My Time Is Running Out

Well well well, once again this country has managed to suprise me with both the sheer rudeness of some of its pepole, as well as the profund kindness of many, often within two miniutes of each other!

On Monday i went for another culture stop down at the famous chicago insitute of art, which was once again very enlightening and had some wonderful pictures including edward hopper's "Nighthawks" which i have always wanted to see. For the afternoon i had planned a vist to the Hancock tower obeservatory however the dense fog and heavy rain colluded to ensure that that plan was a write off so instead i went for a long wander and replaced some much needed items of clothing.

On tuesday i headed off for some relaxation in Indiana staying with my mums great aunt and uncle which was a lot of fun, i now know exctly the key issues in the upcoming Indiana Congress race thanks mainly to the television commercials that are reapeated again and again. Infact one programme was so bad it was like ads with a programme break! Aunty Joan said that i should stay longer so i could appear on Jepordy since i seemed to know all the answers!

After 16 sleepless hours of Greyhound Fun sat next to a lady who could tactfully be described as 'a little larger than average'. However i enjoyed meeting a fun couple from conniticut who offered to share their hamper of food with the entire bus, and would not accept that i had just eaten a large meal and was still full,

However eventually they relented with attempts to force feed me, possibly around the time the bus pulled into a pennsilvania service station (they call them travel plazas here, an odd name that sounds like it should be an italian travel agents with a food court inside). As we were about to unload and pile on mass towards the toilets two police officers boarded the bus, and after a brief word with the driver the officers proceeded to search the bus as apparently they had had some kind of tip off regarding a bag that was on the bus, some kind of wake up call!

Arriving in new york the weather hadn't improved, infact by catching the top end of tropical storm ernesto it was hurrendously rainy, so my plan of the beach was instanteously scuppured so instead i headed to the new york public libuary which was an amazing building and the tour was incredibly interesting, after that i headed off to the museum of modern art as it was 'free friday night' however i was by no means the only one who had had this idea from their guidebook and had to q and subsequently fight my way round with the million or so others. The art was on the whole very good however i didnt enjoy it as much as my two previous dabbles with the art world this trip for two reasons 1) The crowds made looking at a painting for more than 30seconds an exercise in marking ones territory 2) The shere rudeness and poor attitude of all the staff associated with the secuirity and enterance side of things, they obviously had the attitude that they didnt care about customer service as the plebs were being exposed to culture.

On my way back, getting slightly lost and mildly misled by false advertising and possibly a little mix of curiosity i ended up watching an information film about 'Dianetics' in a church of scientology (the one tom cruise is a member of). After there attempts to sell the idea to me, which appeared far too much like that of Sarek in Star Trek V [I can heal your pain. etc.] they also attempted to force me to buy the book, which despite the cover looking like a eschwing volcanoe, i was in no way going to purchase, but it was an interesting expereince none the less!

On saturday the rain was yet to abate so i went down to see the USS. Intrepid museum of sea air and space- an aircraft carrier saved from the scrapyard and turned into a museum (imagine finding bits of that on scrapheap challenge!) which was pretty good at engageing my miltarygeek side, however going on the guided tour was an interesting experience, the guide was a elderly gentleman who was born in romania and then served in the Isreali air force. This meant that infact he knew almost nothing on american military history and frequently made errors that i felt forced to correct him on, some of the more comedic ones including insiting that america was the first nation to enter space! and that the D Day Landings were exclusivley carried out by americans! oh and the one i found most irritating (altough i realise that not many pepole would) was that despite there being a replica statue and a major exhibt on Iwo Jima he didn't know that it was famously 5 Marines and 1 Sailor raising the flag not 6 marines, at this point i was forced to interject if only to preserve my own sanity!

Follwing this in the evening i went to see the absorbing, intriguging and absoultely hilarious film film Little Miss Sushine which i can't wait to see again when it comes out back home.

This morning i went on the tour of the NBC studios ( the company behind saturday night live, ER and formerly friends) Which was good, and definatley indulged my technogeek side and afterwards i went, at the reccomendation of the friendly guy in the NBC store to enjoy watching the US Open Tennis at the Big Screen and seating that had been set up by a corprate sponser along with giant games of Pong! It was a nice way to relax in the sun especially as both the Roddick and Nadal matches proved to be a great spectale and very engaging, as well as the poetic farewell to an emotional Andre Aggasi.

Tomorrow is the day i fly home, im kind of exited now, even if england are ballsing up the cricket and now the main man darren gough is injured it can only get worse.

