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!
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