Getting Sort-Of Up-To-Date In A Nutshell. A Large One. Like A Coconut's.

Well, I had written a massive piece summarising all the post-Cancun happenings, but my BlackBerry crashed and I lost it all. Scumbag phone. So I'll try again. Even briefer this time though. Here goes. So I arrived into Seattle airport around 10pm and was dreading my exchange with both immigration and customs, given all my possessions were being carried in a single Tesco bag, both tatty and stretched to breaking-point. But I put on a brave face and excentuated my British accent and they actually didn't bother me. Which made me think if I ever were to run drugs, that'd be the best way to do it. I could have had a plastic bag full of the hottest crack, smack and triple sub, yet they were satisfied with the "I was robbed in Mexico" line. Anyway, this isn't brief at all. Try harder! So had two fun days in Seattle - possibly the friendliest city anywhere - buying a new bag, underwear, a couple of T-shirts and, most essentially, fridge magnets and postcards. It's a city where the bus drivers heartily thank you as you get off, wishing you a great weekend and expressing their hopes of seeing you again. And this wasn't just one wacko driver, this was about five over the course of two days. I had to head up to Vancouver on Saturday because there wasn't a bed seemingly anywhere in the city that night. Caught a Greyhound for $30 and had to queue behind a horrendously obese man for whom the physical exertion of just standing was causing him to drip more sweat than a factory-full of children making Reeboks in south-east Asia. Arriving in Vancouver, I did some Google-mapping on my phone to find the easiest route to my hostel. Unbeknownst to me, my selected route took me through possibly the biggest collection of homeless people I've ever seen. Walking down Hastings Street is like Night of the Living Homeless, a-la South Park. Change, spare some change, CHANGE! But they all seemed unthreatening enough, so I wasn't worried. They also smoke so much pot in Vancouver, it's pretty much the default smell everywhere, so when you hit a pocket of fresh air it's a bit odd. I met a group of three very cool college Spring-Breakers from Oregon State University, and ended up hanging out with them throughout my stay, mostly drinking, yet still finding time to point at the weird products on sale at the Chinatown supermarket - predominantly the live crabs, lobsters and fish, grimacing especially at the still-beating-heart of a freshly chopped-up salmon. Walking around in the rain for hours searching for a club on, as it turned out both of our last nights, we found ourselves inside Roxy, a bit of a dive, but actually pumping out some good rocking music, with a live band playing covers very competently throughout the evening. Oh, and this was after I did four minutes of open-mike-edness at the Kingston on Richards Street, which didn't go too badly! Laura, Nick and AK gave me a ride back to Seattle which is where I am now, in my room with just over 24 hours before my flight to San Francisco I managed to bag for $58. I'm going to spend one night there, then it's that long flight back home on thursday evening. So that's about it really. This wasn't a brief summary at all. Sorry. By the way, because my train tickets were nicked in Mexico, I had to buy a new one for London to Norwich on Friday... Trouble is the only affordable one was at 22:30, yet my flight arrives at 14:30. So I have some hours to kill if anyone is around!

