So we’re in calgary and our odometer shows a figure of 175,000 which means we’ve driven ten thousand miles around north America!

ok so i just tried to make the route in google maps, and google maps couldn’t manage it, it found it too big and the page crashed, wicked google!

i have had enough driving for now, and we’re only 1,700 miles from where we started in Los Angeles, but we did take the scenic route, which has been great fun. i don’t think i need to recap here, as everything we have done is down below in this blog. i just have to show some photos!

i’m sat in some dingy econolodge, the radiator wouldn’t turn off, so we have the air conditioning on, don’t tell the environment, but somebody has removed all radiator controls, and the only other option was to sleep with the door open, but maybe the -4 outside would make it too chilly in here.

alan’s just woken now, so i guess time to do stuff.

regina was cool, we had no number or address for the guy who we were staying with, but we did know where he worked, and it all worked out as we arrived when he did, and he even got the night off. so we went and had dinner and saw some bars, alan picked up this pretty but really stupid girl and well it was fun.

yesterday we headed off out on the road for what was the hardest, most boring drive of the trip. we had 500 miles on prairie lands to cross. we had to do all we could to keep from passing out while driving. this involved absolutely horrible music, throwing grapes out of the window to have them crash on the front of the car and general being annoying to each other, but we made it here to calgary to drive past a bar showing the kiwi’s playing wales on tv.

so rugby, pie mac and cheese and a pint made for a nice finish to the day.

there seem to be a noticable number of english, ozzy and kiwi people around here, and i guess it’s the close proximity to the snowy mountains.

so alan has to goto customs and beg for his ski bag to be released and then off we go to banff, can’t wait, mountains, snow, and the lifts open wednesday!!!

photos: alan trying to play patience in the car, our greek breakfast yesterday and the nothingness expanse we drove across yesterday. i notice the iphone photos aren’t great quality, buggar!

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Alan and I have just been to the mall in Winnipeg, narrowly escaping the busyness. I bought a cover for my iPhone because I have seen so many iPhones with smashed screens. I went for the recycled plastic option. We also got some thermals, it’s going to be a cold winter.
So winnipeg was interesting. Out couchhost was a fun girl, plenty of time having recently been made redundant, along with most of her crazy friends but we spent most of the time partying, there isn’t much else to do in that town. It is the grain trading capital of north America.
And the people there are crazy, many of whom walk around making wierd sounds, screaming or talking to themselves. There’s too much winter, no excitement or hope, not even any population growth, the gun crime capital of Canada so we are told.
So we are now in the real prairies, you can see for miles and miles, forward the road dissappears on straight to the horizon and to the sides are endless yellow field where crops grew in the summer.
It’s so straight and boring that they have giant signs to keep you mind active like odometer checks. But no worries if you fall off the road asleep, there’s nothing to hit.
It’s barely above zero degrees and they’re still harvesting.
So wawa was no too interesting, lots of goose statues.
Thunder bay, out host wasn’t too talkative until we got him a bit drunk, and he hit on us.
So the most important thing we did was go to an employment centre to canadianise our resumes. We’ve applied for several jobs now. Not much response yet.
The car is super dirty because I decided to do some off roading just to wake me up from the boring drive.
Oh and I got myself a lovely yellow hat, mmm warm

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Alan and I just swapped over driving, he has to get us the last 100km to Wawa on the north east corner of lake superior. We’ll have driven around 850km, which doesn’t sound much, just over 500 miles, but these long straightish, boring road are tiring.
I can’t wait to get to a motel and lay on a bed, a bed I’ll have all to myself
So yesterday and Niagara falls, I found to be a bit of a dissappointment. Maybe because they are so hyped up, maybe because we couldn’t ride the boat under the falls due to it being winter, but they are real impressive and powerful, but just can’t compare with some of the things that we’ve seen on our tour. At least that’s another thing I can tick off having achieved in my lifetime.
We also crossed into USA, and the town on the otherwise is a dump, dirty, crumbling, boarded up and generally unhappy. We had two errands to do, one sucessful, one not. We did have lunch there, probably cheaper than Canada, but I’m not sad to see the end of USA for this year, ‘oh canada’
After a tedious trafficky drive back to Toronto in rush hour for me, we sat down and got productive. I think that we’re sorted for places to rest on this long drive, and we made a start on applying for work in the Rockies, so go us.
The night ended with pitchers and gravy fries in town.
Oh today we went into one of these drive in lube places for a service. I find it pretty novel that you can just drive up and have your car serviced. It puts my mind to rest that out car is healthy and should be problem free for our drive in the almost wilderness.
So goodbye Toronto, courtney, laura, Cara and all else like city culture and off into the endless prairies we motor.

