reintegration

When we get home I miss breakfasts. There are lots of people to see, who seem to not believe we are back until they have seen for their own eyes. Odd that, it's only been a fortnight, people we usually see less often than once a fortnight who we saw before we went. I am glad to be home, but have a while of feeling as if it was all a dream I need to reassemble in my head, and that takes quiet.

Part of me wishes I didn't have reservations about having parties. There has been so much to do there hasn't been time to take in getting married; I consider having a party and it seems like saying look at me. My problem with parties is the assumption of them. Something like having a party is like assuming people are bothered, it's a celebration of yourself, to have a party you have to be confident somehow. I am not. I don't want to be any bother to anyone, take any of their time, I don't want to seem presumptuous or an inconvenience so we decide against the idea. I am amazed at how pleased my mother is about the whole thing, well done she says. What I am thinking is I haven't done anything, just got married and even an idiot can do that. Funny, she was a lot less congratulatory when I told her I had a book coming out, or that I won a competition. It's good she is happy, but I'm not sure I understand people at all. She complains about my refusal to change my name, but I stick to my guns. It is not that I love my name, more just that it is my name. I will continue to be myself.

We buy ourselves new sheets and a stove top kettle to celebrate to ourselves, and make plans for a camping trip to the lakes when the weather improves. One day we say, we will get a new bed. We don't say why.

I like it here. The herbs have taken off, and when we walk through the front door I am surprised at how tidy I left the unfinished hall. I think about all the pictures I took down when I painted the walls, and wonder which ones will go back up.

I get on the scales with my fingers crossed, somehow or other (even with so much good American fayre) I have managed to lose 6 pounds. I am temporarily banished from Slimming World, since they charge you £4.50 if you lose more than three pounds than your target weight. I see the group leader's car in Asda car park and am momentarily tempted to try and find her, to look in her trolley and see what she buys. But I know if there are no chocolate biscuits I will be disappointed, so I leave the thought there.

My ankles are cold. I look at the sky and wish for sun to wear 3/4 trousers again.

We arrive in LA with crossed fingers, so many cars, so many lanes. What it looks like is the drive to hell, and I'd always thought Chris Rea was on about the A19 when he wrote that damn song. In terms on scenery, there is none. This is the only place that is just quite ugly, endless freeway after freeway, malls, parking lots and palm trees shoved in random places like frilly toilet brushes artfully positioned to hide stains on worn lino. We discover quite quickly that because LA is so big it is actually like a series of towns with busy freeway in between each, if you want to see anything you have to have a car. I think this is what disappointed me most about the place, the smog you have heard of but then experience makes the place feel quite dark and gloomy compared to elsewhere on the West coast. Sky wise it is neither here or there. The sheer quantity of cars and the amount of traffic makes it slow to get anywhere, and there isn't really many places to go for a walk to by our hotel, which means after dark we are stranded there. Luckily it is nice hotel, and something has changed, since I arrived something in my head has flicked a switch and is starting to think about home for the first time since I got on the plane. Is everything being looked after? Wonder how so and so's thing went? Is my luggage going to be within weight?

I have had a good time, but I am ready to go. We spend a day on a mission for Wastelands and then look round Hollywood, which is grubbier and dirtier than we expected, and I find Marilyn's hands like in one of my poems. Unlike Traci my hands aren't made to fit, my fingers are too short and stumpy, and my feet are way too big. Mary Pickford's hands fascinate me, her hands and feet are like the prints of a doll- tiny and perfect. I am glad I wrote my poems before I came, since the idealism and hope of the teenage girl narrator wouldn't have been present if I'd been here and seen just how dirty and smoggy the place was. The narrator in the poems hasn't been there either yet, she thinks it will be beautiful.

It is more expensive in LA than anywhere else we have been. I haven't been impressed by there being nothing to see between anywhere (the freeways are lined with high concrete walls.) Everything being so far apart means there is more time spent getting to places than time there. But I decide to give the place the benefit of the doubt, and admit that maybe I'd have felt differently and enjoyed LA for what it is if it hadn't been the last stop on a visually breathtaking trip. As if was, it was the visual equivalent of going from the bahamas to grimsby. As for tinsel town? What a let down, nothing sparkly in sight.


While I am here I feel fat, everyone around me is so much thinner than me, and I start to think about how much weight I've put on. Time to think of that the day after tomorrow when I will be home, all the way there I will think- I have done it. I actually went. No one is more amazed than me.I hope I won't forget, and that just having been somewhere changes me.

New food tried (for the last time): Jalpeno cheese corndog
Verdict: Too much pastry, needs more cheese and pepper, but I can feel my arteries clogging even remembering it.

