It’ll be an interesting month, that’s for sure. For various reasons after paying rent and assorted bills, I am going to do September on the tightest possible shoestring. I guess it’s time to cash in the dinner favors, drinks offers and lunch dates.

Of course, if anyone is partial to giving away money or needs something done in return for such currency, I am listening.

It was really cool to see the lift technician paraphrasing, accurately, the content of a few episodes. “Before the Normans came here [England], we were mostly, you know, Angles. They brought with them law, and literature, and things we’d lost when the Romans left. A lot of that survives to now, you know. Like words. Did you know that ‘country’ is a French word? Because if you were English, you’d call it ‘land’. That’s the old English word for it. And garage. That’s French too. But I say it /ga’ridz/. Not garahge, because I’m not French,” he ended with a wink.

With a few more forkfuls of chips and beans he continued, paraphrasing from Wednesday’s episode.

“And the fascinating thing about the Normans is that once they conquered, which is what they did all over Europe, they merged with the population. You couldn’t tell after a few years who was Norman and who wasn’t. And nobody else did that at that time.”

He moved on to another show that started last night, called Digging for Britain.

“It really makes you see how much history there is, and we don’t even think about it. What they do in that show is go around to all the digs going on around the UK and talk about the stuff they find. And it’s really well done. Like last night they were at this construction site for a six-lane dual carriageway somewhere down near Dover I think [actually slightly further North, but still in Kent] and what they would do is get the top layer of the soil out and allow the archaeologists to work for like a month. And they would map everything they found before it got covered by the road. And they talked to the guy who found all those coins in Somerset, remember?”

“The BBC really is doing a good job this year. What’s neat is they repeat the programmes in the night, with the little man in the corner, you know, signing away for those people who can’t hear. And it doesn’t hurt that the archaeologist in that other show, you know what you think of when you think archaeology, boring, but she’s not… she’s like this red-headed, kind of blonde woman, in her thirties. And I mean, she’s nice to look at” he guffawed.

I agree. Fully. One hundred percent. The BBC is doing a very good job in this case.

I bet it’s going to rain my pants off.

See you next week, both of you.

(I’ll try and slot in posts about the details of my trip since the last update when I get the chance and a slightly clearer mind. If you follow my RSS, you should get them as soon as they are posted.)

I figured that getting going early would spare me some of the heat of the day. Wrong. Walking down the street wasn’t unpleasant in itself, but getting to the subway to get to Battery Park was. The subway cars themselves are airconditioned, but that hot air has to go somewhere, namely anywhere in the station itself.

When I say the cars are air conditioned, I mean all but mine on the way down, but that’s a digression. A lot of people would enter the car (which I had found pleasantly empty at my station), look around in dismay upon feeling the heat and escape via the end doors to another carriage. I figured I might as well sit tight, as it wasn’t unbearable, and my excitement at seeing a bit more of New York (alone, this time) sped me onward.

Arriving at Battery Park with around twenty minutes before the museum I wanted to go to opened, I took a stroll past the ferry terminals, past crowds of tourists waiting to get to Ellis Island, past the street vendors selling water for a dollar, and a teenage Finnish girl complaining about something to her mother. I sat in the shade opposite the Skyscraper Museum and realised that I had rounded the tip of perhaps the most famous island in the world in no time at all. Manhattan really isn’t that big across. A child trailing her mother decided to splash around in the little fountain installation, and proceeded to get completely soaked. Must have made him feel more comfortable, and I kind of wish I could have dared to do the same. A cool swimming pool or lake would have been the bomb.

The museum opened at midday, and I went in to buy my ticket from the thoroughly bored-looking girl at the front desk. Barely bothering to talk past her chewing gum, she said “there’s just one floor, starts upstairs to your left”. And her day had only just started.

The museum itself has two distinct halves, the part focusing on Wall Street and its evolution from a street lined by a literal wall to keep the English out of New Amsterdam to the South, and one about the construction of skyscrapers of mind-shattering height and scale. These included a specific exhibit on the Burj Dubai (boring) and on Hong Kong towers (yawn). I was there for New York! The Art Deco gargoyles leering above a three-hundred foot drop, the workers having their lunch on steel beams suspended above nothingness! So, after looking at the historic exhibit, the most interesting bit for me was the part about the World Trade Center site, and how the dug-out land from that formed an entirely new extension to Manhattan in the Hudson River.

