Trans-Atlantica - You're history, punk!

Good morning and welcome to another beautiful day in Kansas. Although after the first night here I regard any day without fifty mile per hour winds that e in front of you and your coat most of the way off as a beautiful day, but that's neither here nor there.

There's been a theme to the last couple of days and that theme is history. It also featured something that shouldn't be a tourist attraction, or worth talking about, but somehow is. Much like Bass Pro Shop before it, I walked in expecting a commercial outlet and was soon busting out my camera to take pictures. I'm trying to think of anything comparable at home, and I suppose those ye olde shoppes that cash in big on their heritage might count? But they don't seem to put anywhere near the same amount of effort in and more often than not just look like a smaller and darker version of every other shop around them.

Welcome to Spangles! And more importantly, welcome to America, mainly as I'm not sure you've been properly inducted until you've seen some form of Elvis. Spangles is a small chain restaurant that I'm told only operates out of Wichita. They're a burger joint that has been open since the 1930s and go to great lengths not just to look the part, but go above and beyond the call of duty to look that good.

Apologies for breaking out the vintage filter, it just seemed appropriate. The atmosphere there was fantastic, every wall was covered in something new and interesting to stare at. And the food? Oh, if I could just move into that dinner and never have to leave I think I could live in this country quite happily. I mean, I'd weigh several tonnes after a few months, but I'd be happy? If there was one thing my visit to Spangles did teach me, aside from how great the food is, it was of the perils of driving on the wrong side of the road.

Don't do it, kids. You'll careen into an American style dinner and forever be enshrined as a decorative piece, where everyone can laugh at you for being such an idiot. Trust me, it'll happen.

After that we went to the mall, which was nothing to write home about but I did experience a real taste of mid-western culture (I implied this was the South last night, ignorant foreigner that I am, a mistake I will not be repeating! Due in no small part to the picture below).

They... They start them young here. Real young.

...

Moving swiftly on, the next day we headed out to the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum, not the museum we were planning to go too but my goodness does it have a beautiful building!

The inside reminded me a whole lot of the local history museums back home. The ones that are one part local history museum and one part very recentish history museum. The Victorian era drug store replica really reminded me of the bar replica in the history museum in Luton and the replicas of the old rooms, with time period specific furnishings, called back to the Sherlock Holmes museum of all places in my mind, but that is in no way a bad thing! I love little museums like that, they document things that other places might overlook. And for five dollars entrance? Yeah, I was more than happy there! Even if most of the exhibits did look a touch creepy.

Wait, can go back to that last picture?

Johnny Depp... Is that.. Is that you?!

Moving even more swiftly on again, there were some really cool looking exhibits in there too. Including the aforementioned drug store replica, and the old time garage with the model T was fun too. It was great to see the signage in the museum use the words 'Victorian era' because I always did wonder if that was a British thing or no. For all I knew they tagged their eras by president. I loved the atomic age displays too, mainly because I'd be quite happy if somebody bought me some of that cool, retro Sci-Fi looking furniture.

If nothing else, it was nice of the museum to lay a chair out for the humble British visitor. They even roped it off to keep away the riff raff.

And while we're on the subject of being painfully British, I also had my first taste of iced tea in Spangles. I know it's not strictly and American invention, but my native friends insisted and so it happened, and I'm still wishing it hadn't. I will never understand the allure of cold tea. Never. The sweetened version tasted like ten hour old regular tea with a nice think film of undissolved sugar in the bottom of the mug. I swear I've poured better tasting things down the sink, and I may have accidentally out a paintbrush in some of those. I did get my revenge by accidentally getting one of them lost in what was supposedly a rough neighbourhood. Which to me looked a lot like the set of Sister Act 2 pouring out into the streets, with an awful lot of eighties style hair and clothing on the teenagers as they came out of school. It was curious and uncanny and led me not to worry, until I remembered that people got shot in those movies and then I was about as worried as she was after that!

We survived, though, and I think today I'm going to take it a little easier. Hopefully they'll be more fun to be had in Kansas, as I've heard about some really great things here and hope to be able to visit them. I'll see you guys when I have something to share!

