For'n in the USA

And so, with a heavy heart, if slightly lighter pockets, we bade farewell to Las Vegas and gave a warm hello to San Diego, next stop on the trip. As we left behind the capital of capitalism we did have one regret; we failed to marry Christina Aguilera. After all, we figured, if Britney can get married to someone she hardly knows, surely Miss Aguilera would go one better and marry someone she's never met before? Alas, it was not to be and we have to accept that she won't be Mrs Flum, not this year anyway. Instead, we'll just have to make do with the set of Christina trading cards that we picked up in San Fransisco. These tell you all you need to know about the shy and retiring popstar, though they were quite clearly put together pre-Stripped, the time when she still maintained a girl-next-door style innocence. One of the cards happily claims that her idea of a perfect date is to be "taken to a museum". Nowadays, of course, she'd want to be taken in a museum.

Today was another day spent allowing the bus to do all the work while we run the risk of deep vein thrombosis. Arriving mid-afternoon we had time for a quick wander to get our bearings and visit what we thought was the tourist information office but was, in actual fact, the offices of the Town Redevelopment Commision. Oh well, it's always nice to know how other people's tax dollars are being spent.

When in Vegas there are two things which you have to do; see a good show and gamble, otherwise you might as well just stay in your room and look at the wall as they're not a great deal else to do. It's a bit like Blackpool in that respect, only with "gamble" replaced by "bingo" and "good show" replaced by "Cannon and Ball", which ultimately results in you replacing "fun" with "mind-numbing boredom". As we wanted the former, we decided to spend the afternoon seeing a couple of shows. To be honest, the only reason we went to see the shows was because we'd acquired some free tickets or, at least, tickets that claimed to be free. It's an interesting use of the word free, however, which involves a minimum drinks charge of $8. We decided to think of it as a paying for the show and getting a free drink as, as far as we were concerned, there was no way on earth we could justify paying 5 quid on a bottle of Budweiser.

First up was the Mac King Comedy Magic Show. The most impressive trick in this was the fact that despite it being advertised as the Mac King Comedy Magic Show, our tickets declaring it to be the Mac King Comedy Magic Show and the backdrop to the stage announcing proudly it was the Mac King Comedy Magic Show, Mac King himself wasn't there. He was on holiday and we got some bloke called, we think, Nick Lewsin. Had we actually heard of Mac King, this switcharoo might have upset us, but Mr King was about as much of a known entity to us as the ones out of Blue who aren't Lee or Duncan so we weren't hugely bothered.

The main problem with comedy magic shows is that there's always more emphasis on the comedy than the magic and they never quite satisfy either count, which always leaves you with the impression that you're watching a half-decent stand-up who's got a gimmick. This was very much the case with Mr Probably Lewsin. He certainly entertained for the hour, but he only did a handful of tricks and we're not totally convinced that ripping up a newspaper and putting it back together again is the best thing to finish your set on. It ends things not with a bang, but with a thin tear.

After that though things improved immeasurably with Ronn Lucas being on the cards. The name may not instantly cause sparks of recognition to fly through your synapses, but he used to have a TV show in the UK ten or so years ago and he's a very funny and talented man indeed, despite the fact he can't spell his first name correctly.

Ronn is a ventriloquist, best known for his teenage dragon puppet Scorch. He's advertised as being able to make anything talk and for him money definitely talks as as you entered the theatre you were encouraged to have your photo taken with Scorch, the resulting photo being availiable for purchase at the end of the show. This would have been all well and good, and actually quite a cool idea if the truth be known, had it been the "real" Scorch. It wasn't. What you were getting photographed with was the soft toy reproduction which was also availiable for purchase after the show. Not quite as impressive.

The show itself, however, was. Mr Lucas is incredibly skilled and is so convincing that you often find yourself forgetting that there is only one person on stage with any intelligence, which is a little bit like watching an Atomic Kitten gig, only with out the intelligence part. As well as Scorch we were also treated to Buffalo Billy, his child like but dirty minded - in a clean, family oriented kinda way - cowboy puppet, a guy from the audience who, via an ingenious face mask, was turned into a puppet, Ronn's sock - at the start of a slightly schmaltzy tribute to his grandad - and, finally, Ronn't own right hand, which closed both the show and, thankfully, the schamltz, though not without taking the time out to plug the availiable merchandise.

After the shows, and a visit to the Fremont Street Experience which is a night time overhead light show that has to be seen to be believed and is also the only thing that causes the casino lights to be switched off, we went gambling. We have been gambling each evening we've been in Vegas, but we've been too embarrassed to recount the tales as, well, we've not exactly been hitting high-roller status. On the bright side we didn't lose a huge amount of money, but this is less down to a perfectly worked out gambling strategy and more down to a result of our abject fear at moving away from the penny slot machines. Even the nickel machines would often seem too risky for us. We weren't even able to take advantage of the free drinks that the casinos offer, as every time the waitress returned with our order we'd already spent our limit for the evening and were off to pastures new. Tonight, though, we managed to win $9 so we decided to quit while we were only slightly behind.

One of the advantages of Vegas, other than it's ability to turn your obscenely bulging wallet into something far more anorexic looking, is it's relative proximity to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Admittedly by "relative proximity" we mean a 5 hour bus journey, but it's not every day that you get an opportunity to see one of the 7 Wonders of the Modern World so we grasped it with both hands. This day trip cost us quite a bit more than the Disney trip would have done but, even though we're not here to play existensial Hide and Seek and find ourself, we somehow felt that seeinf the canyon would be slightly more life-affirming and awe-inspiring than seeing a bloke dressed in a rubber suit who was unlikely to be bouncing on his tail.

Because of the length of the drive, the bus departed our hotel at 6.30AM. The upside to this, if you can accept that there can be one at this time of day, was that they supplied a continental breakfast. This consisted of a cheese danish, a banana and a Kellog's breakfast bar. If anyone knows exactly which continent regularly serves this as their first meal of the day then, please, let us know.

As we drove to our first stop, the Hoover Dam, we were given some information about the area we were travelling through and shown a couple of video's about what we would be seeing. We'd like to tell you if they were interesting or not, but we were half asleep during most of this so it's all a bit of a subconscious blur - it was only the stop at the Hoover Dam that shook us back into the world of wakefulness. It was worth waking up for though, as the Dam is a very lovely thing indeed. As with the casinos there's absolutely no need for it to have been designed with beauty as well as functionality in mind, particularly as it's out in the middle of nowhere, but design it that way they did, especially as the idea of spending money on anything aesthetically pleasing seems to be anethema to those in power in this day and age. It's a stunning piece of art-deco engineering, designed to look like, in a heavily stylised way, two hands holding back the water. All the associated buildings are just as beautifully designed and, by all accounts, the inside of the dam is rather fab as well, although we couldn't find this out for ourselves as not only did we not have enough time, but also we wouldn't have been allowed in anyway due to the fact that the Dam is considered to be a terrorist target. Even driving past it means your vehicle is subject to an inspection. Even if the inspection that we got simply involved the guard standing next to to the drivers seat, giving a cursory glance down the bus then buggering off again. Persumably as none of us were carrying a black sphere with a fizzing fuse and the word "BOMB" written on it in big white letters meant that we were not a danger to the freedom of the western world. Hooray for their ever watchful presence and awe-inspring vigilance!

After leaving the Dam we headed off to get our kicks driving along part of route 66. This famous highway was the backbone of the American road systens and masses of truckers, travellers, tinkers and tourists swear by it. This is unlike the motorway system of the UK, who's users swear at it. Having said that though, once you get past the romanticised image of it, it is just a road who's main purpose is to get you from A to B quite quickly. If anything it's main function is to stand as a testiment to the power of Americans to turn anything into a tourist attraction.

After this it was onto the main event, the entire purpose of the trip and something which we were very excited about seeing - the Grand Canyon itself. The bus parked a short distance away from the South Rim, there was no obvious sign of what was lurking just out of sight. After going up a slight incline and passing through some bushes, the vista enters your view and you're immediatly struck dumb by the wonder that is before you. It's a cliche to say that words alone cannot do it justice, but like most cliches, there's an element of truth in it. Even photographs could not convey the full beauty of the sight which lay before us. A massive rip in the landscape, the other side is barely visible although the bottom, worrylingly enough, is all too clear. It's a stunning mix of reds and oranges and golds, much like the hair of a certain pop star of whom we're beloved. While we're loathe to say that it's more gorgeous than Nicola, especially as being likened to a gaping whole isn't a comparison that most women would welcome, it's certainly on a par and has been added to TiaPL's 117 Acest Things... Ever.