Spring Break-In - Part 1

So as predicted, I've fallen ridiculously behind with my postings. And after I started so well. But I have an excuse. So I'm going to jump ahead to the present and explain. My spur of the moment decision to head to Cancun on a cheap flight to experience some of infamous US 'Spring Break' shenanigans didn't work out fantastically. On my first night I got back from the mental $20 all-you-can-drink filth-fest to find some absolute cockstain had broken into my locker and taken off with both my backpack and my other hand-luggagey bag. He didn't take my toiletries, towel, spare trousers, and, most importantly my Smiths T-shirt. So I could at least rest assured I was robbed by someone wasn't a Morrissey fan. That'd have been too much. Fortunately my passport and iPod were in the secure box behind reception, and of course I had my wallet and phone on me, so it wasn't the end of the world. Clearly I was still quite distraught, and while I held out no hope of getting my stuff back, I got a taxi to the nearest police station to get my report so my insurance could at least get me something. After being told in broken English to hang around in a building full of no-hablar-Ingleses for two hours (completely understandably so - I'm not arrogant enough (or at all really) to expect everyone to speak my language!), I finally broke and tried out the 112 international emergency line, who after about 20 minutes of listening to what happened politely informed me he couldn't do anything and that I had to go to a different police station. Thanks. Anyway, after an expensive cab ride I finally (painstakingly) got my statement taken and was on my way at 8.30am, in a non-sleep-induced daze, attempting to work out what the hell I was gonna do. I only entertained the notion of cutting my losses and heading back to England early for ten seconds before ruling it out as stupid. Why should I let one complete tosser ruin a trip I'd not been planning for months? And one that had been so amazing up until then? (oh, you just wait for my backdated Baltimore entry!) so that just left the question Where Next? And When? Part of me wanted to leave that day, to pretty much anywhere other than Mexico. Checking the all the flights back to the US out of Cancun there wasn't much to anywhere useful for any sane prices. By useful I mean closer to the west coast than east. With just over a week to be in San Francisco, I had to rule out the likes of Miami, Atlanta, Birmingham and even Chicago, that one mostly on grounds of having been before, but also because it being in the so-called Mid-West suggests it's far further across the country than it actually is. So my options were New Orleans, any city in Texas, south west coast to San Diego or LA, or up north to Seattle or Vancouver. Oddly most were around the same price, despite them being huglely different mileage-wise. Although I had really wanted to head to the Big Easy, paying the same price to leave me furthest away than any of the other options meant it, regrettably, had to be culled first. Having still not been to the South, Texas was very appealing and not overly expensive to get to, however there's a distinct lack of hostels. Even though they have a ton of motels for only a little dearer than some dorms I've stayed in, its more about meeting people than a bed for the night. I know there'd be a chance of bumping into some crack dealers, bail-jumpers or Devil's Rejects-esque physchotic killers, but I'd probably only bore them with talk of Edinburgh, New Zealand and travels through all those horrid liberal blue states to the north. I just don't have that many drug, prison or murder-based tales to tell. So that unfortunately ruled threw Texas out. Were I to head to San Diego, I felt I'd only end up heading through LA or Vegas and again, while I loved those places first time round, I was of the thinking I'd rather take a chance with somewhere new. Plus, taking the hit on San Diego wasn't too hard, as I'd heard it was a big Spring Break spot, and I'd had my fill of obnoxious college kids proving almost every stereotype completely true. With their slutty outfits, and their big boobs and their wet T-shirts and their.... Yeah, it took a lot of willpower, but Seattle seemed to make the most sense. So for $200 I booked the flight for the next day on Alaska Air, a 6 and a bit hour flight to the extreme north west of the USA, incase not everyone watches Frasier. So that all decided and booked, I went back to the scene of the crime to collect my few remaining possessions, think for a few moments of the good times in T-shirts lost, and accept a million apologies from the owner. He was mortified, but there wasn't much else he could have done. The TWOCing bastard was a pro. Well, on weekends anyway. I'm over it. I found a much better place called the Mayan Hostel, checked in the night, had an hour-long nap and woke up just in time for the free evening meal they provided between 7 and 8. Embarrassingly the only Mexican food I ate throughout my time in Cancun. Chatting to several fellow travellers sat across the table from across the world, I used some of my vast Spanish vocabulary to impress a group of South Americans. "tengo once anos" was about the best I could muster, or "I am 11 years old". Yeah, I gave up on languages a long time ago. My bad. It got a laugh though. And that's all that matters. CONTINUED....

Spring Break-In - Part 2

.....Afterwards I headed to a convenience store to grab some beers for pre-bar drinks on the roof terrace - I heard people were drinking up there so thought I'd be socialable. With my local dark beer I started chatting to a Finnish guy who wouldn't stop talking about the wonders of Mexican women. He even had a bit to say besides that, and we headed up to the main 'party' area together and managed to wangle our way into the 20 dollar bar of infinite drinking for almost half price and had a decent night, despite the piss-poor music and frat-boys dry-humping anything that moved. I'm glad I stuck around that extra day, but it also felt good to be on my way the next morning too, with nothing but a precariously close-to-splitting Tesco carrier bag holding everything I owned. US customs are gonna love this, I thought as I checked in at the airport, but I had a smile on my face and bizarrely felt more upbeat than when I arrived. I still had a week left to explore the continent's north west corner, and no junkie bellend's thievery was going to stop me!

A Baltimorean Excursion En-Route to DC

I've backdated this entry so the blog is chronologically accurate - I wrote it up after I got back as it was always going to be a big post! I didn't want to rush it out, and at the time I was a pre-occupied with what happened in Mexico! -Andy

I left my aunt and uncle’s place early Monday morning to get into Philadelphia early in order to start my journey south as soon as possible. A Greyhound ticket to Washington DC with an open stop off in Baltimore was $30, and asking the guy on the desk what to do for a few hours was given a big list of potential places to visit. I asked if he knew of The Wire, he told me it was his favourite show right before giving my strict instructions to stay on the right side of the tracks in a part jokey, part deadly serious manner. So I spent the next two and a bit hours sat in front of an elderly lady hacking her guts up, pausing on occasion to intermittently spit on the floor and shout, in what sounded like angry Chinese, into her phone. Not the most pleasant of journeys, but I kept myself entertained by playing the Avoid Rivers of Chunky(not ’Chinky’ as I genuinely mistyped first) Saliva game and tracking our progress using Google Maps on my BlackBerry. It sounds like a dull waste of time and battery, but never underestimate the satisfaction of being able to put a name to a cruddy town as you pass by. On arriving in Baltimore, I quickly found that contrary to what the Greyhound staff in Philadelphia had told me, the station wasn’t near the city centre at all. It was in fact a twenty minute and very infrequent bus ride away. Never mind. Of course sight seeing with a big, heavy backpack isn’t that easy, so I went inside the bus terminal to seek out a locker I could use for three or four hours. They didn’t have any. Instead, with the least enthusiasm humanly possible, they offered a $5 per hour luggage storage service. I didn’t fancy paying that much to such apathetic staff, so had the bright idea of seeking out Penn Station, the city’s Amtrak terminal, assuming they’d definitely have lockers at a fraction of the cost. So I searched for it put a marker on my Google Maps and hoped the bus went somewhere nearby. In retrospect I could have just asked the bus driver, but that would have spoilt the fun! Feeling everyone’s gaze as a skinny white boy with a backpack trying his hardest to blend in and not look lost, I sat near the front, following our route on my phone as subtly as possible. Fortunately we kept getting closer to the train station, and I managed to get off just a five minute walk away. Given, it was five minutes more toward the wrong side of the tracks and plenty of shady people threw me some not-quite-threatening, but not-quite-friendly stares - I just kept moving purposefully, attempting to look sort-of local.