The photos are; niagara falls, the car in mr lube, niagara falls town and the view I can see out of the windscreen right now.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Feeling pretty rough in Amherst.
Last night we saw jay-z and it’s was one of the best gigs that I’ve been to in my life. I’m not a huge fan of hip-hop, but jay-z is one of the biggest acts there is. The stage setup was awesome and the live acts awesome. The arena was packed out, 10000 people, all loving it, knowing the lyrics, the energy was unbelievable. The security was totally anal, but it’s cool because the whole experience was such a surprise and gotta say it, sic!
Before that we drank round another student house and it was so stereotypical of an American party, like in the films. Kegs, beer pong, music, girls who love the english accent, general madness.
After the gig we partied some more and now feel pretty tired.
So now we’re chilling, waiting for Christian so that we can find a printer to print off our Canadian work visa because we’re going to cross the border. Ian’s taking us up to his dads cottage for some time out.
America has been unbelievable, we’ve driven over 7000 miles through 20 states. We’ve met some great people, had many once in a lifetime experiences, lots of first times, a trip of a lifetime that words will never quite describe.
I’ve taken some nice photos and will upload some when I find time.
So fingers crossed that we don’t have too much trouble getting into Canada.

So today I did something new, I ate fish! I have good reason to.
Alan and I did stuff, and finished off with breakfast burgers while driving across town to meet a man with a boat.
This man with a boat is known as duck, strange, but true. Duck took us on this boat out towards Cuba, until we couldn’t see land any longer.
We went out into the deep blue to fish, deep sea fish. I think we were inspired by the large photograph that grandpa has hung in his house of him stood by a very large marlin, or sail fish I’m not sure, that he caught down here in key west.
We sun creamed up, and from the red patch on my back, I can’t quite reach my whole back, oops! For it was a glorious sunny day, and then we went in search of birds and sea grass. The birds tend to hover around fish activity which they can see much better and from much further then we on the surface can. And the grass makes for a good hiding place for small fish trying to avoid predation.
Six hours at sea went by in very little time. We dragged lines, searching for tuna and dolphin. The dolphin are not the mammels that we all know, but a fish which goes by the same name. And bites we got, catching a couple of dolphin.
This didn’t last long, and so we motored off further toward the horizon. And before long, by aid of the birds, we found more activity. But now this school of fish was hungry and excited. So we used some more classic rods, making for harder work, but more fun. We caught 8 dolphin so far, lost a couple, threw one back as it was too small. Fish polulations need to be maintained.
Time running out we head back to land. But following sone birds we came across commotion, tuna. However there were dolphins, the mammels, chasing them around, so we started the chase. You have to get ahead of them, so as not too spook them by getting too close. Yet to no avail, we caught no tuna.
No matter as we were lucky enough to see some great turtles, who watch us then dive into the blue below. And even more beautiful we were entertained by the dolphins to a dance, some flipping in the sunset!
Alan and I got set up in the supermarket with some olive oil and Ginger sauce, and I made a salad. So the moment came, and it must have been maybe 8 years since I ate fish, but I did, and enjoyed it, but don’t think that I’ll be making a habit of it. Well that’s pretty extreme for me.
The other guys here commended us on our great fish, so yeh, a great day and successful.
What next but to watch ‘into the wild’ and chat about life and loss. It seems that most of us here out of 7 have lost a sibling within the last year, strange, connection, but most of all the realisation that we all go through these strugles and surprises that come at us as we go through life.
So the film has been done beautifully, not to the book, but based upon real life, it is beautiful while sad, but paints well the picture of his life and the effect he left upon the world after death.
And with that it’s that. Another day in America, doing the American thing!