We stared awestruck at nature's finest act of lanscape gardening for a while, watching as one man's hat got blown off and into the canyon. He briefly dived after it before realising the stupidity of this and gave it up for lost. Presumably it's now being worn by one of the many vultures which, rather disconcertingly, were dotted around the crabs and outcrops below. We eventually managed to drag ourselves away from the wondrous sight that filled our eyes and began to walk along the edge of the canyon (this is a lot less thrilling and dangerous than it sounds) towards the next viewing point on the rim.

Here, our friendly neighbourhood tour guides were on hand with a couple of telescopes to point out a number of things of interest along the bottom of the canyon. As well as useful and worthwhile stuff such as the Phantom Ranch - not Scooby Doo related, but the only place you can stay at the bottom of the canyon, and we would have stayed there too if it hadn't have been for you meddling kids - and the Colorado river, we were also shown the location of two toilets availiable down there. Not only were they miles away from even the sillhouette of civilisation offered by the Ranch, but there was also no mention of whether they were actually connected to any sort of plumbing system. What, we wanted to know, happened to the mess? We never did find out, but we did start eyeing some of the browner mounds rising up against the horizon with suspicion.

After this we carried on with our walk around the canyon. The view to our right was still as blood rushingly wow-worrthy as it was when we first saw it, but we must admit that as we went westwards we did become a little bit blase and accustomed to the view and stopped paying it as much attention as we had been previously. This was partly down to the fact that it's not hugely safe to walk around looking 90 degrees from the direction your heading, especially if theirs a massive drop to your right hand side, but was mainly down to the fact that we'd met two attractive Irish girls and we were were chatting to them instead. There may be a platitude lurking here about beauty being all around if you look for it, but we're buggered if we know what it is.

Alas, our tour of the canyon had to finally come to an end. With one last glance at the landscaped beauty we got back on to the bus and headed off on the long journey back to Vegas. As darkness fell we crossed over the Hoover Dam once again. As it was night time it had been all lit up like a Christmas tree and managed to look even more impressive than in the daytime, even if having it bright and shining in the dark made the aforementioned terrorists job a lot easier. More bright lights were to be seen as we re-entered Nevada and drove back down The Strip but they failed to exite us as much as they had done on our first day here. Perhaps it was because after seeing one of the greatest sights the world has to offer we'd become a little bit more jaded to mankind's rather futile attempts to create it's own dazzling sights. Maybe we were thinking what collection of flashing lights could ever hold a candle to even the dullest example of what Nature has created? Could the Grand Canyon have put us in touch with our inner hippy, man? Possibly. But it's more likely that we were just so tired after the long day that we'd had you could have given us a set of Girls Aloud Pez dispensers and we'd still have probably have just gone "Meh" and headed off to bed with a dismissive air. Which is pretty much exactly what we did once we got back to the hotel, dreaming happy dreams after a very satisfying day.

It'll come as no surprise to anyone that Las Vegas is something of a sleazy city. Indeed, there's a popular saying around the town which goes "Whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas". In reality though, the only thing likely to be left behind in Vegas is the money that you brought to gamble with. On the Strip this seedy underbelly is most noticeable as it relates to a group of flyerers who appear at virtually every intersection as you travel between casinos.

Sure, head downtown and the seediness is much more open, with many motels renting rooms by the hour and proudly advertising that the offer free adult movies, but the Strip itself does seem to try and give off a more family oriented air, if you ignore the whole gambling side of things, that is. This pseudo-respectable vibe is somewhat destroyed by the flyerers who agressively hand out leafelts promising naked girls direct to your door. A more erotica based fast food service if you will, and we're sure that Indian,Chinese and Thai are all on offer. The whole concept puts us in mind of the sort of dodgy porn film where a pizza delivery man turns up at the home of a bored housewife whereupon he offers her a special deal on hot stuffing, only with the gender roles reversed and without the need for a dough, tomato and cheese based subtext. We reckon that the person ringing your doorbell will still have a dodgy moustache though.

The most interesting thing about them is not the annoying way they desperately try and force their flyers into your hand, but that they don't care who they're targetting, while you'd expect them to aim for single men, groups of guys and anyone who looked vaguely laddish/desperate. They, on the other hand, target just anyone; husbands walking with their wives, the wives themselves, familes, elderly gentlement who look unlikely to even remember the number to call, let alone what to do when confronted with a naked woman. While we're not going to say that no married couple would ever want a naked girl delivered to their hotel room - we've read Dear Deirdre, we know what goes on - we're not totally convinced that they're handing them out in the right location, flushing them down the toilet would be far more appropriate.

While the girls on offer were described as hot, somehow we doubt that that claim would stand up to vigorous investigation under the trades description act, one thing which did live up to the term was the weather. It was 99^oF today, (37^oC)or, to give it it's official meteorlogical term "Fuck me, it's hot". It was the kind of weather were sensible people remain indoors amongs the cooling joy that air conditioning brings and definitely don't go wanderinh down the Strip looking for excitement and adventure. Can you guess what we did? Well done.

To be fair, we weren't just walking along tempting the God of Sunstroke and Prickly Heat to strike us down, not only did we follow the advice of Baz Luhrman and wear sunscreen we ducked in and out of the casinos looking for as much free entertainment as we could get our hands on. This included a car exhibition at the Imperial Palace, which was exactly as dull as it sounds, and waiting for half an hour to see the talking statues at Caeser's Palace, which didn't happen because, as we later found out, we were waiting at the wrong statues. The ones we were watching don't talk, have never talked and if they ever talk in the future, it's going to be down to witchcraft.

We also caught part of a show by an Elvis impersonator, which is pretty much de rigour in Vegas. This was no bog-standard Elvis look-a-like though. No. This was Big Elvis who is quite easily the fattest man we've ever seen wearing a jumpsuit. Not that we've seen a great deal of men in jumpsuits, we hasten to add. He was so large that he didn't even perform standing up. Instead he sang whilst sitting in an armchair, though this may not have been through choice, but down to necessity due to him being physically wedged into the chair.

As an impersonator, he was pretty good. His set included an excellent cover of Dire Strait's Walk of Life and, despite being confined to a chair he did have the action and the motion. Oh yeah, the boy could play. His huge size certainly spoke volumes about his dedication and devotion, even if actual walking, whether of the life variety or otherwise, wasn't something that was high on his agenda.

So, it's goodbye to the den of sin that is LA and hello to the even more sinful, wanton and shameless city of Las Vegas, the only city in the world that would consider a neon shortage to be of greater consequence than a water drought.

Vegas is an exciting place, there's certainly a buzz as you enter the city, though this may be caused by the aforementioned neon overdose. Even though we arrived in mid-afternoon, the lights were blazing, the music was pumping and through every door could be heard the tinkling of slot machines paying out.

For the first time on this trip we're staying in a hotel, yes, an actual real proper hotel, this is partly down to the fact that outside of weekends the cost of a hotel room is basically the same as what you'd pay for a bed in a hostel, if you book in advance, but it's mainly because we've been in hosteling for the past month and we feel that we've earnt a bit of luxury, thank you very much.

All the hotels on the Strip are themed, Luxor has it's Egyptian stylings, Excalibur has a King Arthur/medieval vibe, while the Venetian has an Italian theme, rather than a blind one, even if some of the more garish designs lead you to beleive that the architect was. Our own place of residence, Circus Circus has, unsurprisingly, a circus theme to iy. This extends to having a big top as the main entrance, circus acts performing in the middle of the casino at various times of the day and pictures of clowns all over their advertising material. Indeed, such is their love of the comical face-painted entertainers, (clowns, not Kiss) that one of the channels on TV, designed to promote the various fun things, activities and restaurants availiable in the hotel, takes on the form of a TV station entirely staffed by clowns, even the newscaster. We don't reckon that this would be a good station to watch when you're stoned.