It was about 1pm by the time I reached Amtrak, and upon asking very politely if they had any lockers was told flatly no. With such helpful customer service, I pressed and asked if I could store my heavy bag anywhere, taking it off and putting it down with a thud. “Are you an Amtrak ticket holder?”
“No, fraid not.”
“Well we can only hold the bags of Amtrak ticket holders.”
“Really?” - stepping up my British politeness - “Please, just for few hours, I want to explore your fine city!” - maybe a bit much.
“Okay, that’ll be $3,” in a thoroughly emotionless monotone.
“Thanks!”
“Psshh.”

After that delightful exchange I wanted to find out what was going on in Baltimore, so after buying a fridge magnet I asked the station gift shop assistant what was good to do in the city, to which he just shrugged. “Nothing at all?” Another shrug followed by a head shake. “Brilliant, thanks!”. Spying the transit police booth across the way, I figured cops must have some idea of what’s fun, especially if The Wire’s McNulty is any fictional character to go by. “Good afternoon, strange question, but I’m in Baltimore for a few hours and looking for something to do, anything you’d recommend?” Again, complete nonchalance. After a bit more prompting, all the while staring at his gun (actual weapon, not penis) as most Brits in the States find themselves doing, he half-arsedly pointed me in the direction of dull-sounding museum at the other end of town. Thanking him sarcastically, (but not too sarcastically, still clocking that gun) I walked out of the station just laughing to myself like a total mental. I didn’t really care about sight-seeing, I just felt so free at that point it was fantastic. Happy to be alive totally unrestricted, I strolled - almost swaggered - in the complete opposite direction to the Museum of Boring and saw a wonderful old clock tower in the distance and felt like taking a closer look. A fine example of some architectural style, I’m sure. While taking some photos I noticed two girls standing outside the entrance, one humouring the other’s smoke break, and so took the opportunity go and as some questions. “Hello! Sorry to disturb you, but just wondering what this place was…”
“It’s an art studio, used to be railway station,” one of the girls politely informed me, the other immediately asking where I was from and what I was doing here, leading to a very pleasant ten minute conversation, during which I was given a guided tour of the many splendid works in progress. She then wished me happy travels and left me to my own devices, not before reminding me that I’m an international student at the Maryland Institute College of Art should security give me any hassle. After thanking her I spent another few minutes taking in not only the art but also the amazing architecture of The Mt Royal Station (I had to cheat and look it up), before heading out for a wander in west Baltimore.

The following section may contain several references to HBO’s The Wire, so anything doesn’t make sense, please blame it on that. Unless of course you’re a fan of the show, in which case I’m talking bollocks.

