Springfield: Episode A

Day 63 (Wednesday Nov 24th)
"I'll have a burrito and a Margarita."

Alex had told me she'd be going grocery shopping early so when I woke up at 10am I texted her to see what was happening... she was doing her make-up in the bedroom. We checked out some thrift stores because I needed a jacket, I got a sweater, some gloves and a hat. At the grocery store we bought a lot of stuff for Thanksgiving and I picked up some veggie stuff. We got back to the house and Brian came home from work shortly after so we decided to go out to Chipotle. Brian and I had Margaritas with our burritos because we are manly men. Also in Chipotle was the old lady superhero known as "Pumpkin-hat" so I got some video of her. Back at the McDonald's I played some Rock Band, some Beatles Rock Band, Alex prepared Thanksgiving food, I was pumped full of vitamins and aspirin and then we went to sleep at about 1am.

Day 64 (Thursday Nov 25th)
"Happy eggplant parmesan day!"

I woke up with a bit of a cold, it had been coming on since the day I left San Francisco so I'd been taking lots of aspirins and vitamins since I arrived in Eugene. I watched some of the Macy's Parade and laughed at the awfulness of it all, everything is a commercial. The Reeds (Martin & Natalie) and Liz arrived at about 3pm and Austin arrived shortly after them. It was lovely to see everyone again and I managed to last at least ten minutes before I made an inappropriate comment to Natalie. We started drinking and had some nibbles while we waited for Vanessa, she arrived just after 7pm and we went straight into the proper eating. The Reeds had made some delicious stuffed mushrooms and Alex had made me some lovely eggplant parmesan so I had that with some peas, salad and a bread roll. We spent the night drinking, reading excerpts from Jon Bon Jovi's biography, playing Guesstures, Rock Band and silent Rock Band. The girls won Guesstures because they cheated a few times. Around 3am we all settled down for the night, falling asleep to Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

Day 65 (Friday Nov 26th)
"Vanessa the Mexicaninja!"

Waking up in a room full of people felt just like a hostel only this time I actually got up in time for breakfast, we had eggs, potatoes and toast. Somebody put Speed on and after that I put on Jingle All The Way, that's a helluva double bill! Vanessa disappeared at some point, Alex thought she'd gone out for a smoke but she'd actually gone somewhere in her car. When she came back it was time for Martin, Natalie and Austin to leave. We mourned their departure by watching The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Tosh.0, Wing Commander (oh yeah!) and a couple of episode of Dukes Of Hazzard. We went to a cool little independent cinema to watch Scott Pilgrim vs The World, it was okay but there was a bit too much going on for my brain to compute. I spent the last half hour of the movie trying to figure out an audio reference that I'd heard, it meant I couldn't really think about anything else until we got back to Alex's and I could check IMDb.... it was Ming's ring noise from Flash Gordon.

The rideshare to the Grey Havens (Oregon)

Day 62 (Tuesday Nov 23rd)
"Buy me some woman's underarm deodorant please."

I'd set my alarm for 6am but when I woke up I decided I'd not bother with a shower and get half an hour longer in bed. On the way to the train station I only had time to grab a muffin and a banana. It took about half an hour to get to MacArthur and I ended up getting there too early so I waited about twenty minutes before my rideshare arrived. Nick and his wife Elizabeth turned up in their old Saturn, we chatted for a few minutes and once our other rideshare Connor arrived we were on our way!

We had some constant chatting going for about the first hour, mainly between Connor and Nick. They actually knew a lot of the same people because they'd both lived in Seattle. I learnt that Nick lived in a gay man's commune kind of thing in southern Oregon and that Nick was a drum teacher for kids. Nick and Elizabeth took turns driving and sleeping and we stopped at a diner for some lunch, I had a veggie burger. Alex texted me asking if she could buy me anything from the store, I requested some women's underarm deodorant... it's one of my things. About half way into the journey there was a 'road closed' sign and we took a detour but as soon as we got back to the I-5 we hit major traffic. We actually didn't move for about an hour and at one point both our drivers got out of the car to go pee, which reminded me of the scene from Flash Gordon where the pilots disappear. Two hours of slow driving followed and it was getting dark so any nice views of the snowy mountains were not visible. We finally got to Wolf Creek at about 7pm and dropped off Connor.

I slept for most of the two hours to Eugene except for when I heard You Could Be Mine by Guns N Roses and realised that was the first song I'd heard from Nick's MP3 player that I also had on mine. They dropped me of at iHop and Alex turned up about five minutes later. I met her husband Brian and then Alex made me my first ever grilled cheese sandwich, they were amazed that I'd never had one before. It was already quite late so I ended up watching an episode of CSI: Miami and then going to sleep on the sofa.

San Francisco in a day

Day 61 (Monday Nov 22nd)
"In your message please tell me one thing that you're grateful for"

The first thing I did when I woke up was to check online and see if there was any change in my travel options. My dad had spotted that train tickets were available again but for about $20 more. I quickly booked one and then checked my emails to find a couple of replies to my rideshare post. One asked me to reply with a bit more info about myself and the other one left a phone number which I called. It went to voicemail and she sounded like a very hippy woman so I left a message. I called Amtrak to check if could cancel my ticket with no charge and the woman said that would be okay up to a couple of hours before my train leaves so I left my options open. I stored my bag at the hostel and went down the road to a cafe for a veggie chili bowl. Then my plan of doing the whole of San Francisco in a day went into action!

Union Square was my first stop, there wasn't much going on there so that was simple enough. I walked through Chinatown, it was mostly Chinese people, I'm used to Chinatowns being full of tourists but this one was different. It was pretty cool and seemed to go on forever! I walked a bit west to get to Lombard Street and see the famous steep winding road. There were lots of tourists here just standing in the middle of the street, it was rather amusing. Next stop was Pier 39, I'd been told they have sea-lions and that it was a good location to see Alcatraz, both of these things were correct but also correct was that I'd been told they don't have as many sea-lions as they used to... damn humans. I had a pee and a poop on the pier (in the restroom) and then Nick called me about the rideshare, he seemed like a nice guy and the only condition was that I had to get over to Oakland which was about half an hour on the BART train. I called Amtrak and cancelled my ticket, it was all rather easy, Amtrak is good. I had a long pleasant walk along the waterfront to the Golden Gate Bridge and then walked about half way across it. I headed back the same way that I'd came and managed to snap a hawk that was perched in a very good photo op, I also got a comedy pervy video of a couple snogging. I'd decided to get a cable car back towards the hostel but the one near the waterfront had a massive line so I walked a bit further to the next one. It was still about a half hour wait but the ride was pretty fun, I rode hanging on the side of the car because I like living life on the edge..

I got back to the hostel at about 6pm and booked another night there. The room I was in the previous night was now full and I ended up getting a different room all to myself. I went to Golden Era Vegetarian which was a fairly cheap Vietnamese restaurant around the corner and I had Pho. It was a bit confusing because I had a bowl of stuff and a side dish with just bean sprouts and a lemon segment. I dumped some of the bean sprouts into the bowl and chowed down. It was a tasty and very filling meal. Nick called again at 9pm and we confirmed everything, he'd done the research on which train I'd be getting in the morning and how much it would be, very helpful indeed. I'd need to get to the pick up point for 8am so I went to bed quite early.

