The Big Trip to America super-sized Blog

This Blog fails in the blog test in one respect in that it wasn’t published to the web in real time.. My ipaq was great for writing it as-it-happened but I couldn’t get the GPRS/ISP connection right (though did get the phone module working for calls) so I’ve loaded the whole trip here in one go, a week after we got back.
It was a truly great holiday, a new part of the world and I’m grateful for the financial freedom and opportunity to be able to long-haul my lardy middle aged arse and my family over to see my friends Richard and Gina and get a look at the land of TV shows-gone-by for real.

Let the USA blog commence ======

26/03/05

Were sitting in the departure lounge at Manchester and I thought I’d try out the keyboard on the ipaq. Err, it works. But its a bit slow going. Full qwerty but small keys. At least qwerty was easy to type. Ha ha. Ha ha easier to type than corresponding smiley.. :-) ah that got it.
And I’ve killed 5 minutes of the long wait. So time for a wander and a coffee. Lian is bored. She is puffing beside me. The white noise from the aircon above us makes it all the more dull.

Chasing the sun

We're a long way above the pond as I believe it is smugly referred to and we're chasing the sun across to NYC. It's 20.35 GMT and 15.36 in USA Eastern Time.

The sky has lilac gray smudge to one window and a pink-thru-gold-thru-blue gradation to my right. Reminiscent of the Athena posters of the 80's.
Anita and I are going to plan the itinerary for the next three days. Once we've joined the long queues for the toilets on board and emptied our aging bladders. Anita is waiting until the urine coloured wine she emptied on her trousers dries off.

Mars landing
27/03/05

Writing this at 7.30 a.m N.Y. time. We got to bed at 11 p.m. N.Y. time. Should be knackered as was 4.00 a.m. to us when we hit the sac but of course that now makes a respectable 12.30. Confused? I am.
Tell that to the kids, all still asleep in the one room we're in. Two double beds for mom and pop and the boys, Lian is on a hastily ordered and space consuming 'roll out bed'.
The Expedia web site 360 tour NOT what the rooms are in reality. But I don't actually care, a big enough base station from which to explore this mad planet of concrete and neon.
Coming into times square last night where the hotel fronts on to was like being in blade runner or total recall < a much worse film IMHO>, and looking out the room's big windows last night I thought I could see rutger hauer releasing some pigeons to fly across the walls of neon advertisements.

We're on floor 36. And you can tell when you look out the window, or down/up the hollow centre of the hotel core from our corridor walkway. Oh god. Oh crap. Oh help. A challenge for heights-phobic man over the coming days!
Dying to get out there, as is Anita who is now awake. Its Easter parade nr St. Patrick's cathedral we think - just a couple of blocks away. We'll see Giant rabbits or super sized gm Easter chickens grown in low gravity planet Manhattan maybe.

3/28/05
We had an interrupted night of it with various clock watch and pda reminders and alarms going off. The weather has grayed into a rainy morning so change of plan. We'll save the boat tour till later or tomorrow and hit the shops on the lower east side after breakfast.

After yesterdays 88th floor trip up the empire state, I'm confident in tackling the subway system. Heights are more a neurosis than people ;->
Btw - there really is steam rising out of manholes and subway grates - it wasn't just on starksy and hutch or kojak.

Rainy Monday - update

It rained. And rained. All day. Drizzle, mist, torrents, showers - a real variety. Like their food, new yorkers like a smorgasbord of weather choices. The tops of some of the skyscrapers were lost in low cloud, which looked really spectacular around the neon canyon of Times Square.
Hiding in shops from the rain meant shopping so we came back with new shoes and T-shirts and some silly figures from a great shop called kidrobot. Lots to look at for kiddad.
We couldn't face walking the soaked streets in search of an evening meal so we ate in the hotel restaurant . Anita had a chicken pot pie that was literally big enough for a whole chicken . Even some yanks stopped to admire it as they went past the table. Of course, she only had a fifth of it.

it's chatham,innit?
3/31/05

Not Chatham ,Kent.- Chatham N.Y. county. We got to Richard and Gina’s yesterday afternoon after safely negotiating our way out of Manhattan in the big avis rent-a-monster-truck.
It's great to see them in the context of their home and life in this part of the world. Chickens, a pond, loads of trees and two happy children. Cool stuff. And when they get the dog that both Iona and Finn want.. Even cooler ;->
We went to pick the kids up from their school today after a spell in the town – which is a small high street of mixed shops and a good cafe. It has a Marsden feel to it, a mix of 8th generation locals and commuter comers-in to add a touch of liberalistic, caffeine free variety to the place.