Well I say west Baltimore, but it wasn’t quite the deepest, darkest drug ghettos of The Wire. Still, I walked for a good twenty minutes and went into a supermarket that had a cop permanently stationed by the tills. When he answered his phone with the words “Sheeeeeeeit woman!” it was a real strain not to burst out laughing. But as the only white person around, I was very aware I could be perceived as being horribly racist - and if there’s one thing you don’t want to do in west Baltimore, it’s that. Oh, and sell heroin on someone else’s corner. So after stocking up on nutritionally worthless food, and not seeing any signs of organised drug gangs with witty banter and pumping tunes, I decided to head back toward the Maryland Institute College of Art to have a nosy round the rest of their campus. An interestingly angular, all-glass building, signposted as The Brown Center seemed to demand further investigation - I just hoped it wasn‘t a poo museum or a see-through toilet. It wasn’t either. Just more art. I went in and saw tons more paintings and sculptures, including a gigantic papier mache pig which actually looked far less ridiculous than it sounds. Feeling thoroughly cultured, I left and walked toward the downtown area of the city. I’d gone about a minute before I spied a dingy-looking bar across the street, and suddenly an afternoon beer or two seemed an attractive option. Half expecting the music to stop at the sight of an outsider (given my previous less-than-friendly interactions with Baltimoreans), I was pleasantly surprised by the welcoming atmosphere. Definitely dingy, but not in a bad way. Taking a seat at the bar, I asked for a local beer and got poured a pint (or thereabouts) by Mick, The Mt Royal Tavern’s charismatic and thoroughly hilarious barman. So one pint quickly turned to two as I talked about my trip to the already quite sauced locals. Amazingly, Mick bought my second beer and told me to get it down me - I gladly obliged hoping to Christ this wasn’t part of some elaborate From Dusk Till Dawn-style get-outsiders-drunk-then-rob-them scheme. Oh and turn into vampires and bite them too. But it wasn’t. He’d selected the Pabst Blue Ribbon, what he described as “a working man’s beer - It‘s flat, doesn‘t taste great, but it does the job!” My beer snobbery drained away as I realised that‘s all that mattered after hard day‘s work. Two beers turned to six or seven over the next four hours, and a great time was had as I chatted to the remarkably eclectic crowd. “Yeah, we get all walks of life in here - doctors, lawyers, factory workers, students, lowlifes, junkies - but everyone just gets along,” Mick told me after insisting on my buying me another brew. It’d got quite busy by then, and as I’d professed my love of The Wire earlier, he said “Hey, you liked the Wire right?”
“Yeah!”
“Well this guy worked on the show, you wanna meet him?”
“Yeah!”
Mick beckoned over a grey-haired goatie-wearing gentleman and informed him I was a fan from across the pond. He was wearing his embroidered “HBO: The Wire Season Five - CREW” fleece and it turned out he’d done the electronic effects on the fifth season, including a big pyrotechnics showpiece he was very proud of. Unfortunately I’d only seen the season one at that point, so regrettably couldn’t say ‘great job!’ or something equally pathetic. I asked him a load of questions I can’t even remember now, but it was all quite exciting. After a bit more bar-mingling It’d somehow got to 7.30pm, and really was time to leave. Saying bye-bye to the several new acquaintances I’d made and would lose the second I left, I found the Wireman to wish bid him adieu too. “I was about to leave too, you need a ride anywhere?”
“Errr I’d hate to impose…”
“No imposition, where you heading?”
“Well, I gotta pick up my bag from the Amtrak then get to the Greyhound…don’t worry about it.”
“That’s fine, it’s dark.”
That settled that then! After collecting my backpack from another indifferent member of the station staff, the Wire bloke asked if I was hungry and proceeded to insist he buy me some dinner. Fine. At this point I’m quite aware it seems a bit seedy, but I assure you he was being a genuine nice guy, not a sleazy molester. Another beer and an amazing large pizza later, he asked if I’d mind heading back to his house round the corner for a minute because his wife would never believe he’d been out with an English fan of The Wire. “Sure, of course!” Now again, it wasn’t sinister, I’m aware it’s beginning to sound a bit rapey, but it was all aboveboard! His wife was lovely and runs a salon… furnished with old props from the show. If only I didn’t hate getting my hair cut so much, oh, and paying a few hundred quid in airfares every time, I’d definitely go there. Anyway, without much more ado, I was taken to the Greyhound terminal just in time for the 9.15pm bus, feeling really quite drunk and not looking forward to navigating the capital’s Metro system an hour later!

Navigate I did, somehow, despite being woken up by the Greyhound screeching to a stop when we reached Washington DC. Walking about three or four deserted and poorly-lit blocks south to Union Station sobered me up a bit as I avoided several questionable locals, getting my customary half-drunken stomp-on. , I managed to get onto the Red Line train toward Tacoma without any issues, not massively looking forward to my couch that the Hilltop Hostel‘s Eddie had promised me for ten bucks over the phone for lack of an actual bed. But a bed was a bed even if it was a couch, and I wasn’t expecting that much sleep anyway due to my impeding Mexico flight the next morning. After my (also quite customary) failure to see the hostel right in front of me and subsequently searching up and down the street for five minutes before ending up precisely where I started, Eddie was pleased to announce there was a bed after all, and an extra $14 was now required. Sort of hooray! After an uneventful night, I awoke around 5.40am, intending to leave just after six to arrive to Dulles for eight: a whole two hours before my departure. And that’s exactly what happened. Via an Egg McMuffin and pinching several copies of America’s finest news source, The Onion so as to look cultured and satirically aware to whichever Cancun-bound craaaaaaazy college girls happened to be sat next to me on the plane. Or, as it turned out, to David - a smug, middle-aged stock-broking-analyst-banking-prick from Boston who couldn‘t stop talking about his ‘shrewd-’ cocking ‘-investments’. Tosser. Oh well, I was certain Mexico would be a giggle and had no idea where I’d be heading after that. Figuring as long as I didn’t get robbed of most of my stuff, I’d be guaranteed fun times in Spring Break central! Wooo!

Baltimore and DC.

Hey yo! Andy comin'! Sorry, both confusing to non-Wire fans, and an irritatingly inaccurate piece of paraphrasing to those who are. Congratulations to me for possibly the worst opener ever. But I don't care, because I had an phenomenonal day!

But this entry has to wait... I need to severely catch up in summary form with the rest of my movements first... But this is first in line for a write up!

New York to Spreadable Cheesy, um, Spread. (Philadelphia?)