My last day in L.A. and first night in San Francisco

Day 59 (Saturday Nov 20th) "Anybody in from Iceland? Yes."
I woke up to the sounds of an American guy being interrogated by the Mexican cleaners. He was saying that he didn't know when he was checking-out and they were asking if he was lost. Me and the Welsh guys chatted to him for a bit but were none the wiser as to his situation. The Welsh boys were leaving and one of them gave me a Jon Bon Jovi biography because he couldn't fit it in his bag. I did some planning for the Oregon part of my trip and sorted out a rideshare to San Francisco for the next day. It would be with a guy called Michael, he said there would possibly be another guy joining us. I went out for a veggie burrito at Chipotle because I hadn't been to one of those for about a week. I almost left my bag in Chipotle because I wasn't used to taking it out with me. I'd decided to turn up at the Big Blue Bus depot because the security man hadn't go back to me but they wouldn't let me in without the proper paperwork. They told me to go to customer service which I did but to no avail except that I got to chat with a nice lady about the bus, she used to drive them. Back to the hostel and I booked the San Francisco hostel for the next night. I went to buy some headphones because mine had broken and then went down towards the beach for sunset. I'd planned to walk down to Venice Beach but it was getting too late so I only made it as far as the Speed bus explosion location. I bought a blueberry muffin from a CVS across the road and did a weird little photo re-enactment. That actually really cheered me up for ten minutes as I walked back towards the hostel listening to the Speed score. I managed to get slightly lost for the first time in Santa Monica but only because they print the maps the wrong way round to make it look like the beach is to the south. At the hostel there was a middle aged English guy badly chatting up a young Japanese girl much to the amusement of everyone in the library although Daniele (Japanese Brazilian) was getting a bit fed up with it and wanted to close the door, I wouldn't let her. The giggling French girls from Flagstaff turned up at the hostel (not the French girls from New Orleans). We found out that a stand-up comedy night was happening in the hostel so a few of us decided to go to that. It was four comedians telling mostly bad jokes to about fourteen rather tired and mostly foreign, totally sober travellers. It was never going to work although the stand-up woman was quite cute. I thought about going back after the show to chat to her but she left before I had the chance. In my notes it talks about a cute Chinese girl coming into the library straight from the shower, wet hair, dressed for bed and then me ending up alone in the library with her and a Japanese girl. I'm going to skip that bit and say that I went to bed.

"The Firehouse Restaurant, the bus and the muffin all fit the doubloon!"

Day 60 (Sunday Nov 21st) "I thought it couldn't be you but then I heard that Liverpool accent"
I got up at 9am but I still managed to be the last one up. I checked-out, said good bye to Danielle and then grabbed a slice of pizza for breakfast. Micheal my rideshare guy turned up in a snazzy BMW. We drove to the station to pick up our other rideshare dude but when Michael called him it turned out he was still in San Diego so that wasted half an hour. Micheal had a massive stammer but it would be rude to mention that so I'll just say that on the seven hour journey in between the massive spells of no talking we talked a lot of crap, he kept telling me about women he'd been with and I talked about Speed, we went to In & Out Burger but they had a massive line so we waited to eat at Panda Express which had a couple of nice veggie options. When we got to San Francisco at around 6pm and he needed to pick up some medical marijuana and for the purposes of this blog I most definitely did not buy a marijuana cookie off him. He dropped me at the hostel and I checked-in. The room was quite cold because there was a window open... I closed it. A couple of French guys came back to the room so I chatted with them for a bit, they'd been sutdying in the US for almost three months and were heading home in the next week. I planned a whole day of walking around San Francisco, trying to fit in as many of the major tourist things as possible. I asked one of the hostel staff if it was possible and she gave me the green light. After all my planning and deciding I could get a train to Eugene at 9pm the next night I discovered that the trains were sold out for the next two nights. I posted on Craiglist about getting a rideshare and found that Greyhound was back-up option but it was about $80 for a 15 hour journey. I popped out to Walgreens to grab some snacks and bumped into Victoria from Liverpool who I'd hung out with in New Orleans. After some snacking I went back to the hostel and was in bed by midnight.

Los Angeles continued: Dreamworks and some live music

Day 57 (Thursday Nov 18th) "Vagina!"
I woke up with one of my "I'm still drunk" hangovers. It wasn't painful but I was feeling very zoned out. I was supposed to get the bus to somewhere near Burbank but in the end Damon came to pick me up. We started with a beer run because Damon had to re-stock the bar in the hidden room so pretty much the first thing I got to see at Dreamworks was the hidden room. It's quite an incredible thing and there are so many stories that go along with it, Damon is my hero. Guillermo Del Toro was apparently on campus doing a book signing but I didn't get to see him. We grabbed some food at the canteen and then sat outside for a bit. Back inside and Damon showed me some cool animation stuff from How To Train Your Dragon while he was explaining exactly what it is he does. I also got to see some early stuff from The Croods. Matt was in an office nearby and Damon left me with him while he went for a meeting. Matt showed me a bit more of the campus, lots of cool artwork, a big wall of famous signatures and then a sequence from the upcoming Kung Fu Panda 2. At the end of the working day we headed for the hidden room and this time it was full of people. I tried a pint of one of the beers that's brewed by people that work at Dreamworks an hung out with some of the interesting animation folks. A lot of the people seemed to be writing novels so they were all talking about that. I met a woman called April who told me a lot of movies that I should watch and I found out that her husband actually worked on the bus explosion scene from Speed. Someone was telling a story about the "saying penis louder than the previous person" game and that's where the quote for this blog entry came from. Damon drove me back to the hostel and on the way we went to Norm's for a veggie burger. When I got back to the hostel the Chris, Leigh and Stuart were loitering and Stuart was going to Hawaii the next day. We had a bit of banter, added each other on Facebook and then went to bed.


Day 58 (Friday Nov 19th) "Spare some change for an old fool?"
I didn't sleep too well and when I woke up it was cloudy outside. I had a missed call from the bus manager guy so I called him back. He passed me on to a bus maintenance man who gave me some information about the bus and said that they'd kept one for historical purposes but I'd need to clear it with the head of security before I could go in and see it, I left a message for the security guy. I put my laundry on then headed to an Indian vegan lunch buffet about twenty minutes walk away. I ate two plates of lovely food but I think it was too much because I felt too full for the rest of the afternoon. On the way back to the hostel a homeless guy said "spare some change for an old fool?", I replied with "sorry, dude" and he said "have a good weekend buddy". I thought that was a nice exchange. I was really tired but was checking online for interesting things to do that night when I remembered that one of my old internet friends Justin had a gig in L.A. tonight. He has a band called Lemon Drop Kick who originally were three American guys with a Japanese female vocalist who sings in Japanese, I messaged them about four years ago on Myspace because I thought it was an interesting set-up and Justin had replied, we'd kept in touch ever since. I made sure I knew which buses to get and headed to a venue called The Strange in an area called Silverlake. It took about an hour on the Rapid 704 bus and then I had to walk five minutes through a slightly dodgy looking area. The venue turned out to be some sort of art gallery with a performance space which meant I didn't have to wait outside. Justin arrived about five minutes after I got there so I said hello, his band were on first so he had to set up his stuff. LDK did a good set although they said it wasn't one of their best performances. I got to meet the rest of the band when they'd finished and I also recognised Jeff as one of the old members of the band, he'd come along to support them. The second act was a trendy young black man doing some beat-boxing, dancing and rapping, he was quite cool. The third band were called The Slants and they had some Asian Jonas brothers on guitars who jumped on some boxes at the front that then lit up. The front-man had some great dance moves and had a mic stand that lit up. I can't remember the name of the next act but it was a rather camp Japanese man doing some electro-pop with some dancing women and a dancing man in a monkey suit. They were quite entertaining although the singer had a video of himself doing backing vocals behind him, he even conversed with himself between songs, it was quite creepy. Paul the LDK bassist told me to talk some random Japanese women so I had a go at that, they preferred my English accent to my lame attempts at speaking Japanese. One of the girls was literally the prettiest Japanese girl I've ever seen in person. The next band were Dead End Amelia, a lot of people had left and it did kind of feel like the night should have been over. I was mainly sticking around to hang out with Justin after the show but DEA turned out to be a very cool band. The front-woman was rather hot and I stood with Justin up near the front to take in the full show. They had some cool songs and did a really good cover of Change by Deftones, so good in fact that a balding dread-locked black man started going crazy at the front. Justin and Jeff spoke to him after the show and he showed us his driving license, his name was officially Freak. I said hello to more people at the end of the show including the sexy front-woman who had to mock my accent... but I didn't mind. Justin, Jeff and I drove to Mel's Diner which is where I'd almost gone with the BTTF gang, I knew where it was but Justin didn't, that was weird. I had a veggie sandwich and fries. Justin drove me back to the hostel and I had one of the latest nights I'd had in quite a while, in bed by 3.30am.