The school is out in the sticks and it was really charming, with its own farm and a community wholefood shop. We were shown little pigs and calves in the barn by a perennially excited Iona and Finn, which was fun.
I noticed a lot of long skirts and rugged clog shoes and head scarves, people aren't playing the faux rural lifestyle you get in Cheshire or the home counties - or perhaps the colne valley - these folk are the real thing - a mix of alternative beliefs and self sufficient living.
Where else would you get a school noticeboard advertising tractor sales and a new Reiki healing centre. Open your charkas whilst oiling stoking your wood stove.

Albany day trip
1st April 2005

We drive with Richard up to Albany, to hit the mall and then the museum of N.Y. state. The mall was just like a U.K. one, but with new retail names and far more pastel window displays. Our mission was to get Garry his carhart trousers, on order for his birthday.
It didn't work out, but we got to visit a huge 'sportman' outlet where you can get head to toe camouflage gear. Either to wear using one of the dozen or more paintball gun kits - or to use with real guns and go bag deer, goose, rabbit or whatever runs through the hills in the area.

A Taco Bell lunch, in the mall was as plastic a culinary experience as you get at home. So much, so cheap. The youth here have little chance to eat healthy unless they have vigilant parents like r and g.

4/3/05 - the sound of silence

What a day of contrasts, Quaker fellowship meeting in the morning and bowling at Chatham ten pin bowl in the afternoon.

I went with Richard and Gina to their fellowship meet with a degree of trepidation but also curiosity. The cottage we've used in staintondale (north Yorkshire) for 'Watch' youth nature groups is a Quaker house and always has a nice peaceful air to it. But it’s devoid of Quakers when we stay. (Alive one’s anyway, always feel like there’s a couple of the previous occupants around the place.)

So, sitting in on an actual meeting was a new experience. And an enjoyable one.
Being raised, albeit sporadically, as a catholic, I was on automatic pilot as I entered the meeting room, looking for somewhere or something to genuflect to. No altar or statues of a sanitized middle eastern Christ given the Michael Jackson complexion treatment here though; just a fireplace, and books, and people sitting in two semi-circles, facing each other.

Pushing away the initial self-consciousness and random thoughts / inner cerebral chatter, I did find myself having some insight in to my own nature and relationships with others. And my need for noise and company. So, it felt surprisingly (for me) comfortable sitting in silence for a whole hour with a room of strangers. It actually went very quickly between the first and last 15 minutes.
Much to my relief, no one tried to wrestle me to the ground for a sneak baptism or gang conversion ;->

This was just a group of nice people with what seemed to be spiritual rather than 'religious' outlooks and healthy, passionate political takes on the state of modern America (and UK I guess) over energy usage, war and personal/collective responsibility to others.

Conversely, I didn't engage anyone at Chatham Bowl in discussion about the middle east or renewable energy ... Too busy playing badly and the two guys in the 'sports bar' next to our lane looked a bit back woodsman to me. No doubt they would have said ‘meditate on this, good buddy’ as they bagged me with a hunting rifle and dragged me down lane 6 to be skinned behind the bowling alley… okay got carried away there.

4/5/05 - niagara falls

It's seven twenty p.m and i'm sitting in the Ramada inn, Niagara falls town; in the 'family sized' room we have for the night. Letting the boys sleep a bit before heading for a meal. Only place we can see from the lobby was a Dennys grill and the casino. Casinos seem big here, there’s a bit of the blackpool about Niagara town. And that's on both side of the gorge - we walked into Canada earlier to see the horseshoe falls from there. The Canadians are running the same planet Hollywood and hard rock cafe franchises as the Americans, two nations united by commerce.