After briefly enjoying the novelty of not having to sleep in a bunk bed and of having a private shower, we ventured out on to the Strip and had our first proper experience of Vegas. The thing that struck us, and the thing we instantly adored, was the utter pointlessness of the casino's architecture. Is there any need for Paris to have a large recreation of the Eiffel Tower outside? No. Is it necessary for Treasure Island to be guarded by two pirate ships? Course not. Is a massive roller coaster running along the exterior and through the interior of New York New York vital to the running of the operation? God no! From the indoor canal at the Venetian to the massive bird bothering tower of the Stratosphere, they're all completely useless. All, that is, except for the shaft of light fired into the night sky by the pyramid shaped Luxor. This not serves as a beacon for drunk gamblers, helping them find their hotel at the end of the night, but it also has the ability to blind unsuspecting pilots who are flying over it when it gets switched on. For the others though, it's the lack of justification that makes them so fantastic. After all someone, who's name we've forgotten, but we're sure it was someone who's opinion matters and not just some random bloke that we met down the pub, once said that all art must be functionless otherwise it ceases to be artistic. Only the truely useless things are those which should be valued. Of course, following this idea through to it's logical conclusion implies that Jenny Frost is absolutely priceless which, to be fair, she is, though only in the most literal sense of the word.

The greatest of all the pointless features is the dancing fountains outside the Bellagio. You may well have seen dancing fountains before, in which casae you're probably thinking "Oh, for fuck's sake Mr Flum, dancing fountaints are pish of the highest order", in which case we'd firstly ask you to mind your language as we have family members reading this, and secondly we'd like to agree. Dancing fountains are pish of the highest order, but these ones are possibly the only good dancing fountains in the world. For a start there are 1000 fountain and, as we all know, other than in the case of Rik Waller, bigger is better. Secondly, these fountains don;t just spit half heartedly into the air almost, but not quite, in time with the music, while bearing little relation to the mood and energy of the pice, these ones dance with fire in their watery bellies, unlikely and, in a putely factual sense, untrue as that may seem. We watched them dance along to All That Jazz from Chicago. Later, when we walked past, we noticed that they were dancing, without apparant shame, to Faith Hill's This Kiss. had this been the performance we'd seen we'd probably have been a little less impressed.

We took a trip to Santa Monica and Venice Beach today. Venice Beach is, of course, the home of the beautiful people, so naturall we fitten in like a Metallica CD sandwiched between Madonna and Kylie Minogue in a CD collection. The beach itself is a pleasant enough area, though once again capitalism rears its ugly head and the head that rears is the ugliest one of all - hippy capitalism. All along the promenade is row after tow of stalls selling such enticing items as badly painted pictures, poor quality 'silver' jewelery, exotic glasswear for display purposes only which definitely aren't bongs, ethnic clothing which would only be worn by someone who is not only blind, but who's entire social circle is also visually impaired. If that wasn't enough, at regular intervals down the beach can be found numerous buskers for whom a tune is an abstract concept that one day they hope to master. We turned tail and left the rollerbladers, the muscle beachers and the sellers of aromatherapy starter kits to it.

Hollywood is the home of the premiere, but despite our best efforts we failed miserably to get invited to anything exciting, decent or even actually good. The best we got offered was tickets to see a screening of Van Helsing or be in the audience for Jimmy Kimmel Live. Both of these were two days after we left so weren't a lot of good. The Hostel we were staying at, however, clearly seeing the disappointment the residents were suffering caused by their failure to penetrate the LA party scene provided a premire of their own, admittedly in an extremely mediocre way.

It turned out that one of the blokes who worked in the reception was an aspiring stand-up comic and had won some sort of comedy competition. As a result of this he was now one of the people involved in the new series of Punk'd. Punk'd, for those who don't know, and this included us until this evening, is MTV's hidden camera show which performs allegedly amusing stunts on unsuspecting celebrities. Basically it's Noel Edmond's Gotchas, only with slightly higher rent stars than Linda Lusardi and Lionel Blair. It was, quite frankly, rubbish, but the hostel was very proud of the 'star' within their midst and provided champagne while we watched the premiere of the series, and by champagne they meant somethng which tasted suspiciously like pomagne, and by premiere they meant "we've taped it off the telly and you can watch it half an hour after the rest of the country".

Adter the delights of a show that made even the hidden camera sections on Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway look like the height of comedy genius, we were then treated to a night of stand-up comedy, starting off with the brand new star of Punk'd himself. As may have been expected given the high quality of what we'd just seen, he was dire. This was clearly a theme of the evening as we had a number of comedians and they were all, with a couple of exceptions, about as funny as a motorbike accident. Perhaps it wasn't their fault though, as they weren't performing to a hugely receptive crowd. While the place was full, the audience was far more interested in partaking of the beer that was availiable for $1 a bottle rather than listening to the pearls of wit which the comedians presumably intended to impart.

Towards the end of the gig we moved closer to the front and the show improved immesurably. This may have been down to the fact that the comedians got better. It may have been down to the fact that we could hear the comics better without the chatter from the bar drowning them out. It may even have been down to the fact that we were closer to the funny and it didn't have a chance to decay in a Carbon-14 half-life kinda way, but it's more likely that it was down to the fact that by this point we'd partaken of quite a few of the $1 beers ourselves and were quite, quite drunk and when you're drunk even the most rubbish things can seem hilarious. including motorcycle accidents and Punk'd. Well, maybe not Punk'd, thinking about it.

We also got described as looking like a "cool Harry Potter" by the compere. This is better than being called "The Edinburgh Fonz" as Al Murray once described us, but it's not up there with Phil Nichol's "Teenage Jesus" which pleased us. Especially as we were 23 at the time.

After having been on the Jurassic Park ride yesterday, dinosaurs were in our blood. Actually, that's not true, as usual it was merely red cells, white cells and haemoglobins that were coursing through our veins, but even so, we still decided to take ashort trip to see the La Brae tar pits, home of more dinosaurs than a monsters of rock show. Although while we decided to take a short trip to the pits, the inability of any LA map to actually be to some sort of scale meant that what we thought would be a shourt jaunt around the corner turned into a 1 and a half our trek through the streets of LA. Still, it's always a good idea to wander to get a chance to see a city, even if you're seeing a rather shabby and rather dull side of it.

The pits lived up to their name. The smell of tarmac that hit us as we got near reminded us of the foul stench that distrubs you nasally as you approach The Coral's section of a CD store. As you enter the pits you see on your left a tableaux showing a wooly mammoth drowning in the pit while its mate and baby watch on helplessly. This is extremly disturbing and tragic in a way that badly moulded plastic really shouldn't be. If it wasn't for the hot sunshine beating down on us and creating a rosy glow in our heart (and our cheeks and nose, hooray for sunburn!) we might well have broken down and wept there and then, beating the ground with our fists and shouting "Why?!" to a god we don't believe in. Thankfully it wasn't raining, so our dignity managed to remain reasonably intact.

Wiping away a stray tear which was caused by a piece of grit in our eye, yes, that's right, grit, we entered the museum to see what there was to see. The most attractive piece was a collection of skulls, all from the same animal covering an entire wall. Same kind of animal, that is. The tar does not, as far as we know anyway, have any sort of mutagenic powers. The animal in question was the now extinct Dire Wolf. We like this as an animal name as it's nicely literal and immediatly let's you know that this is a crap version of a proper wolf, hence it's extinction. If only this attitude carried on in the more important sections of the world, then perhaps S Club 8 would have to officially be called The Rubbish S Club 7. This literal animal naming continued when we found the display of the fragile eagle. This, too, is extinct. We were shattered when we found out.

We headed off to visit the Getty Centre next, taking the bus this time having, for possibly the first time ever, learnt from our mistake. The Getty is, rather unsurprisingly, owned by the ridiculously rich John paul Getty. While it would be a fallacy to say that he has all the money in the world, it's pretty safe to say that he does have a large chunk of the Christmas pudding, and he probably still sulks if he doesn't get the sixpence. In a spirit of philanthropy, he's opened a number of museums in the US to display some of his vast collection of art. Personally we're of the view that these things should be on public display anyway without having to rely on the crumbs that well meaning rich people decide to toss from their overstocked table. And crumbs is very much the operative word here, as while the collection was large and presumably priceless, other than a couple of Monets, there was very little that was woth seeing. Still, the building was quite nice.