I knew I had to be on the Lower East Side after the museum, but since I’d escaped early I decided to walk up and see some of the sites I’d just looked at in schematics, photos and history. Walking down bustling Broadway, with other tourists stopping every few meters to take pictures and gawk at the sights, I found myself at the World Trade Center site before long. Not having seen the Towers standing, I still knew the historical significance of the place. It was certainly accentuated by the continually-laid wreaths on fire station doors, the thousands of people taking peeks through construction walls and taking photographs, and the bronze statue of a Wall Street worker on a bench, talking on his phone with his briefcase on his lap. I suppose such memorials indicate he died on the spot, or something.  But despite the history, it was hard for me to see the place as anything but an immense construction site, laden with historic baggage.

But then the entire city is laden with historic baggage, starting from the Lenape indians being ousted off Manhattan for the value of a couple of thousand beers.

I wandered around streets I knew by name and through vague media memory to find a subway station with a line going to the Lower East Side. The Tenement Museum was built into historic tenement buildings in an area that is rapidly gentrifying with artists, young professionals and the like. I did begin to wonder whether anyone had done anything similar in London, considering the layered history of the inhabitation in that city.

I never saw the museum tour (bookable in advance on the Tenement Museum website) starting and ending with a round-table discussion on immigration, immigrants, social housing and social mobility, but that’s exactly what happened. In the first round we simply introduced ourselves and the Americans gave their ethnic background. Then we took a sort of time travel tour to two restored apartments in the building, one in the 1890s and one in the 1920s. They really were vastly different 30 years apart. The word “tenement” had wholly negative connotations prior to my visit, but it was really cool to see how the families, especially the German Jewish family of the 1890s, made the most of their situation and gave the best they could to their children.

The museum had reconstructed the apartments to be as authentic as possible, going as far as tracing historical lineages of the inhabitants. For the 1920s apartment, they were able to interview a woman who grew up in that very house. Though it was a continent and several decades away from where my father grew up, I really felt like the two places shared a similar vibe. It was a really cool experience that I’d recommend.

The second round of the discussion quickly descended into strange territory, though. A certain Italian-Irish-American gentleman who was there with some of his friends (a couple in their sixties, as was he) started bashing “our socialist president” for allowing “the mexicans and the chinese” to “do what they please” and for the Arab population “in Detroit, effectively imposing Sharia law!” The horseshit flying out of the guy’s mouth was so impressive that the facilitator, our guide, was stunned for a minute, as were we. It took some sharp rebuttal questions and his friends, the couple, to step in, to steer the conversation to more careful territory.

I’d only seen the Statue of Liberty from Battery Park, and didn’t want to pay for the ferry with a thousand other people crammed on like sardines, so after the museum experience we decided instead to take the Staten Island Ferry (which is free) since it goes past the Statue at quite close range. Seeing New York landmarks like Brooklyn Bridge and the morass of skyscrapers from that angle was really cool, especially on the way back with the setting sun. I had also thought we hadn’t been to Staten Island before but on closer examination it turned out we’d driven straight through it on my drive from hell experience on our very first day!

Worn out from the heat, we ended up getting takeout pasta, including my first ever pasta alfredo, and collapsing in the hotel in preparation for an early morning start to Boston the next day.

Our hotel was on Columbus Circle, so right on the South-Western edge of the park. Despite that, I managed to leave the hotel in the wrong direction several times over several days. Something about the canyon-like streets flanked by immense buildings completely ruined my sense of direction. Once we did reach the park it was pretty cool to see the buildings disappear behind trees and the sound of traffic quiet down, if not completely. I don’t know what New York would be like without Central Park. Probably not livable. I can totally see how people would come and play softball on their lunch breaks at the pitches, just to feel a semblance of nature and outdoors.

The park is big, too. I somehow thought it was only a mile long (in fact it’s over two miles) and the trees are tall enough for you not to see the street and the buildings flanking the park on all sides if you step in a little bit. Sure, there are cross-cutting roads through the park, but they weren’t that busy with cars. We rambled on, past the lake with boats, through the Ramble, all the while downing copious amounts of water because of the heat. As we were sitting at a bench pretty much parallel to the American Museum of Natural History we pretty much had to give up being outside for a bit. Though the museum appealed, we decided instead to head back for an afternoon nap at the hotel.