Falling asleep to: South Park

staring in

More coffee and head to Grand canyon viewing points. I am feeling a little tired and for the first time all trip dispirited. This is also the first place we have stayed only one night, and I hate how nice the room is, and then having to pack the bags and clear out no sooner than we have arrived. It would have been nice to have arranged to stay here another night. So after yesterday drive and arriving late, I see the Grand Canyon for a little while and am back in the car. Arizona is full of flies, giant ones, tiny ones, ones that buzz like fighter planes. Tourist information list animals in the area- tarantulas, snakes, mountain lion, wolves, basically anything that might want to kill you. I look into the canyon, the canyon doesn't look back. The sheer size of it makes me feel empty, small. Gazing in I am nothing.

Back in the car, on the first drive I've found boring because so much of it is doubling back. i don't like to go back, and the rest of the trip has been about heading forwards and inevitably onwards. Flies, flies flies, whenever we open the door at least 2 dozen get in and I spend the journey pounding them to pulp with my fist. The whole journey is polka doted by the shadows of departed flies. I don't care, I keep pounding flies as we pass car after car filled with men in bandana's and what look like members of zz top.

When we arrive at Havusu we drive past London Bridge, the one they rebuilt brick by brick, and I want to know who swindled who? How did it happen? Havasu is red hot. Look at the lake is about all there seems to do. The hotel is more like a motel than it looks on the page, and its magazine of things to do is a list of shops, with starbucks as an attraction on its own. Again this is a one night stop so I don't unpack my case. Getting in the car so soon after I got out has done me in abit, so I put on my bikini and spend some time in the hottub, flake out on a lounger. Today I don't need to see everything, not even the chain restaurant we can see across the street in the distance for tea. I drink a beer and sit on the balcony, watching the monster trucks go past. I take a shower, order pizza, re charge. Havasu? I am not really here.

Me, a dress, a circus outside

Leaving Las Vegas

We pack up. We are leaving Las Vegas today, but first there is stuff to do. It's his idea to go to a chapel and get married before we get in the car and drive to the Grand Canyon, and by the time we have got cleaned up we are starting to worry about the time. We have been warned the drive is long, to stock up on fuel every chance we get on the journey.

'Where you guys from? newcastle? That's where the brown ale is from! Where nou heading? Grand Canyon? Guys stock up on gas every chance you get, between here and there is nothing.'

I am feeling abit stupid in my dress as I walk through the hotel in my shades. I walk the way I would walk in fancy dress, act as if you are wearing a suit, something normal, don't hesitate just walk. I don't want to look at passerby's in the eye to see how stupid I might look . He is luckier, he wears jeans and a shirt, and not for the first time I wish I was a guy. The first place we go is the chapel where Bon Jovi got married, we liked the look of this because it is Graceland. We look at the leaflets of the wedding packages and I change my mind. What they are offering is for Elvis to walk me up the aisle, and sing three songs. Since there are just the two of us the idea makes me mortified- some poor Elvis singing to just the two of us, and us having to applaud? Me trying not to laugh the whole time. It also occurs to me I don't want to walked down an aisle. I don't belong to anyone to be given away, not even a fake Elvis. The walk will seem long with the minster and him looking. I don't like to be looked at I decide.

We head to the drive through chapel, where a man comes to speak at our car window as soon as we pull up and whispers to us in a husky voice.

'You guys wanna get married? You can do it here sure, yeah, right, you wanna stay in your car? Yeah, yeah I can do you a deal'

There is something in his tone that sounds like he has illicit marriages tucked inside his coat. We are already here, but this is Vegas, and it wouldn't be vegas if there wasn't some kind of hustle and striking of a deal. The car in front of us in the drive through has broken down, so we leave the car and hop onto the back seat of a cadillac, through the window like so many where you can pick up burger and fries the Native American minister says his stuff.

He is wearing his shades most of the way through, a safety guard I suppose, and I laugh most of the time at nothing in particular, except that I am in a silly dress, perched on the back of a cad. I laugh coz someone has to and he won't.

'I now pronounce you man and wife'.

And here I am 5 minutes later, slipping on shorts and pulling the dress over my head in the parking lot, sipping a much awaited coffee and watching the next wedding to go pull up. The bride is gone in a blink, all that remains is the sparkly shoes and the garter I wear over my shorts as some sort of self evidence.

Just married, apparently. We hop in the car and just drive. Drive towards Arizona and the over Hoover Dam. We drive in the heat mistaking sounds of tiny flies bombarding the windshield, me for confetti, him for rain. When we arrive it is dark. We are just in time to see the canyon be lost to the dusk.