Justin (LDK), me, Jeff (former LDK)

Another movie location day and my first day in Santa Monica

Day 55 (Tuesday Nov 16th) "Nice night for a walk"
I didn't leave the hostel until about 2pm and I kept forgetting things so I didn't get to Mann's Chinese Theater until about 3pm. I just wanted to go there during the day because that's when it was seen in Speed. I then got the subway over to East Hollywood and checked out the Vista Theater which was used in True Romance. Then I started my walk to Griffith Observatory. It's on a hill that overlooks L.A. so it was a bit of a tiring hour to get up there. On the way I stopped by a tunnel that was featured in Back To The Future and War Games. Some opening scenes from The Terminator were filmed at the observatory but for a change that wasn't the only reason I was visiting a filming location. It was really nice up there, the building is quite interesting and there were some really good views... through the smog. I took a different trail going down and then went for a Thai yellow curry at Truly Vegan. They had a comedy night at the hostel but when I walked past I heard some terrible jokes so I decided to just chill in my room and get an early night.


Day 56 (Wednesday Nov 17th) "China Wednesday!"
I checked out of the Hollywood hostel and got the bus to Santa Monica. On the way I stopped at the Viper Room where River Phoenix died. It was something I had to check out but then wished I hadn't, it just felt kind of morbid and not very fun. After checking-in at the Santa Monica hostel I struggled for an hour to get on the internet. I couldn't actually get online in my room which was a bit annoying but they had little library room with a good wi-fi signal which ended up being where I'd spend a lot of my time. Sharing my bunk was a middle aged Australian man called Russell. The only way I could print stuff was by using their computers which was about 10 cents a minute with a $3 minimum. It was rather annoying and I ended up having to call up customer service because the code for the rest of my minutes disappeared before I could write it down (I can't be bothered to explain that any more that I have, it was annoying, I'll leave it at that). I tried to find a veggie or vegan food place nearby using Google Maps but there didn't seem to be anything cheap in the area. I walked around the block a few times and eventually found a Greek fast food place with a falafel wrap thing. I walked to the corner or Ocean Park and Main St which is where Annie got on the bus in Speed. Then I walked up to Rose and Main which is where Bob's bus blew up. I tried to re-enact the phone call between Dennis Hopper and Keanu and then went in to the Firehouse Restaurant. It's more of a bar now so they didn't have any muffins, instead I had chips and salsa. I walked back to the hostel via the beachfront and Santa Monica pier and then went online for a bit. When I got back to my room there were two Welsh guys dressing up as Austrian women. They introduced themselves as Chris and Leigh and explained that they'd recently started a tradition of dressing up every Wednesday and calling it China Wednesday to confuse Americans. There was also an English guy Stuart who had dressed up as a gynecologist. I blew up some balloons for the Welsh guy's breasts and decided to join them on the hostel pub crawl. There were about twenty people out on the pub crawl, we had three voulenteer guides that were going to take us to four bars. At the first bar we played drinking games with a a Korean guy and a Japanese guy, it actually went pretty well despite the language barrier. In the second bar they had a Beatles cover band and after a few songs they let people go up and sing with them. We put our name down for a couple of songs but only Stuart and Leigh had time to do one. The third bar (which ended up being our last) was a long sports bar with karaoke at one end. I put my name down for Power Of Love and gave the woman in charge $10 so she could bump my name to the top of the list. I was quite drunk and didn't dare imagine the state I'd be in trying to sing that song an hour later. I chatted with lots of people including a Terry McDermott lookalike, nobody knew Terry McDermott so we resorted to chanting "Keegan! Keegan!" at him. The Welsh guys spent a lot of the night explaining China Wednesday to everybody, they came up with a whole fake history for it. I befriended a Japanese girl who didn't know any Japanese because she was brought up in Brazil, that didn't stop me trying to speak nihongo to her. Lots of drinking took place and I was told by the Welsh guys that they found me asleep in the hostel library. I have a few videos from that night and my narration did sound quite nonsensical but Daniele (JapBra) and a couple of other girls made sure I got back to the hostel.

Day 54: The Price Is Right and Japanese drunks.

Day 54 (15th) Monday "Berry good Danish man! kusou yarou!"
I got up relatively early but I still didn't have time for breakfast, this was the day of The Price Is Right. I walked the to CBS studios and grabbed some chips to eat on the way. It took about an hour to get there but when I arrived I followed the map to the car park rather than the front entrance. If this had been a show in England I probably wouldn't have got in but being ten minutes late didn't seem to matter here. The audience members were all hanging around for about an hour before some people handed out numbers and got us to fill in some details about ourselves. I chatted to a nice lady called Norda and her rather lovely niece Alisha. Norda's parents were also there celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary. Alisha was a stand up comic but she was going to say she wrote children's books, she said this was because she didn't want to be put on the spot but I think she was going for the "aww factor". I'd already decided that I was going to say I was a grave digger because I thought an English grave digger might have a chance of getting on the show. They interviewed us in small groups so they could choose who they wanted to be on the show. I told them my pretend profession and then the guy asked asked me about how I got into grave digging. I said "I just fell into it", I didn't actually intend to make a pun, I'm just a genius like that. Alisha was actually one of the first contestants to be picked but she didn't get any further than contestant's row (where they stand at the front guessing the prices). Nobody actually won on any of the normal rounds, apparently that's not uncommon but it made for some impressive anti-climaxes. It was insane how much clapping we were being told to do and it was funny how even Americans were struggling to keep the enthusiasm going. The strangely thin Drew Carey chatted to the audience between rounds and he was quite funny. They had a guest announcer from Heroes but he only started in season three so I didn't recognise him. One of the funniest items was an in-car microwave, Drew was laughing about it and he made some pretty funny jokes about how unsafe that could be.

After the show I decided to walk back a different way, via Fairfax and Sunset. There were some quite interesting shops including a few really big music stores. Once again I ended up at Truly Vegan and had a Truly Spicy, pretty much just a Chow Mein but with more peppers and hot sauce. I thought about going to a comedy improv show that Alisha had recommended but it didn't look too great. I asked my L.A. friend Justin about live music but the places he recommended all had a steep cover charge. Shintaro came back from his daily adventures, he told me that yesterday he'd been at Gamble House (Doc Brown's house), he same place I'd been. We did some Japanese joking around, the more I divulge about my knowledge of Japanese culture, the more embarrassing it gets. He told me that he'd made friends with a Japanese girl called Tomomi who was staying at the hostel, he popped out and brought her back to our room. We chatted over a beer and then decided to go out for drinks with our other room mate Jesper. When we got to a bar we realised that both Japanese were only 20 and they were IDing at the bar so we decided to buy some beer at the store and drink it back at the hostel. What ensued was an international night of drinking, jokes, bad language in lots of languages, awful translations, foosball, opening beer bottles with various objects, Shintaro the lightweight and then sleep.

Los Angeles days 2 and 3

Day 52 (Saturday Nov 13th) "World's finest chocolate!"
I tried to catch up on my sleep a little bit so I didn't get up until 11am and I didn't actually head out until 2pm. I was going to check out downtown to get my full Speed and Terminator fix. Before I headed out I booked a free ticket for a recording of The Price Is Right, a couple of people said it would be fun and I had no plans for Monday.