This is my last post from within the continetal US however i will put up one final farewell when im home on tuesday.

T

This really isn't my kind of town

Ok, so the last two days have been very very surreal

Yesturday morning i went down to the greyhound station again to chase up my bags, still no sign, however half an hour later i got a call saying that my bags had showed up so I went down to greyhound again to meet luke the baggage guy, again, where he hands me my rucksack, which i noticed was missing the sandels, which caught my attention as being odd, then the second bag wasnt there it was just some of the stuff dumped in a black bin bag,

Luke said that a guy had just come up and said he found the bag in the alleyway across the street

After working through the chain of events luke speculated that the bags had infact been sent up from cleveland on saturday morning as on phoning clevland they said it had been on the bus, but when being unloaded at chicago someone swiped them, took what they wanted and dumped them in the alleyway, so my cd case, and a large proportion of money have gone, as well as some odd items like a couple of t shirts, and most bizzarely quite a few pairs of boxer shorts! Sadly several gifts and souvieners id collected for people also vanished. :(

Im in a strange state of flux at the moment which is proberly just the shock of it all, and i don't really know how to react to the whole situation.

So after nearly 4 hours in the greyhound terminal including calling the chicago police i left and went out with some people from the hostel, firstly to a latin music festival, however that kind of got rained out so we headed for some chicago style deep dish pizza which was great.

T

ARGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH

STILL NO BAGS AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

The Longest day

Yesturday i decided to culturally enlighten myself a little so headed for the art museum but this time actually made it inside rather than just up the steps, it was very good with lots of art i reconised including Van Gough's sunflowers and several Rodin scupltures as well as some excellent asian art,
On the way back to the hostel on the bus i happened to bump into Johnny and Ryan from camp which was yet another random occurence,
Then at 11pm it was time for me to get my bus to chicago which it turned out didnt actually leave until 12.20, after what seemed like forever along with changes in pittsburgh and cleveland, we finally arrived, one of our drivers having proved his mettle in cleveland by squaring up to an angry passager who couldnt get on the bus! The security guard stood idle and seemed more than happy to let the driver sort the guy out.

As i said, i arrived in chicago, however, my bags didn't. Hopefully they are somewhere between here and pittsburg and traceable, the rediculously helpful man at the chiago office seemed to think they would be in clevland, but they had left for the night so i have to call in the morning.

Luckily the hostel im in is fantastic so im able to partially forget the stressage!

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

or maybe not

T

Le Capitol - Independenceville

Well well well, what a couple of days

After enjoying a truely unique tour of washingtons monuments on saturday morning, in the blinding heat and with a tour guide who was like a cross between a school economics teacher and dennis hopper in apocalpyse now in the boiling hot sunshine, i felt fully aquainted with the sights monuments and memorials of the beautiful and friendly city of washington D.C. The tour even included an obligotry group photo outside the white house!

In the afternoon three of us, all lower leauge fans went on an adventure to the Robert Kennedy Memorial stadium to see D.C united play soccer against the colorado rapids, the d.c united team included 17 year old wunderkind Freddy Adu. Having been orginally seated in between two large concrete blocks and 3 kids , at half time we decided to move to a position where we could see and get a little more atmosphere than the sterility of the first half to which we were greeted by a drunk being ejected having just vomited over two rows of seats!

In the evening i had one of those 'seriously random nights'. This was in the top ten, right up there with swimming pools in fueteventura, razorlights tourbus, 4am bakeries and russian elevators. On coming out from being out at a bar, where sadly your humble authour had been watching T.V and playing snake on my american cellphone, i was coerced into the beutiful idea of walking to the Lincoln memorial with a group of us who has met at the tour in the morning, whilst carrying one of the girls bags as she had to be at the greyhound terminal by 6 am, some people even wanted to go swimming in the reflecting pool, but thankfully sense prevailed on that one!

The next day i went with leah, an australian to arlington national cemetry which was very moving and interesting followed by the huge iwo jima memorial to the US marine corps, which was very impressive and hopefully have some great photos from that. In the afternoon i visited the museum of american history which led me to conclude that britain had taken no part in world war II!!

On monday i headed for philadephia, to discover that my hostel was actually in the middle of nowhere! An unfriendly welcome from the locals on the bus didnt do anything for my confidence but the hostel proved to be lovely. This was where i met will who is from manchester and togther we started to watch rocky (it felt apt being in philly), then realised we were only watching it for the steps sequence so fast forwarded the tape and let the girls in the room hi jack the recorder to watch pretty woman.