Falling asleep to: the jingle of ice cubes in my own unfinished glass

Aladdins Lamp

Waking time: 7am

I start the day with a quest for coffee, and return with bagels, coffee and sticky buns.Getting coffee is strange since downstairs many people are still on Friday night and sit at card tables with cocktails in their hands.Later, I say, i'll play some machines. It takes us a while to get out and about today, since we are both struck with some kind of food poisioning we can only attribute to yesterday's Mexican/Italian meal. Vegas is without a doubt the most environmentally unfriendly place I have ever stayed, since everything comes in plastic punets and on paper plates. The food we had wasn't awful at the time, it was disappointing though and a bit bland, since we are used to chilli's we make ourselves, and the Indian takeaway over the road. There is nothing in our Mexican that resembles spice, but since it's inoffensive we ate it anyway. We don't complain, since we are convinced since it is Mexican food the people in the restaurant will attribute it to English people not being used to spicy food, and there will be nothing we can say to convince them otherwise. To be honest I am a little relieved when he is also struck down, it reassures me that feeling a little queasy is not just the result of the feeling I have woken up with resembling stagefright.

We head out, buying bus passes, since the memory of our aching feet is so fresh. We are heading downtown. He says he wants to find the Marriage License Bureau. The building is surrounded by people hustling, handing fliers for chapels to couples and running a spiel to them about their place, 'Come with us, we could drive you right over now.' Couples take the leaflets and join the queue which is out the door, and I remember that Vegas is also one of the quickest place in the world to get divorced. It seems a shame there isn't a divorce papers bureau right next door, with a queue twice as long to serve its cautionary tale. They could put a revolving door between them and save alot of time. I watch the couples in the queue, listen to snippets of conversations at the bullet proof hatch.

'the last time we were here it was 2 in the morning and we just got right through'

'Sure, we both turned 21 now.'

Quite a few pregnant women, lots of people who look very young.Something that makes me a little sad about the whole place. I try to keep the boredom at bay by secretly guessing which couples have been together for less than a year, and decide I can spot them a mile away. This is about when he puts his arm around me as if he is thinking the same and doesn't want to lose face.

After the bureau we head to Fremont street to see the old signs we've seen on TV, that have been restored after the hotels where knocked down. It is a nice atmosphere, the place is more laid back and less hustle, blissfully shaded by a canopy. It is early afternoon, and 32 degrees. Tomorrow we leave Vegas. He has a license with our names on in his bag and I am wondering what happens next as we head back in search of stripper attire shops. Wondering what i'm so afraid of, wondering if there'll be a sign.

It is Friday night for real now and we sit drinking beers watching the lights, and cars come to collect waiting brides. I am feeling chilled. The lights wash over me, and this seems like quiet time. One more beer and I could be ready, we could wander over to that chapel, get it over with, come back and have an excuse to get pissed. I wait for suggestions, but they don't come, so we get something to eat and head back to the room, the could have been wedding day slipping away as he lies back on the bed and prays to break wind.

New food tried: Finding it hard to find new foods to try in Vegas, lots of take out places with meals for the masses.Overall not impressed with the food here, no local delicacies except cactus candy, and not that big on vegi meals. The food is disposable, quick, afterall there are machines waiting to be gambled on.
Slot machines: I had a whole punnet of change ready but I think my mistake is I was looking for Scarbrough, and getting excited at the thought of lots of little horse racing games and one arm bandits with pictures of cherries on. Most of the machines don't take cash and you have to use your credit card or buy coupons. There isn't a single ledge in a glass case with a shelf of silver overhanging to roll 10p's in so I give in, since there isn't a single game here I understand.
Falling asleep to: I don't turn on the set, since the whole of Vegas feels like one giant TV

Toto, I don't think I'm in Blackpool anymore

What it looks like: Vegas

So here I am in the land of bright lights, nervously chattering slots, man made waterfall and bridge after bridge. Inside the casino's take forever to navigate and it is Friday night 24/7. It is loud and so air conditioned inside the casinos in a footstep I go from a hairdryer on full type breeze to teeth rattling and goose bumps with the cold. Inside smells like freshly sliced orange and cigarette smoke, outside smells of bergamont and drains that don't get enough rain. The builders are everywhere, dust in the air. After the long journey we walk along the strip past boxes of free papers with girls on the front with stars where their breasts should be.

Little Darlings

Aisian and Young

Older women

'I'm new in town and learning to entertain.'