The happiest place on earth is, of course, Disneyland, and not the set of the latest Girls Aloud video, as you may be thinking. Disneyland is just 1 hour away from LA and we'd been really looking forward to going there, mainly because we wanted to meet Tigger, one of our heroes. After all, how can you fail to admire someone who is not only bouncy and trouncy, but also flouncy and pouncy, and that's not even mentioning the fact that he's fun, fun, fun, fun, fun. Meeting him would clearly have been a lifetime highlight on a par with winning Nicola's Shoe and discovering Wonka Xploda Bars. Alas, though, it didn't happen. We didn't go to Disneyland.

There are two reasons for this, first up is the fact that we would hae had to pay $85 to get out there and get into the park, which is just under our budget for two days, so that immediatly put a bit of a downer on the idea. Secondly, and slightly more importantly, was the fact that our Travelling Companion wasn't hugely keen on the idea, and we felt that going to a theme park, mainly populated by children, by ourselves and then desperately searching for Tigger was a sure fire way of attracting unwanted attention from overzealous Disney security guards. While we're sure that Tigger would have leapt to our aid if such a circumstance did arise, we decided it wasn't worth the hassle and instead put the idea to the back of our mind.

Having missed out on Disney, though, we still had a theme park hunger that needed to be filled, so with that in mind we took a trip to Universal Studios instead. While it's not the happiest place on earth, it's certainly the moviest and, just because it rhymes, we're going to declare it to be the grooviest place as well, as it's an extremely ace place, even if there aren't any honey hating, cat-like creatures wandering around.

The greatest thing about the park is the sense off immersement that you get as you wait for each ride. OK, you never quite lose the awareness that you're in a place designed to extract as much money from you as humanly, if not humanely, possible, and you're also always slightly conscious that it's being done to disguise queueing times, but it doesn't really matter because it's done so well. The Back to the Future ride treats you as a volunteer for a time travel experiment at the Institute for Future Technology, complete with introduction from Doc Brown himself, T2-3D sets you up as a delegate at a top secret demonstration of Cyberdine's new technology, while Shrek 4-D has you waiting inside Lord Fahrquaar's torture chamber with the 3 Little Pigs exhorting you still can, before then giving you a quick overview to the film which is about to unfold before your eyes.

The rides themselves manage to be even better than the queueing experience, if you can believe that such a thing is possible. Our particular favourite was the T2-3D show, especially the part when the actor on stage who looked a little bit, but not quite like Arnie 'entered' the filmed section of the show and immediatly transformed into Arnie. The difference was highlighted during the section where the 'live' non-Arnie was in front of the screen, but was miming to lines that the screen real-Arnie, appearing live on security cameras for the purpose of plot, was saying on the screen behind him.

The other 3-D, well 4-D as they claim, ride, Shrek, was also rather fantastic, given that this is 3D that actually works and convinces you that an animated donkey voiced by Eddie Murphy is genuinely spitting on you, an experience that can normally only be achieved by high quantities of hallucinogenics. It's certainly a better experience than the rubbish blue and red affair nonsense which is still common in UK theme parks that offer you the hitherto unknown thrill of being in a 50's racing car team or travelling in a hot air balloon with a man who has a curious moustache. The excitement there just never starts.

It's not just rides that are on offer, there's a number of shows as well. Most famous of these is probably the studio tour which goes through the genuine Universal backlot, though it is at pains to keep you away from any of the actual movie-making goings on. The tour itself also includes a number of shocks and surprises or, at least, it would have done had our tour guide not been the worst actor known to man and managed to signpost any possibly shocking or surprising occurence by putting in the sort of hammy performance last seen in Babe 2: Pig in the City.

Other live action spectaculars included the Blues Brother R&B revue; better than BB2000, not exactly hard, though the person playing Elwood didn't exactly convince, Waterworld; very ace indeed, and it means we don't actually need to see the movie now, and the very mighty indeed Spiderman Rocks. This transformed the Spiderman story into a rock musical, which is quite clearly what Sam Raimi should have done when he got hold of the franchise. The tale was told using the songs of Bonnie Tyler (Hero), Ricky Martin, (She Bangs), an excellent mash up of those two songs, Christina Milian (AM to PM) the Spiderman theme itself and, the crowning glory to the piece, a fight scene between Spidey and the Green Goblin choreographed to Queen's Another One Bites the Dust. Yes, it is exactly as good as you're imagining, and we hope that Ben Elton is considering this as his next big move.

While we'd been in San Francisco, we used up some of our time attempting to learn how to play a large, stringed instrument. All good things come to an end, alas, and it was far too big and bulky to carry with us on the bus to Los Angeles, our next destination, so we decided just to leave it behind in our room in the hope that someone else would find it and take an interest in it. In other words, we left our harp in San Fransiso.

Anyway, the journey to LA was another long one, 8 hours, but the time passed pretty quickly on this one due to the guy sitting next to us on the bus being in a chatty mood. He was a decent bloke, but he was a bit lacking in knowldge of the world outside of the US. Indeed, he seemed to be of the view that the countries in the world are positioned alphabetically, holding the firmly held belief that Scotland was next door to Switzerland.

After we'd arrived in LA and finished giving a potted, and admittedly somewhat inaccurate, history of caledonian culture, we checked into our hostel, located just off of Holywood Boulevarde and left to see what the home of film and entertainment had to offer us. as it turned out, a premiere was on offer, but it was for a film called Godsend, which we'd never heard of, so we didn't bother hanging around to see who was going to turn up. Robert De Niro was in it, so he was probably there, but given that he's appeared in not one, but two films with Billy "City Slickers" Crystal, it can safely be said that he is now artistically null and void.

We also took a look at the Hollywood Walk of Fame. At first this is pretty cool as you see the names of such giants of the entertainment industry as Britney Spears, Marilyn Monroe, Rod Serling, Pee Wee Herman, Donald P Bellasario and Ginger Roberts. Sorry Rogers. Eventually, though, there comes a point when you realise that not only are you just walking down a street looking at a lot of random names, half of which you don't even recognise, you also find out that Michael Bolton has somehow been awarded a star. And, if that wasn't enough, they've also seen fit to award David Hasselhoff one as well. The only phrase which adequately sums up a situation like this is, clearly, "Oh, for fucks sake.".

The Golden Gate Bridge was standing proud against the skyline just two and a half miles from where we were staying, so we decided it would be churlish to pass up the opportunity to pay it a visit. While it's undoubtably impressive in its scale, beauty and the way it represents an entire city in a striking, bold way, it does disappoint in its colour. You see, it's not actually golden, insstead it's painted in more of a rusty colour. At least, we hope it's paint and not actual bona-fide rust. With that doubt in our mind, we decided not to risk wandering across it, for fear that it might suddenly disentegrate into a cloud of unsupported flakes.

After that, we stuck with the golden vibe and headed towards Golden Gate Park. The time spent in the park was enjoyable and lovely, but there wsan't a lot that actually happened there, which is a bit of a problem when you're writing a daily diary. Normally we wouldn't even bother mentioning something like this on-line, but the park did have a herd of bison, and we want to point out that if we ever get a pet bison, which would surely be living the dream, we'd call it Tennial.

Feeling a need to be spiritually cleansed after the direness of the previous pun, we went to the Mission District to look at the Mission of Dolores, the oldest building in San Francisco. To get there we went via the Haight district. This was where all the free love and hippy happenings for which San Fransisco is reknowned went on, nowadays there's more of a retro-clothing store and record shop vibe to the place now, but it's still a fab area with ace murals over many of the walls. Mind you, there seems to be a distinct lack of free love full stop in the streets of modern day SF. Indeed, the only places we've seen offering love are the ones where you have to pay for it, and no friendship bracelets hair beads or tie-dyed t-shirts are goint to get you even a discount, let alone a freebie. Ummm, not that we tried this or anything, right?

Just off the coast of San Francisco is the unwelcoming sight of Alcatraz. The island achieved it's notoriety when it was used as a prison to hold such ne'er do wells as Michael Stroud and Al Capone locked up for their own good. The crimes of those who were kept there included such heinous deeds as murder, kidnap and, umm, tax evasion. It was eventually closed in the sixties as it was proving to be too expensive to run. This is a shame as we feel it would be the perfect place to hold at least 73% of Blazin' Squad and still have room left over to hold all of Vs. It's not all bad news though, it's now a tourist attraction, hooray! So we decided to take a cruise (yes, another one) and pay it a visit.