When I arrived at the subway station there was a big group of kids crowding around the ticket machines so it took a while to even get on a train. They were also on the same train as me and they were screaming every time it jolted, very annoying. I got off at Pershing Square station and immediately recognised the neon lights, I tried to do a bit of walking in Keanu's footsteps. I went to a Subway at street level that looked onto Pershing Square and had a very nice foot long veggie sub. I then walked a few minutes to the financial district and checked out the building from the beginning of Speed and the hill where Harry and Jack jump into shot in their police car. Also in that area I checked out the bank used in Heat and Fight Club. Next was the jewelry (American spelling) district which featured a couple of locations from The Terminator. One was the store front used for Tech Noir where Sarah takes refuge and the other was the alley where Kyle appears. I was slightly unsure of where both locations were but I narrowed it down to only two possibilities and got photos of both. I spoke to a security guard next to one of them and he had no idea what I was talking about.On my way to the Bradbury Building (Bladerunner) a woman was selling "Chocolate! World's finest chocolate!". I didn't buy any, I assumed it would be very expensive. The Bradbury Building was actually closed for filming, I tried to sneak in the rear entrance but there were security guards right around the corner so I chickened out. I then walked to the Orpheum Theater which was featured in Last Action Hero.

I got the subway back to the hostel and got off the train a few stops early. I just wanted to check out the area on foot and there was a pretty cool sky when I turned onto Sunset Blvd. When I got back to the hostel I met another room mate called Jesper, he was from Denmark and doing some acting classes over here. I caught up with some blogging and then went across the road for some vegan chop suey, it wasn't as good as the chow mein but I was making sure I wasn't eating the same thing on consecutive days. Shintaro returned from his day of skateboarding adventure and we chatted in the kitchen until about midnight, then went to bed.

Day 53 (Sunday Nov 14th) "Sarah Connor! Sarah Connor!"
I was meeting Damon at around midday so I got up at 9am to do some planning. He said we might be able to drive to some of my movie locations so I made sure I knew where they all were. The vegan restaurant didn't open until 11am which I thought was strange because they serve breakfast, so I went to the nearby gas station to get a blueberry muffin, a blueberry Danish and some grape Gatorade.

Damon was bang on time and it was so good to see him again. We drove straight to the apartment complex from The Karate Kid, I hadn't even put that on my list but Damon had been doing his own research, my kinda guy! We then drove to Marty McFly's house and then on to Vasquez Rock. It was quite busy on the rock but we managed to get some videos of where Kirk and evil robot Bill and Ted had climbed up. Next was the E.T. house which was a bit harder to find than th other places. Damon's iPhone told us to drive through a hill and it turned out the house was in a gated community, our first two attempts were blocked by gates but third time lucky and there was no gate on one side, seems a bit silly. As we leaving the area a couple of cops were driving around, Damon joked about them arresting us for tresspassing, then saw that they were actually checking his plates and then they turned around behind us. Damon was rather scared for a couple of minutes but it was a false alarm. We then drove to Gamble House which was the house used for Doc Brown's house in Back To The Future. They have tours and a book shop there now but we just got a few photos and headed to Carrow's restaurant where Sarah Connor worked. We also did a rather terrible re-enactment across the road from there of when Arnie pulls a guy away from the phone box so he can check the phone book. Onto Bushnell Avenue where there were three house that were used in the Back To The Future trilogy. We bumped into a couple that were actually at the event the other night. Then Damon agreed to drive a bit out of the way just so I could get to a Masters Of The Universe location. We re-enacted the final scene of the movie where Kevin and Julie meet in the street and realise that it wasn't all a dream. Look forward to that video!

It was time to head home... to Damon's home in Monrovia. I got to meet his wife Courteney, his two month old Presley and his eldest son Carson. We had some very filling Mexican food and I played trains with Carson. It was weird because he's into Thomas The Tank Engine and it was pretty much the same kind of train set that I used to play with twenty years ago. Carson also kept breathing fire on my legs with his toy dragon. After some running around in the back yard I got to read him a bed time story (Carson, not Damon) and then it was time for me to go. On the way back we drove to Jennifer's house which unbeknown to Damon was just around the corner from his house. I'd be seeing Damon again on Thursday so it wasn't too much of an emotional good bye.

I got back to the hostel at 10pm. Shintaro was already asleep and Kim was packing her bags because she was leaving early the next morning. I did some photo uploading and then went to bed around midnight.

My first day in L.A.: "There's a rhythmic ceremonial ritual coming up."

Day 51 (Friday Nov 12th) "Does anybody know where Sean Bishop is?!"
I arrived in L.A. at about 7am, we were either an hour early, we'd changed two time zones, or the daylight savings thing was screwing with my mind. I'm actually still not sure which of those is correct. I'd been drifting in and out of consciousness all through the journey so I'm not sure I got any proper sleep. I had a couple of granola bars to keep me going and then got on the red line of the subway. It wasn't long until I was laughing to myself when I realised this was the line that Speed took place on. Then we actually went through Pershing Square station and I was riding along chuckling to myself (I was tired and rather happy). It was only about 8am when I got to the Hollywood hostel and I couldn't check in until 11am. The receptionist let me leave my bag there and I had a quick look around the hostel before deciding I should use the time wisely and go thrift shopping for my 50s outfit for that night. The crazies were out in force but I was just glad to be away from the cold of Flagstaff. I've decided I love heat, mainly so I can wear shorts when I'm out at night, maybe I'd get fed up of it after a while but I think it would take at least a year. A couple of vintage shops I'd looked up weren't open until 11am so I hit Goodwill and spent a good couple of hours in there. Eventually I decided upon some garments and spent about $45 on what I thought were some pretty decent looking 50s style clothes. I also went to stock up on toiletries and noticed that there were security guards in every shop. Walking back to the hostel I realised there were no Speed buses, they had a new fleet, I was actually quite annoyed at this. I checked into the hostel just after 11am and my room was pretty cool. There were only two bunk beds in each room and we had a bathroom and kitchen between eight of us. There was a Japanese dude still asleep in my room when I arrived so I woke him up and we had a chat. His name was Shintaro and he was from Nagoya. I caught up with some stuff online and at 3pm I did some laundry. It was the first laundry I'd done in almost two weeks but somehow I had three sets of underwear left... I set my laundry going and popped out to get some food. There was actually a Thai vegan place just across the road from the hostel so I thought I'd check that out. They had a really cheap menu, lots of stuff for $7 and all vegan. I had some chow mein which was probably the best meal I ended up having there (I ate there at least three more times). It was around 5pm when I started getting ready for the Back To The Future event, while I was getting dressed an Australian girl named Kim showed up. I didn't realise our dorm was mixed until then, cool. Andy had actually raised $200+ on the "Get Merk To The Fish Under The Sea Dance" Facebook page so even though I'd had no sleep I was going to make sure I made the most of it...

