Can't get there from here

47 A.D.

She’s a siren!

She’s a temptress!

She’s a whore!

Who do I mean?

Why, Los Angeles, of course!

But before I get onto the-city-that-you-never-leave, please observe a minute’s silence for the following:

In Memoriam – GREYHOUND

Finally the love affair ends and this great and terrible bus service is no more in our lives. From east coast New York to west coast LA, we’ve had all sorts of fun and games and never had the same level of service twice. Even the final journey, a three hour ride from San Diego was notable for us being rushed on board and not being able to get our fleeces out of our baggage, leaving us at the mercy of rctic air con. And what was in many ways the simplest journey we undertook was interrupted at San Clemente station for a full-on search of all personnel by the border patrol (not THAT full-on!) So, that’s the end of this chapter. And to that person who voted in the latest questionnaire that they were sick of me whining about Greyhound, well, their wish has come true! RIP.

Tim got us a cracking deal at the Stay At Main hostel in downtown LA. Even though the bathrooms are shared, there’s plenty of them, including one right next to our door. Plus there’s complimentary popcorn at 4 o`clock – woohoo! It’s a boutique hostel, whatever that means – I imagine it has something to do with this flowery light type thing on one side of the room...

...as well as the red and white spotted duvets. Nice. The hostel is adjoined to the Cecil hotel and we can get in through there with our key cards when the hostel entrance closes at 11 p.m. The Cecil is a grand old 1920s place, supposedly with very naff rooms (at least according to the reviews), but a very grand foyer. In fact, I take to entering the complex through the Cecil, rather than the hostel.

The guidebook said we’re staying in a “dicey” area and I concur, if only for the beggars. To be fair, 99% of the beggars I’ve encountered in the US have never pushed it when I’ve refused to give them any cash, some have even been more polite than the Greyhound staff (oops, I’m still whining about it!) To save having to give too much of an explanation, I’ve developed the habit of telling the beggars that I’m “brassic” in the hope that they don’t know what the word means, but imagine it must be some serious hardship. But the first guy who bugged me here knew exactly what I meant;  “Ya can’t even spare one cent???” he yelled at me down the street. “One cent???” he continued to yell. Anyone know any more colloquial words than “brassic”?

Let’s get back to our adventures in LA. Saturday night – nothing happened. We didn’t even have a beer. Pretty dull, huh? Instead we spent the evening researching where to go over the next three days and how to get there. LA has been described as “19 suburbs looking for a city” and there’s no doubting just how gigantic it is. Everyone I’ve met who’s come from here has recommended getting a car. But we think we can wing it on the public transport system, just need to decipher the online maps which make the periodic table look like a kindergarten join-the-dots.

After sleeping well, despite the constant police sirens through the night, we hot-footed it down to the nearby subway station and bought day passes for $5. Unfortunately the subway is just that – underground, so you don’t get to see much of the city as you travel.  We alighted at the one place that we both agreed we had to see – HOLLYWOOD!

Okay, so the big film studios moved out decades ago, but the area still has plenty of allure for the casual tourist. The subway emptied out onto Hollywood Boulevard, featuring sidewalks decorated with the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Everyone who is anyone in this town has a star there, many of whom I’d heard of, but a great many of the names didn’t register. And a lot of them are still blank, so no doubt the fab five lads of popular boy band One Direction will be listed there soon, or maybe it’ll just be Harry Styles after he goes solo and takes over the world. I know, I know, bad example, but it’s been a long day.

[After taking this shot I was asked, "Sir, what is the significance of your rabbit?"] 

The guide book mentioned an underwear shop called Frederick’s along the boulevard, containing the free-to-visit Celebrity Lingerie Hall of Fame. Well, it’s something different, isn’t it? But alas, it was closed. Sunday bloomin` Sunday! Probably the most popular spot on the whole road was The Chinese Theatre where they still show movie premieres and people in strange costumes hang around outside waving for pictures.

Far in the distance we had spotted the fabled Hollywood sign, but it really was a long way away. Ducking into a nearby visitor centre, we asked which roads to take for a better view. The lady behind the counter duly obliged, but suggested that one should not attempt to walk it because of the hills – get a taxi up and walk back. Shouldn’t walk it? Telling that to the Grayboys is like a red rag to a bull! Not only did we intend to walk it, we’d stride up those hills with our San Francisco-experienced thighs! But it was hot. And steep. And tiring too. At the end of the day, we couldn’t get that close, so had to settle for a few shots standing on the road with the huge white letters like a tiny alphabet in the background. But at least we saw it.