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Nouvelle Orleans.
It’s interesting to say the least. The experience thus far has been great, almost overwhelming.
So we drove through the back roads, swamps, alligators, needing the toilet like no other day. We drove the most zig zag route into here in search of interest.
Our host is intriguing, involved in politics here, half Jewish, half catholic, half Italian, totally American and gay. I/we haven’t had so many/strong discussions that aren’t bullshit in a long time, well as brothers, ever.
We’ve had a great tour of town, and local beers, and some else.
We watched a football game, on TVs. We had a bar crawl, being that each bar that we went to wasn’t fun enough for supporting the local college team. We met people, well Vincenzo knows everybody in town. We met the bucket man, who sang alan and I a sang inside a bucket!
In the end we came back home, I guess at 11pm ish to cook gumbo, and for me, pasta. The other couchsurfer came back from being musical, and together we chatted away while cooking failed. But we drank the chili wine. We chatted about life and Krishna, and lucid dreaming, and ioraska(maybe I can’t spell that), and katrina, and new Orleans, and now everybody is laying to sleep in the dark but me.
I think it’s time, gone five hours of cooking, eating and chatting to meet the zzzzz’s

We’ve had a great couple of days. After an uninspiring drive across new Mexico we went to Santa Fe to kill some time, couple of days, and stopped in a nice hotel, used the gym and went for Chinese. They even make the Chinese food with chillies, well this is the state of chillies.
We then took out bloated selves into town to find a bar, and found a good long bar, good music called el paseo. Beers later and we got chatting to cha, jack and katy, with 2 hours until cha’s birthday we drank until it came time to start doing shots, and when that bar closed at two onwards to the next bar for some smokey magic, and fuzzyness before getting a lift to the hotel.
Yesterday morning alan and I went for a wander around town. It’s pretty, all classic architecture, brown, earthy and full of art. The city is known to be a centre of creative people, and is america’s oldest capital, celebrating it’s 400th anniversary this month! America is barely over half that age.
So we had some brunch, a priceyish rooftop cafe, and I had a salad. My salad involved a lettuce cut into clean quarters and placed on my plate just like that with some decoration. Nice!
So after that we hooked up with the guys from the last night and Thomas and off we went into the wilderness to shoot off a rifle. We can’t shoot for damn, missing bottles, but it was about the experience. Not an experience I care to do any time soon, it was strange to say the least, but all part of our American adventure.
After that we drove down to diablo canyon near the rio grand and wandered up to a cliff. This is the first time for me to climb since indoors at Zurich last autumn, first time ever on a real mountain, and same for alan but maybe he hadn’t climbed in many a year. Fun for sure, scary too, tiring definately, but one hell of a view and great to hang out with some awesome guys.
After, we headed back to jack and katie’s where we all mucked in to cook dinner, other people coming and going, yum and fun.
On to poker, I like to take risks, make it exciting, and got kicked out thrice, great, so shots an later alan won.
Today we gathered our heads together, said our farewells and drive off into the country.
We randomly found Madrid, otherwise known as Mad rid. Once a mining town, then and now a hippy town, but made famous by a john travolta film ‘wild hogs’ it’s super bizarro, eclectic, new age, pretty cool. I tried me some fried green tomatoes on a salad, not bad. Well that was it for Madrid bar a few photos and we drove on, wishing grandpa happy birthday by phone and off yo get lost.
Lunch hadn’t been filling enough so we took a right turn, signed to a diner, toward a ski area. We ended up a mile higher, overlooking Albuquerque, so cool view, bloody cold and had lunch número dos.
Fun fun, now we are outside jessica, not rachael’s place in Albuquerque, our couchsurfing hosts for the next two nights waiting for their return home.

so back in the uk, missing budapest.