The next day Will and I borrowed bikes from the hostel and cycled into the city. After the experience i can definately see why floyd landis took performance enchancing drugs, im still struggling to sit down properly. We did the obligotry photo by the art museum- aka the rocky steps and then went to the excellent franklin science centre, in the afternoon we explored downtown and then took the bikes off to 'Lee's hoagie house' where we had been told was the best place to obtain a philly cheese steak and it didnt disappoint. After a spectaular ride back i collapsed exhustedly into the shower, feeling glad of the exercise.

Today i explored more of the city, and visted the site of the signing of the declaration of independence and the liberty bell which infact is a lot smaller than i had imagined it.

As a side point, monday marked the half way point of my post camp travels, i can't belive how quickly its going.

Hope everyone is having a great time,

T

New York To D.C!

Howdy folks, currently in wahington d.c. and having a great time,

On monday gavin and i went to the american museum of natural history which was really interesting even though they left the dinasores to the last floor, by which time we were quite tired and we could feel the museum shutting around us!

Tuesday saw me head off to the United Nations building, well it felt a crime not to really since id spent an entire term studying it, which was facinating even if i am confident that our guide new pretty much next to nothing about the UN and its activities! Then in the afternoon i explored the beauty and tranquility of central park.

In the evening as we headed back from getting something to eat i had yet another of those random, its a small world type moments. I was just walking past one of the millions of starbucks on the way back to the hostel when i saw Emma Moreton from uni, who was until recently the sabbatical in charge of the Athletic Union at Uni. I was stunned to see someone so familar and we spent a while chatting as it turns out she had been working on a camp in upstate new york. Im still shocked at quite how random it was!

On wednesday we visited the museam of the city of new york followed by a free showing of the new movie idlewild, which is about as much as im allowed to say about it until its released!

Yesturday i jumped on the bus from new york which brought me down to washington d.c. The pepole here are a lot freindler than in new york, i was greeted by one of the local 'SAM' (safety and maintance) staff as soon as i stepped out of the subway who directed me to the hostel where i am now staying.

After finding a beautiful sandwhich shop which made a scrumptious banana and apple smoothie i went for a walk around the city, and found what i thought was the white house and was amazed at how close i was able to get, however i soon discovered by walking a little further that that was in fact the department of the treasurery and oh, THATS THE WHITE HOUSE,

This brought me onto thinking of one of those strange american contradictions, why do they have uniformed secret service personel? surely they lose their secracy?

Today i endulged my geek side and visited the superb smithsonian museam of air and space flight, and spent hours mainly in wonder at all the exhibits! This evening i joined a hotel organised execursion to the Kennedy Centre for the arts to look round and see a jazz concert, in the process finding a statue of presdient esisenhower which looked exactly like gazza! No kidding!

Ok now for a few messages
1) thanks for everyone whos emailed/ left comments, its great when pepole do please do as it lets me know you are all still alive etc etc and yes ele i did get the package it was great thanks, i did send you a letter which should arrive any day now i hope.
2) Becky, i hope you did ok in your exams and your test, let me know!
3) I managed to upload some photos to my facebook.com page, which is quite easy to get to, just type my name in and you can look at them,

Hope everyone is having fun

T
XXX

The End of Part 1

On friday, amoungst many tears from the campers at least, camp wildwood 2006 came to a close.
I jumped onto one of the camp buses which was headed for the outskirts of new york city where i am now.
Ive been travelling with gavin who is from epsom and for the first two nights we stayed in a hostel in chealsea which turns out to be in the middle of the gay district! There was even a bar called rawhide at the end of the street which the hostel was on!

On friday we went for a walk round time square followed by going to see rocky horror picture show in the cinema with a live cast in front of the screen, was abosultely hilarious and a lot of fun, even if i did get called on stage!

On saturday we went down to the river with the intetion of going up the statue of liberty but in the end we just went on the staten island ferry and saw her from the outside as the cue(line) was too long! Then in the afternoon we walked up 5th avenue which was good and saw the empire state building but again didnt go in! We also went to the world trade centre site which was very moving along with seeing the oliver stone film world trade centre which was quite good.


Sunday ment it was time for us to move across town to a different hostel and then we went to the beach at coney island which was awesome, quite like blackpool but with nice weather! Last night went on the walk of all walks and ended up 70 streets away but all the subways had shit so had to walk back! arr!

Anyways it on to Washington D.C on wed and from there, who knows!

T