I wonder what I am doing wrong when the men push flyers for hookers into his hands. Do I look like a woman whose partner might need a hooker? Most definitely, probably. So this is Vegas I tell myself, as I sip a beer and it takes about an hour to get used to the lights and the constant din. A bit of time on the strip and we head back for a beer, and food, but the city has tricked us with time, and we are too late for dinner. The trouble with Friday nights twenty four seven is losing track of the time. The only place still open is Subway, and I remember the smell of the freshly baked subs on Chilli Road that have made me delirious for the past few slimming months. When I eat the foot long it is just a sandwich it seems. Not bad, but not as good as my food addled head has lead me to believe.

The next day we head out to see Vegas in the light, and walk past Stratosphere to a shop I've seen on the net. It is hot, the walk is long, through the arts district (could it be any other way?) Amazingly I don't buy the pantaloons I love in the shop where you have to pay to get in. When we get back to the hotel we go out again, the other way, and walk the full strip and back. When we get back we have walked about ten miles, and my feet wince whenever they make contact with the concrete. Some of the hotels I've seen in movies have been knocked down, instead I look at gold lions, a techni coloured New York, the eifel tower, Venice, waterfall and fountains dancing to the pink panther tune. The whole place is water everywhere and not a drop to drink, so much man attended to water your feet aren't allowed to paddle in, and you can't drink.

Locals speak randomly to me like I'm some odd species they must identify.

'Cowgirl, damn.'

'Cowgirl. Where you from? England? I love England.'

'You ever been?'

'No, but as soon as I get a vacation that's where I'm going. England, yup.'

'Photo's for tips, get your photo taken with Elvis, filthy degenerate Elvis.'

'I live in Florida, I've been here 12 times in the last 11 years. I only gamble 100 bucks a time. A guy came to me and said I'm starving give me a dollar for a meal, I told him there's a place over there does hotdogs for a buck I'll take you there and buy you one, but he said know. If you're starving you'd go, I said you just wanna the cash to gamble am I right? That's Vegas, a lot of people come here, they don't all go home.'

New food tried today: The heat has made me forget to eat properly.

Falling asleep to: The Dawg (a show about a bounty hunter who looks like a cross between Peter Stringfellow the beast from 80's show Beauty and the Beast, and his comically breasted wife.)

Bear Attack

It's such a long drive, I eat sesame seeds, and try to take off the shells in my mouth with only my teeth. I can see how a cowboy could do this, without using his hands at all, the sort of man good at spinning a toothpick in his teeth, but it isn't happening for me. It gives me something to do, picking up the splintered shells.

I sit and flick through the leaflets I picked up in Mammoth as the dessert waves at me and the sun pretends.

LIVING WITH CALIFORNIA BEAR

I like the idea of being a woman who knows what to do when face to face to face with a bear, even though we are heading away from them. Nonetheless this is useful stuff I decide I need to know.

The leaflet says when face to face to with a bear:

Do not approach a bear, give it plenty of room.

If you come face to face with a bear

Do not run- You cannot outrun a bear, and running will trigger the bear's innate chase and hunt instinct.

If a bear approaches- Try to demonstrate to the bear that you may be a danger to it.

Make yourself BIG as possible. raise your arms, open your jacket

Make alot of noise, yell at the bear, and make as loud and threatening a sound as possible.

I sit in the car and try to imagine what i will do if a bear comes for me. I am a bit of a short arse, so the idea of me making myself big enough to scare a bear is impossible. Also I am no good at shouting, I can't imagine making a deep enough sound with my voice to sound ferocious to a bear. I sit in th car and practise growling. I wonder how big I can make myself be.

I practise every sound I have ever heard so see which would be most intimidating. I construct my bear facing personae. I decide that the scariest thing I can do to a bear is sing, when the bear comes I will start singing as loud as I can. Since I can't make myself very big I hold my arms above my head and dance, to the Tales of the Unexpected music. Me, la la la laing that old spooky music and dancing the Tales of the Unexpected Dance- that will be my stance. Maybe I will not appear scary to the bear in a conventional sense, but I might just be weird enough to freak it out. That is the plan.

VEGAS 100 miles

Viva Las Vegas

Today we leave mammoth with no fuss. The air is changing, the smell of eucalyptus and pine disintegrating. Mammoth was pretty, but I won't miss its attitude too much. Snowboarders talking in coffee shops.

'No Trent Reznor is way knarlier than that.'
'My Mom has Johnny Cash on tape reading the bible.'
'He shouldn't have done that dude after the life he lived.'

I want to protest, but I am distracted by the news and a courtcase about a 9 year old girl who was abused and became pregnant. So much seems impossible I don't know what to think.