Trans-Atlantica - Off to see the Wizard.

Well my friends, we finally bid Colorado farewell as I'm working my way into my second night in Kansas. We spent the last few hours in Aurora packing up our things and saying goodbye to our freshly married friend there, never made it to that museum but hey, we're passing through on the way back so you never know (spoiler: we won't get there, but that's okay, friends are better than attractions any day).

We were soon ready to hit the road, and let me tell you, as somebody from a country that can probably be crossed from one end to the other in six hours on a good day? The six hour road trip to Kansas had sounded daunting. Especially as, without getting into details, America has kinda been kicking my arse all over the place these past couple of days. But I was surprised how fast it flew by.

Most of it was on one, long flat road with nothing but plains either side, and I'm not saying I was captivated, because I know how boring that sounds, but I've just never seen that much space before. Especially with all the strange farm machines, grain silos, aging billboards that look thirty years old and are probably advertising something that doesn't exist anymore. I mean, I had fantastic company as well which helped the hours tick by immensely but Kansas really does seem like a different country in a way Colorado didn't.

For one thing, I've actually saw a sight today! A real, legitimate place of interest that isn't a store! We stayed the first night with a friend's family and they were nice enough to take us over to Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita, which was pretty fantastic. I always have mixed feelings on zoo's, and there are some animals it straight up depresses me to see caged (especially the way those animals are caged at most places) but I always think the conservation work outweighs any dismay in that regard. Plus they have monkeys, and who doesn't like monkeys?!

As I left the car I even uttered 'Oh my god! I finally get to do tourist stuff!!!', which does remind me I probably need to cut down on all the taking the Lord's name in vain, as I doubt it'd be appreciated here. At least, that is the impression I'm getting.In any case I'm gonna shut up again and let you see some animals!



And of course, no trip to the zoo would be compete without a gorilla judging your soul.



I was quite proud of some of the pictures I aquirred this trip, I'm not sure if the animals were in a better mood than usual (it was feeding time, so it's possible!), if my camera is better or if I just had more sense and wasn't trying to photograph everything so I got better results but all in all it was fun and I think I have enough fodder to make cows making stupid faces memes for a lifetime.

One thing that did amuse me is that they rather blatantly caged freedom though.



And another thing that was baffling was the very... Interesting signage and displays.



As you can see they were either really graphic or just really strange in a way I've never seen anywhere else. There was a part of the bear exhibit that had a whole area paved with names and we couldn't figure out if it was a dedication to people who donated or a list of people who had been mauled by bears in the state. Neither would really surprise me right now.

After that fun day out I've moved into my new base of operations, a Value Place hotel which honesty doesn't seem too bad. At least it has working Internet which is more than I can say for the last one. The one complaint I do have right off the bat is this though,



Blinds! Always with the blinds or the paper thin flimsy fabric curtains on this trip. What do they have against real curtains?! Expecially when neither keep the bright light of day out properly so you better want to wake up when the sun does otherwise you're screwed! Ah well, it's nice enough otherwise so I'm sure everything will work out! I'll see you guys next time! Not sure what we're up too out here

Trans-Atlantic - Alas, poor Colorado, we hardly knew ye.

As we reach the final day of our stay in Colorado and prepare for our road trip down to Kansas, the only thing I'm left wishing is that we'd seen more. It's been an experience, don't get me wrong, and I'll be sure to remember it for the insane weather and fantastic people I've met alone. But when I go somewhere I like to try and get a feel for what makes it special. I like to see tourist traps, I like to see areas of natural beauty (even if from afar), and I love museums and places of knowledge because sometimes how somewhere handles it's heritage and what it emphasises as important can say an awful lot.

With Colorado I can't help but feel I haven't really got that experience. A lot of our trip here seems to have been mainly roads and malls, with the highlight of the day before the wedding being the Bass Pro Store. A place that my friend describes as being like 'the inside made to look like the outside'. It's a taxidermists wet dream, basically an outdoor and camping store taken to such an excess that it's practically a tourist attraction. They even had an artifical waterfall which played host to fishing exhibitions.