The woman was right – going down the hill was a lot easier, but we were very hungry and there weren’t any benches, let alone any shade. Therefore we ate our packed lunches on a small wall on Sunset Boulevard AKA Sunset Strip. This was the place where bands like The Doors set the sixties ablaze with tunes like Light my fire at the Whisky-a-go-go club, but the only blaze today was overhead.

The next nearby destination was the Hollywood Forever Cemetery where several showbusiness people were buried, most notably Johnny Ramone (or, at least, most notable to me). As we entered the place, Tim went one way, and I went another. Was it a subconscious What Carcass Moment? Who knows, but by the time I looked around, I couldn’t see him. I kept wandering a little while, but no joy. By now it was really hot overheard and I was down to my last millilitre of water. There are better places to lose your brother than in a massive Jewish cemetery in a massive city in a massive country. I tried to remember commando training, or whatever it was I learnt in school – if you get lost, stay in one place so people can find you. But what if he does the same thing? We’ll both be rooted to the spot `til dusk! In the end we both worked out that it made sense to head back to the gate where we entered, like two minds working in tandem. I’m not sure if we’ve evolved a group mind yet, but we do often have the same thought at the same time. Can men synchronise? Let’s not go there, instead we’ll end the paragraph on a positive note – Tim found Johnny Ramone’s grave on his wanderings and got the pic, so it was all worthwhile.

[Johnny Ramone's grave not pictured due to potential copyright infringement from Tim.]

It was by now the middle of the afternoon and I was flagging. On US TV they’ve been constantly advertising the 5 Hour Energy Drink (it may be big on Britvision as well) and I got given a free sample on our way to the subway that morning. So I drank it and waited for the five hour magical buzz to happen...ha! If anything I was yawning more than before! It made sense to get the bus to our next destination – Beverly Hills. Unfortunately we got off a few stops too soon and ended up only skirting around the edge of this high class suburb. But boy were the houses fine! And even the grass on the sidewalk was a lush shade of dark green, every blade trimmed to perfection. The plan had also been to amble round to the even grander mansions of nearby Bel Air, but time was against us. Why did this city have to be so huge???

Tim is keen on his photography, so we headed to the glamorously-titled Avenue of the Stars for an exhibition called Who Shot Rock `N` Roll. This was all about iconic photographs of musicians through the last few decades and I have to say I was very impressed. I even commented to Tim how the album cover from London calling by The Clash  was deliberately shot to parody Elvis Presley’s debut, supposedly demonstrating the death of rock `n` roll after 25 years. This titbit of information wasn’t on the accompanying plaque and the people around us were very pleased to hear it. Ironically the exhibition did not allow photographs, so instead I’ll just post the visuals behind my tittybit...   

The bus journey back from West Hollywood to Downtown took nearly an hour. Yawn! We ate out at the Mexican equivalent of Subway, name of Chipolate. Scratched another new food off the list. And that’s it for today. May you come back for the next installment in which I will be displaying my wares on the beach...

Going up the country

38 A.D.

[From Thursday onwards...]

Fortunately the police were not called to the bus station at Salt Lake City last night, although the paramedics came after an old man was sick into a bin.

Our next destination was a place that I’d only really heard of in one line of the Johnny Cash song Folsom prison blues:

“I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die...”

Thanks for that, Johnny. 

Reno sells itself as “the biggest little city in the world”, kinda like a smaller version of Vegas. Like its larger state neighbour, there are three things to do in Reno – gamble, get married and get divorced. We wouldn’t be in town long enough to do any of them as the bus arrived at 8.30 (a bloomin` hour late) and we were picking up our rental car at 9. That said, we always fancy a coffee to get ourselves going and Tim said he’d spotted a Macdonalds close to the terminal just before we pulled in. We looked, nothing there. He claims it must have been a mirage. Oh dear, my little brother is already having hallucinations and we’ve got a four hour drive across the desert coming up!

We’d booked the hire car through Hertz and were picking it up at Hurrah’s casino car park. Not needing anything fancy, we’d opted for the smallest car available, a “compact”. What we got was a gold Chevy Malibu with a 3.6 litre engine – definitely not a compact! A big beast like this wasn’t going to help us learn to drive on the wrong side of the road! Still, it was at least an automatic transmission, which meant one less thing to think about.  

