was as if the sword of Damocles was no longer hanging over us and waiting to strike. Of course, it could happen again further down the line...but let’s not think about that. That said, we’ve got A LOT thinking time coming up while we wait, stranded in New Mexico with sunburnt legs...

Chicago

12 A.D.

I sorted myself out with hairspray at the local ‘Dollerama’ store. Not sure how strong it is though. Is it wise to use a product like this from Canada’s equivalent of Poundland when I’m heading for The Windy City??? As for my ulcers, Tim suggested swilling my mouth with a mixture of warm water and salt, which I gave my best shot. Such witchcraft apparently does not work immediately, so I hoped for some respite the next morning. Sound like a bit of a wimp, don’t I?

For our last night in Niagara Falls, Tim wanted to do a Man-Versus-Food visit. If you haven’t seen the show, there’s a charismatic guy who goes to lots of ker-azy restaurants, orders the largest thing on the menu and attempts to eat it within a certain amount of time. No really, that’s it. Tim is keen to imitate these amazing feats of appetite, but unfortunately the place in question (‘The Silo’) was six miles north across the border. Instead we had a quick walk north to a big whirlpool resulting from The Falls and ate at a local diner, me ordering a Caesar salad to curb the pain of the ulcers [note to self – stop talking about your bloody ulcers!]

As it was Saturday night, we decided to finish the pack of (small) beers we’d got in. I could really get used to sitting out on the veranda on a pleasant sunny evening watching the world go by. Once the sun went down and I got sick of listening to my chilled-out Ipod playlist, we ignored Canadian TV and tried to invent a new game of cards that combines the best elements of the games we grew up playing. It’s very much a work-in-progress at this point.

Next morning we wandered around the deserted streets until it was time for the quarter final kick off. Even the free refills on the root beers couldn’t ease the drawn-out agony of England going out on penalties yet again. It was definitely time to leave town, to leave the country even. I realised then that we were as far north as we would ever go on our trip.

Getting off the bus at the border and going through customs was straightforward enough, but why is it that, even though you know that you’ve done nothing wrong and got nothing dodgy in your luggage, you still feel a tad nervous? Buffalo bus terminal looked a lot worse by night than it did by day. As I sat down I simply said, “Ta,” to a young Jack Osborne lookalike who moved his bag for me and he took this as his cue to chat. And this was where my education about who to talk to in late night bus terminals began; although he looked pretty normal, his every word reeked of B.S. – something about him not being given a passport when he entered Canada and subsequently not being able to get out of the country again. So how was he sitting there in the USA and talking to me? He said that on his last trip on the Greyhound he’d had to stand for five and a half hours (curious, because Greyhound do not let passengers stand on long distance buses) and he claimed that because he was late again his parents would have to spend hours waiting to pick him up (wherever the mythical place he was heading for happened to be). I suggested he call them, he said he couldn’t. I asked why not and he’d said spent his last few dollars on [something mumbled and unintelligible]. I suggested he reverse the charges, he said he couldn’t. I asked why and he gave me a blank look, knowing he was beaten and I’d seen though his cock-and-bull story. At this point I rolled my eyes and went back to my book, which I finally got around to starting. It’s called Adventures in the screen trade by William Goldman, if you're interested.

You should never judge a city by its bus station, but after rolling in through the darkness at 3.10 a.m., the fair city of Cleveland will only be remembered in my mind for low level prison-style lighting and aircon needlessly pumped out to make me feel cold for the first time in a week and a half. It’s that chilly that for extra warmth I put the hood up on my fleece, the first time I’ve done that since I was a nipper. Tim spots a guy dressed as a pirate in the queue for the bus to Columbus and I have to do a double take to check he’s not an illusion. He’s not, but it’s too late at night / early in the morning to ask why. Just as 4.50 a.m. approaches (blast off time), a crowd of people from a Washington D.C. bus invade our line and are given priority boarding, making it look as though we won’t get on. I remember Giselle’s words in which she said she’d only ever not been able to get on one bus in all her years of travelling – would we face such a scenario already? Fortunately good old Greyhound brought out a second bus for us, but it wasn’t one of the newer express versions and that meant no wi-fi (but still plenty of freezing aircon!)

