Back home....... unfortunately! Part the third

The last adventure on my US tyrip this year involved ......

All these......

Two of these....

A missing one of these......

Lots of this......

And this.

After getting back to Illinois I was detailed to drive Ray's little red car, above, to New Mexico whilst Ray and Dave drove his truck with the rock crawling jeep on a trailer and Karen and the ladies, Terri and Ildi, took her Honda.

All went well for the first half hour when we needed to stop for breakfast. This after a late start as Ray realised that he had lost his cell phone the previous evening. Not a great omen.

Things after that seemed to go well and we made good time through Illinois and Missouri until just outside Joplin when one of the tyres on the jeep trailer blew out. Luckily Ray is an organised chap and had all the necessary tools and spares to complete a tyre change in a few minutes. An F1 team couldn't have been slicker than Dave and myself. Problem being that when the tyres were checked and inflated the day before the spare was not checked. No big problem, just needed some air.

Pulled off at the next junction and inflated the tyre. Luckily there was a little garage there which sold used tyres and Ray managed to purchase a replacement. Well not really purchase, more like had one donated as it was very ropey and almost repaired but would do in case of an emergency.

Good job too as no more than 5 miles down the road the spare blew too. Another quick tyre change and a crawl on the very dodgy replacement to Joplin. All good plans come a cropper and before we reached Joplin the spare spare blew also. Dumped the truck and Jeep in a car park and went to buy two new tyres.

Joplin, awaiting a replacement.

Stayed the night, and fortunately the next day was greatly uneventful. Texas is very flat and boring as the picture shows. Never noticed before but when you are following a truck and trailer and cannot get much beyond 65mph in a little Merceded you have lots of time to 'enjoy' the scenery.

The PODS delivery system was pretty slick. They deliver it to your home, you load, they ship and you unload. What took 3 days to load in Illinois was emptied in 3 hours in New Mexico.

The unloading crew of Ray, Karen, Terri, Ildi, and Dave were great fun to be with and the whole week was great fun with lots of laughter and a great time was had by all. Thanks guys.

As a house warming gift we found some herb wands that were supposed to chase out any negative vibes in your home. Talked Ray and Karen into burning these and walking them through the whole house and garden.



Not sure if ther really worked but they sure stunk the place out. Although some people witt smoke just about anything.

Again guys, thanks for a great time and I hope to be back there sometime soon.

Back home....... unfortunately! Part 2

Had a great weekend with my sister Sheelagh and her children Conor 6 and Kate 4. I had forgotten how lively little children can be and was quickly reminded of this fact.

Weather was good so that all the sporting activities for them went ahead from 'flag' football, which is like touch rugby for the little ones. Seeing as american football is all about playing catch and trying to stop the oppositin from getting anywhere near the ball I struggled to understand the concept of having a flag tied loosely to the waist to be ripped off. A non-contact version of a truly violent game.

Saturday was a sport I could relate to, soccer as they quaintly call football, played by little kids is the same the world over. Everyone chases the ball and just kicks the hell out of the thing. Great fun and I have seen this done on 6 continents, truly a world game. Sadly the sport seems to be dropped before the kids get to be 16 as all the focus is on the parochial games of american football, baseball and basketball whose 'world' champions all happen to be from the US.

We stopped at a garage sale on the way home from the 'soccer' field and picked up a fusball table for 10 bucks, a true bargain.

Kate and the Football table

As it was the week before halloween and also Kate's birthday there was a lot of excitement and dressing up for parties. Kate had a fairy princess costume and Conor was a spy and looking very cool.

The Princess and the Spy.

Monday lunchtime it was back on the train to return to Morton, Il. Again I was not impressed with the running of the Amtrak service. I wrote the following while stuck in Albany:

Travelling back to Morton, Illinois I realised that the railways in Britain are not so bad after all. The clowns that run Amtrak do so for the benefit of the crew not the passengers. Either that or the crew are blindly following orders without question, and we all know where actions like that end up!