Looking for places to go and eat dinner, and knowing that steak was a thing to have in NYC, I stumbled upon the details of a kosher steakhouse (of all things) on the upper west side, near where we had decided to head back to the hotel from earlier in the day. Of course we had to try that, as the idea of rabbinical supervision of a steakhouse was just so… New York. Unfortunately, we seemed cursed with the places we chose. It wasn’t the Sabbath, and to the best of my knowledge no other Jewish holiday, but once we reached Talia’s, it was closed, shuttered and dark. Damn.

Knowing we wouldn’t go far before finding something else, we began walking down Amsterdam Avenue. We ended up choosing a pretty little sushi place a few blocks down, and I’m really happy we did. After the meal, a reasonably-priced bento box that included miso soup and salad and various sushi, I was genuinely content – not too full, not unsatisfied. Just right. It was the best sushi I’ve ever had, too, but that’s not saying much since I don’t have much experience with it. Really tasty.

We had drinks at the Amsterdam Ale House to round off the evening. Despite being a kind of a pub, we were taken to a table by a host and served at the table. An American quirk, I guess. Thing is, they didn’t make us feel welcome. The girl taking our initial order asked “whaddaya want?” and when we did order the beers, one of them didn’t taste at all like the description. When asked (by my companion, I to this day am a bit reticent at confrontation) she said she’d find out what was up. The reply? “Oh yeah, they’ve changed that beer and she forgot to tell you”! Who prides themselves on their beer and then swaps one for another hoping the customer to not take notice? And after all this they expect a tip.

Because they’d sat us down in the middle of the room, under the blasting cold of the air conditioner, I actually started shivering after a while. We didn’t quite know what the etiquette was to move to a free outside table, so we had to ask, feeling rather sheepish. But it was OK, and much more pleasant to be on a quiet side street, in the now-pleasant evening heat, sipping a strong IPA to refresh and relax.

I had come to understand that for Americans, taking internal flights was like boarding a coach or train in Europe. That’s why they call standard class “coach”. And that’s precisely how it was. Small plane (an Embraer), no frills and only drinks served. It was a brilliantly clear day, and between naps I kept looking down at the territory we’d covered overland in the past few days. It was beautiful, and I kept thinking I could have quite happily kept going.

We arrived at LaGuardia, which was an experience, given that the runway extends into the bay, making it look like the plane is coming down over water. The endless rows of gridded streets below us during descent made me excited for New York. The city that never sleeps, and all that. I knew it would be a world away from Atlanta or any of the tiny places we’d visited on our road trip.

The moment we stepped off the plane we were surrounded by Italian American accents, New York accents and bagel and pretzel stands signaling quite forcefully that we weren’t in Kansas Georgia anymore. The heat was oppressive as we waited for our cab to Manhattan. Turned out the guy shafted us on the road tolls – the helpful info screen in the back of the car said that cabbies have to use their EZPass and “pass on the toll discount in full to the customer,” adding the toll sum to the final meter reading. Either our guy didn’t have an EZPass or something else, but he asked us for the $5.50 in cash, and I wasn’t in the mood for an argument.

We’d both read things about the rooms in the Hudson Hotel being “tiny” and “horrible” but to be honest if you’re spending time in your hotel room in any big city, you’re doing it wrong. That’s why I was ok with our small but comfortable room. It didn’t fit much aside from a bed, and opening up suitcases meant you had to think which way you walked, but it was all ok. Most everyone in NYC lives in pocky little places anyway, it’s not like you can expect enormous caverns like our room in Manassas. Once we settled in we decided on a place for a drink and dinner thanks to a guide book we’d picked up while waiting for our plane in Atlanta.

Given that we hadn’t had a chance to have a drink at the taproom in Asheville, it was nice to go to a beer pub and actually enjoy what was on offer. The Blind Tiger was a pub in the way Americans make them. They emulate the British pubs in the wood paneling and dark interiors, but somehow over- or underdo it, meaning you thoroughly enjoy yourself but think it’s not entirely natural. They had an impressive selection of beers up on the board, clearly constantly changing. When I asked what sort of beer the seasonal peach beer was, though, the barmaid kind of repeated exactly what was on the board (”It’s kind of… a kind of tart, bitter… tart peach”). Oh well, I got that one and a Brooklyn-based beer given that I did want to try local stuff. They were both all right.