On arrival, we were slightly disappointed to discover that it's not an Alcatrazland style theme park. There was a part of us hoping, and it's somethign we long for every time we turn round an unknown corner, to see an animatronic Al Capone gesticulating with a tommy gun as we came into port but, alas, it was not to be. Indeed, we've been disappointed as a whole with the lack of animatronic people on this trip. Cursed real people. Hopefully this is something that will be rectified later on on our travels.

Alcatraz is a somewhat foreboding place. After watching an introductory video which came straight from the eighties, we walked up the hill to see the infamous complex itself. The prison is a cold, dirty, very enclosed place with an unwelcoming dining area and communal showers which are designed to strip the inmates of any last vestiges of dignity and self-respect that they might have had left. Much like the hostel we're staying in here, as a matter of fact. The prision is, of course, famous as being the only prison from which no-one escaped from. Apart, that is, for the 3 people that probably managed it, but because they probably drowned on their way ashore, they don't count, which is a little bit like saying if you ignore all their bad singles, also known as their entire discography, Westlife are the best pop band ever, something which isn't going to stand up in any court of law.

Once back on the mainland we took a quick look around the Alcatraz gift shop, this contained such myriad items as black and white striped prison uniforms, t-shirts bearing slogans like "Too Cute for Alcatraz" and "Alcatraz Psycho Ward Patient", hats declaring "I escaped from Alcatraz!" and other items which clearly show the world what an absolute you are a crazy sense of humour you have.

We also took a trip to see MOMA, not a companion piece to Radiohead's Kid A, but the San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art. The museum looked fantastic in photographs, but is a bit ropey looking close-up, a bit like Madonna, and they both have a similar amount of plaster covering up their cracks.

Inside we enjoyed some excellent pieces by Warhol, Lichtenstein, Hirst and Jasper Johns, but the highlight was the Paint By Numbers Last Supper, and it was such a highlight that we've managed to forget who it was by. Sorry. Also excellent was a video installation tucked away from the main gallery which featured a tiny monitor in the floor showing a trapped under there and who was desperately asking to be let out and freed. At least, we assume it was an installation and not reality. It's easy to get confused in galleries - we once spent a good half hour enjoying a piece which featured two glass plates sliding apart as we walked towards it, before moving apart as we walked away. We'd just decided that it represented the desire for love and togetherness, but as you get closer to achieving your dream you push it away and it all falls apart, when we were politely asked by the security guard to "stop buggering around with the exit door". We reckon he was something of a philistine.

More cable ca based activities today, well, we've got a three day pass so we might as well make the most of it, but not only did we ride the cars today, we even visited the cable car museum as well. Mainly because it was free, which is always a plus point when it comes to tourist attractions, we turn our noses up at suggested donations and care not for the cost of repairing the wear and tear which are footsteps cause as we wander through there buildings. Indeed, much of today was spent doing things that involved little hand in pocket action.

As well as the museum, we took a trip to see Lombard Street, a throughfare which they proudly claim is the windiest street in the world, and that's windy as in back and forth, not as in gales or flatulence. The street was clearly a major influence on the Spice s, such was it's zig-a-zag-ah action.

As with many cities in the world, San Fransisco has more than it's fair share of street performers - it's hard to say what is the fair share, we normally consider it to be none within five miles of us, which goes to show that life isn't fair. SF, however, does seem to have a greater variety than most places we've visited. So far we've seen some blokes playing steel drum; their version of Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot was rather fab, their version of Dancing Queen was less so, two silver painted blokes bodypopping with no obvious look of shame, presumably the silver paint helped hide their blushes. We've also seen a half-naked bloke tap dancing, an apparantly accordian player and the heart-warming optimism of someone wearing a mask who played two notes on a recorder, then held his hand out expectantly as we walked past. There was also the keyboardist who is probably the only man in the world to consider Robert Miles to be a valid musical influence. We nearly gave him a few of the dollars we'd saved out of sympathy.

We arrived in San Fransisco today, though we did forget to wear any flowers in our hair. This was a bit of a mistake, as it transpires that floral headwear is now a legal requirement for entering the city. We had to think very quickly as we stepped out of the bus for our hair inspection. Swiftly we grabbed some dandelions from the road edge and, with a confident manner, we managed to convince the officer that they weren't just weeds, honest.

Our first step was to take a cable car to our hostel a move which is similar to having the phrase "I'm a tourist, please mug me" tatooed across your forehead, but it did get us to where we wanted to go, albeit in a very slow, slightly dangerous manner. The hostel itself is located at Fisherman's Wharf, looking out on one side towards the warm welcoming sight of the Golden Gate Bridge, and on the other to the slightly less warm and welcoming view of Alcatraz. For those who may not be aware, Alcatraz is nost famous for having a starring rolel in a rubbish film starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage. Oh, and apparantly some bad people were locked up there, alas not Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage.

The afternoon was spent wandering the Wharf area of San Fransisco. In amongst the tributes to Starfleet's much loved Klingon warror was an array of shops designed to seperate touists from their hard-earned pennies. We looked into one called "Only in San Francisco" which, putting aside it's selection of badly painted recreations of the Golden Gate Bridge contained exactly the same tat we've seen in every other city we've visited, only with "San Francisco" written on instead. Uniqueness is clearly not a major development area in the US tourist tat industry.

The area also contains a man who makes his living by hiding behind a collection of branches he carries around with him and leaping out and scaring unsuspecting passer bys. This is very entertaining when you watch it happen, and it made us seriously consider taking it up when we return to the world of working. On the other hand, it is a lot less entertaining when you're the one who is being pushed close to a heart attack. Or so we'd imagine anyway, we certainly didn't jump a mile out of our trousers when he did it to us later on that evening. No, definitely not. Ahem.

We like squirrels. Admittedly we prefer the red kind, naturally, but they're somewhat thin on the ground in the US. And the UK for that matter, but never mind. Our fondness for the bushy-tailed vermin is such that we spent a chunk of today watching the squirrels happily eating, climbing and playing in the park. Oh, and fightng. Quite a lot of fighting, in fact, but it did give us the only opportunity outside of a Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon to hear what sort of noise a squirrel makes - an anguished squeak, in case you're wondering. We were sorely tempted to rescue one of the poor, put upon victims and take it with us as a mascot and pet for the rest of our trip. We planned on calling it Albert, keeping it in our inside jacket pocket, with its head sticking out of the top and feeding it on M&M's and Pez's. Albert, however, was not keen to take part in a coat based existence and buggered off every time we got anywehere near to him. The little bastard.

As well as playing at being a low-rent David Attenborough, we found time to go on a river boat cruise - you know, this 3 month holiday lark can be very taxing at times. An enjoyable hour was spent relaxing and watching the world go by, even if the world that went by mainly consisted of Old Sacramento, an area of town that might as well have had a big neon sign flashng "We Fleece Tourists" above it, such is it's subtlety. It is a pleasant enough place though, in it's own quaintly historic kind of way.

Alas, we have had no further freebies from the hostel. Indeed, the only other gratis thing that's been on offer was a sample of "Salt Water Taffy" from a candy store in Old Sacramento. Of those 3 words, not a single one sounded appetising, so we decided to pass and buy ourselves a Tigger Pez dispenser instead. A much wiser move.

Despite the number of people wanting to blow up buildings, assasinate politicians and generally cause mischief and mayhem, the US is surprisingly open when it comes to it's Government builidings, which is why we spent some time to day wandering around Sacramento's Capitol Building - workplace of none other than top thespian and political expert Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Governer who, lest we forget, had lead roles in such cinematic classics as Kindergarten Cop and Junior, was in the building during our visit but, alas, he never made an appearence. This was presumably because he was incredibly busy and had nothing to do with the fact that there was a lot of students protesting outside the building and he was hiding, scared, in his office. This was a shame as we were looking forward tp asking him about the finer points of the State's investment into healthcare. Oh, and we wanted to know exactly what he was thinking of when he agreed to do Jingle All The Way.

The Capitol Building also has a gift shop. This shouldn't really be surprising, given the ever so slightly capitalistic nature of the country that we're in, but it was anyway. As you'd expect though, seeing as it was a Government building, the gifts were from the tasteful end of the spectrum; books about the history of California, keyrings featuring the State Seal, glasses engraved with the State's motto, that sort of thing. At least, this was how it seemed for the most part - for along side all this semi-austere nonsense you could find a nodding head Arnie toy for your car, t-shirts featuring the slogan "The Governator" and, the piece de resistance, a George Bush Jack in the Box which plays Hail to the Chief. Should we see the latter item again towards the end of the trip, we feel we'll be very likely to buy it and give it pride of place once we return to the UK.