Mammoth is full of people who start fake coughing when they someone with a cigarette 100 feet away, surrounded by nothing but trees, and the whole thing irritates the hell out of me. I know alot people are offended by smoking. They are right; it is a horrible habit. But here it seems a little mean, when someone is standing near nobody with nothing but trees. Self important people, getting into gas guzzling hummers, not there to see me doing the universal symbol for wankermobile as they spew away.

The smell changes quite quickly, things heating up, cooling down as we head to death valley which smells like a melted wax crayon.

ELEVATION
4,000 ft

ELEVATION
2,000 ft

ELEVATION
5ft ABOVE SEA LEVEL

SEA LEVEL

Death Valley is as hot as they say, and somehow stunning in its emptiness. There is nothing around for miles, it is a long drive past desert, flat, Mud canyon, red dust and rocks, Joshua Tree and sand dunes. We stop at Stovepipe for more water, the man behind the counter is friendly as he looks at me.

'Where you from?'
'England'
'I had a girfriend from Carlisle once, she used to call me a useless article... Yeah, I felt like one too.'

With postcards in my hand I am gone. I remember I like Nevada, there is something down to earth about the people, no frills that I respond to, a down to earthness I guess that comes from having to wipe dust from your face everyday.
The air con is on, and the sat nav lady is quiet. She refused to come to Death valley with us. I sip my water with my feet on the seat, as the carrier bag rattles and I imagine all the snakes that could have stowed away when I left the car.

Moment to mention snakes, as an environment loving vegi I'm obligued to remind myself I love all living creatures. This is not strictly true, there are a few human beings we could all live without. There are also creatures, less so. Snakes are it. Now I know they don't feel cold or slimy,I remind myself of the time I held a boa constricter to overcome my fear, so i know what is true. I just don't like them though, I don't see the need for them. It is almost hatred, the way they have two sets of eyelids boils my blood, the way they move, everything. Anything that moves that way can only be evil. I sit in the car thinking of snakes and can almost feel them, again I miss the snakebite kit I didn't buy and moreso a rod with spike on the end.

Journey so far:
california, nevada, California, Nevada

We drive. Through Beatie a town that seems to be mostly trailer parks, and back into beyond. the desert is ganging up on us, mirages on the tarmac of silver pools to wash my feet, little lakes conjured and snatched away by the sun.

Viva Las Vegas. Elvis I'm trying, but the desert has somethingelse to say. The road keeps unspooling. I am on my way.

Ghosts

Ghost Town

We start the day by heading to the New York bagel company for breakfast, and sit trying to decide what to do. What we had planned was to go see devil's post pile monument and then drive to yosemite national park. Unfortunatley we forgot about snow, both roads are snowed off and impassable at this time of year, so need to make other plans. Nearby it seems people ski and snowboard to fill their days. I haven't brought those sort of clothes to give this a go, so we find the visitor centre, and flick through leaflets about local attractions surrounded by blue jays, chipmunk and squirel. We are watching the trees when we are surrounded by cops, three cop cars pulling up around the dodge, three officers stepping outwards us. We have to explain ourselves, what we are doing, where we are from, where we are heading before they will leave. It seems that the problem is that we are taking photo's of the trees, which is close to the park rangers station we didn't realise is a federal building.

Here pops another reminder of home, leaving san Fran I took notice of a sign towards Stockton, and here we pick up leaflets for a town called Bishop. Neither one tempts us to see their sights.

We drive past the unflinching Mono Lake, the blushing lilac mountain peering demurely in, and there isn't a photo I can take to do it justice again. We have decded on Bodie, a ghost town somewhere North.

'Turn left' she says.

We head down a road that says 30 miles an hour, but it is a road of orange dust and rocks, and we are never able to drive over five. I am beginning to wonder if this is a wild goose chase, but there is no turning the back, the road is too narrow, we are surrounded by dessert, steep drops, canyon faces and rocks. When we finally reach tarmac again he looks as if he would like some time alone with it, but that's Ok. There's already been some floor kissing of my own going on. In Bodie the mountains seem very far away, we are deep in the desert, with nothing around for miles. A town as people left it, buildings standing defiantly against the unflinching sky and wood curling into exotic blooms in the wind. It is sunny and hot, I get out the sun cream and he shakes his head. Later he will look like a man who tried to fly into the sun, with bright red markings on cheeks and chest the shape of a stencil of Santa Claus.

We stay in Bodie for a fair few hours, a whole town, evidence of lives lived, a population of 20,000 dwindling to 200 when the gold ran out, until only two dozen people remained. I wonder what it would have been like to be in the last dozen, what made them stay. I peer into windows at easy chairs still in place, wallpaper hanging by hope alone, peeling, curling into its own bouquets. Any minute someone could come home, people have been here, left something behind.