Waking up a minute before checking out left me with a bit of a fuzzy head, so much so I can't even remember if I've used that exact expression in a previous entry. I was out of the front door before I really knew what was going on or what I was going to do. I knew I had to head south, and my aunt who lives just outside Philadelphia had, before I left England, offered to put me up at literally an hour's notice were I to need a place to stay. So, as bastardly as it seemed, that got called in. When it went to voice mail, I got to thinking that if they were out of town, or unavailable, I'd either find some place to stay in the city that night, or failing that, continue south to Baltimore. I wasn't worried either way! So I just bought a slow ticket to Philadelphia for $20 and sat back. After deciding to go hardcore 21st century social-networking crazy and leaving a backup message on my cousin's Facebook, I was grateful when it resulted in me getting a phonecall asking what time I wanted picking up from their local station. Had a good time catching up with everyone - I'd literally not spoken to my cousins for three years. Suddenly Emma was at college and came so close to fullfilling the (of course pathetic) dream of my going to a college frat party. I'd heard they were EXACTLY as depicted in every college campus movie ever, from the kegs, to the beer pong, red cups and low alcoholic tolerances. Unfortunately the thing got cancelled last-minute, so it wasn't to be. One day, one day! anyway, I spent a few hours attempting to work out where I was heading next. South to Washington DC via Baltimore seemed the next logical step, but from there it was looking like a big jump and definitely at least some way west. It's incredibly easy to head south via bus or train to the capital, so it would be the flight out that would dictate my schedule. New Orleans was probably the strongest candidate early on, and I found a flight from Washington for about $120 with AirTran on a price comparison site. Going directly to their website, out of curiousity I clicked on their route map to see where else might be viable. Cancun immediately stood out, but I was certain it'd be far too pricey for my budget. What harm could it do to check? $150?! Nuts. To check out another country, especially one filled with the types that would have been at the frat party I missed, it seemed an awesome idea! So it was decided, just like that. I was booked to fly Tuesday morning, giving me Monday night in DC, via a Baltimore for a few hours for a quick Wire-related walkaround. A plan. So I spent Sunday night at my aunt and uncle's, whose generosity is unrivalled. Thanks again (if you happen to be reading!) also cheers Emma and Matt for putting up with me too! Anyway, thank you speeches aside, that's it for this post... Sorry it's late!

A Final Night In Harlem

In the morning I had to (regrettably) leave the New York City Loft in Brooklyn as the were completely booked out. My search for anywhere else in the borough proved fruitless, and staying to abuse their internet I met two separate groups of two who were also in the same boat. Their searches for any affordable place anywhere in the city, let alone Brooklyn, had yielded nothing. Wanting to stay a final night and knowing the place I'd stayed before in Harlem, Jazz on Lenox, was pretty empty then, I just headed back to Manhattan and back north to 125th street. They had plenty of space, so had no problem checking in, and at $23 a night I couldn't complain. I was still in a dazey-haze through lack of sleep and spent a good hour pissing about on the internet, as I'd miraculously discovered I wasn't (and still aren't) getting charged a penny for any of my data usage on this BlackBerry. So effectively I've got unlimited free access wherever I am, regadless of having an available WiFi connection, oddly making me as electronically available as I am back home. But that's boring. The un-boring thing was I headed out for drinks with my old school friend Mark in lower Manhattan at about midnight, and that's really not at all weird in New York. It was a case of "wanna meet for a few pints in lower Manhattan around 12?" Almost anywhere back home, catchup drinks would be pointless at that time due to the banging tunes, leery bellends and general fuckwittery of places open past that time. But we met in a real-aley place called the Heatland Brewery near 14th Street station that was of course cringe-worthily expensive at about 7 bucks a pint, but had a good atmosphere and most importantly good drink! When they stopped serving around 2am, we went for wander around 34th and Madison, as my friend's last train back to Long Island was out of there about 30 minutes later - just time for one more. We managed to stumble, quite literally, across a great little bar called The Rattle and Hum who also served an impressive array of draught beers, and was seemingly managed by a very knowledgeable and friendly Irish fellow. We chatted beer and ended up with several free samples of odd brews varying massively in style. The maddest of all was a 15% whisky-esque ale that brought back terrible, terrible millennial-eve scotch-based puke memories. The guy told us the owner is always sourcing new varieties from independent breweries from across the state and country, so much so the menu changes on an almost daily basis. So definitely check it out if you like good beer! Anyway, we left just in time for Mark to (with seconds to spare) catch his last train home. I headed toward the north-bound red 2 & 3 lines to get myself back to Harlem. Fortunately, the first train to come was a number 3, which teminates at 148th street and not the Bronx-bound express that runs all the to, if my memory serves, 241st. Why was this fortunate? Well I've become something of a serial subway-napper, and drifted off around north Central Park, only to be awakened by a thud and an announcement we'd reached our destination. Bugger. But it presented a good opportunity to prove to myself and to you, my four dedicated readers, that Harlem's not a dangerous place, even at 3.30am. So I decided to walk the 20 blocks south to 128th Street and my bed for the night. Of course it was fine. There were people about, nobody menacing, most smiling right back at me. When I saw two boisterous dudes entering a fried chicken place I just couldn't resist. Even though I wasn't hungry, the thought of chatting with locals while I waited was far too appealing! Ordering a five-piece box and fries for $6, I just turned to the guys and asked how they were going? They were far friendlier than the sort of pricks that frequent our late-night shit-eateries. We chatted about all sorts and our exchange ended with one of the guys high-fiving me and a reciprocal wishing of good night. So chicken in hand, I strolled the last seven or eight blocks to meet one of the decent hostel employees, working the graveyard shift on the hostel's reception. An awesome girl from Austria who seemed to get my sense of humour reasonably well and just was (still probably is) a genuinely decent human being. Unfortunately, possibly the biggest tosser I've ever had the misfortune to meet was on hand for some needless argumentative bullshit. I'm not going into full details, but everyone who knows me knows I hate conflict and will avoid confrontation at all costs. This guy, however, was such a prick, I couldn't help but argue the shit out of him. And it actually felt good, especially when I caught him out at the end. Essentially he was accusing me of being a bigot and a racist, which was completely unfounded and twatty, and after he wouldn't admit he was wrong for over 20 minutes, claiming he was fucking Ghandi, he said, "alright, this conversation has got really gay" to which I pointed out that he'd just completely destroyed his case by being an offensively homophobic titend. What a faggot. So that was that. Determined to leave in the morning, I set my alarm for 10.30 - half an hour before checkout. Of course it didn't go off, leaving me less than a minute the following morning to get my stuff together and head to the subway. Fun - yet shaggy-haired - times.

