Ask most Americans what the absolute worst way to travel is and they’ll tell you the Greyhound Bus. One step up from the bus, apparently, is the train. “Scum of the earth take that train” I was told… by an actual Amtrak employee. On an actual train. My apprehension about the coming journey was getting worse. Every American I’d mentioned the epic train journey to had been relentlessly negative about it. Everyone, apparently, flies. Trains are for scum. End of story.

Nevertheless, competing with the negativity and that advice was that of Michael Palin on Radio 4 who probably had no idea that people were going to make life-changing decisions based on his advice to “travel slowly” and to avoid planes where possible. Travel slowly, he says, and make the travelling as much the point as the destination.

How slow is slow, though? Well, New York to San Francisco is a 3,500 mile journey that takes 4 days using two trains, the Lake Shore Ltd to Chicago then the California Zephyr to San Francisco. It goes through: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island [Those are the Acela Express, Boston to New York, not the Lakeshore Ltd.. did that 4 days earlier.. whoops], New York, Pennsylvania,  Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and finally California. It is astonishingly long.

Turns out the Americans were wrong about this journey. It’s sort of redefined the words ‘spectacular’ and ‘epic’ in my brain… apart from the Day Of Corn which involved waking up in the corn fields of Ohio and going to sleep in the corn fields of Iowa and seeing very little else all day.. okay most of the day involved hanging out in Chicago Union Station, but it’s hard not to be someone stunned by the scale of the corn growing operations they have in the USA. There’s a day of it. A day.

The next day, however, waking up in Denver and then making our way through the most literally breathtaking landscape I’ve ever seen – first the Colorado Rockies then watching the sun go down on the monumentally epic mountains in Utah… I don’t know how I’m going to ever be content with Yorkshire now. Damn. The day after the train goes through the Sierra Nevada mountains and it’s goo goo time, your brain is gone. That’s it.

America… it turns out… is a truly beautiful country. The magnificence of the scenery is then added to by the sheer audacity, courage and engineering-fu to build a train line all the way through it, not to mention everything else they’ve done to this continent.

I’m a bit stunned. In awe, really. San Francisco awaits outside but it’s all a bit too much.

What’s devastating, however, is that most Americans will never have this experience. They hate the train. They’ll fly, or maybe drive instead.. and they just won’t see their own country this way. They really, really, really don’t know what they’re missing. Far from sharing the train with ‘scum’ I found really pleasant, friendly people wanting the same kind of experience, sharing my own lack of comprehension at the gap between the perception and reality of these rather immense train journeys.

I’m glad I’m the kind of soppy loser tourist that can get some sort of quasi-spiritual experience from a journey of this kind. I gave up smoking so that this journey wouldn’t be ruined by waiting for the next smoking stop (few and far between) rather than living in the moment. Best. Decision. Ever.

Still, to get off a train 4 days after getting on feeling like it all went by far too quickly is not what I expected at all. Colorado… we’ll meet again, you and I, mark my words.

Apologies for the lack of blogging and continued off-topic stuff. Things will be back to normal soon.

The curious phenomenon of radioactively white and uncanny valley-esque perfect teeth in America continues to disturb, but one image has stuck in my head for two weeks. I can’t get it out of my head.

I wish I could remember his name – I have attempted to find it today but have given it up as a needle finding exercise for the League of Non-Guild Aligned Haystack Workers Union. Sod that.

However, the man’s face? That’s burned into my mind forever. He was a Democratic Party candidate for some southern state – that’s how he ended up on MSNBC anyway – and he had conspicuously man-made looking teeth. They were brilliant white, as if determined to bleach the viewer’s retinas with their fluorescent glow. His skin was orange and his hair suitably quaffed. He’s not the only one with such teeth and hair, but he’s certainly the only one that’s seemingly so proud of his teeth that his lips are permanently twisted into a grimace that, if nothing else, displays these teeth. Clearly he’s very proud of these new teeth and believes that it’s very important to his future career that people see them.

Hmm.

I wonder what the point of all this is, what the cultural significance of this display is, and what the connection between cosmetic dentistry and political ability might be. Then again, I’ve got his hideous face burned into my brain.. so perhaps mission accomplished as far as that politician is concerned. Perhaps this lesson is to terrify people with your appearance, so as to make sure they never, ever forget you.

The tyranny of pedestrian restrictions is getting me down. Sure you get pedestrian crossings absolutely everywhere – they’re on the end of every single road, mocking you, laughing at you – but the down side is that you HAVE to use them.

They really don’t like you just crossing a road because it happens to be safe. In fact it’s a crime. It’s called Jay Walking and it’s one of those crimes that exists purely because some utter arsehat decided that FromNowOnPedestriansWillDoThisOrElse and that’s pretty much all there is to it. No wonder people drive everywhere.

However, the sinister nature of tyrannical pedestrianism is nothing compared with the eerie phenomenon that is People Actually Pressing The Stop Button On Buses And Waiting For The Bus To Stop Before Standing Up.

I mean, for reals? Apparently so. People round here are strangely well behaved, following rules and regulations of which public life seems strangely full of. There’s precious few smokers (speaking of which, I’m not one of them) and…. there’s no teenagers. Or, at least, they’re impossible to spot because they’re indistinguishable from children or adults, or hiding in a special death camp of some kind.  I can’t tell you how bloody nice it is.