I'll quickly set up the event. In the movie Back To The Future Marty has to make sure that his parents get together at the Enchantment Under The Sea Dance otherwise he'll never be born. That dance was being re-created in the same venue where it was filmed and they were inviting some cast and crew to sign autographs, take photos and generally just mingle with us fans. I chose to walk to the Hollywood United Methodist Church where the event was being held and I didn't feel too out of place in crazy garb walking down Hollywood Boulevard. I knew I was in the right place when I saw two Deloreans in the car lot and another one arriving. Two were done up like the second movie and one was not modded at all. After hanging around outside for a while, chatting to some random people, and getting some photos we were finally let inside. One of the guys I was chatting to outside was Marvin from San Diego and we did a walk around the hall together. He had a poster that he was getting signed for his two year old son, I thought that was quite sweet. Some of the guests were charging for autographs which I thought was a bit much, especially on top of the $275/$300 entry fee. I got no autographs but managed to meet most of the guests just by shaking their hand, explaining my trip and also explaining the donation side of things, it was a good angle and they were all willing to chat a little bit. I met Bob Gale (co-creator of BTTF), Harry Waters Jr (Marvin Berry), Donald Fullilove (Goldie Wilson), Courtney Gains (ginger kid, also in The 'burbs), Bob Yerkes (did Doc's zip-wire stunt and is a legendary Hollywood stuntman), Jeffrey Weissman (George McFly in Parts 2 and 3), Wesley Mann (kid who says "he took that guy's wallet"), Shawn Kerkhoff (Sound editor on American Dad). Jeff Weissman was really friendly and I chatted to him about an event in Milton Keynes that we'd both been at, Shawn Kerkhoff confirmed Seth MacFarlane's 9/11 story (look it up). I didn't get to meet Claudia Wells, she had the most people crowding around her and to be honest I just couldn't be bothered. Half way through the night a random guy grabbed me and asked if I wanted to do an interview for his documentary, I was up for that. It was easy enough, just the usual kinds of questions and I layed the accent on thick so I reckon I'll get on there. During the night there were dressed up fans posing for photos and recreating scenes from the movie. Towards the end of the night Harry Waters got on stage with a bandage on his hand and put the spotlight on a guy near the front of the dance-floor. This guy then proposed to his girlfriend, she said yes and then Harry Waters dedicated Earth Angel to them. It was a really good performance of the song. He then recited lines from the movie and introduced the guy who has done the voice of Marty for the new BTTF video game. He played guitar and sang Johnny B Goode in the style of Marty, again a very good performance. I like to fault things and I really couldn't fault it. For some reason we were all told to go outside and they did the raffle in the parking lot. I'd snagged some free raffle tickets from one of the organisers but I didn't win. During the raffle my camera died and I quoted The Goonies with "Only problem is batteries don't last so long, guys", nobody knew the quote and I was very disappointed. The winning of the hoverboard was quite interesting. One guy came forward and said that he knew it was his number but he'd lost the ticket, then another guy said he had the ticket and that he'd found it on the floor, he gave the ticket back to its rightful owner and the cockles were warmed in everyone's hearts when he collected his prize.... except mine... I was two numbers out and I wanted that bloody hoverboard!..... and that was the night over...

I hung around in the car park for quite a while because there were now five Deloreans to take photos of and everybody else seemed to be loitering too. There was a slightly odd bloke dressed as Doc Brown standing on his own and beat-boxing, he worried me a little. I met some guys from Bristol who were trying to rally a bunch of people to go to a bar but first I had the mission of finding somebody that Damon knows. Eventually I found him and had a little chat, he said he is to Ghostbusters what Damon is to The Goonies. Then some Deloreans started driving out of the lot so I had to film that. It was about midnight before me, the Bristolians, another English dude called Julian, a French girl and one of the event organisers left to go for a drink. We tried one hotel but they didn't have a good bar so we went to The Roosevelt instead. We all got a drink and then some more people turned up, a couple of people I can't remember the name of plus Caroline from Santa Monica and Bob Schmelzer (Eric Stoltz's skateboard double when he was playing Marty in BTTF). I chatted to Bob and Caroline for a bit. Bob was really cool, he told some great stories of his time on set and said if I was ever in San Jose to check out his skateboard shop and then we could head up to San Francisco for the night. After one drink everybody except Bob wanted to go for food, I think he stayed at the hotel because he liked the wine they had and he wanted to pick up chicks. They all went to Mel's Diner and I decided it was time to call it a night. On the walk back to the hostel at about 1am I was getting various heckles. One drunk guy thought I looked like Jeremy Piven from Entourage but most of the shouts were of "Pee-wee Herman!"

Final Day In Flagstaff: "Dude, I can play Close Encounters on the healing drums!"

Day 50 (Thursday Nov 11th)
I made it up in time for breakfast again, this hostel was doing something weird to me. Also breakfast was less than a two second walk to get to so that probably helped. Some of the guys from the previous day were headed to Tucson, they were all going to different final locations but all passing through Tucson on the same bus. I toyed with that idea for a little bit but decided I'd rather have an almost full day in Flagstaff before I headed overnight to L.A. on the train. When breakfast was going on there was a woman talking about how things happen for a reason and I could see Kim was interested. He asked if I wanted to join them for a walk, they were going to a sound healing shop, I didn't have any plans so I figured why not. We went there and started playing some pretty sounding tongue drums, then Dimichelle (hippy woman) lay on a table while the shop owner (hippy dude) played some strings underneath her, it was a monochord table. Then he started chanting and singing... it was all very entertaining and I think she was enjoying it which was the main thing. Kim and I got a bit bored while Dimichelle was sound healing her liver so we went to get coffee and hot chocolate. We ended up losing Dimichelle so went walking around Flagstaff, it's a really pretty town so it was cool to explore. We also checked out some thrift stores because I was looking for a 50s outfit for the Back To The Future event, by now Andy had raised almost $200. When we got back to the hostel I found I had a response to my rideshare ad, I called the guy but he said he'd already passed through Flagstaff and I'd missed him by about twenty minutes. I looked him up online and discovered he was a former Hollywood stuntman so I'm sure he would have had some interesting stories, Dimichelle don't know shit! Kim wanted to see the sunset from somewhere good but I told him we only had ten minutes. He managed to talk "Jeremy Beadle hand man" into driving us up a hill... but only the east side of the hill was accessible. Sunset fail! I was starving so we acquired John and the Swiss guy and went out for some Mexican fast food, I had some kind of veggie burrito as usual and John kept making me try his extremely spicy pineapple salsa. We all decided to try finding some live music and went to the wonderfully named Cafe Ole... there was a wonky eyed man doing a solo acoustic set and some of his stuff wasn't too bad. He did a couple of very obscure Beatles songs and also attempted to speak German to Kim and Swiss guy, he failed. He got a bit annoying after a while so we moved on to another live music place, the band hadn't started yet so I decided to make my exit. John was very sad to see me go, he gave me a hug and said I'd brought him out of his shell a little bit. I headed to the station with my $118 ticket to L.A. and boarded the packed train. I chatted with a couple of people briefly, it's a small town so they were interested in my travels. It was a very uneventful train ride and I think I got a couple of hours sleep, only one seat to myself though, very disappointing.

The Grand Canyon - "We came, we saw, we kicked its ass!"

Day 49: Wednesday Nov 10th - "Three Brits and two Aussies walk into a big hole in the ground..."

I got up early at about 8am, had a shower, actually got to have some free breakfast because I was up early enough and then met up with my Grand Canyon gang. We were five, myself, Beau and Travis from Australia, Rob from Manchester and James from somewhere posh. This was James' first time to the canyon but the other guys had gone there the day before. It meant they had a car pass so I got in for free but it also meant they up for more of a challenging hike. We drove around to the east side and found the trail that someone had recommended to the guys. It was about 11am when we began our decent into the abyss. I was almost worried as we were passing knackered looking people coming the other way, the Aussie's were wearing their skinny jeans and almost skipping along so at least I knew they would die first. The views were pretty spectacular all the way down and the windy steep route we were taking meant that the view kept changing. After about two hours of mostly non-stop walking we decided to take a break for lunch. I had a couple of apples, a granola bar and stole some of the guy's bagels and cheese. We made it to our target  rock formation (the horseshoe) at about 2pm but the trail to the top would take too long... so we just went for the direct route. It was rather steep and probably quite dangerous but we all made it up there. I think we all felt a great sense of accomplishment as we sat at the top of the horseshoe saying "we kicked the Grand Canyon's ass!". Then it was time for a casual stroll back up to the top of the Grand Canyon...