The Forced Laughter of...

... a thousand arthouse movie patrons doesn't come close, because at least they do it without explicit instruction from severely goosed-up network drones on happy pills. On the Late Show with David Letterman, the laughs are produced on cue to spine-chilling effect. The world's shittest stand up could perform on that show and feel like Bill Hicks. No, not cancer-ridden ( although incidentally, Letterman's virtuoso partner in crime, Paul Shaffer, looks remarkably like Jade Goody does at the moment) but akin to one of the all-time greats. Texting of Shaffer though, all credit to him and the CBS orchestra he leads, as they play great music throughout the ad-breaks. Also, Letteman himself is not an unfunny guy, but it's just when you're given strict instructions to laugh five times harder than you normally would, and even to go for it if you're not actually amused, it totally cheapens any genuine laughs you might have. But anyway (my most underused linking words by far) the overall Late Show experience was fun, even if the most high profile guest was some guy from American Chopper. After it was over I headed back to Brooklyn to check into possibly the nicest hostel I've ever stayed at. If you find yourself heading to NY and wanna pay closer to 20 quid than 200, meet a ton interesting people in place more modern and well furnished than most budgety five-times-the-cost hotels in the city, look up the New York City Loft. So besides the shameless plugging, I ended up hitting (so they claim) the only exclusively blues club in Manhattan, an excellent evening with a couple of welshmen, two Americans from Michigan and a south African applying to do a massively complicated chemistry-based doctorate at Princeton. Who was actually infectiously funny. Well, he had a funny infection. Sweaty puss-ball blistitis. Or so he said. Didn't fancy checking. Regardless, Terra Blues, a few blocks south of Bleeker Street had an awesome band that played well into the small hours. Their bar prices were nuts - the cheapest pint being Rolling Rock coming in at a cool $6, plus the dollar tip, making it over five quid! But even so, it was worth it for the music. My hostel buddies trickled away bit by bit after between midnight and one, but I wasn't quite ready to quit that early. I couldn't get enough! Plus I knew getting back to Brooklyn with company would be too easy - I figured you've not experienced New York till you've been alone and at least a bit lost on the subway in the wee hours. Not that it was my intention, but it came to pass anyway. Staying till closing, I felt torn between having a great time listening to the Blues, yet by the very nature of the music feeling somewhat sombre. I chatted to the girls on the table next to mine, recognising their Baltic accents as an easy in, we talked about Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, travel and loads of other jazz, except of course jazz itself, as it may have been a violation of the whole exclusively-blues status of the place. After they left, a waitess seemed to both respect my long-haul patronage (by then running into hour four or five) and pity my lack of company. Bizarrely, she offered to buy me a drink, which just confused me. Already hopelessly lost in the ocean of tipping etiquette, I had no idea how to respond, except for hesitantly taking her up, requesting a Rolling Rock with a terribly British Hugh Grant-esque overly-polite bemusement-babble. It seemed to work, and my offer of a tip was politely waved away. But I offered distracting, yet seemingly well received conversation as she was attempting to clean up, trading a plethora of contact details. It was a brilliant night, topped off nicely by, as hinted at before, a long and confusing journey. The most baffling part of it was Bleeker Street station having the least clear signage in the world, making me enter the station from both sides of the street, running up and down the stairs and J-walking several times, to hear conflcting reports from everyone about which side was heading north. Eventually I needed to pee so bad I had to head into a nearby bar, and again, being ridiculously English felt obligated to buy something. Asking if there were any drink deals, the bar tender informed Bud on draught was five bucks a pint. And why not? Whatever. Drinking quickly before I left I made sure to ask which side of the road would take me NORTH on the subway. "absolutely the one across the street. Not this side, the other." Great. Got on. Doors close. SOUTH. Bastard. This is far too long, so to it down, eventually made it to the L Train to Brooklyn, drifted off, thought I'd gone past my stop, got off, as it was leaving saw I was in fact three or four stops short. There wasn't another train for ages, so I just went for walk. As much as this BlackBerry is pissing me off, Google Maps saved my bum (possibly literally), as Brooklyn isn't as easy to navigate as Manhattan, as the grid system gives way to a more British windy and twisty-turny setup. Anyway, I made it back by 6 and slept feeling a little braver (unfortunately not 'beaver' as my predictive text suggested), yet had no clue where I'd be bedding down the next night. It's all part of the game.