the night before, i met jackie, bobby and leslie, and we went with the aussies to deak ter for a couple of beers. it’s worrying how some many young giurls easily look mid twenties, best to nt talk to girls, nahhh.

all evening we were entertained with lightening all around us, with pre storm winds, but no rain, which was lovely. the best part of the storm, minus the wet stuff is great outside in the park. so the aussies and  headed off to szimpla. we arrived just in time before the rain, and had a long pint.

it was interesting that we came upon long in depth spiritual conversations, when the previous night none of us probably thought the others were even of such thoughts.

so the thought not necessary now, doesn’t mean that the same will be in the future thought.

so to yesterday morning and tired again i went to the dentist. this timeall went well, lots of chatting, no pain, a bit of dental cement, and i have a new tooth, so all my pearlies look great! (must remember to floss, and not eat trees!!!)

having seen a biker being squished between 2 german cars kinda puts a damper on my ideas of learning to ride a motorbike.

i had a great time couch surfing this past weekend, all in all staying in four places over 5 days, tiring, but great to meet some great people, and just have fun with others, travlling is wonderful

so i flew back, read the newspaper, boring, a car magazine, expensive and unproductive, but had some good music to listen to. wizzair isn’t a bad airline, pretty basic, but not unpleasant like ryanair!

i had a few pints with alan in downtown cambridge, watching posh chavs abuse the punting kids, ate burritos, mmm, and loving the cider.

so today we visited the garage to see my car. it’s in bits, but the guy says wont cost too much to fix. however it wont be ready before monday. so time to chill here at dad’s and get things done.

off to gym with alan now.

i will miss budapest. it was great, beatiful girls, fun parties, cool bars and parks, so sunny. well the sun just makes life so nice, it’s a shame living in the uk people don’t get enough sun, as it makes such a great difference to the happiness you have in life. maybe some pictures later

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

I have scratches all over my arms from play fighting with leslie’s young pitbull. The little beast is lightening fast, I smacked her on the bum and her teeth were around my hand before I could even move. The pair are lovely and cute. Oh and I’ve never seen a dog jump it’s whole body up to human head level. Scary!
So last night I stayed in the hostel, nobody there came out, too hungover. So I met agota and our group grew to maybe fifteen. The shop had no gold beers so we sat and drank beer with a classical concert beside us in deak square. We headed off to corvinteto and I think I wandered off home due to being a bit drunk. So another day feeling a bit rough.
I happened upon a great little underground restaurant earlier, Nepalese. I had some paneer naan and a curry, wonderful.
Since then i’ve been walking, and now I’m up on Buda hill, with a view over all of Pest and the Danube.
A chilled night is in order I think.
I’ve just noticed something missing from this skyline, an abundance of cranes. Any other capital city is usually overrun by construction, but it doesn’t look like that here.

Around 40 degrees, and I’m wandering around Budapest.
I was fooled into not bringing my flip-flops due to the horrid english weather the day before, but can’t bring myself yo part with £30 for another pair just for here.
I’m staying with bobby a couch surfer, cool guy, well travelled, served in the US military, and totally sound. We went for some drinks with other couch surfers, and I had his nice studio to myself.
Yesterday after the flight I was collected straight from arrivals and delivered to the dentist. Again a very nice surgery, professional, modern, clean, with nice English speaking nurses and dentist British Hungarian Medical Service.
Again with the drills and complications. My implant is very wide for the gap, so he had to do some metal working while at it, sparks flying around, and even managed to break a drill bit! I thought that while having work done, I’d have my teeth whitened a bit, while in a land of lower cost. I would never want to go through that ever again. I had to stay still for way too long. I didn’t too much enjoy the nerves and my gums dancing around under the hydrogen peroxide and ultra-violet light. But after all that, my teeth look nice, yet not scary White like American actors and such people.
They are making me a tooth now, so either Monday or Tuesday I should be whole again, I can’t wait!!!
I’m sat in hero square, a bit hungry, but it’s too hot to so anything. I guess I’ll have to move once I’ve run out of water.