They also had a rather agressively friendly man on the tills who demanded to know what accent that was through a painted on smile. Welcome to America?

We also headed to Top That, which is like Subway only for pizza. An intriguing, if highly unhealthy idea that would have been fantastic had they cooked their dough a little more throughly. It was only really until the day of the wedding (which again, I'm not going to dwell on, but pro-tip, if you're getting married - Do turn your phone off before you get to the altar) that we really saw some beautiful landscapes abd countryside, so I'm going to shut up and share some with you!

So that's almost it for Colorado, we may do something on the way out, maybe even hit that museum that I mentioned last time, but until then, see you in Kansas!

Trans-Atlantica - Four Colour Warehouses and Snow Capped Mountains.

Hello, welcome and good morning to my first day proper of travelling the face of the United States! Well, I say my first day, but these posts are probably going to cover a few days at a time to stop it all becoming too unwieldy. That said I guess it depends how much happens on any given day and how reliable my Internet is.

Today was fairly laid back, by which I mean I missed most of it. I woke up after three hours sleep and felt pretty good! Until the afternoon when I glanced in the mirror and realised my eyes were more red than white, so sleep? Probably a good idea! What I can tell you though is that we went to a comic shop!



And when I say comic shop what I actually mean is comics warehouse.



Welcome to Mile High Comics! Some of you are probably aware of their website which is a great place to find back issues. I think I've shopped with them before, but the idea of them actually having an honest to god warehouse has never crosses my mind, let alone there being one you could visit. I always assumed it was a couple of guys running it out of their house, but I realise now that's kind of absurd. Either way, I can't think of a better way to start a trip than a giant room full of comics! It's just a shame I'm mainly a trade reader these days, and most of the trades they had were volume three or higher, without a volume one in sight. Combine that with the pricy action figures and other assorted trinkets and the place didn't quite set my world on fire. What it did do though, was remind me they add VAT on after purchase here, rather than including it in the marked price,which I'd somehow managed to forget. So you see, comics are educational too!

Oh, and you remember that snow I mentioned last blog? The flurry that came down like a storm of white wllhen I arrived and threatened to make snowmen of us all when we loaded the shopping into the car? Gone. Gone in a blaze of sunshine as sudden and blinding as the snow itself. Seriously, this state is weird and I almost dread what tomorrow will bring.

Turns out I needn't have worried though, next day was uneventful weather wise and fairly uneventful events wise. We had had a chilled out, relaxing day that I think we all needed and I'm only brining it up at all because I wrote that 'what will tomorrow bring?!' sentence yesterday and am far too lazy to change it.

Day three though? Insanity. We had a wedding rehearsal to attend, which I won't dwell on because it's the private business of friends, and guess what was back with avengance? The blizzard, that's what!

Even worse than before this time we had an hour long drive up to a mountain top and let me tell you, Colorado has not done much to adhere itself to me. The weather is as schizophrenic as it comes (and this is from somebody who hails from the UK, where talk of unpredictable weather may as well be currency) and the roads seem like a nightmare to navigate. What was a light drizzle of snow soon became a full on snowstorm. As we climbed up and up it became worse and worse, and while I credit all but two or three suicidal arseholes who almost gave us all a heart attack with their bullshit with being slow, steady and sensible going up - The sheer size of the road coupled with the lack of visibility still made it a very much a fist in mouth moment that left us all wishing we were situated closer to the church we were travelling too.

On the plus side one could argue it was good prep for the upcoming, never ending drive through the states that is to come and the snow covered mountain was gorgeous. With it's crisp white inclines and snow covered buffalo it's the first piece of truly natural beauty I've seen since arriving in Colorado. I couldn't get pictures because of the death road, but it did leave behind pretty views like this.



Still, even though I love snow as much as a small child praying to the winter godsfor a day off school, and had actively bemoaned the fact that we'd had none back home, I think I could've done without this. Especially when I know it'll all be melted sooner than I can enjoy it, the sun already beating down on the crisp white surface as I write this the morning after. It also didn't help that when we arrived at the church we were greeted by this,

Not a single soul was there and considering we were at the top of a freaking mountain it was reasonable to expect that nobody else would make it.