It didn't take as long as I'd expected, only about half an hour longer than it took us to get down. However, it was far more tiring than I'd expected and the small rain and snow showers didn't help. We chatted to a few people on the way back up and met a nice couple from New Zealand. At one point we were all chatting to an old American dude and we realised that five of us were vegetarians, we're totally taking over the world! The old American dude said I looked pale, I said I'm from England and I've just been hiking for four hours in the Grand Canyon, he said no more. We also met two guys from L.A and I asked about the possibility of getting a ride there with them. They said it would depend on a couple of things and that I should call them later on. That would have been perfect except I managed not to store his number in my phone when I typed it in, I blame the lack of feeling in my hands. As soon as we got to the top of the canyon it started snowing heavily, it felt very strange. At some points during the day it had been really hot and we'd all been down to just a t-shirt. As soon as we left the car park a mountain lion ran across the road in front of us causing Rob to slam the brakes on and causing the rest of to unleash a torrent of expletives. We'd certainly had a day of bonding and the car journey back to Flagstaff was pretty funny. One funny thing I remember is Travis saying "Do you reckon the Kiwi woman was a babe............... in her past?"

We got back to the hostel at about 6pm and the two French girls I'd met in New Orleans were checking-in. They remembered me, I remembered them, it was rather amusing. The G.C. gang went out to the pub for happy hour, which was actually happy ten minutes because we were a bit late. Still, $2.50 for one pint isn't bad. We then went to another place for food, the Aussie's had eaten there the night before and recommended their bean burgers. I had a green chili veggie burger which was rather tasty. We got a couple of pitchers and had a few pints each, then went for a few games of pool at a pool club. A couple of locals were trying to tell us which local beers to drink and I got the barmaid to give me a taster of each one, that's always the best way. I beat all of the guys at pool and they ended up having a losers tournament. Upon our return to the hostel one of the staff members was recommending a cheap drinks night somewhere, we decided to check it out with an American guy called John but when we arrived there was a cover and the drinks really weren't that cheap. Back to the hostel again! We sat around in the lobby for a bit, reminiscing about our day of adventure, then some rather cute German girls sat down with us and were joking to each other in German. After a while they suddenly asked us all how old we were, then started giggling to themselves again. We tried conversing with them but an older woman came down from upstairs and told the Germans to be quiet, she said she was their coordinator, James thought she'd said commander, we laughed about that (we were tipsy), she was possibly their teacher, we couldn't quite figure it out. We decided this was all too much like hard work and that the Germans were a bit young so we all went to bed.

A quick stop in Phoenix and my first night in Flagstaff

Day 47 (Monday Nov 8th) "I think humans are going to become extinct fairly soon"
After a night of bad news I had to decide what I was going to do. My booked flight wasn't until the evening and I was considering whether to cut my losses and head straight to Los Angeles. I also had the option of going to Phoenix, crashing at the hostel for one night, then heading to Flagstaff and going to the Grand Canyon. With my newly acquired laptop I went to the library. I spent about two or three hours internetting and figuring out what I was going to do. Tony's wife Keri tried to help by calling up the site I booked my ticket through and seeing if I could change the destination for no extra cost. In the end I decided my original plan was the best one, Phoenix > Flagstaff (Grand Canyon) > Los Angeles. On the plane to Phoenix I was sat next to an interesting Chinese woman. She kept talking about the end of the world. More interesting than people I've sat next to before. Once I arrived in Phoenix I got a bus and then the light rail to withing nine blocks of the hostel, it was a scary looking, empty nine blocks to walk on my own but I survived. The lady working there, Mary, was very friendly but they were closing down the common area as soon as I arrived which meant there wasn't anyone around to chat to. Although a French Canadian girl saw my frostbitten (exaggerating) hands and offered me some lotion. It rubs the lotion on its skin...
Later that night when I was checking online I saw that Andy (Goonies friend in London) had set up a Facebook event and was trying to raise money for me to go to the Back To The Future event and that she'd already received almost $100 in donations! Rather amazing! I went to bed happy but it soon turned to despair, I only had two other people in my room and they were both very heavy snorers. I think I got at least a couple of hours sleep that night.

Day 48 (Tuesday Nov 9th) "Las Vegas halfway house? Me too!"
I woke up, showered and stuff, then straight to the internet to figure out if I was going to kill a day in Flagstaff or kill a day in Phoenix. I decided to kill a day in Flagstaff. First I chatted about languages with the French Canadians and a multilingual American girl. On my way to the bus station a cop pulled over to the side of the road and asked me some questions. He asked if I was hanging around and if I had a camera, then I remembered that a few minutes ago I'd seen a guy taking photos of the airport so I told the cop. I uphold the law! I had a salad at the bus station and then got on the bus to Flagstaff. It was a fairly empty bus so I relaxed and enjoyed the ride. Half way to Flagstaff the bus broke down and one dude wanted to use my phone to call the halfway house. He'd just been released from prison in Phoenix and was headed to Vegas, I declined because I didn't have much credit left. He borrowed somebody else's phone and took about fifteen minutes to get it all sorted. You'd think he'd never seen a mobile phone before... surely not. When he was explaining his situation a guy at the back overheard and said "Las Vegas halfway house? Me too!" Then the girl sat across from me broke her phone by dropping it and standing on it. I was on a bus of fools and criminals! The bus was fixed after about an hour and we continued to Flagstaff. I walked the ten minutes from the Greyhound station to the hostel and realised it was going to be a cold few days. I chatted to a couple of people after I'd checked in, one American guy with a Jeremy Beadle hand and one Swiss guy who is one of the most chilled out people I've ever met. I had a cool little room with just two bunks. A German dude called Kim would be sleeping across from me. He wanted to go explore so he got a coffee, I got a hot chocolate and we walked up a big hill, walking across train tracks and going directly up rather than following the road. It was really nice at the top but very cold. I only had layers, not a decent jacket. We were above the town so the stars were really clear and the air was really fresh. We wisely decided to take the road down to the bottom and we heard a band playing The Beatles "Come Together" in a garage. We returned to the hostel and I posted an ad on Craigslist asking for a rideshare to Los Angeles on either Thursday or Friday. Then I asked around about the Grand Canyon tour, it turned out that it probably wasn't going to happen because not enough people had signed up. Two European guys were driving there the next day but they were then driving on to Vegas, I pondered that for a few minutes and then I found out that four guys from another room were driving there, I knocked on their door, introduced myself, and then had a ride sorted to the Grand Canyon first thing the next day!

Colorado Part 2

Day 45 (Nov 6th) "Go Willy!"
Tony picked me up from the hotel. I'd never met him before but it didn't feel like that. We drove around Denver for about an hour trying to find the Denver Mint. They'd closed off lots of the downtown roads for some reason so were struggling a bit. In the end we gave up and drove south to Colorado Springs where Tony lives. We picked up his wife Keri and went to the Air Force Academy. The car got searched on the way in, two locals, a Brit and a dog must look like terrorists in Colorado. They had some planes on display, I did Free Willy on one of them and we got lots of photos. We also checked out the football stadium and the futuristic looking chapel. We then grabbed some cheap pizza and went to eat it at Garden Of The Gods, which is a cool rock formation thing. We dropped Keri off and Tony and I went for one drink and some chatting at a downtown bar. Then Tony took me to a motel and very kindly handed over a laptop that he said I could keep for the rest of my trip. I watched some terrible TV and fell asleep.