Sadly, the place we’d scouted out for dinner ended up being closed. The Blind Tiger is just across from a legendary pizzeria, John’s, and we could have returned there had we not walked a few blocks already. We ended up eating thoroughly pleasant pasta in a lower east side Italian place, where we watched an American man squirm through a business dinner with Chinese men, outnumbered five to one, with only one of them speaking English audibly. Must have been an uncomfortable time. After he’d escorted them out, he returned to settle the bill, and sat reading a newspaper on his iPad for a long time. I like to think he had a drink to calm himself down, too. Poor guy.

Travel always wears you out, as does the heat. Meandering back toward the subway stop we got out at, we stopped at a Starbucks for one of their cold ice teas to chill us out a bit. It must have been 10pm but still incredibly hot, with all buildings and the streets radiating heat even without the air conditioning exhusts blowing at you from every direction. There, sitting, watching the traffic quiet down, and young people hang around the corner entrance to the subway, with an unmistakeably New York skyline in the background, I felt pretty cool. New York City was pretty much exactly as I thought it would be.

The place was insane. We could have parked at the drive-in where middle-aged men in paper hats and aprons would come and take our orders, but for reasons of space (5 people in a hire car eating hot dogs) went upstairs to the “restaurant”. Long lines snaked to each of the two dozen cashiers, with a woman yelling “move on down, move on down” much more forcefully than all London tube ushers put together. Dutifully we did, with me getting a meal that makes me feel vaguely ill now just thinking back to it. As we tried to get a grilled cheese and some salad for the vegetarian who was by now looking a bit green, we discovered the guy had served her a chicken sandwich (”grilled chicken” sounding like “grilled cheese”??) and the salad eventually came with a load of chicken dumped on top. Going on a rescue mission, I managed to catch a friend at the counter just as he was ordering, and he offered to get a sandwich without the chicken this time.

Any description I give of the Varsity will not do it justice. I’m sure there are videos of it on the internet, but they won’t convey the masses of people in Atlanta Braves clothing queueing up for their Sunday staples. In a way I’m glad I went but at the same time I was thoroughly, thoroughly disturbed by the experience. At least we got a moment to breathe out of the noise since we decided to sit in the parking lot through one of the most severe rainstorms I’d ever seen battered central Atlanta for about twenty minutes after we finished eating. It was interesting seeing the buildings across the road disappear into a gray mist as the rain blew over us, overflowing sewers and soaking everything in its path.

Something even more troubling than the Varsity was our next stop on the tour, the $15 a head World of Coca-Cola. Being headquartered in Atlanta, Coca-Cola is such an institution there that any soda is just referred to as “Coke” in the region. Along with the Atlanta Aquarium, the place is a chief Atlanta attraction, and I guess it was only appropriate to try and do some touristy things. I never expected to be quite so thoroughly bombarded into consumption submission, though. Almost prophetically, as if discouraging us from entering, the peppy ticket cashier asked where we were from. I said Finland and it was easier to not specify anything else. “Oh wow, Fin-laaand! Welcome to America! Go shopping! Eat pizza!” she crooned at me. No, I was going to Coke World instead.

“WHO’S READY TO OPEN A BOTTLE OF HAPPINESS?!” the host yelled after they had herded us into a trophy room at the start of the tour, and had called out for places people were coming from. At this point, our bloodshot and confused eyes were meeting each other in looks of concern and distress. It didn’t let up at all throughout the tour. The first real stop was sitting through a “documentary” about the “employees of the Happiness Factory“, the grotesque cartoon characters supposedly inhabiting the Coke vending machines. I wish I could have seen the irony.

Herded through exhibits of memorabilia, a “4d film” with moving seats and spraying water about “the secret ingredient” that makes Coke special (you, the consumer), and an example bottling plant, we finally came to the fountain section, where some 80 different Coca-Cola company products were available for tasting. They ranged from the nice (vanilla Coke) to the nigh-on-unfathomably-undrinkable (a Djiboutian mint soda that tasted so strongly of mouthwash it was a challenge to try and swallow). At least it got our blood sugar levels up, if the hot dogs and ridiculously sweet orange soda at the Varsity hadn’t done that.