When boarding the train tickets are checked for destination and you are told which car to sit in, choice of seat is then up to the passenger. When tickets are collected a little slip of paper is poked into the overhead luggage rack stating your destination. The ticket collector seemed to get a bit upset when I swapped seats when a pair became available as this seemed to confuse him. Seems that you gotta stay put! So much for land of the free! can't even freely move around a train!

Unfortunately they seem to want to fill one car at atime as when I went to the 'cafe' car there was acompletely empty coach. I asked the crew if they could explain why and they told me that it would come off at Albany. Fair enough but why were the passengers for Albany not in that one but filling up the other coaches? Couldn't answer me and just kept saying that the car would be coming off at Albany and I was to stay in the seat for the entire trip as there would be no chance to change seat. Didn't quite understand that one either.

On reaching Albany they wandered through muttering something about getting off. Didn't quite catch it and if it was a train announcement then why not use the intercom, unless they couldn't figure out how it worked as on the way out I was woken pre-dawn by somebody hollering through it that breakfast would be served. After about 10 mins the train pulled out, travelled about 200yde, just enough to clear the platform and stopped. The lights went out. Guard cane through and stated that the train would stay here until 7:05, 1 hour and 45 mins and the lights would come on shortly as a couple of cars were being removed and replaced. Why they couldn't do this in the station and let passengers off for the duration is again beyond me. It is not a sif there was no room as there are 4 platforms and not a single train passed as we sat there doing nothing.

After all that we then reversed back into the station and left 25 minutes late.

Sorry British Rail, or whatever you are called these days, all is forgiven.

Back home....... unfortunately!

Arrived back home last week after a long journey from Alberquerque via Chicago and London that took a couple of days. Since my last post I was all over the states .....

.... scene fades to show rememberances of past events......


..... After the crash landing of the balloon we upped stakes and returned to Illinois. This year we decided to go the northern route through Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa and then south into Peoria. This was so we could see the rockies but as with lots of great ideas the weather did not co-operate and the mountains were hidden behind a veil of clouds, rain and mist. Have to go another time.

Nebraska and Iowa are flat and boring. Drove through wind and rain on a journey best forgotten.

Back in Morton Ray had his second PODS removal cube delivered and we then spent three days loading all the crap, oops sorry, stuff onto it that was going to be shipped to his and Karen's new house that they bought while ballooning in Albq.

With this completed I decided to go on another trip to visit my sister in Massachucettes using Amtrak the US rail network.

26 hours on a bloody train. Seats were OK but nothing special and space was at a premium as there seemed to be just enough of them for the passengers who were herded into set coaches at the whim of the conductors, about 6 of them. Seems that even though there were no seat assignments as such one could not sit where one liked as passengers for certain destinations had to sit in assigned coaches. When asked why the reason given was so that the conductors knew where people were but still put little pieces of paper on the luggage racks saying the destination. Totally illogical, but that is the us for you.

Odd thing happened in Erie, Indiana. After being woken by a wailing banshee announcing breakfast was being served at some ungodly hour pre-dawn, I was accosted by a guy in a brown uniform asking if I was a US citizen, the conversation went as follows:

Brown shirt: Are you a US citizen?
Me: No.
BS: Do you have a passport?
Me: Of course! (thinks: What a dumb question! How the hell would I be here otherwise)
BS: Can I see it?
Me: Who are you?
BS: Border Patrol!
Me: (sounding confused) Have we crossed a border or something?
BS: No just a check!
Me: (hands over passport) So if I had just said 'yes' you wouldn't have gone any further? ( he had been ignoring anybody who said that they were a US citizen)
BS: No I would have been able to tell from the accent! (returned passport after close scrutiny of the data page but not of the visa stamp)

Still not sure what that was all about, maybe somebody had snuck over the Canadian border and jumped on a moving train during the night. Must be bloody desperate to escape from the economic depression of Canada for the so called land of the free!

Rest of the journey uneventful although as we went deeped into New England the scenery became better as the leaves were turning beautiful shades of yellow, orange and red.

Will be doing the catching up in installments... so keep checking back!