Day 46 (Nov 7th) "I conquered a mountain and I didn't even have to climb!"
I missed breakfast at the hotel by about an hour because the clocks had gone back and I was confused. I picked up a veggie sandwich and a muffin on the way to Pike's Peak (a 14,000ft mountain near Colorado Springs). It was going to be my first mountain but luckily we could drive all the way to the top. We stopped a lot along the way to take lots of photos and it took us about an hour and and a half to get to the top. Tony and Keri had warned me that I might feel dizzy and sick at the top but I was fine. Tony didn't have any problems either. It was just a really cold wind and my hands were suffering the most. At the top ofthe mountain there was a fox just hanging around, very cool. After conquering the mountain we went back down to Manitude Springs where they have lots of different flavoured springs. Tony and I tried almost all of them and they were all pretty disgusting. I quite liked Manitude Springs as a town, lots of hippies and lots of shops. Tony then drove me back into Denver and back to the hotel where I'd previously stayed. I took a walk down to Chipotle for some safe Mexican food and then went back to chill at hotel and plan the next few legs of my trip. I got a depressing text from Danielle in Phoenix saying she would no longer be available for hanging with me on the Thursday and that was my only real plan for Phoenix... bummer. I also got a text from Liz saying she wouldn't be able to do San Francisco... bummer. So I spent the night trying to figure out what I'd be doing the next few days. I also got a message from Andy reminding me about a Back To The Future event in Los Angeles on the Friday. It was a re-enactment of the Enchantment Under The Sea Dance with some of the cast and crew, tickets were slightly out of my budget at $300 so I jokingly said to her that I'd go if she could get enough donations from all of my friends.... more on that later...

Colorado Part 1

Day 43 (Nov 4th) "England?... Oh wait! You're British!"
I woke up not really remembering what had happened the night before, just that I'd somehow made it back to the hostel. I packed up my stuff and said good bye to Darren, then headed to where I needed to catch a bus to the airport. I just got to the bus stop in time although it required some running. A couple of French girls from the hostel were also on the bus, they were flying to Vegas. A couple of nights previous I'd booked my flight and because it hadn't accepted my card online and I'd had to wait a day the price had gone up from about $100 to $250. That was rather annoying but I had to go and see Tony! When I arrived in Denver it was just before sunset so when I was on the bus I could see the sun setting over the mountains, that was quite lovely. I arrived at the hostel and it turned out there was a hotel/apartment section to it. The guy showed me a couple of the rooms and I decided it would be nice to have a room to myself for a couple of nights. Denver started expensive so it might as well continue to be. It was only $37 a night which was just about justifiable. I walked to Walgreens to get some snacks, bought some fries, and when I told a woman I was English she said "England?... Oh wait! You're British!"....sweet Jesus.... When I got back to the room I saw a cockroach (which I failed to trap) and then I just watched bad American TV until I fell asleep.

Day 44 (Nov 5th) "I'm in love, dude"
I went to the library to use their computers and try and plan my day. I was only allowed an hour because I didn't have a library card but the lady helped me find an internet cafe nearby. I had a lovely mango smoothie there and booked my flight to Phoenix. Mario called me and we arranged to meet in the evening at a pub called Katie Mullins'. It was a really lovely day so I just walked around Denver a little bit. Most of it looked really pretty because every time you crossed a road and looked south you could see the snow covered mountains between the buildings. Later on I met Mario and we decided upon a food place where I got a veggie burger and fries. We went to a couple of different bars and had a couple of beers each, one was called Tilted Kilt and had Scottish dressed waitresses, another was Earl's where the waitress lady was one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. She sat down with us for a few minutes and told us that she'd been to London the week before to see the NFL game and she'd gone to a party with Jon Bon Jovi, rather cool. We drank some vodka and cranberry drinks, then Mario had some mash potato. When I got back to the hotel I fell asleep watching Eraser and woke up to Steven Seagal in his Lawman series, nice.

New Orleans

DAY 1 "Are you Ewan?"
This was the first totally solo leg (uni-pod?) of my trip! Dani took me to the airport before she went to work so I got there at about 7am. It was another short flight but the train to New Orleans would have taken a day and cost more than the flight. There was a cute girl sitting next to me on the plane. I tried to get her attention by being annoying and leaning over when she was doing a crossword. My incredible advances failed... at least for now! We touched down in New Orleans and my research kicked in, I managed to find the right bus and the girl from the plane turned up at the bus stop about ten minutes after me, my research was better than hers... or maybe she grabbed something to eat. She told me that she'd flown from New Hampshire to surprise a friend in New Orleans. She gave me her number (I didn't even ask!) and she said that if her plans fell through then she might arrange to stay at my hostel. I arrived at the hostel, it was a bit of a dive but with a good mix of friendly young people. When I first went into my room there was a dude in there with some whiskey. "That'll wake you up in the morning! Captain Morgan!" was the first thing he said to me after he'd taken a big swig from the bottle. There was an Aussie guy in the room too and I quickly befriended him so we could team up on the other dude if he tried anything funny. The Aussie stepped out for a bit and the black dude told me "I can get you anything. Women, drugs, you name it." I thanked him for his kind offer and quickly ran away to find the Aussie guy. It turned out that Aussie guy was called Darren and he used to be a policeman in Sydney. I think I picked the correct dude to befriend. It was raining all day so most of the hostel folk stayed in for the night. It was a bit of a trek to downtown and most of us were pretty tired as we'd only just arrived or been drinking heavily the night before... or both. Darren and I got speaking to some Irish girls, Lisa and another girl with a crazy Irish name (Eomer?... no wait that's the dude from LOTR). We chatted for a good few hours and were joined by another Aussie. At one point the hostel phone rang and Darren decided to answer it, it was the first time I've cried with laughter on this trip. From what Darren was saying we figured there was a Korean guy called Min-sok Lee on the other end asking to talk to "Ewan". Darren was saying stuff like "This is a youth hostel, you know you're calling America right?" and it was just too funny to hear him try and explain stuff. In the end we decided it was Yu-an and that turned out to be one of the hostel workers, it was her father calling. We only worked that out after Darren had asked anybody that walked by if they were called Ewan. I was actually in bed before midnight in our room with the air-con stuck on 65.

DAY 2 "Pat Benetar in the taxi!"
The day started with making a new friend in Dom, another Aussie policeman who'd arrived the night before and was staying in our room. Dom, Darren and I were all heading downtown so we decided to go together. Before we left the hostel we gained another hosteller in Victoria, a singer from Liverpool. Our group of four headed into the French Quarter by the streetcar (tram). We went down to look at the river and then stopped at Cafe Du Monde for some beignets. They're non-dougnut-shaped doughnuts with a thick layer of powdery sugar on top. I left there looking I'd been snorting cocaine, that stuff got all over the place. Then we went to the French market and then just continued walking, Dom was looking for a specific place and we just happy exploring with him. We ended up walking into a slightly dodgy looking area, it turned out we'd gone a bit far and we were a bit north east of the French Quarter. One woman sitting outside her house took it upon herself to steer us away from trouble. "When you gets to da end of here you gonna turn left, you don't want go dis way, you in da ghetto! I won't tell you wrong." After that delightful piece of information we headed back to the safe area. I'd been told to check out any cemetery so when we walked past one I insisted we go in. They have to bury their dead above ground because the place is below sea level so it makes for some interesting looking tombs and stuff. We came across Marie Levau's grave which was covered with calling cards, jewellery, random stuff and a Macho Man Randy Savage action figure. She was a voodoo woman so people give her cool stuff even though she's dead. We grabbed some food somewhere, I had a big salad. Darren had made a note of a free concert in the park that was going on so we headed there around 5pm while Dom chose to check out some other stuff instead. At the concert they had some blues and some jazz and some scantily clad women handing out info on sporting event tickets. Victoria decided to walk back to the hostel but Darren and I got the streetcar (tram). We had some beers at the hostel, watched a basketball game on TV, chatted with some Aussies, Americans and some Essex girls. Then around 10pm myself, Darren, the other Aussies and the Americans headed downtown. It was a really fun night except for all the walking in the rain, at least it was warm enough that you dried off pretty quickly. We went to a couple of live music bars, one bass player totally inspired me to pick up the bass again, we bumped into Dom and his Brazilian friend, we then went to a bar where we played some pool and chatted up some local girls, they loved the accents. All of us got a taxi back to the hostel and a note I'd put into my phone was "Pat Benetar in the taxi!" so I imagine I was singing along and annoying the guys, "Hit me with your best shot!" (I don't actually remember this, I found the note the next day).