So, we decided to cut short our visit to Redwood. This does not, however, imply that we're quitters, weak, lazy or scared of a little bit of rain. It merely shows that we're astute of mind and body and simply wanted to use the time availiable to us in the most constructive way. And besides, we'd walked 22 miles yesterday and our feet were killing us.

The weather hadn't improved, as we discovered first hand as we waited for forty minutes for our bus, getting drenched as we did so. Quite why the driver decided that this sort of weather meant it was a good time to dawdle down the road, we'll never know. Suffice to say that we were spent our time on the bus in a grumpy, miserable and undeniably wringing wet kind of a mood.

The journey to Sacramento, our next stop on the trip took ten hours and there's not really a lot that can be said about it, so we won't waste any more valuable pixels talking about it. On arrival at the hostel the bloke in charge offered us a cup of tea and, later, a bottle of cider, albeit of the non-alcoholic variety. This isn't quite up to to the high bar of the Shuswap Bag of Muffins, but it's a promising start.

Last week we slept on a train which was, as is obvious to all but the most truly foolish, e.g. the sort of person who's still waiting for a third OTV single, one of the 117 Acest Things in the World... Ever! Last night we slept on a bus. This was not an ace experience. There was no living out of childhood fantasies, no chance to pretend to be the driver. Hell, there wasn't even an opportunity to wear the driver's hat. Unfortunately we had little choice in the matter as the only bus that went from Portland to Redwood National Park, the next stop on the trip, left Portland at 9.45PM and didn't get in to Redwood until 8.15 in the morning. We had a funny, chatty driver, which isn't really a good thing when you're desperately trying to get as much sleep as possible, two hours as it turns out, despite being in a space which has clearly been designed to keep you as physically uncomfortable as they can without breaching regulations on transporting cattle. A phrase involving quarts and pint pots comes to mind.

After apologising to any deity who may have been listening for whaterver misdeed we'd commited which caused this punishment, we looked up to realise that we'd arrived in Redwood. We also realised that the deities don't take kindly to blatant efforts to imporve your lot by dyed in the wool atheists, as we saw that it was raining. Why this was such a bad thing may need some explaining; We started out trip in Vancouver, a notoriously rainy city. For us, however, the sun shone, the warm air glistened in a heat haze and everything was bright and lovely. In Seattle, a city equally famed for it's precipitation, a heatwave was in progress. So what happens once we enter California, a place revered for it's sunshine and hot weather? The rain lashes down like a thing posessed and drowning seems like it's going to be a valid danger. This, in itself, wouldn't have been an overly bad thing if it wasn't for the fact that we were in Redwood, a place where there is nothing to do except go hiking. A place where there is nothing to do except go hiking, and they lock you out of the hostel between 10AM and 5PM. A place where there is nothing to do except go hiking, you get locked out of the hostel between 10AM and 5PM, and where we're planning on spending 2 days.

Not considering this one of the best ideas in the world, we nevertheless decided to go hiking dressed in a way that could be described, in it's most basic form, as "Seriously underprepared". Essentially we knocked on hypothermia's door shouting "Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough"

As it turned out the hike was, for the most part, quite enjoyable. As we spent time amongs the redwoods (we assumed they were redwoods, our tree knowledge is only slightly more advanced than our rose knowledge), a feeling of enormous well-being swept over us. We felt at one with nature, part of the never ending cycle of life and an important link in the chain of the wilderness. Admitteldly we were peeing against a tree at that precise moment, but you've got to take these things where you can find them.

Our happy euphoria faded somewhat though, when we discovered a sign informing us that this was lion and bear country and that we shoudl be on our guard. Unsurprisingly, this failed to put a spring in our step. Luckily they gave us some good advice on how to avoid being attacked, although by 'good', they clearly meant 'stupid'. They recommend "fighting the bear aggressively if it attacks you". Now, while we reckon we're smarter than the average bar, we're pretty confident that our fingernails are not sharper than the average bear's claws. We have no desire to put this to the test though. Other advice includes "keepign small children with you at all times", presumably this is so that you can throw them at anything that's attacking you, then sneak off while it's distracted devouring the kid, and "making lots of noise as you travel around the park". With this in mind we wandered around the park singing the hits of Girls Aloud, Shampoo, allSTARS and LFO in a manner which was full of enthusiasm, if a little lacking in actual tunefullness. This tactic did seem to work, however, as not only did we not see any lions or bears, but we also failed to see any other people whatsoever. Indeed, the only incident of note was when we heard a disturbance in the branches above us. Bravely, and it was bravely, it definitely wasn't panickingly, no matter whay anyone else says, we looked up to briefly snatch a glimpse of a sandy coloured dog passing through the trees. At least we thought it was a dog, it could well have been a very thin, and therefore very hungry, lion. With that thought in mind we hastened on our way and returned to the hostel as swiftly as we could.

We visited the Rose Garden at Washington Park today. It apparantly contains a number of very rare roses whihc can only bee seen in a handful of locations around the world, which meant little to us as we're not exactly a rose expert. We'd be hard pushed to tell the difference between a rare rose and a common or garden specimen. Hell, we'd be hard pushed to tell the difference between a rose and any other kind of flower. Had we been more knowledgeable on the subject then we might have realised that it wasn't the best time to visit a rose garden, what with none of the flowers actually being in bloom yet. It was, basically, just a bunch of pricks, or Oasis fans, to give them the technical term.

At Pioneer Square, they have a large metal weather vane. At midday it appaprantly predicts the weather for the next 24 hours, so we settled down at lunch time to watch it happen. It wasn't quite what we expected. The chicken which was atop the vane disappeared inside the structure, to be replaced by a dragon. The dragon then returned to it's metal prison before being replaced by the chicken again. A spray of water then shot out the top , soaking everyone who had been foolish to stand underneath it. We reckon that this means that it's going to be warm, but showery. Either that or it's a portent of apocalyptic end times as fire breathing, mythological creatures rise up and raze the earth and we all end up as slightly damp chickens. This doesn't sound like a good thing.

"So", we said brightly, or at least as bright as it was possible to be when you've been up and about since 6.15AM, to the hirl sitting next to us on the bus, "What's fun to do in Portland?"

She paused, and ummend and awwed for a bit before answering. "Well, the Saturday Market is cool.", she replied, "How long are you staying for?".

"Just 'til tomorrow."

"Oh..."

So, that didn't hugely well for this particular step in the trip as we waved goodbye to Seattle and headed down towards Portland, the trip itself was quite dull, the scenery wasn't even breathtakingly etcetera, consisting mainly of trees, with the occasional McDonalds, motel, or casion for variety. We got quite excited when we passed through Olympia and saw signs pointing to the Sleater-Kinney Road, but the indie-fanboy in us gets excited very easily by little things liek that it seems.

As it turned out though, the girl was kinda right. The city does have a distinct lack of things to actually, well, do, but even so it's still a reall nice place with interesting buildings, friendly locals and a very good Chinese restautant, even if it's biggest claim to fame is that it has the biggest bookstore in the US.

As we're in a foreign country it's always a good ida to immerse youurself in the local culture. So, bearing that in mind, we found ourselves spending the evening going to a cinema to watch 2 episodes of the top 60's British TV series, The Prisoner. Why, at this rate we'll be eating daily in McDonalds and buying a gun, such is our ability to fit in with our surroundings.

It's Easter Sunday today, which has meant that we've had the song Eggs by The Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players going round our head for the entire day. This has proven to be mildly annoying, especially seeing as the only word of the song that we know is the bit that goes "Eggs.... Eggs.", but is an improvent on having LFO's 'hit' Summer Girls going round our head, which it's been doing ever since we walked past an Abercrombie & Fitch store a couple of days ago, and has now, as a result of typing this, returned to torture our limited headspace. Grr.

We went to visit the Fremont area of Seattle this morning to see what excitements it had to offer. The main joy came from a piece of public art which shows exactly why you should put people who took copious amounts of LSD in the sixties in charge of such things. It's a statue of a troll blocking a bridge, the troll is typically ugly and is clutching a VW Beetle in his left hand, ready for some automobile based chewing. Clearly this is absolutely fantastic and more things like this need to be placed in cities around the world, the only downside was a lack of goat vibes to the piece, though we're sure a quick trip to some farmland can rectify that.