A Night Out in Harlem

I'm attempting to not fall behind on these updates, but sense it's sort of inevitable. There's far too much stuff to write about, but when it comes to abridging it, it's really tough decided to leave out. So it probably won't be abridged at all... But tenuously enough, I'll be heading over a bridge soon enough... to Brooklyn! That's actually a lie. I'll be taking the subway, and that goes under the river. So boo. But anyway, last night I went for a wander in the neighbourhood around my hostel and happened up a funky-looking eatery called Soul Food, teeming with locals, so went to check it out. Inside it looked like a highly eclectic buffet, but with polystyrene take-out trays and several confusing prices. After initially mistaking me for a Frenchman, the host was nothing but overly polite and helpful, not laughing at my lame question of "What's the deal here then?" Turned out I was being an idiot as usual, and it was a pay-by-weight situation, at $6.50 per pound. If only our exchange rate was that good! My tray full of fried and jerk chicken, rice and beans, and various other stereotypically black foodstuffs came to around ten bucks, almost eight quid! Lemonade and a dollar tip on top of that, and it'd cost almost a tenner. To eat out of a polystyrene tray. But it was good and felt better than copping out with a McDonald's shitfest meal. Stomachally satisfied, I was all ready to head back to the hostel via some sort of seedy convenience store to grab a six-pack of America's bestest brew, Sam Adams. But then the bright lights of the Apollo Theater, one of the world's most famous comedy venues were glowing invitingly from just a short distance away. I figured I might as well check out the place to say I've at least been in the lobby. When I got closer, I saw it was their famous Amatures Night, where a handful local wannabees compete against eachother with their varied performing arts skills (or lack there of), a tradition there dating back decades. The even brighter lights close-up indicated there was to be a guest appearance from TV's queen of grating voices, Cathy Griffin. The box office staff informed me the cheapest ticket was 17 dollars, and that the show would only last another hour or so. I thanked her for the help and walked away, thinking it was a bit much. Then a minute later I returned with gusto, after questioning the likelihood of ever returning to Harlem and getting to see such a famous show again. Screw it, what's 17 dollars for the chance to see a "now a white guy, he drives like this..." joke and within the same hour getting my brains screeched out by an irritated, wholly unfunny and quite ambitiously self-rated D-list celebrity. Not much. So I politely asked for "one please", to find the lovely lady behind the counter respond by slyly sliding the ticket through and going "shhhh". Let in free, I was half expecting it to be part of some cruel joke where the only white guy brave enough to venture in is paraded and ridiculed around the stage in some humiliation-based reparation scheme. But no. The place was full of pastey caucasian boys and girls. Almost disappointingly so. But the atmosphere was great, and while the hopefuls I saw were on the whole pretty mediocre, and Cathy was just Ppppfff, I had a brilliant time. Bizarrely the prominant black preacher and 2004 democrat presidential candidate nominee Al Sharpton had been hanging out with her all day and gave her a stirring, but totally unfounded introduction. She's really not the funniest woman around. Really really. I found the whole thing very strange. But anyway, thanks to the wonders of 24 hour dodgy convenience stores without any time-of-day-based licencing laws, I was able to pick up a few bottles of Sam and chat the rest of the night away with a German, and Argentine, an Aussie and a Colombian. As cool a bunch of people as they were, I made the decision to stay elsewhere the next night (tonight), hence the Brooklyn reference earlier. I started writing this on the train out of Harlem, manged to drop my stuff off then come back to Manhattan and chance upon a ticket for the Late Show with Letterman, which begins filming in less than an hour! So I'm going to have to pretend I find the man funny, lest I get thrown out the door for being a miserable bastard. Fun times!

London to NewYark. My cleverest title yet.

Cough, cough, splutter, splutter. Ill people eveywhere, each adding their own flavour to the mix of diseased, recycled cabin air being forcibly breathed by everyone onboard. It's a clean-freak's nightmare. A woman sat at my 2 o'clock is hacking her lungs up with nothing more than a token mouth-covering once every ten splutters. It's awful. Another guy to my 7 sounds wheezier than James Cordon after five minutes of Wii Sports. I'm convinced that by the time I land (which oddly is going to be in the past by now) I'll have some sort of international super-flu that'll make bird flu look like a man-cold. Anyway, had a good time last night in the hostel bar, drinking pretty much the cheapest pints in London ever - £1.25 during happy hour! I met several interesting people, including a Danish guy who confirmed the shit state of the pound by telling me the minimum wage in Denmark is about 9 quid an hour, and an Aussie bloke necking Castlemaine XXXX after catching his (clearly now ex-) girlfriend cheating on him. But in typical antipodean style, he was ridiculously upbeat, shrugging it off like it was a minor inconvenience. On top of these too (not quite literally) were two Americans... Or rather one followed by a couple. Both heralded from the mid-west - Michigan and Indianna respectively, and both offered to put me up were I to head out that way next week, which is of course a possibility. I started talking comedy with Ryan, the first guy, and when I asked his favourite standup, he told me he'd recently died. Instantly knew it was George Carlin and worded him up accordingly. Emma, the girl from the couple offered to get me into a frat party were I to swing by her university, which sounds almost too hilarious an opportunity to miss! Anyway, I'm going to wrap this up now... My mind is still numb from sitting through Body of Lies - the only thing that kept me turning it off was the prospect of seeing more of Russell Crowe's compelling take on Rory Bremner's George Bush impersonation. Other than that, it's a big load of turd. That's me done...currently 90 minutes from Newark. Next stop: Harlem. And don't worry, there's a very strong possibility I won't be wearing any racially provocative sandwich-board signs. Very strong indeed.

