Cheap as chips. Cheaper in fact if your chips come from the dirty shop and not quite so disappointing either

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There was an emotional moment yesterday as I said good bye to the boys. Most of them were in tears but I managed to hold my composure - after all they will miss me more than I miss them. I was somewhat revered in our little group and they would always be falling over themselves to take my place on the floor and give up their own in a bed. My steadfast refusals only bolstered their admiration for me. Whenever we went anywhere or did anything, they would like to me for guidance. The pressure was quite considerable at times but I knew it was my responsibility to take care of them. I only hope a new leader emerges now that I am gone, but I fail to see the particular talent in any of them.

We exchanged hugs, handshakes and high fives Borat style, wished each other well and then I walked out of the motel on my own with an enormous sense of excitement building. This was now my own adventure and I was 100% responsible for myself. Not only that, but I was going to a new place with no challenges. I got on the metro and bought a ticket to the Ronald Reagon airport for just $1.35. Cheap as chips. Cheaper in fact if your chips come from the dirty shop and not quite so disappointing either. I noticed that the Pentagon was on the way so got off at here for a wander around. The pentagon was unremarkable, just a big boring building and I soon got back on the metro but the stop was worth it for a different reason. The escalator up and out of the station was broken. Climbing some steps was quite unimaginable to the fattys around me. They were mainly women with enromous backsides. At the bottom one far arse exclaimed, ´this is crazy!´ I caught up with another at a casual pace and she stood aside saying ¨you go on passed honey buney, sugar, muma´s gunna fry you up some chicken!¨or something like that. A third, who had stopped half way up had to lean on a wall and recover, she was still there after I¨d walked around the Pentagon for a bit. One fat bottomed girl said, ¨I don¨t wanna walk nowhere else!¨ It was all very amusing.

The airport was too cold as usual. I had mu passport checked no less than four times, three times within about 10metres of each other. The bastards at Delta had marked my ticket with SSSSS which meant I had to have an extra search. I asked if this was because I was a foreigner or if it was random but all I was told was that the airline had for some reason marked me down and they didn¨t know why. The second of three men that escorted me in turn said ¨I{m hanging in there, how are you?" I replied, "I¨m good thanks, how are you?", the standard response and then realised what he¨d said. I thought it was an odd thing to say. As it happens, I had carelessly left a keyring knife in my bag and this got confiscated. At one point the bloke, who had put on plastic gloves at the beginning, opened a circular pot that looked like it could be cream and with a wave of panic I thought he was going to do an anal examination. Thankfully he did not, he just took out a piece of cloth to wipe down my shoes with and I was soon free to write more remarks about fat american women on my blog. I wonder if anti-americanism somewhere in my past was what I was called up for. They do have an awful lot of lists in the states. I doubt it though.

The flight was in an old plane that didn´t even have televisions. The flight attendants did the safety demonstration in person. You don´t often see that these days. When I was offered a snack I requested one be picked at random, the air hostess, who turned out to be a very nice woman who had been to Cancun several times and let me have the Time magazine that was sitting in a pile of old newspapers, was perterbed by making this choice and gave me one of each of the snacks. If there is one thing American´s know it is what they like to eat, they never seem to hesitate in choosing food and my addition of just a little bit of excitement to the situation had clearly thrown her.

I had a Burger King in the Atlanta airport having not had one yet. I had to say ´Whopper¨ three times before the drawling southern girl understood me. She short changed my by five dollars, clearly on purpose because she reacted immediatly and without question when I pointed this out. I had to wait until she had served the next person and then she replaced one of the two dollar bills she had been about to give me instead of seven and instead pulled out a handful of change amounting to less than a dollar. I let it go. Fascist. The burger was good though, it had an awful lot of salad and sauce in and that¨s what makes a burger really. The actual burger is unimportant. I threw my rubbish in an electronic trash can which made a bit of noice and chewed it up.

I arrived in Cancun and tried my Spanish out. It¨s crap and now I am concerned. I went through the complicated motions of getting on the bus and walking to the hostel without really taking anything in, I just wanted to arrive. It is a decent place. There are ants in the bed fairly often but this is to be expected in a hot country. I haven{t been bitten or anything so far. It¨s clean enough for it¨s very cheap price and had free internet - useful for catching up on my blog. There is a couple here a Swede and a Mexican who are getting married and moving here having met in Australia, there are quite a few British backpackers who seem to be coming and going fairly rapidly like myself and there is a guy who I have been warned against who has asked me to go places with him a couple of times.

Instead, I have done very little. These couple of days are to be spent recovering entirely before I start volunteering. I had a walk around the town and got some food and started sweating a lot but then came back, read about Cancun, had a nap and practiced some Spanish. I will go out again in a bit.

That¨s me all caught up then, thank good. I have decided not to bugger off around the world for a year. I think I will have had enough after this and I don¨t want to spend a year doing crap jobs which is why I decided not to do it in the first place. I am actually quite looking forward to my job next year when I think about it for long enough, which is rarely. I think I quite like stability after all. Maybe I¨ll try and get a job abroad after my scheme is over.

I wish the cyclists and Rob (whose job as support driver is harder than you might think it) the best of luck for the rest of their travels. They are performing a difficult task in very hot weather and there has been plenty of pain, exhaustion and frustration already. If you haven¨t already, please do sponsor them and/or follow their blog at www.teamamerica2007.com They are paying all of their own expenses (and all of us spent more than we intended to) so everything donated will be going to charity.

On a more personal note, I have had a wonderful fortnight with these guys and have seen bits of America that I never would have done without them. There had been so little conflict that it is quite suprisingly really and I have enjoyed getting to know you all, and your various smells, more intimately.

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