Back at the hotel it gets dark, we forget to buy dinner, and eat Reese's and nuts. I write postcards to try and name what I have seen.

New food today: Garlic bagel, reese's crispy crunch
Song in my head: been to the desert with a horse with no name- who was that by? Google seems very far away
Falling asleep to: A show about Folsam prison

mammoth

Waking Time:5.30am


Today we leave Tahoe, heading down and into desert, and climbing back to snow, past canyons and orange and into the blue, past small clusters of buildings that seem to be closed and back into wide open space. On the way we stop a few time to look at views, and there isn't a wide enough les on my camera or a word to do them justice. The pale blue expanse of Mono Lake, full of salt deposits, closed as the inner eye of a snake.

The sign near the road says

SCENIC ROUTE

and points the other way. there is nothing for miles but lake and sky, and scenic do they want to get?


Finding Mammoth isn't a problem, but the sat nav lady doesn't recognise mountains, turn left she says, into a snow drift that used to be road.

Our hotel is high in the mountain, and my eyes are worn down stubs grown sore from being rubbed against so many stones. The hotel is quite pretty, antler chandeliers and high wooden beams, an open fire in the foyer and a rocking chair made of sticks. Val Doonican would have liked it here.

Everything looks as it should look but the staff at the hotel are a little snotty and unfriendly, and we are afraid to of the lack of prices on anything to venture into the restaurant for food. Instead we head down to town, California style, which looks like a parking lot dropped into the mountains with stores on the side- what do people actually do here? It is pizza or KFC, we settle for pizza, and eat, heading up the mountain in the dusk with out fingers crossed we don't get lost, and looking out for the coyote we saw sniffing outside.

What it looks like: A 70's Milk Tray ad, and I expect to see a man in black skiing down the mountain to leave chocolate on my window ledge anytime.

New Food tried today: Reese's granola bar

Warning: Coyote's may appear smaller than indicated by Warner's, and express no interest in ACME products.

Falling asleep to: Him videoing out of the window waiting for Coyote's

Virginia City

Waking Time: 5.30am

In a slow blink I have gone from writing down mornings in seawashed pinky dawn to being a woman at a table inside a snowglobe. The whole town is abecoming a wedding cake as the snow continues to steadily fall, frays from an indifferent sky. The town is quiet and laid back, at the coffee place an American man speaks to me to comment on my boots.

'Are those things metal?'

'Yes they are.' I say something I can't remember about snow and he smiles.

After breakfast we take a short walk and and decide where to go. It is too cold to take a boat trip on the lake, so we decide to drive to Virginia City, a small town North east, one of the gold towns in the 1800's, with many of the original buildings intact. The drive is leisurely with views of the mountains and lake, down a hill and into a whole other world where the land is yellow, dry and bare. This really looks like America, which should be no surprise and yet it is. Dessert, cliff faces and drops, and the dust, and me starting to think about the snakebite kit I haven't bought yet. This looks like hard times, disused mining equipment rusting inresilient blue sky, homes with tin sign gardens and rockeries of bones. I am half expecting a man in long johns to appear with a gunand tell us to get of his land when we see a sign.

SEE THE FAMOUS SUICIDE TABLE

This tells us there should be people to see, and we are allowed to be here, though I wonder if this is a table tourists strap themselves to while blindfolded locals throw knives. The high street is a wave of wooden sidewalk, shop fronts and people stepping back in time. Inspite of the giftshops there is something here, a slow sun hanging on and the out of place brick church they couldn't put a price tag on.

Built: 1860

Burnt down: 1864

Rebuilt: 1868

The people in the shops are laid back and friendly,

'Howdy folks'

I put to one side a conversation I overheard.

'So that's what he said about guns. Can you believe it? I told him out here we kill people, that's just what we do.'

We stay longer than we need, just soaking it in. I like it here. There's no rush in gold town at all.

New food tried today: Chai spiced latte, sasparella

Verdict: No way can I make this, which is a shame.

Awkward moment: In Virginia city he heads over to a glass display case of rings, and asks me to try one on. I am feeling weird, embarrassed, shy and just in a situation out of my realm. What am I supposed to say or do? What is his motive? Is it right? This all seems hugely impractical- an 1860 ring from gold rush town, when each night we watch a 25 year old TV. I am thinking about etiquette, what is the right thing to do in this situation? More importantly why hasn't anybody told me it? What do girls do? I know women who would have no problem with this, women who'd take the ring, and be honest about the one they like. Women who'd go into Tiffany's without wondering if they are suitably dressed. These are the women who know ettiquette, they have rules, that a ring should cost a certain amount, that taking it is fine as long as it costs no more or less than a month's salary.

