london calling ...

Checking into our hotel felt oddly like returning home - I guess that's what happens when you've been on the road for so long.

We'd only been home for a few days, but it was a relief to leave the chaos of unpacking our belongings behind and head down to the capital for a few days. The main reason for the trip was to kick off the job hunting in earnest, but it also gave us the chance to catch up with a few friends and we even managed to squeeze in a cultural attraction.

The Tate Modern is well worth a visit - not only is it cunningly housed in the shell of an old power station on the banks of the Thames, but the art is pretty good too - or at least most of it is. Wandering around a room with paintings by Rothko and Pollock I spotted a sign for a multimedia installation and decided to check it out.

Inside the white room films were being projected onto all four walls. The main one was of a guy stumbling around in a bathtub wearing nothing - and I do mean nothing - except for a boxing helmet and gloves. The action alternated between him punching himself repeatedly in his well-padded head, and smearing the contents of a bottle of ketchup over his loins. 

It's put me right off tomato sauce I can tell you ...

The job hunting went better than expected. Mel is about to embark on a round of second interviews this coming week - and I've got a new job working at EMAP in London from the beginning of June. It's been a really busy couple of weeks - I guess we're lucky that we haven't had a chance to sit around and mope about the end of our trip. 

Before real life resumes there's just enough time to pack my bag for one more trip - this time checking out some air-conditioned greenhouses in the desert. 

the finish post ...

They say all good things must come to an end.

I just wish they didn't have to.

The excesses of Vegas and L.A. had left us in desperate need of sleep as we arrived at JFK late at night we made our way to our lodgings at the Pod Hotel - only in New York can they turn lack of space into a selling point.

We resurfaced late the following morning to the realisation we had just 24 hours before our flight back to the UK. We needed to prioritise.

Sushi, shopping and cerveza.

And here it is - entry 150 in the league - a pint of Brooklyn Lager. Travelling around the world is hardly carbon friendly, but at least I can take pleasure in my unique brand of offsetting; consuming as much locally produced beer as possible.

The coming home experience started at JFK's British Airways terminal where all the announcements are delivered in the finest home counties accent. For some reason we found this incredibly amusing after a whole year out of the country - I rather suspect BA's staff are encouraged to "ham up" the Englishness for American tourists.

Getting home is very strange - everything costs more than anywhere else we've been in the past 12 months - Leeds more expensive than Tokyo? You'd better beleive it. I think it's going to take a while to get used to the UK way of doing things in shops and call centres - I've begun to think of it as service with a grunt. OK, so it's not true of everyone, but in my recent experience BT are doing enough bad work to make up for all the good examples out there - still no home phone or broadband after first contacting them in mid-March.

Of course there are some great things too - curry, fish & chips and of course going to see Leeds win at home - next stop the play offs. I've already got my ticket.

It's been great to start catching up with friends over the last few days - and we're really looking forward to seeing the rest of you over the coming weeks. I'll be keeping the blog running for the next few weeks as I visit a few more interesting destinations.

After all, it's not as though you can phone me ...

last orders in la-la land ...

I've not been sure what to write about our weekend in LA.

We had a really nice time meeting up with our friends Sean, John & Laura, but I didn't take any photos, and how interesting is hearing about other peoples dinner (tea if you're from Yorkshire) and shopping trips? Not very I suspect.

I know you're only interested in the drinking.

After dinner on our last evening we headed to one of Pasadena's bars for a quick drink. I don't know if it's the same for you, but whenever that is the pretext for an evening out it inevitably ends up being anything but quick. This is always bad news, but especially when you have to leave for the airport at 5.30am.

We met lots of interesting locals during the evening. The ones I'll remember most are the couple who walked up and by way of an introduction asked me if I used to play the trumpet as a child. No, only the fool I told them.

We got talking and it turned out they were on a date the format of which they had decided would be a treasure hunt - finding people who had played various instruments in childhood was one of the questions.

As the conversation turned to pets we found out the guy had a female cat called Zeus. In retrospect this was obviously a setup and when Mel made the comment we were all thinking - "surely that's a boys name?" the girl let out massive "YYYY-ES!!" and punched the air as she crossed one more off her list.

Later, and after receiving a complimentary pint of Guiness in return for helping the barman to sign You'll Never Walk Alone (a transaction I still don't fully understand) I looked up just in time to see the girl from earlier giving her boyfriend a piggyback through the bar.