Florida: Days 4, 5 and 6

Florida: Day 4 "Women don't know I'm straight so what's the point?"
The day of the (Gay) Halloween Ball! Huzzah! Dani worked on her friend's wizard cloak costume for most of the day on Saturday. We watched some more Romero movies while she sewed. Then her friend Chris came round and they did some adjustments on his costume. We tried to sort out a pirate costume for me using whatever stuff we could find around the apartment. In the end it was the de-shirting that made it look authentic... and sexy. We'd been drinking ciders for a couple of hours before we left Dani's but I soon sobered up as we rode up the escalator... into a sea of gay men in the most amazing/ridiculous/flamboyant/gay costumes I've ever seen. "Holy Mary mother of God", was all that I could say. It was actually quite a fun night, I got to meet some of Dani's favourite gay men and the only scary part was going to the bathroom. I'm not used to being checked out when I'm trying to pee. The female bathroom was unisex for the night so I was tempted... but my morals stopped me. Needless to say we had a few drinks, chatted with some Balrog costumed dudes and the wicked witch of the west, then we headed back to Dani's. I'd managed to not get my cock grabbed once, which is more than can be said for Dani's friend Chris...

Florida: Day 5 "If I beach it they will come"
We were rather hungover so we didn't do very much. I wanted to see one last sunset so we went to the aptly named Sunset Beach. I'd actually decided during the day that I was going to stay an extra day because I was too ahead of schedule and the flights were cheaper a day later... but who turns down a sunset at the beach? There were tons of dophins knocking about, I was obviously getting quite sick of them by this point. Dani did some shelling, which is where she collects shells, hence the name. More zombie movies, then bed.

Florida: Day 6 "I ain't gettin' on no plane, fool! At least until tomorrow..."
Dani was working on Monday so I mostly slept, watched some movies, slept and when Dani got home we went to Picnic Beach for yet another sunset. This time there were no dolphins but there were palm trees which made for some good photos.

Florida: Days 1, 2 and 3

Day 1: "It's definitely not on Snow St"
I got up at about 5am after not really getting to sleep until at least 1am. Sonja was up early to go to work so I got to say good bye. Dave drove me to the airport and I when the lady at security checked my passport she said "cheers". This has happened a couple of times before but it just didn't register. Oh those Americans! I had a short, easy flight to Tampa. When I arrived Dani showed me the roof of the car park and a really nice view of downtown in the distance, she said she always does that if she picks someone up from the airport. We went back to her place and chilled until about 6pm. Dani really wanted me to have some good veggie food so we did a bit of research and found a couple of places nearby. We ended up spending an hour trying to find a place, mainly because Dani didn't believe the street name I'd written down and thought it was somewhere else. Of course when we eventually found it the place was closed. There was some sort of street party going on near it which added to the difficulty of finding it. We gave up and headed to Qdoba, a Mexican fast food place near to Dani's apartment. I had veggie gumbo which was actually quite nice. I like these Mexican places, I must petition to get them in England.

Day 1: "They sure swim fast don't they?!"
I woke up deciding I needed to get my hair cut. I researched a few places and settled on one round the corner from Dani's called Toni's. We figured it was short for Antonio so were expecting a Mediterranean..... more fool us. It was an East Asian dude with diamond earrings and beautifully kept silver hair. He was very efficient to say the least, I was only the chair for about ten minutes. He had a cool hair sucker thing attached to the clippers which I've only seen before at the dentists.... for teeth rather than hair. We then went thrift shopping because I was after some new shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, I think the 90°F+ temperature had gone to my head. I didn't find any shorts and all of the shirts were too big for me. In most of the shops we went in the shirt sizing by section was SMMMLLLLLXLXLXLXLXLXLXLXLXLXLXLXLXLXLXLXL. I noticed that the other guys shopping there were either massive or they were wearing shirts that were way too big for them. Food time! We went to a place that I'd researched the previous night called Chaat. Dani had never had Indian food before so I figured it was about time someone introduced her to it. They had a lunch buffet for under $7 which was purely vegetarian, I got a bowl of each thing and Dani tried most of the stuff. It was all a bit hot for her and the milder coconutty stuff was not to her taste. I ate more than my belly could take. The best purchased food that I've had on this trip has been Indian. The staff very friendly too and they let us try a nice little sweet thing for free. Dani wanted to show me sunset at the beach so we headed to Treasure Island beach in Saint Petersburg (near Tampa). The shell and rock filled sand was a bit hard to walk with bare feet but the view was really pretty and I was surprised how warm it was even that late in the day. The sunset was stunning and I even got to see some dolphins swimming out at sea. Dani said that was rare, the only disappointment I had was that for a split second I thought they were sharks. There was a guy trying and failing to run alongside the dolphins, "They sure swim fast don't they?!" he panted. On the way back we stopped in to see Dani's friends David and Rick, they were nice and we chilled at their place for a little bit. Rick let Dani borrow some horror films and so that night when we got back I watched Dawn Of The Dead (I've been to that mall!) and Night Of The Living Dead while Dani did some sewing on her friend's Halloween costume.

Day 3: "Denny's wins!"
We got up at around 9am on Friday and went to the library to print off the BOGOF voucher for Kennedy Space Center... then we drove to Kennedy Space Center. It was about a two hour drive and I had my mp3 player hooked up the car stereo so we were wonderfully entertained for the whole journey. As we approached Cave Canaveral there were some dolphins swimming out in the water alongside the bridge. We arrived at about 2pm and started with the two hour tour of the area. We got to see Discovery from a distance, it was on the launch pad being prepped for launch. At the time of writing this it still hasn't been launched but it was meant to happen three days after we were there. Part of the tour took place in the actual control center for Saturn V... which was nice. There was lots of space stuff, all of which I'd forgotten from From The Earth To The Moon, then we went back to the main center. We watched a 3D film about the 2009 repairs that were done to the Hubble telescope, it was narrated by Leo DiCaprio, he drives a Prius, he kept mentioning how precious our planet is. It was a really good film though. Then we went on the space shuttle simulator... because you have to don't you? We sat down and it shook a bit. On the way back Dani wanted me to a beach on the east coast but it was late and there wasn't an obvious place to go so in the end we gave up and went to Denny's. I knew they had a nice veggie burger so it's always my safe veggie back-up. When we got back to Tampa we saw lots of strangely dressed people lining up for a Halloween party. There were also some women in only their underwear but I couldn't turn my camera on quick enough to get them. We continued the tradition of having one cider every night and I went to bed at about 4am.

Texas Part 3: "Roads? Where we're going we don't need... No wait, we're only going to Fort Worth."

We had a very lazy Sunday. I carved my pumpkin a bit and did some planning of what I'd be doing after Texas. I properly watched a new episode of CSI Miami live for the first time and then watched Premonition. I love Bullock.... but it was awful.

On Monday Sonja received some bad news so she decided not to join me and Dave at a screening of Back To The Future. Seeing Christopher Lloyd's face on the big screen brought so much more to the movie. His expressions are amazing. I continued with my pumpkin carving.

Tuesday was Fort Worth day. Dave and I headed out around midday and went to Brenton's rather wonderful house. I got to investigate the tree house he built for his kids and then he took us out for pizza at a place called BJ's (chuckle). The other guys struggled with their small pizzas and we spent at least an hour full of pizza and pumpkin ale at BJ's (chuckle), then we went back to Brenton's to chill for an hour. Dave and I left and went to the Fort Worth Water Gardens where they filmed some of Logan's Run. One of the big water features was really cool but the other ones were a bit too simple. We then headed to the Omnitheater and watched Mystery Of The Nile, the big screen made Dave feel sick. Dave cooked a stir fry which I had two helpings of, I'm not sure if it was really good or if I was just really hungry.