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Published: August 6th 2008
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..only in LA...
Can any lawyers reading his explain - do they represent motorcyclists or people injured by motorcyclists or do they practice from the back of a motorcycle? We’ve been travelling around a lot in the last couple of weeks so just got the time to update y’all on what we have been up to. Apart from Boston (where the people are really up themselves) we have had a really positive experience of the US - like totally yeah! We are both thinking in American.
So much has been happening that we’ll just give you a flavour of what is happening out here. (By the way Live free or Die is the motto of New Hampshire)
The big issues are the same as in the UK - petrol costs (up past $4 a gallon but today we paid $3.65 say £1.90 a gallon), house prices (down by up to 24%), and the Obama/McCain contest.
On petrol - cars out here are advertised boasting that they can do 25 mpg on the highway?!
On politics if Obama doesn’t get elected then the Western World is going to have a mega problem with McCain who is irascible and will simply pee everyone off around the world
. and finally the concept of energy saving is putting your washing to dry outside!!!!!! - no kidding this was explained
Witches House in Salem
...no comments allowed....!! on a radio show. However we are fitting in well and now drink gallons of coffee in the car and we eat pancakes, bacon and maple syrup in diners. Indian and Thai food seems a long way away!
Anyway back to what has become a road trip around the USA - having gone San Fran - Sonoma/Napa/Russian River/ - Tahoe - Reno - Carson City - Virginia City - Yosemite - Death Valley - Las Vegas - Grand Canyon - Monument Valley - LA (where we saw Eddie Murphy in a black drop top Rolls Royce), Malibu and Hollywood ( about 2000 miles) we then flew to Boston.
Boston is definitely over stuffed with itself but interesting bits - Paul Revere house and old buildings (a bit like York really but York is better). Went to the Museum of Fine Art and also the pics to see the new Batman film - very dark indeed and nary a laugh. One thing that did happen was that it rained really hard and long in Boston which is the first real rain we have experienced in the whole time we have been away. Carol bought some Red Sox plastic macks
Abe and friend
...now look Abe the fact of the matter is..... for us. so we didn’t get totally soaked. The Red Sox play baseball which is rounders to us and is played in England by 9 year old girls.
Then we picked up another car and drove up to Salem - of witches fame and an old seaport - absolutely fantastic 18th century houses and we had a fascinating tour of one of them that was really well preserved. There is a whole district of them and we had a lovely afternoon wandering through them and their gardens in the sunshine.
Then up to Concord New Hampshire which is the state capital and of character - nice people and we had a great Mexican meal. We went up into New Hampshire and Vermont for a couple of days and the countryside were just beautiful - dinky clapboard houses in 18th century style and towns more like villages in the Cotswolds in England - and just a pleasure to go look see. We can now fully understand why most Americans don’t have a passport - they have every kind of scenery and places to visit in the continental USA,
We are really privileged to be travelling around like this -
New England Covered Bridge
... stunning rolling wooded countryside, white wooden houses and all the pancakes and maple syrup you can eat... yeehaa and pass me the fiddle! to see so many places and meet so many people each of whom has their own story to tell. It sounds patronising and it’s not intended but Americans really do want to do the right thing. Just yesterday we were talking to a lady at breakfast that had spent 5 years going to Honduras to work in a pharmacy that was part of a health mission. It’s just that at a higher level it doesn’t really work out.
Back to our trip - after New Hampshire and Vermont (mmmm maple syrup) we went down to Newport Rhode Island - which is real salty dog land - and again a very attractive architecture and lots of old houses and churches before going onto Hyannis on Cape Cod. Here we had some of the most memorable sights of our whole trip so far. Long beaches with really clear air and luminosity so that the skin tones of people in the far distance could be seen - it really was life imitating art. As I sit here writing I can still see the pure blues and golds that seem to glow from within rather than merely reflecting the light. We spent a magical couple of days visiting the little communities that, as Carol says, are England as it never was in England.
We were then planning to go to New York but had decided to give it a miss (confirmed as a sound idea by a Russian émigré now living in Canada we talked to one morning over breakfast). So we had a long drive around the outside of New York and down south where we arrived late at night in Gettysburg. Next morning we had a guided tour of the battlefield - no glory just a sense of immense waste and good people showing enormous courage and trying to do the right thing on both sides. One reminiscence was of a skirmish when two brothers from Germany who had not seen each other since they had landed in the US met on opposite sides in the middle of the battle. A fascinating visit and a place where history is evident and relevant today. Then onto Richmond. via the Blue Ridged mountains of Virginia and Charlottesville - beautiful! It was here in Richmond that the story of the defeated is writ large and to us it seemed is still felt today. Before the Civil War it was a beautiful cultured city which also had world class iron works and shipbuilding - by the end of the war it was a burned wreck (by its own army as they retreated to Appatamox and defeat). A pretty depressing city but it tells a story that we should heed today. For the first time I could understand the French attitude in the Second WW.
Anyway back to cheerier stuff - we are both bright eyed and bushy tailed. And not long before we return home now - under three weeks so hopefully we’ll get a couple more blogs done
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