After those two separate assaults on the senses, I am surprised I was capable of driving, first to the MARTA stop to drop off a friend who had a plane to catch, and then to sit somewhere quieter to contemplate what we’d just experienced in the last 24 hours. It took a while, and we only left when they started putting together a campaign meeting for a democratic candidate for Georgia governor. (Speaking of the gubernatorial primaries, the ads on TV were something else. Personal attacks against other candidates within the same party, as well as references to God and piety in personal statements are things you don’t see in Europe.)

Twenty miles of driving later we were back in the hotel in Marietta, packing and getting ready for one more night in the South, and one last morning with our Buick that had taken us over 1000 miles by that point.

Of course, the sauna was… not one I’d call a sauna though the manufacturer’s name was a reference to Finland. Not that our sauna manner was appropriate either. In keeping with his ways the groom came up with a jingle to go with our experience, so every time we threw water on the rocks, we stood up (them as a test of endurance, me to just enjoy a touch of the heat a proper löyly should be and he’d sing “living in a microwave” to the tune of a song I instantly recognised but can’t place now. It was that kind of morning.
(See comments below, the tune for our jingle was the chorus line from James Brown’s Living in America).

After a couple of rounds of sauna and swimming (with no shower facilities in sight so we must have breathed near-lethal doses of chlorine gas off ourselves) I was ready to hit the shower up in the hotel room. We escorted the groom through the hotel, with a towel on his head so he wouldn’t even accidentally catch a glimpse of his wife-to-be. Leaving him in the capable hands of the best man, I settled into the nervous wait through the time before it makes sense to get dressed up in my suit and tie. The air conditioning in the hotel was fine for wearing one, but the first step outside, even in a linen and silk suit, was deeply unpleasant. Thirty-odd degrees centigrade, high humidity and semiformal wear just don’t go well together.

The ceremony and reception were held in Marietta Square, a historical bit of town just across from the railway. We arrived way early, and sheepishly asked a gentleman in a white suit standing by a flower-decorated gazebo whether we were in the right place. He assured we were, and we fell into conversation with a policeman also observing. He was really friendly, and talked about having been born in the UK and about the issues applying for citizenship posed. The moment I noticed the .44 caliber gun hanging loosely in a holster at his side I became a tiny bit tense though, which I hope didn’t show. It’s everyday life there, but I still get struck at guns being carried openly, which nearly never happens in Europe.

The groom arrived first, with his father and the best man, dropped off by limousine. They stood in silence, waiting for the second limo carrying the bride. As she stepped out and he went over to walk her over to the gazebo, a guitarist started playing the Jurassic Park theme song. For those that know the couple, it was pretty much the only appropriate thing to play at the time, and we did smile quite widely. I suspect that for others who did not recognise the tune, it was just a pretty melody played on a guitar to accompany the procession. Shame about it being so quiet, though.

After the couple said their vows (much more audibly than the priest leading them through the ceremony, clearly they were mindful of the audience!) they came down to have some pictures taken, while shooing us guests to the reception itself. Held at the top floor of the theater nearby, there was a roof terrace overlooking the square with soft drinks. The beer and wine flowing indoors got peoples’ tongues moving, and soon we were engaged in conversation among our table of friends and new acquaintances. I liked the fact that there was no set seating order. This allowed people to walk around and chat. I got cornered several times by the father of the bride, having had a few drinks, demanding to know what I’d thought of driving through his home state (Virginia) and whether I’d visited specific locations (no, Sir, but I’m sure we will the next time. Oh yes, there will be a next time, Sir. Thank you for your hospitality).

Having been the chief reason for our drive Southward, it was quite amazing how quickly the actual night progressed. The next thing I knew we were onto speeches (the groom, the father of the bride, the best man, the bridesmaids) along with a video message from the groom’s best friend currently employed in Afghanistan. All in all it was a really warm-hearted and sweet affair, with loads of attention being lavished onto us “English” guests who’d “driven all the way from England”. Not long after that, the band had packed up and a vintage Rolls Royce came to whisk the couple away on their honeymoon (to Costa Rica the next morning). The rest of us continued the party at a nearby bar.

At this point things were a little bit on the wane, despite the delicious barbecue-type food on offer at the reception. In fact, a collective decision, made more or less consciously of its implications, was made to continue at the hotel bar, from where it would be easier to end up in bed. It was easier on the ears, too, as there was a seriously loud country/folk/punk band playing indoors. It must have been the heat of the day and the whole proceedings, but I was so completely exhausted at that point that all I wanted was a nice comfortable bed and some peace and quiet.