Again we slept well and I woke up as we arrived at a truckstop deep in the heart of Indiana. The female bus driver was an absolute hoot and she gave us 20 minutes to get off, do what we had to, and get back on. When she counted us back, we were a couple short. “Anyone seen those two Indian women?” she called out, but no one answered. “Oh well,” she shrugged, “guess they’ll just have to take the next bus!” And off we went, with all of their luggage still on board! Mental note – if she says 20 minutes, DO NOT be longer than 20 minutes!

After falling asleep again and waking up to see a goods train (some people will understand why this is important), we arrived in Chicago. It was an easy walk from the bus station to The Parthenon Hostel in Greektown. Once she’d checked us in, the receptionist said in her sultriest tones, “Enjoy your stay, British boys!” That got me thinking...up until now we had always introduced ourselves as English, never British. Hmmm. Maybe it was because of the football? No, don’t want to think about that shattered dream anymore!    

We spent the afternoon walking round the south and east sides of the city. Chicago has a skyline that would seem very impressive had we not seen that of New York ten days ago. But sitting beside Lake Michigan was great (no pun intended!) and by mid-afternoon I had seen enough goods trains to last me a lifetime – the thrill (if there ever was one) had gone. The afternoon ended on what could be a good or a bad note – I got ID’d trying to buy a six pack of beer! It was the first time it had happened in the USA and I’d been starting to believe I was immune. Was all this healthy sunlight starting to make me look younger? No matter, upon returning to The Parthenon we were hit by a conundrum as we re-read the rules and saw that no alcoholic beverages were allowed inside the entire building...what to do, British boys, what to do?

On the road again

8 A.D.

Anna was with us for about 10 minutes before she discovered there was a spare bed going in a room with some friends she’d met the previous day, so she took it. Did we care? Not one bit – a private room for us! We spent a quiet evening on the netbook planning some future routes for the next few weeks and weighing up which towns to try and hit. We also took care of our Niagara Falls dilemma, but more about that later. Just as we were winding down and thinking about hitting the hay, the clock struck 10.30 (the time things always seem to happen) and the door to our room flew open and in burst Hannah and Mike to destroy the tranquil peace we’d established. Claiming to be no more than friends, Hannah was extremely loud, Mike was very mild-mannered, and to be fair they were both very nice, if a bit full-on. The Grayboys made conversation for a while, but our hearts weren’t in it and we couldn’t help but wonder if H and M were in the mood for a party. Fortunately they weren’t and we all got off to sleep peacefully, with no rogue noises or movements to disturb the communal slumbers.

[ A great place to live???]

We allowed ourselves a lie in next morning and awoke to find Hannah and Mike had left as quickly as they’d arrived. This day held the latest in a line of challenges for us – we would be booking onto the night bus to Niagara Falls, leaving D.C. at 6 p.m. and getting into N.F. at 8 a.m. the next morning. We were a little dismayed to see that to get there we had to travel back through New York! Re-tracing our steps, maaaan! The plan was to grab some sleep here and there and then check into our hotel at midday and grab some more snoozies. But plans are always subject to change....

[The next hotel we will be staying at.]

We checked out of D.C. Lofty at 11 (stripping the beds as per the rules) and left our backpacks in the corridor, displaying a massive amount of trust in our fellow travellers (should they be able to break through our numerous padlocks!) Our time in Washington was almost up, but before we left we wanted to see the western suburb of Georgetown, which our aunt and uncle raved about when they came here. And it was certainly pretty, with a colonial, almost frontier-like feel to it, but it didn’t make us rave. Maybe we’ve seen too much good stuff already? Or maybe the continuing heatwave experienced by northeast America was creating an anti-rave factor! We ate lunch at Subway for the first time since arriving. I loved it.

[James gets stuck into some light reading over breakfast in an Arabian coffee house / bookshop.]

We returned to D.C. Lofty just before the first Euro 2012 quarter final kicked off, so we chilled our beans in front of the big screen for a bit. It was then a tough trek to the bus terminal and we made sure we didn’t pass through the same dodgy area of two days ago. And that’s you up to date, dear reader. By the miracle of modern wi-fi technology I am writing and posting this on the Greyhound express service to New York. Hope you slept soundly last night, England.