I’m missing pies, decent beer, Tea and my stuff and life…. mostly I’m missing proper broadband though. Oh, I miss my car… I really really miss my shitty hairdresser’s car. I even miss Enemy Cat, the fat bloated feline menace belonging to a neighbour that believes my car is some sort of cool hangout party place for cats. No, wait, I don’t miss Enemy Cat. I miss squirting Enemy Cat with the Super Soaker, the little shit.

What I’m not missing is the yobbery and the palpable air of menace that I normally have from home. I hate to say it but it’s just possible that there’s something not quite right with the UK, that it’s… actually… you know, a bit more horrible than it actually should be? Maybe? Or maybe Boston’s just weird and just happens to be a really nice place to live… stranger things, etc.

Sorry, did I say nice? I meant nice except for the pedestrian crossing tyranny, obviously. Bastards.

My favourite Labour supporting blogger, Sunny Hundal (left), has decided to join the Labour Party for a number of reasons that, I’m sure, make perfect sense to him in his own head. If you’re interested, his profoundly unmoving post on the subject is here.

This appears to have tickled my interest: Why would anyone want to join a political party?

I left the Liberal Democrats at the beginning of this year and all I really appear to have lost is the ability to not win Lib Dem Voice’s Blog of the Year award, or feature in Iain Dale’s list of Lib Dem blogs… boo hoo! Party membership (well, of Labour or the Conservatives) does have advantages for political bloggers who want attention. Perhaps Sunny can expect more appearances on the BBC as the representative of Labour’s Grassroots, which isn’t bad work if he can get it.

After all, the official job of the political blogosphere is for people to dress up in party colours and throw their own turds at each other until they each die of old age, but not before teaching this important and critically useful skill to the next generation. People want to see what the real nutters and crazies are like when they’re not media trained and not watching what they say. Every post is a mini, magical car crash and we’re all ghoulishly waiting for the next one.

Sunny can now join this wonderful game. Good for him.

But the biggest scam people fall for when they join a party is this idea that they can ‘change it from the inside’ which is a very cute idea but is essentially very much like buying a lottery ticket in order to stimulate the economy with the millions you’ll win.

Take the Liberal Democrats, for example. Here’s a party in which members are actually able to vote on stuff and set the party policy… but wait! First you need to be a voting rep, which is a gift from the local party. If you’re one of the lucky chosen few then you’re still just one vote. Power? It’s nothing of the sort.

That, however, is the most democratic of the main parties. Labour? You don’t even get that.

The only real power anyone in Labour or affiliate organisations really has is the power to give it money, then shut up while their betters use that money to ignore them and their crazy ideas and do exactly what the marketing people tell them.

Q: At which point does the opinion of the chumps who bankroll the whole business come into “how to reach A, B and C in the most cost effective way possible?”

A: Ha. Haha. You’re funny.

No, what you’re really buying with your hard earned/easily sponged money is the ability to change from saying, “they” to “we” and suddenly have your opinion discounted by the ‘not we’ as party political nonsense that isn’t worth a damn.

Joy!

But, all joking and cynicism aside… gosh darn it, knowing all the good that the Party will accomplish with that £10 you paid to join brings a warm fuzzy glow to your heart, doesn’t it?

It’s a lazy Sunday here. Local time is half eleven in the morning. Back home it’s half four. The sky is blue and the temperature outside is… warm.

Have adjusted to life without a kettle and taken up filter coffee as my main beverage. See, in the local supermarket there’s only a small selection of instant coffee – no freeze dried instant coffee at all – and just two types of tea. Pretty obvious why, in hindsight, if boiling water takes a minimum of four minutes in the Microwave.

So here’s an example of how something as simple as the Mains electrical system – 110 volts AC instead of 240 volts AC (apparently this stops there being enough juice for British style kettles) has caused an entirely different beverage culture out here. Here filter coffee is the easiest and quickest thing there is, creating a huge market for filters, coffee beans and ground coffee and destroying the market for tea and instant coffee. No kettles, no tea.

Cause and effect, you see.

With that in mind I notice this curious story about the Governor of Massachusetts, one Deval Patrick. He’s a Democrat, if that sort of thing matters to you, and he’s just signed an anti-foreclosure bill (or anti-repossession for Brits!) which will mean, in effect, a delay of around a year between someone stopping paying and someone losing their house. It’s called “An Act To Stabilise Neighborhoods“, and it is intended that it will help individuals and communities stay together. It’s the only bill like it in America, apparently.

Critics and cynics, and I have to say this includes me, suspect that the knock on effect of this particular Act will be to make getting a mortgage in Massachusetts more difficult than it currently is. People already in their homes, whether they can afford them or not, will get to stay – at least for another year – and those who are stuck on the sidelines waiting to get their own home? Well, they’re going to stay stuck.

Says a lot that the rights of people in a house that they’re not actually paying for count for more than the rights of a company that lent them the money to live in that house in the first place, but hey, I’m a ruthless evil Capitalist so perhaps I’m missing something here, but isn’t this the sort of thing you expect from old Communistic Europe, not the brave new world of the United States?

Ho hum. Your strangely baffled and bemused correspondent, signing off…