What I feel is different. I find it hard to take things, ask for or accept them. There is that practical bird on my shoulder squawking in my ear, 'for that kind of money you could buy a shower cubicle.' There is that nice girl who just doesn't like to be any trouble and wants to point him in the direction of the ring with a pricetag on he has ignored, which will only buy less essential bath mats to put outside the shower door. Then there is the me who has tiled the bathroom, stripped, filled the walls, painted over ten rooms. She hasn't worn any sort of jewellery in ten years and thinks it might be nice to be that sort of girl. But there is no one to tell me how to play out this scene, and which thought is correct so I mumble something about wanting coffee and we file out of the store with him trailing behind. After the coffee he says he wants to go back, but when we get there the store is closed. We drive back to Tahoe, part of me releived the decision has been taken from my hands, and part of me a little sad that I couldn't have been that girl who just knows how to act.

Falling asleep to: Spiderman.

(There is something in Toby I always believe.)

On the road

Waking time:6am

Destination: Lake Tahoe, casino

What it looks nearest like: Twin Peaks

I start the day by walking to Pier 39, to say goodbye to the seals, and when I leave the hotel leave the maid her tip by the coffee machine. There is something about it that looks incomplete and for no reason I wish I could leave it tied in a pink ribbon under a white paper crane.



I haven't been looking forward to the driving bit, and the first part is the worst. We spend two hours just trying to get out of the city, so many one way streets, and trams and hills, and the sat nav woman keeping her lips stitched shut. By the time we make it onto Route 80 I am so happy I understand why the pope is so fond of kissing the floor. The sat nav has resumed her sweet nothings and he can't get enough. The terrain is changing once we are past Sacramento, climbing roads entwining the trees, pine looking on as the breeze tickles ancient chants from their bones. Past Jackson, log cabins. Forest, waterfall and Lake.



When we arrive in Tahoe he takes the sat nav box off the dash and kisses it. He has to keep his baby sweet. I am tired and starting to feel it, looking out of the window at the blue lights of the casino opposite and the reflections of fireworks behind us in the windows opposite filled with dark stone columns of people staring out. I've definetey looked better. I take a short walk, eat and take a bath. All day I look forward to taking off my shoes and looking at my feet.


New Food tried: Swordfish

Verdict: Turkey-fish

New food tried: California roll sushi

Verdict: Mm, can I make this?


Tahoe feels like a different country, without me realising we were ever leaving one.


Falling asleep to: Something on the Discovery Channel involving penguins and seals.

Out on the town

Waking time: 5am

What it looks like: Vertigo, and something I haven't seen on TV

Yesterday we were lead to places we needed to see, safely tucked into a coach. Today we are on our own. The streets are still dark as I sit in an armchair in starbucks writing out days as if I can make them into something to take home.

6.20 am He passes by the window, marching, fag in hand. I have seen him without permission only once or twice before, always storming from A to B , and I wonder if the slow meandering he has to adopt to escort me gets on his nerves. I am slowing him down. Eventually we will find each other, there's plenty of time. The sun is shining, and the bay is a jealous eye as the sun hits my face and we wait for the tram. I'm not in a hurry, I'm starting to think I am finally here. We take the tram and walk down into China town, which is crowded pinks blues and greens, old Chinese ladies navigating the streets with tennis balled feet. The place is chocked with corners, satin showing off cherry blossom and dragonfly, and myseerious mushrooms cursing the sun. From here we head to North Beach and City Lights Bookstore, not far but a million miles from t-shirts like bunting drying on fire escape, the sounds of defenceless chickens and what looks like a dead griffin in a window, plucked of scales.

Next we walk the financial district to market street for a bus to the bottom of Haight. For what seems forever we walk up the hill past Victorian homes that turn into shops stacked with incense. Tie-die, handmade paper, vegan cafes with psychedelic fronts. The whole area is buzzing, and I remember back home for a moment when I wonder if they asked Pete Mortimer to help decorate. It takes a good few hours to do Upper haight properly. I am lured into Vintage clothes shops with the promise of wearingf someonelse's shoes, while he camps in an old bowling alley come record store where he'd be happy all day. We sit in Golden gate Park and watch people file past, hippies, skaters, rappers, all sorts of kids and people, and don't worry about where we fit in.

At about 8 the sunburn on our faces and the pistons in our calves make their presence felt and we head back to the hotel to drop off bags and get something to eat. We are warm, aching, but accomplished feeling. We searched out places for ourselves and found our way back.