I checked my watch and confirmed it was indeed that time of night. 3am.

Otherwise known as stupid o'clock ...




Of course you really just want to know how this affects the league ...

After sampling Woodie Gold, Sierra Nevada Summerfest and Beech Wood Red I got a bit of a scare as the bar menu described Blue Moon (sampled in late 2007) as a Canadian Beer. A spot of internet research has revealed that despite being owned by a Canadian company, Blue Moon is very much a US brewed beer, so the current total stands at 149.

I hope I'll be able to find at least one more in New York ..

getting our kicks on route 66 ...

After 3 nights in Vegas I'd had my fill, so I was glad to set out into the desert for one final road trip.

After the relative excitement of driving across the top of the Hoover Dam, the highway running through the Arizona desert was dull, dull, dull. A whole hour without the slightest curve or kink made me very glad indeed of cruise control - never again will I think of motorway driving in the UK as boring.

We spent the night at the old Route 66 town of Williams just 60 miles south of Grand Canyon National Park, which nowadays has reinvented itself as a tourist gateway, with restored 1950's diners.

A we drove out to the canyon the following morning we nearly hit a roadrunner crossing the highway - having now had the opportunity to observe both a Coyote and a Roadrunner, I feel qualified to raise a few issues with the classic cartoon.

Running out front of cars is just plain stupid. However, the Coyote we saw displayed his wiley characteristics perfectly as he stalked a small herd of deer - wandering off casually behind a building after being sighted, only to reappear moments later from a completely different direction. In real life I just don't think there would be any contest, much less the need to spend a small fortune at ACME.

But the biggest question is why? Roadruners are tinier than the cartoon makes out. In fact I reckon you'd probably get more meat on your average housesparrow. I can't see that in real life a Coyote would even bother.

The Grand Canyon was well worth the journey, and if anything possibly more impressive than I had expected. After taking in several viewpoints, the return journey gave us the opportunity to take the more scenic route for a couple of hours along the 66. It was just a small taster of the classic road trip from Los Angeles to Chicago, but I think the full route would make an excellent holiday - and current exchange rates I doubt there'll ever be a better time to do it.

We'd had a great day, but as we took lunch in a classic 1950's Soda fountain (think lemonade, with vanilla ice-cream and fresh cherries) I couldn't help thinking Mel had let all this talk of cartoons go to her head ...





Finding new beers to sample is becoming increasingly difficult but as we stayed just outside Vegas I got to sample of couple of hitherto unseen beers from Utah at a local wine bar.

My eye was especially drawn to the Polygamy Porter and after ordering a bottle I was even more amused by the strapline on the bottle - Why only have one?

bringing down the house ...

I'd never really thought Vegas would be my sort of place.

Checking out flights from Denver to California I discovered that rather than flying direct it was cheaper to stop over in Vegas, stay in a 4-star hotel for 3 nights and hire a convertible sports car for 2 days.

So of course that's what we did.

Nothing I saw in the first 24 hours altered my preconceptions, and on the second afternoon I found myself having to escape to the hotel pool to avoid the pulsating neon and crowds of loud margharita swilling tourists wandering the strip.

The first evening we'd restricted ourselves to a few dollars in the 1 cent slot machines (at one stage reaching the dizzying heights of a $5 profit), but no trip to Sin City would be complete without at least trying our hand at some slightly more serious gambling.

Our budget is by no means "hardcore backpacker", but neither is it endless. After blowing $50 in just 20 minutes playing roulette we thought we figured we wouldn't be spending much of our time playing the $10 minimum bet table games.

Since reading Bringing Down the House earlier in the trip (watch out for the film, it's a great story) I'd been keen to at least try playing blackjack, so we decided to commit just another $40 to a few quick hands - our main objective being to spin things out long enough to land a free round of drinks.

So we were quite suprised when 3 hours later we were still playing and had managed to increase our stake five-fold to $200 - and almost as good we'd had at least a dozen free drinks each.

Compared to the MIT students in the book we might only have brought down the equivalent of a small garden shed, but despite my expectations we had a great time here.

I found another 4 beers here from the aptly named Sin City Brewing Company, taking the current total to 144 as we enter the last week of the trip.