Norwich to London

My first update using my poncy BlackBerry thingy... How executive am I? That's not rhetorical - seriously, answers on a postcard. Wait, that won't work. Answers on a...hmm... I'l think about it passively while writing the rest of this. Anywho, I just finished work 45 minutes ago and I'm currently sat on my train to London admiring the flat East Anglian scenery. Wait, I just saw a hill! No, actually it wasn't. More a field pretending to be a hill. Somehow. But anyway, I've hardly eaten today, except for some weetabix impersonators living in a Tesco 'wheat biscuits' box, two Activia yogurts that would have gone off otherwise, and three donuts (cheers Mark!) and without getting too graphic, I think I've shat most of that already. I blame a dodgy pizza I ate last night. Nerves? You what? Never. Shut up. What I'm attempting (poorly) to get out is that the lack of stuff in my tummy is contributing significantly to the oddness of this entry! Specifically that hill non-joke. Apologies. Etc. Right, so, the bottom line is I'm excited and truly can't wait to get stuck in to some hardcore stuff-seeing, people-meeting and, those amongst you who think I'm far too skinny a wretch for my own good will be glad to hear, eating. Plus plenty of other ing-ending words - verbs to thems clever folks. But anyway, I need to end this soon so I can feed myself some fatty junk to stave off any further breaches of comic-security, saving everyone time and needless uncomfortability. And you can't prove that's not a word. Cheerio for now!

P.s. Answers on a post-script. No, that doesn't work either. Balls.

The Obligatory Introduction

Well hellow. I mean hello. I almost always append that double-u by mistake when typing that word, so figured I'd leave it in for a change - mainly with a view to gaining your sympathy from the outset. I think I’ll need it. This is probably going to be the worst maintained blog ever, but thought I'd set it up now so there'll be less excuse to ignore it once I hit the road. My Improvised Fortnight In North America begins March 11th with a flight from London to New York and ends the evening of March 26th with my return to the UK from San Francisco. Where I'll be on those fourteen nights in between is anyone’s guess. Readers of my other blog, Improvised German to English Writings will probably know my reasons for travelling this way already, but as that has a readership countable on fingers - depressingly human hand-based, not Cadbury’s chocolate - chances are you’re not clued up.

The idea came about from a trip I took back in September 2008 to several European cities. My itinerary was planned quite precisely, with accommodation and flights booked well in advance. I ended up changing plans and being a bit frustrated that I had to make a choice between losing money in bookings or sacrificing the great time I was having where I was, in Tallinn. I chose the former and changed things around significantly. I’ve bitched before about organised tours and coach trips on my other blog, but thinking about it, that holiday - originally planned as stringently as it was - doesn’t seem that far removed. Given all destinations, accommodations and methods of travel were decided completely by me, but the less flexibility you have, to use a poor food-based metaphor, the more processed and less organic the adventure becomes. You’re just getting what it says on the packet. Travel for me, wanky as it sounds, is an adventure, and anything to heighten that sense could never be a bad thing. The notion of leaving it completely open gives me absolute freedom. I could end up getting out of The Big Apple the very next day, spending a single night in fourteen different cities, or stay there the entire time, jetting across to San Francisco a day before my departure. North-west through Canada, due west through Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado, or south through Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, dipping into Mexico. Half the excitement is not knowing where I’ll be, but whatever happens I’m certain it will be a trip to remember!

Aren’t I going with anyone? Won’t I get lonely? No and maybe. When travelling alone you can do whatever you want. There’s no debate besides that internal head-based one - the constant Is this a good idea? question which ultimately doesn’t matter because there‘s bound to be an experience either way, positive or negative. For me, that’s something to write about, learn from, or just another story to tell. Loneliness is possible, but I expect to meet a ton of people wherever I go. I’ll be actively disobeying my mother’s advice of never speaking to strangers - especially if they’ve got sweets or a puppy in the back of a white van. Besides, you’re never that lonely when you have phone and can send a barrage of offensive texts, even if they do cost 40p a pop!

So, I have my recently acquired Blackberry that I intend to finger-jab most of my electronic musings onto, so any entries to this blog I do manage to post are likely to be brief and poorly worded. Also probably not that funny. But lame disclaimers aside, I’ll try my best!

Andrew.