Eventually, no thanks to our satellite navigator friend, we made it to the edge of the Cherokee National Forest and the picnic spot marked on our road map. It was a really hot day, as they have been throughout our stay here, except of course in high altitudes. After lunch of the previous day’s salads eaten off paper plates bought at a gas station where I managed to misread the meter reading by a full $10, confusing the attendant and making her think I was trying to fib her, we hit the road again, winding down the scenic route through the Southern Tennessee and northern North Carolina . It really was really beautiful, with green hills, sunshine and the occasional jaw-dropping view of a valley ringed by mountains.

Hot Springs, NC is a Small Town. The manager of our bed and breakfast was also the head of the local tourist association and several town and county projects, and the place only had two restaurants that remained open after lunch. We ate at the Iron Horse, where the service was excellent and friendly, the food unbelievably generously portioned and good-tasting. But, compared to the excellent Alejandro’s in Roanoke a few days before, we ended up paying double. While we were having dinner, an amazingly long coal train thundered through the train tracks crossing the town, rocking the entire place. American train tracks seem to be built alongside rivers, I suppose because of the relative flatness of the land. It is interesting though because the tracks would be at risk of any flood, being so close to the stream.

Friday morning we had an early breakfast and set out on the last, relatively long stretch of this trip to Atlanta. I had been recommended by some people on the Forums that Asheville, North Carolina is a “liberal” cute mountain city that would be worth a visit. Sadly we didn’t have time to stay for longer, because I did like the feel of the place. Sure, some of the shops were the typical tye-dye dress/astrology stone/new-age type of places but the atmosphere seemed pretty laid-back and cool. We stopped for a quick drink at a pub (called a Taproom in this part of the world) that got me regretting we hadn’t time to stay for longer: Several dozen local beers, and dozens more other American beers, not to mention the standard imports, all under one roof! I do like my beer, and being on the road meant we couldn’t have a drink. Luckily, there was a stroke of genius – we asked the cute server whether we could get local beers anywhere nearby, and got the address to Green Life. What a hippie food store! It was like a Whole Foods for tattooed twenty-something vegetarians (and aficionados of prime meat). As we were puzzling the choices at the wall of ales, a guy in a Dr Pepper shirt came up and struck up a conversation about his preferences, including a recommendation for a Asheville Brewing Company beer commemorating Bob Moog, with proceeds going to the Moog foundation. I had no idea that Moog was an Asheville resident! Turned out the guy giving us recommendations didn’t work there at all, but just happened to look like an employee thanks to his shirt. I guess that kind of describes the feeling in Asheville – just generally friendly and laid back.

Having stocked up on several North Carolina beers, including a two-gallon (2 liter!) jug of Pisgah Brewery’s “Endless Summer” in the back of the car, we hit the Interstate on a last dash to Atlanta. The first hundred miles went by in a flash, but the last fifty to Atlanta suburbs was slow going, first due to an accident on the road, then because of roadworks and then plain old fashioned Friday rush-hour. Finally, though, we were in the hotel parking lot, feeling the Georgia heat and humidity, ready to check in. By sheer luck the bride and groom whose wedding we were due to attend happened to be preparing for a practice dinner, which means we actually got some details about the wedding program since thanks to Royal Mail our invitation had never actually arrived.

As we had settled into our room and were toasting the end of the road trip, the groom arrived after his dinner, slightly nervous. We shared some of the beer we’d thrown into the fridge and showed him a DVD with greetings from his London friends we’d brought with us. I met some of the other guests and the best man, and we made a date to go for a swim and a sauna in the morning (yes, sauna in the morning!). It must be an interesting time knowing that in less than 24h later you are to be married, and planning for the time until then must be weird.

With our brick of a GPS unit as “guide”, we headed south toward Charlottesville, hitting a pretty severe rainstorm on the way. The drops were huge, visibility was reduced next to nothing, and we didn’t have a full clue of how the lights in the car worked. We ended up taking refuge in a midway town called Culpeper, mainly to avoid the most of the rain and pick up some lunch and gas. Our trusty Lucerne gets a little over 300 miles on a single tank, which really did drive home the point that on our first day we did get quite far.