And so we headed south on route 395, Yosemite National Park being our destination. Although Greyhound not going directly to Yosemite was cause enough for us to make our own way, we’d both fancied doing an all-American road trip, but it hadn’t been practical to rent a vehicle from east coast to west. At least this way we got to experience the open highway for a while before returning to the unwelcoming bosom of Greyhound. And despite the scattered rain drops on our windshield, the highway still rocked and made us feel like we were born to be wild.

Doing the driving in shifts so the other person could make video / takes pictures as we went, it took us about the four hours we expected to hit the park limits. Speaking of hitting things, the only roadkill we saw on the way was a dead raccoon – you see more than that on the 20 minute drive from Southport to Ormskirk!

Yosemite costs $10 to enter, but your pass is valid for a week. It is a vast expanse of nature with campsites dotted here, there and everywhere. The only way to enter from the east is via Tioga Road, which is closed from November to May, and judging by some of the sheer drops by the roadside, coupled with the constant signs for falling rocks, I could easily understand why. The scenery was stunning and we had to stop every few minutes for a photo opportunity, and to annoy the chipmunks who were running around all over the place, fuming that we’d strayed into their territory.

Our destination was White Wolf campsite where we hoped to park up with no hassle, no fuss. At the turn off we were greeted with a sign saying CAMP FULL. Nah, they probably still have room for a compact Chevy Malibu in a clearing somewhere, right? Wrong. Even before Tim had started asking the camp warden about a space, the guy was shaking his head. A woman's voice from within a tent directed us back down the road to Yosemite Creek camp, claiming it was usually the last one to fill up. If we fancied risking it and parking out on the main road for the night, the chances are we would get a ticket from the park rangers on patrol, and I hadn’t planned on winding Ranger Smith up by stealing pic-a-nic baskets or anything else. Oh hang on, that’s Yellowstone. Oh hang on, that’s Jellystone!

Yosemite Creek is never full for a good reason – it is incredibly difficult to get to! The road is extremely narrow and winding and rocky and potholey and would make tough work for the most rugged 4 x 4, let alone an oversized Chevy Malibu. Eventually we stopped worrying about the car’s suspension and made it down to the bottom of the track and some semblance of civilisation. Well, I say “civilisation”, but there were no showers, no running water, and the toilets...I don’t want to write about the toilets.

Other people were here, so we didn’t feel quite so crazy, but they had all of the gear needed for surviving several days in the centre of Yosemite. Unfortunately the advertised diner at White Wolf where we’d planned to fill up had been closed, so our provisions consisted exclusively of crisps and chocolate. Yes, yes, I know that’s pretty much what I exist on at work, but this was the great outdoors. Oh well, it’s an adventure, isn’t it! An adventure within an adventure.

Speaking of food, it all has to be locked up in big metal bear-proof closets. Yes, they really do have black and grizzly bears strolling around this place and everywhere in the campsite there are warnings about what to do if you encounter them. Oh how I would love to encounter them!

The drive through the park had taken longer than we expected and it wasn’t until 6 p.m. that we’d parked up, stretched our legs and packed our rucksacks, ready to head out on the trail. I was keen to find a big, sharp stick to use if the bears made our acquaintance, but I’m sad to say they didn’t – we couldn’t even spot any off in the distance. Bloody little chipmunks, sure, but bears? Nope. However, we did get a fantastic sense of Yosemite in all its natural beauty as the sun slowly set on the horizon.

Sticking to the flow of the creek to accurately maintain our position, we suddenly became attacked by pesky mosquitoes from every which way – I may have packed my compass, but I’d neglected my insect repellent. Figuring that the blighters prefer the humid air around the creek, we headed up the rocks to the higher, dryer ground and meditated for ten minutes in perfect silence (bar the odd sneeze or imagined mozzy swipe).

The sun went down and we returned to the campsite, sitting down at our plot’s pic-a-nic table to dine on our meagre provisions. All layered up with as many clothes as we could comfortably wear, and ignoring the warm glow of our neighbours’ fires, we indulged in several hands of cards until bad light stopped play.

So, to bed we went at just before 9 p.m., “bed” being the rather poky Chevy Malibu – Tim on the driver’s side, me on the passenger’s, with both seats fully reclined. We also had our sleep sheets, blow-up travel pillows, eye masks and a flat sheet that we’d bought weeks ago to keep us warm on the overnight bus journeys when the aircon goes into overdrive.