The Seattle Art Museum is currently hosting an exhibition by Christian Marclay and we reckon that you should drop whatever you're doing and rush over here to see it, or at least be slightly hopeful that it turns up at a gallery near you soon as his work is very ace indeed. His art comes out of using music and records to create pieces which both look incredibly cool and are infused with a wit and playfullness which is lacking in many pieces of modern art. Pieces include a pair of glass drumsticks, montages of album sleeves invloving arts of peoples bodies to make full bodies and faces and an elongated accordian, but the ultimate highlight is a piece entitled Video Quartet, which is 4 projections, each projection features parts of movies cut up and stuck together to create an a new audio track, and each projection plays together, creating a 4 track masterpiece which really does need to be seen to appreciate just how fab and amazing it actually is. It's the sort of thijng we'd like to do if we actually had the time and patience. Oh, and the talent.

To start the day off, we went for a wander round the Experience Music Project, for a report on this please visit Talent in a Previous Life, but if you can't be bothered going there, then the summary is that it's a rather ace place, but fails to cover the most important genre of music of all.

Seeing as it was a hot, bright, sunny afternoon in Seattle, we figured that the best way to spend it was by taking the advice of The Jam and going underground and spending some time amongst the cold, damp and smelly parts of the city by going on the Seattle Underground tour. The underground exists thanks to the city burning down to the ground way back in the past when it was thought that building everything out of wood was a damned good idea. One good result of this was that they realised that building everything out of a highly flammable material wasn't necessarily the best idea that anyone had ever had and instead decided to use stone as a building material, hooray for this bright new idea that people had only been aware of since the, umm, stone age.

Anyway, the city was simply rebuilt on top of the burnt remains, but slightly higher, hence the existence of the underground sections now. It's an entertaining way to spend an hour and a half, and helps you acquire a little bit of knowledge of the history of the city. Knowledge which we have, admittedly, promptly forgotten, but that's not the point.

Back on the Greyhound again as we leave Canada behind and get our first glimpse of the United States, which helpfully makes our blog's title relevant and not just an, admittedly rather good, pun. Despite expecting the sort of interrogation which ends with us confessign to crimes that we didn't even think possible, let alone known we'd committed, it turned out to be relatively straightforward and painless. We were slightly confused when we were asked, apropos of nothing, whether we were going to San Fransisco or not. We decided, however, it was best not to question both the question and the sanity of the questioner and answered all the questions with a pleasant "Yes Sir, No Sir, Three Bags Full Sir" kind of attitude.

As Seattle is the home of Starbucks, Microsoft, Jimi Hendrix and Grunge, it's not unreasonable to expect it to be the most evil place in the world... ever! and be surrounded by pits of flaming bodies, tortured souls suffering in cages hung from lampposts and Stereophonics records blasting from every availiable speaker and PA system. As it turns out though, it's a very lovely and exciting city indeed with lots of public art sculptures, friendly locals and generic good vibes all round. Even the tortured souls in their cages bid you a friendly good day as you go past.

After a meal in an Italian restaurant - which had one waiter who's only responsiblity was filling water glasses, which he did virtually every time you'd had so much as a sip. We can only admire his dedication to his quite frankly rubbish job and can only hope that everyone with menial tasks is so enthused by their purpose in life - we went to see Unexpected Productions, an improvised comedy show that was happening near to where we were staying. Improvised comedy generally falls into two camps; the rubbish, quite clearly unplanned show which is the bread and butter of student comedyu groups across the land, or the actually rather good kind, which is very rare, and always leaves you with the sneaking suspicion that it's not as improvised as they'd like to make out. This performance definitely fell into the latter category and we shall ignore our natural cynicism on the unrehearsed part of it and hail it as a very ace show indeed.

Our main fear about it was that there might be too many local references to teams that we've never heard of playing sports that we don't understand. Fortunately this was unfounded as it was simply very, very funny indeed. Two teams of improvisers played against each other in a very nominal way, though one team was clearly more accomplished than the other, and it wasn't a huge surprise that they had the 'honour' of winning. Other than that twist - and by twist we mean slight curve - it was a standard impro show in format, the main difference between this and UK impro shows was that we all had to do a mexican wave at the start to warm us all up. We joined in, but we made sure we had a very grumpy look on our face as we did so.

Another day spent travelling, essentialy. This time we were heading back to Vancouver for a brief stop-off before heading to Seattle. While it's still rather lovely looking out of the windown, to be honest there's only so much gorgeous, breath-taking scenery you can see before you run out of breath to take. A pretty uneventful trip really, though we did enter Nicola's valley during it. You may feel free to make up your own double entendre relating to that.

So it's goodbye to Calgary and hello to Shuswap Lake, another one night stop-off, and we're very glad that we did stop here as it's our favourite hostel so far, and is unlikely to be surpassed by anything else on the trip, though we'll be happy to be proved wrong.

You see, what is so ace about this hostel is that you're not sleeping in a dorm, instead you're sleeping in an old converted caboose down by the lake. Not only do you sleep there, you can sit in the drivers seat, pull on the whistle cord (alas, it doesn't make a noise), wear the engineers cap and generally live out all your childhood railway based fantasies - you'd probably need to to go elsewhere to live out your adult railway based fantasies. We spent most of that afternoon with the sort of grin normally reserved for a village idiot who has just won the "Stupidest Grin" contest by a country mile. As if that all wasn't fab enough in itself, the lady who owned the hostel gave us some freshly baked apple and cinnamon muffins to take with us when we left. As a result of this, this hostel is quite clearly one of the 117 Acest Things of All Time... Ever and TiaPL has been updated accordingly.

The evenign was spent watching ice hockey while the hostel owner attempted to explain the game to us. Our faces were left pretty blank, but we did try to understand. To be honest though, it was like trying to describe to a blind person what "blue" is, or even trying to tell a deaf person how lucky they are that they don't know what Blue sounds like. It's a pretty thankless task for all concerned.

Today was windy. Very windy. We're not just talking a little bit blowy here, we're talking full on gales blowing you down the street windy. The sort of weather last seen taking Dorothy away from Kansas in the Wizard of Oz. This was a shame as it would have been a nice day otherwise as it was really sunny. Admittedly this is like saying it's a shame about the music, singing, dancing, looks, charisma and the general lack of anything positive whatsoever as otherwise Westlife would be a really good band, but we digress.

Fort Calgary was the destination of choice this AM. This is one of those places where peopel dress up in traditional costumes and exhibit signs of personality disorder by claiming they are people from the actual past, even though they don't appear to be particulalry phased by hoardes of people from the future traipsing around their bygone world with all their newfangled gadgets and gizmos. As Canada doesn't, compared to the UK at any rate, have a great deal of history, part of us was hoping that the period recreated would be the 1980's and that they'd have a full-scale rollerdisco in action and Tron showing at a mock-up cinema. We were slightly disappointed therefore, to discover that it was simply an attempt to recreate the Mounted Police headquarters at the turn of the century. Due to it being off-season, there were no people dressed up either. Which is probably a good thing, as we're not convinced our pre-planned questions about Wham! and Debbie Harry would have gone down hugely well with a moustachioed red coat. Having said that though, perhaps playing him Miss Harry's "I Want That Man" might have helped provided a bond with the horce obsessed officer of the law, after all he always gets his man. Equally then, he might therefore have been able to relate best with George Michael.

The first full day in Calgary was initially spent wandering around the city. Luckily the streets are marked with red footprints to help with such a task. At least, we assumed they were marking out an interesting walking tour, it's quite possible that somewhere in Calgary there's a particularly accident prone painter and decorator desperately scrubbing at his carpet in a futile attempt to remove the shame that shows the world his inability to keep foot from paintpot.

In the afternoon we took a bus up to Calgary Olympic Park - site, unsurprisingly, of many events in the 1988 Winter Olympic Games in Calgary. As we're here in the off-season, the guided tour around the site wasn't availiable, so we had to go for the cheap, self-guided tour option. Not only did this mean that we had to walk all the way up to the ski-jumps, which isn't exactly a light stroll, but we weren't given any historical context for anything in the park. This basically gave us carte blanche to make up our own history, so here's what we've decided happened:-

"The Winter Olympics started in 1956 when a Polar Bear and a Penguin got fed up watching events such as boxing or beach volleyball at the Summer Olympics which they simply could not do, no matter how much they may have wanted to. Instead they decided to start their own sporting spectacular which they could shine in, including events such as the Luge, ice-skating, seal eating and waddling in a ridiculous manner then failing to fly, the latter of which inspiring Britain's own Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards to humiliate himself on a national stage. Eventually humans, fed up with animals showing off decided to prove they were better and took over the competition, thus the modern Winter Olympics were born.