Another in the line of first experiences was going into a Wal-Mart. To be fair, it wasn’t as much of a shock to a non-American as it could have been some fifteen years ago. Europe now has the same sort of enormous warehouses full of goods. It was nice to be able to pick up pretty much everything under one roof though. So, buying some beer and wine for the evenings ahead, we got ID’d by the lady at the cash register. “Neither of you are old enough to be buying these things,” she said determinedly, then opening her eyes wide seeing our foreign passports as proof of age. “How long have you been in the United States?” she asked. Two days, we replied. “And you found Walmart in Culpeper?” she asked, disbelieving. Wishing us a “blessed day” and that the US will treat us well, we were out of there.

Due to the rain and a bit of confusion about the best route to take (as more driving on the characterless Interstates didn’t really appeal) we were quite late to arrive at our next stop, Monticello. Built by Thomas Jefferson over the course of his life, I had heard about it from a few sources, and really wanted to see what kind of environment inspired the man who drafted the American Declaration of Independence, served as international diplomat during the revolutionary era, as well as US President. While the grounds were beautiful and the house immaculately kept, I somehow preferred the unassuming presentation of the federal US National Parks Service-run Manassas monument to the unabashed commercialism of Monticello.

We managed to get on a tour despite them closing the main visitor center relatively soon (6pm) after our arrival, so the trip and detours as well as being fed a chicken sandwich while driving through rainy countryside roads hadn’t been wasted. Jefferson’s house itself is big, but not as opulent as one might initially think. I especially liked the library, consisting of several units flanked by dark brown bookcases, with Jefferson’s desk at the very back. Our guide was knowledgeable and engaged the audience, which included several children as well a man singularly obsessed with the authentic originality of what was on display. I suppose him asking whether the furniture and paintings and whatever else were the originals reflected his passion for seeing what little he considered there to be “old” history of his country. You often hear it with Americans visiting Europe, with them commenting on the lack of “really old things” back home.

Knowing where we were spending the night, and it being a bed and breakfast type of Inn, we had to get dinner. Though the GPS unit we’d relied on supposedly knew of various types of food available around us, it instructed us to drive the wrong way on a one-way street. Ditching that plan, we headed to Charlottesville town center, and found a really nice pedestrianised street with a town movie theater straight out of a teenage flick. I had a decent burger in The Nook, a independent-feeling diner with families on a night out. It was really weird seeing people drinking Boddington’s and Newcastle Brown Ale, both not especially highly-regarded English beers. Full up and feeling a bit tired, we headed toward the Inn at Sugar Hollow Farm, our place for the night. Though I’ve never been one to hang out at hotels, much preferring to get going and only come there to crash, this place is so nice and nestled in such beautiful countryside that I could have enjoyed it for a few more hours. The bed is huge and firm enough to really support a weary traveller, and it was so nice to drift away to the sound of tree frogs and crickets and the flashes from the fireflies outside.

We had an airport hotel booked, but the prospect of shuttling to a different terminal to await the courtesy shuttle bus was not really appealing after all of the above. Figuring a taxi wouldn’t be too bad price-wise headed to the queue outside the terminal, past the dodgier “you guys lookin’ to get to Manhattan? Only 45 dollars” types. It was my first New York cab ride, so that’s now off the list.

Though London was going through the hottest day of the year so far when I left it, it was nothing compared to New York, which was basking in humid heat even way past sunset. News reports on TV spoke of emergency power saving measures due to the heat wave, as well as fist-sized hail falling in the Midwest.

Our car, which we picked up in the morning, is a 2010 Buick Lucerne. We’d been promised a Cadillac DTS “or similar” and to be honest I don’t know how different they’d have been from each other. The Lucerne is still the biggest thing I’ve ever driven. It feels like a responsive ship of some sort, continuing for a really long time behind the driver’s seat. I’m glad we ended up with a quintessentially American car marque, it somehow fits my vision for the trip better. The poor manager of the airport car hire company was working the Sunday morning shift alone due to staff absences, but he still had time to talk us through the best route to the I-95 and about differences in the cars on offer. Really appreciated.

I took the first turn driving, which scared me. It scared some locals too, with me not being quite aware just how giant the blind spot on the car is. (If you want to know, it fits a normal-size sedan as well as a big white SUV which came this close to getting silver paint all over the front left quarter.) Once the tension of driving on the outskirts of New York City faded, and we were on the New Jersey Turnpike, things started working out fine. I was no longer being undertaken and seemed to have gotten the hang of the dimensions of the car.