And so we said night-night to Yosemite.

Next morning...

When we’d switched the driver’s light off, the interior of the car had seemed pretty warm and we thought we’d make it through the night fine. Wrong. We both woke up cold, probably around the same time, though neither was aware that the other wasn’t asleep. At some point in the early hours I complained that I didn’t have any of the flat sheet, but it had actually got twisted around the back of my head. The only time I peeked out from beneath my eye mask I saw the light of a single star shining down on me – it was so bright that at first I thought it was the rising sun on the horizon. Eventually I warmed myself enough to return to sleep, but I didn’t do it by counting bears.

Tim’s alarm went off at 6.30 and we powered straight out of Yosetmite Creek campsite, the treacherous, winding road seeming much less treacherous the second time around. Thank Chevy for the heated seats that kicked in once the engine started up! Although we’d been cold and groggy, the morning scene in the park was amazing and far more beautiful than anything I’ve woken up to when wild camping in the Forest of Bowland. As always, it makes it so much better when there is guaranteed sunshine to greet you.

We had to get the car back to Reno for 6 p.m., so we were to spend the morning in Yosemite Valley, which is the main tourist trap for the park – seven miles long by one mile wide, with plenty of waterfalls and peaks for the public to stare at in awe. Gasoline was pricier than outside of the park (the guide book had warned us it would be so), but strangely my regular morning apple cost much less than it usually does in the city supermarkets. Guess if I’d looked a little harder I could have picked my own.

We got back to Harrah’s casino at Reno for 5 p.m., using our “mad skills” (back in a Nashville drinking hole, a redneck approached Tim in the toilets and said, “Hey, boy, how’d ya keep yer shoes so white?” Caught on the spot, and a little inebriated, Tim’s reply was, “Mad skills.” The real reason was because it was the first time he'd worn them, but ever since then it’s become a bit of a catchphrase.)

Now we’re off to San Francisco on the overnight bus – our third evening in a row of not sleeping in a bed. It’s also been a couple of days since we had a shower, but we’re maintaining standards where we can and changing clothes in public toilets, cleaning teeth over rock pools, etc. The Lynx spray has also taken a hammering in the last 48 hours. Keeping the hygiene level high is also necessary because San Francisco is extremely popular for travellers and it was difficult to find accommodation - sharing was the only option. We’re back in a hostel, in a room with two other blokes. Gulp.

After more than five weeks on the road, it was finally time to take California for the British...

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...

Bikes and books

59 B.C.E.

Last night I watched The Motorcycle Diaries…it gets better with each viewing. The thought of two people roaring across 1950s South America on the back of a beaten-up Norton with baggage hanging off the back and barely a peseta between them, well, it makes what we’re doing look like a trip to the newsagents and back!

I’ll stop going on about that film now.

In other news, I’ve spent plenty of blood, sweat and booze this weekend trying to nail down the perfect netbook to take on our trip. To say the market is vast is an understatement. In typical James style, I created a spreadsheet and chucked every make and model I could find onto it, marking them down if the spec didn’t fit our needs, which are as follows:

10 inches of screen.

1.66 gigahertz of processing power.

1 (or preferably 2) gigabytes of RAM.

1.3 megapixel webcam.

A keyboard you can comfortably type more then three words on.

A battery that will get us through the most boring bus journeys on the planet.

If you don’t like netbook spec, you probably found that more boring than any bus journey. Anyway, I narrowed it down to about 7 models, some of which are a bit iffy, and some of which you probably can’t buy first hand anymore. It’s now over to Tim to offer his agreement before we start the bidding war.

I reckon we’ll go for an Acer.  

Changing stuff

80 B.C.E. (Before Commencing Expedition)... [80 days BEFORE travelling around the world!]

From the back of The Motorcycle Diaries:

“Let the world change you…and you can change the world.”

Love it!

Not sure how much I believe it though.

Would be nice to try and do it on The Trip, somehow…

Technically I changed a tiny part of the world when I set my tent up on some very old sheep droppings earlier in the week. Prior to me arriving they were perfectly spherical little bits of dry dung, and I crushed `em flat. They are changed forever.  Not the best example, I know, but it’s Sunday night and I’m RAMbling. (Geddit???) 

Forgotten film

Just remembered I left The Morotcycle Diaries at mum and dad’s house on Sunday – after all that fuss about bringing it back!