Getting from Chatham to Niagara falls is quite a drive. We took about eight hours yesterday, though that was with diversions and coffee stops after diverting on to the west twenty through small towns and rolling farm land. Some very nice houses and rural areas and some downright scary 'yards' and shacks that have five or more rusting cars and tractors scattered around the place and the ubiquitous star spangled banner tethered to the porch.

We ended up in Rochester , though only to crash in the Marriott on the ring road. Before that we had tea in a small town called Hilton. A family diner serving the soggiest veg I’ve ever had and frequented by 'salt of the earth' good 'ol boys wearing dungarees and big haired old ladies in tangerine leisure suits and pounds of gold jewelry - the waitress was very friendly though, fair do’s.

So - off now for a meal in downtown Niagara. Fingers crossed for decent veg. And strange characters - the stuff road trip blogs are made of.

[captain's log - supplemental]
We ate at the Niagara franchise of the Hard Rock Café. Which was good - decent food and good mix of rockin' vids for the kelly dudes to watch and scoff by. Then back to the bates motel - sorry - the Ramada inn.

4/7/05 - finger lake final day

We headed back east yesterday across country towards Richard and Gina’s. The space is the thing. Space between towns, between shops, between houses and their garages or sheds .

And when we stopped at one of the Finger Lake resort towns - Canandaigua - we experienced the strangeness of being pedestrians in a car-centric country..
We decided not to eat in the hotel but to get some authentic artery clogging fast food. Of which there were six or so outlets in view from the hotel car park, in what would have been woodland or a delta when the lake was frequented only by the Seneca or Iroquois or Mohawk who lived here.

Getting to our outlet of choice, a mere ten minutes walk away, was easier said than done.
No pedestrian crossings as such and no pavements on some of the roads. I detoured to a bank to use the a.t.m’s.. The only two available sat in a drive-thru section.. I had to keep one eye on the machine and one on the car lane I was standing in!
Presumably you get your money, then order your food all from the car. I've seen drive-thru pharmacists also... To cure the drive-thru burger indigestion?

4/9/2005 - red, white and blues

This is our last full day and that means the goatee which was my America blend-in kit will go before I get back to work. It’s a barometer of age, coming out, as it does, on occasional holidays. The old red hairs are still there but the whole of my chin area has thicker white hairs. And the blue comes from that end-of-holiday feeling, having to start thinking of packing and travel times. Made me laugh anyway.

Enough of that though, Gina’s home made pancakes and eggs smell great and my turn to sit down and eat. I have to try to wake up Lian and Joe again , then we're off on this really sunny morning to the shaker museum village for the kids to see all the rare breed new born babies .. Aah.

4/11/05 - end of the road

I'm writing this as I started, at the airport. Heathrow this time rather than Manchester . We flew back last night, or was it this morning .. Time zone brain drain. Three hour delay between connecting flight back north, yikes. I was going to write a big round up of the whole trip but I feel too tied, too low energy.
As William Gibson wrote when you cross time zones on long hauls, your soul gets delayed in transit and you feel hollow, drained for a while, even when you get your rational head around the new time zone reality.

And Finally - -

Thank you Richard and Gina for the friendship and hospitality.

Thank you Kid Kurt and his bad boys for the night at the (only) Chatham Pub, the Peint O Gwrw (36 Main Street, Chatham, NY 12037 - "A non-smoking Welsh English style pub. 16 ales taps. Hard cider. 24 bottled ales. Variety of single malt scotches. Light food fare").
Richard is thier admirably great guiarist and additional singer. You rock, you grey haired, pragmatic, generous english dude, you ;-)

Thank you n.e America for such beautiful scenery, and such a warm spring.
Thank you members of the public we met, some of you looked scary as hell but all we’re helpful and friendly and curious about us and our small country.

Thank you members of the Chatham area Quaker group for correcting my previously entrenched views on trigger happy Uncle Sam. You’re good people in a nice place. Peace, y'all.