Incidentally, driving on an automatic (again, something I’ve not done before now) is bliss, though strange when you only get a response from the car about a half-second to a second after flooring it on the freeway. I was completely free to tap my left foot to the music we had blaring.

As we’d had no breakfast we had to stop for food pretty soon after starting, somewhere along mile 91 of the I-95. Two Finns were puzzling over the route map on the Rest Stop wall, meaning that for 5 million people we sure do get around. After filling up at the industrial-size collection of fast food outlets and stocking up on water for the road, we set off again, with me again behind the wheel until Aberdeen, Maryland, a place where we did a little loop of Suburbia before actually finding the rest stop.

I loved the driving, but did regret not being able to take in the views across the majestic toll bridges of New Jersey. Sure, the views were of nothing but chemical plants, a rusted industrial landscape of human activity, but I like that sort of thing. At least due to a folly on my part in navigation we ended up cutting through Baltimore, meaning I had a bit of a chance to see something of the above.

We figured that even with the delays we could make it to a landmark location, and chose Arlington National Cemetery. Though we arrived close to closing time, we still had a chance to see plenty. Standing on top of the hill at Arlington House and looking down at a skyline familiar from movies, with sights I recognised was pretty cool. The air was hot and fragrant with green, and the rows upon rows of white marble headstones were beautiful and harrowing at the same time. I’m glad I visited though I have no personal or familial connection to the deceased.

An interesting bit about Arlington, which I didn’t know, was that it’s not just a military cemetery. Other national figures such as astronauts from the Challenger disaster as well as supreme court justices are honored there. The pomposity of the all-white marble amphitheater and other monuments were just so quintessentially American in their blatancy. Quite the place.

The last stretch of the day was toward the setting sun, first past dozens of joggers and then through stop-and-go traffic, a dozen or so miles to Manassas, where we had booked a hotel. After Chinese food and getting the news that Spain had won the World Cup (and I was in the money from the work sweepstake!) I was done.

I can’t quite place it, but it’s definitely true. Somehow the light in Finland is just that much more intense than in London. Colours are more thoroughly there,  everything is that much more clearly in focus. I can’t really explain it in any other way except that it seems everything in the UK seems covered by dust that you can’t wash out. Strange.

I’ve spent the last two days ramming through a long-overdue project, namely my permanent driver’s licence. Legally required, you couldn’t fail the two-day thing which was just designed to drive home some best practice points, but I still had nerves. It really couldn’t have been more if it tried. Driving down brilliantly sunny Helsinki streets with mournfully sad schlager pouring out the radio, I was supervised by a hulk of a man. Bald, in his fifties, wearing jeans and sandals showing his manky toenails. With one slightly drooping eye he spoke in a slow, staccato rhythm I couldn’t quite place as Helsinki or not. Instead of doing two laps around the same route and comparing mileage and driving choices before and after instruction, he simply tapped around on the center console showing me the 6.9 liters/100 km (34 mpg) reading. Apparently that was decent for the car and how I was driving. So that was that.

The second day consisted of driving at a track made intentionally slippery. I’d recommend that day (aside from the price) to anyone in a heartbeat. A gloriously sunny day, splashing around on wet track skidding and righting your car again in safe conditions was both fun and genuinely useful. In fact, I wish I could have had a few more goes trying to right myself from a skid in a curve, with the hypothetical truck coming on the opposite lane. We got instructions for each run via radio and then individual feedback.

After all the fun they really brought the house down by taking us to a wreck museum, showing the damage caused both to cars and to passengers in several different types of accidents including crashing headlong into a moose. I was one of the “lucky” 5 who climbed into a car that was then flipped around on its roof (slowly) and we had to climb out. It was disorienting to say the least, and I can’t begin to imagine how rough it would be in the confusion, pain and fright that happens in a real, instantaneous crash.

At least I’m a lot more confident in driving in the States now. We’ll see how long that lasts.

The prime minister has resigned, apparently, to be succeeded by a woman. Throughout the year there have been news about party funding irregularities. Other than that things seem to be the same as ever in politics. I can’t begin to say much of anything about any other aspect of life, except maybe silly entertainment news tidbits that flow in one ear and out the other.

I guess I should listen to the radio news more often or something.