They came to Calgary in 1988 partly because the city put together a bid which was so impressive and awe-inspring that the Olympic Comittee just had to award it to them, but it was mainly down to the fact that there's only so many cold and snowy cities in the world and they were fed up having it in Norway every other year."

While we may not have got a guided tour of the park, when we visted the Hall of Fame, we were given personal attention by the lone member of staff on duty there. This was probably down to the fact that he hadn't seen another human being in the area in over a month. He didn't seem hugely impressed with the museum himself though, which isn't the best attribute for a guide to have, and spent most of the time apologising for it's rubbishness. In a bid to boost the experience for us, he even gave us a free shot on a skiing arcade game. We shall leave it to your imagination exactly how well we did on it, but suffice to say, no matter what you're thinking, we did worse.

In the evening we went to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It's rather odd - and to try and describe the plot would spoilt it - but it features Kirsten Dunst dancing in her underwear, Kate Winslet with green, red, orange and blue hair and Jim Carrey doing some good acting despite sporting some dodgy facial hair, so it's therefore a very good film indeed.

This morning nearly had the first major cock-up of the trip (forgetting cards and sleepign in do not count as cock-ups for reasons which are far to obvious to go into here) when we nearly missed our bus to Calgary due to our complete inability to find the bus-station. As the journey takes 10 hours and the enxt bus wasn't for another 5 hours, this would have been a very bad thing indeed.

The reasons why we couldn't find the station are two-fold. It's partly our Travelling Companion's fault as he was in charge of the map and should really have had a better idea of where we were heading, we should point out though that he was carrying the map as so far every time we've been in charge of the map we've promptly and confidently walked in the exact opposite direction of where we need to be heading. The main reason however comes down to the fact that not only did have to get up at 5.30AM to catch this bus, but Canada went into Daylight Saving Time this weekend so as far as we were concerned it was only 4:30AM. Had we still been suffering from jetlag this wouldn't have been a problem, but unfortunately we've beaten that particular beast now, and we were quite happy slumbering when we were rudely awakened.

Fortunately we made it to the station in the nick of time (well, 5 minutes late, but the bus was delayed. Clearly Nicola was smiling upon us) and began to wend our way to the province of Alberta. The driver was less chatty this time, though he did put on a movie, which was an adequate substitute we felt. Once again, the scenery was breath-takingly gorgeous, etc. But we're sure you'd have guessed that.

Today was our first experience of the Greyhound bus service as we left Vancouver to take the 5 hou journey to Kamloops, our stop for the night. There's not much to do except read, or look out of the window at the scenery, fortunately the scenery is rather dramtic and breathtaking, and equally fortunatley the seats are relatively comfortable so the trip is enjoyable. The driver was also entertaining in a dead-pan way, so hopefully all journeys will be like this. As long as we don't constantly end up in Kamloops.

Kamloops is nice enough, but it's not much to write home about, let alone publish on a website. We're only here as a stop-over point to break-up the journey between Vancouver and Calgary, but it's certainly not going to end up as the highlight of the trip. The hostel we're staying in is in an old-converted courthouse, which is mildly interesting. The only downside is the fact that people who were sentenced as being criminally insane appear still to be hanging around the place. We're particularly thinking of the guy who seemed to enjoy turning lights on and off at random. We presume that there were reasons for it which made sense to him, but we've got more chance of understanding the popularity of J-Lo as both an actress and a singer than we do of working that out.

Seeing as we were in Canada we decided to take advantage of the local culture and, ummm, go to a Irish themed restaurant for dinner. The staff were all wearing kilts. This didn't make sense to us either; Leprachaun outfits, yes, but kilts? There's clearly something in the water in Kamloops.

As we were looking at our map, we noticed with some excitement that Vancouver has a Nicola Street. naturally we dropped what we were doing and immediately rushed to investigate this particular thoroughfare. Naturally we expected this to be a site of unashamed Nicola worship. We looked forward to seeing hoardes of people dressed in ginger, side-ponytail wigs dancing down the street., we were agog at the possibility of a video-screen erected which showed all of Nicola's solo moments from the videos, with that gloroious minute's worth of material on a constant loop, we were thrilled at the thought of seeing an animatronic Nicola waving at us atop each lamppost, and we were certainly over-excited by the thought of each doorbell we rang echoing with the chime of "No way ow-wow-wow-out" instead of the more traditional "Ding-Dong". Alas, though it turned out to simply be a residential area, albeit a very nice one. No matter, it's still very much were we want to retire, just for the address alone.

After the slight disappointment of the morning, we spent the afternoon wandering around Vancouver Museum. Given that Museums are notoriously dull places, we're not totally convinced that it was the best place to have an exhibition on the sleep inducing narcotic Opium, but then, we never quite expected to see the phrase "In search of a more plentiful supply of beaver, the trappers headed East" written without even a hint of innuendo either, but it certainly amused our tiny mind. Also hosted at the Museum was a Millennium exhibit which consisted of folders and folders of Vancouver resident's memories of the last 100 years. Someone should perhaps have pointed out to the organisers that a millennium is a period of 1000 years, but never mind. It was surprisingly interesting, even if some people's memories were very much on the "Dull, keep it to yourself" side of reminiscing, but at least having them written down meant that you didn't need to pretend to be interested as you were being told the tale.

Jet lag is a bitch.

Seriously.

Last night we were in bed by 10.30 and up again at 4AM, this is not right. We're doing our best to fight it and we're gradually becoming more attuned to the local clock, but exhaustion shouldn't be hitting you at 3 in the afternoon, no matter what. Anyway, today we visited the Gastown area of town. One of it's main features is a steam powered clock, as seems to be traditional in Vancouver, there appeared to be no reason for why they thought something like this would be a good idea, rather than running it on the more traditional clockwork. At this rate we strongly expect to see a statue of William Wallace made entirely out of custard, simply because someone thoguht they might as well try it.

Also in Gastown, though not made out of custard, is a statue of Gassy Jack, the founder of Vancouver. Alas, he was named after his habit of making long-winded speeches, not due to his terrible flatulence. Even so, we do feel there's a certain lack of respect afforded to him, particularly as he's pictured sitting atop a keg, thus leading us to believe he was a pioneer in the world of lager, rather than the more general pioneer he actually is.

After that a trip was taken to Chinatown to visit the Dr Sun Yat-Sen Chinese Garden. This is the one of the few traditional Chinese gardens to exist outside of China, and is very lovely and well worth visiting, it's all about balance, Yin and Yang, dark and light, male and female, hard and soft, Girls Aloud and Atomic Kitten, etc. Everything was constructed by hand, not a single powertool was used in it's construction and is, so far, my favourite part of Vancouver. Just a shame you have to pay to enter it, really.

A wander down Robson Street, the main shopping street in the city. Nothing major to note here, though we were somewhat shocked to see the ugly faces of The Darkness staring down at us from a massive poster outside the Virgin Megastore. Even Canada, it seems, is not immune to the definitely-not-middle-aged clown princes of rawk. Even more surprising was when we went inside and saw that Franz Ferdinand where number 4 in their top 30 artists. This is probably a moment where someone more intelligent would make a comment about the homogenisation of culture and the fact that every city in the world is becoming more and more alike, but we can't be bothered, so instead we'll just say that we hope the Darkness become successful over here so that we don't have to endure them once we get home.

Final trip for the day was to the Vancouver Art Gallery, again, this is free, with entry by donation, on a Thursday, but they're better at guilt-tripping you into paying the donation, so this wasn't a cash-free visit. To be honest, we weren't hugely impressed by this, though once again our jet-lagged brain wasn't in the best position to appreciate it. There were some interesting pieces, notably Out to Metric, a section of a room composed entirely of rulers, but in general it was a bit lack-lustre. They did have some pieces by more famous artists, but they tended to be the less good pieces that probably wouldn't get shown if it wasn't for the cachet that their later work has.