Tomorrow we leave. I will remember a song from the bus.

'I left my heart in San Fransisco.'

Maybe. Just a small chip, crumbling into the dust of the rock.

Weather: Hot, bright, but nice like the best of an English summer.

New Food tried: Red Snapper

Verdict: Bit too much like cod to be worth the extra dosh

Falling asleep to: Dusk till Dawn

The streets of san fransisco

The Streets of San Fransisco Waking time:5.30am I start the day with coffee at Starbucks, but my body believes it's midday. (Starbucks is my guilty secret, I want to not go there, ever. The idea of it, all those people working for Starbucks is something I disapprove it- but my tastebuds are good at ignoring my conscience and want their latte, I am good at ignoring them. I allowed myself one last at Christmas, for the first time in months.) Starbucks is alot cheaper here, and I am glad I am not on the diet till I'm back. Last night I dreamt about a baby duckling that wouldn't eat, as much as everyone tried to feed it it just would take nothing in. there was only me it would accept the feeding from, and even then only by me breaking up small pieces of cereal, wetting them and mushing them into my arm where it would suck them from the wool of my cardigan. But now is breakfast time, and not a baked bean in sight, we stock up on a big American breakfast incase we don't see food again. I am trying to figure out how when I get home I can make fat free hashbrowns and eat as many of them as I like (I think there's a way.) I can hardly move by the time I've eaten my vegi omelette and sour toast, just as well. There isn't time for lunch. 10am and a coach picks us up, to take us on the one sigh-seeing excursion we have booked. We start with Alcatraz, and take a boat over to the island. The sky is heavy and the wind is cold, and this seems fitting. For some reason I don't want my Alcatraz photo's to depict a sunny day, it wouldn't seem right. There is a lot I could say about Alcatraz, but I am still thinking about it. Seniorita on the boat, embraces Elmo all the way to Alcatraz. The tour takes a few hours to take it in, and is without exception the best sight I have seen. The way it is organised feels just right, each visitor walks the spaces with a headset with an explanatory audio on it, and this feels right, a private public space unbrightened by cheery tour guides. I am not someone who believes in doing the same holiday more than once, if if I am ever on this coast again I will certainly see Alcatraz again. On the way back the birds are everywhere, seagulls play chicken with the ferry and I watch the rock get smaller all the way back to land. There isn't time to take it what I have seen, or decide what I think. Skirt making polka waves. A shivering girl directing a telescope at the rock 2.00pm We meet the coach once again, and head out on the bus tour of San Fransisco, up to Twin peaks to see the city from a height, it's lego shapes and clicks where one building seems to slot so easily into another without people getting in the way. Next the Golden Gate Bridge, Pacific Heights, presidio and it's multi million dollar homes, round to China Town, the banker's heart statue of pure stone (which I am surprised they actually put outside a bank in the financial district), union square, castro , back round to Fisherman's wharf. Slopes, twists, hydrangea everywhere, rainbow flags while the painted ladies stand firm in their majesty and no one goes to see their peeling paint round the back. There was a lot to take in. A few things surprised me. How could I have forgotten about the earthquake? In the hottest part of summer the city is covered in fog. Property is even more expensive than Jesmond. Homes are taxed on what you paid for them. (Surely this makes the old rich and young families poor?) Just like Jesmond, there is no place to park, and no back gardens for all your bucks. Bag lady smells hydrangea. Mickey Mouse strapped to trolley sails away. I've always wondered about people who live in climates with extreme weather- people who wait for volcano's and earthquakes to take away their way. I'd watch and wonder- what makes people stay? Lots of things I guess, like anythingelse, family, friends, work, habit. I seem to have some sense of fairness about weather, an oh well, if it's beautiful weather everyday, an earthquake every 20 years in the price that is paid, and people take their chances for all those good days. But if it's foggy in the heart of summer- where's the pay off for the risk? It's an odd one. Otis Reading isn't here to ask questions to, but I imagine he knew, sitting on the bay and watching the ships going in and out again. 6pm The rain comes and we walk along to Pier 39. the seals are sleeping with only the small ones bickering and competing with Disneyland; they have something to prove. The rain seeps in and we buy clam chowder and beer at 10 to take back to the room. New Food Today: Clam chowder (served in a bowl of sourdough) Verdict: Perfect, as no long as no one is watching you eat the last lap. Falling asleep to: A show where people pretend to be minors on the internet and then the crew goes to film the men going to meet who they thought was a 14 year old girl flirting with them. Verdict: Is this entertainment? What have we become?