Thankfully they started to arrive in drips and drabs, and I got to experience my first wedding rehearsal. The idea of this is as alien as they come for me. Most weddings aren't intricate spider-webs of narrative calling for intense and emotional performances that touch the very depths of your soul. In fact, the majority of Christian weddings are pain-stakingly formulaic to the point where even if you'd never been to one, you could probably still do eighty five percent of the ceremony blind folded by what you've seen on television alone. I'm not exactly sold that we needed an hour to tell people where to stand and walk on the big day, but then as somebody who has nothing to do but turn up and park my arse in a seat on the right side of the hall, maybe that's lack of pressure talking.

Once that was over we faced what could have been a very long and dangerous drive home in the dark, but thankfully common sense prevailed and true to form by the time we got back off the mountain what had been landing thick and fast was for the most part slush. We ate at somewhere renown for it's delicious chicken and rampant homo-phobia, every meal coming with a thick layer of guilt despite being incredibly tasty by the standards of fast food and visited a Toys R Us that kinda let me down a little. There's a myth in Britain that everything in the States is dirt cheap to the point we should feel we're getting conned. When it comes to toys and games? That is absolute nonsense.Any saving is minimal at best and even the size and stock of the place let was a touch disappointing, it seemed about on par with it's trans-Atlantic counterparts as if it forgot it was situated in a land known for its excess. I can't be too hard on it though, as we did pick up a couple of great boardgames that finished off the night beautifully.

That's about it for now! Today the plan is to actually engage in some tourist stuff and head to a museum, find out if we actually make it or if laziness wins again next time!

Trans-Atlantica - Airports and Airplanes.

So, this morning was the morning! I was finally able to depart on my journey across the clouds! Into lands unknown and no doubt full of adventure! At least I hope so, otherwise this is going to be a very dull and short lived segment.

I know I touched on this last time, but I love flying. The act of sitting in a plane and hurtling through the sky is something I take a great amount of pleasure in, and the thrill of take-off is something that always leaves me giddy and lurching my neck towards the nearest window. If you want proof of a miracle, don't look to the ethereal - Look at the way mankind rebelled at the idea of being on the ground, padding along on their own two feet like the vast majority of mammals, and launched themselves into the sky, the sea and the very depths of space.

Flying also doesn't take all that long really. Oh, I know it can feel like.forever, but it's really not! My own flight took roughly eleven or twelve hours actual flight time to cover thousands of miles, so for me, it's not an unattractive way to travel at all.

That is, of course, until you factor in airports. Airports are, for the most part, a waste of everyone's time. The level of security is downright demoralizing and even if you accept that level of discomfort for the sake of national security, there's still the infuriating design and management choices that leave your gates a mile apart, with ten minutes to get there because they don't show where you need to be until then and a boarding system that makes getting on and off aircraft an absolute nightmare.

I've spent my entire day on airplanes and in airports. This should give you an idea of the tone of what's about to come.

I started it generally buzzed, if not terribly nervous. Well, truth be told I started it positively baffled because, well...

This is the knife I received with my bacon sandwich in Wetherspoons in Birmingham and I have no idea what it's for. It's not for spreading as that had already been taken care of and I don't see that diddy blade cutting a piece of paper let alone through bread and bacon, do what is it for?! And for that matter, what is it with Wetherspoons and book shelves these days?

But I digress, that was the first of the minor puzzlements that was to colour my day.

I left Birmingham for Amsterdam early in the the morning on KLM airlines, and I honestly don't think I have enough good things to say about KLM airlines. It's not so much that they're good, as it is that they're absurdly stereotypical. It's like the airline was run by a British sitcom's idea of the Dutch, and it made the experience of flying with then and being bombarded with their native language and highly accented English a pleasure. I'm not just being an ignorant little Englander here,making fun of Johnny Forgiener with his silly accent - They encourage it. Check out their plastic cups for goodness sake!

I really can't say enough good things about my limited stay in Amsterdam airport either. I mean, it still looked like any other airport from the outside,

But all credit to the place, the gate for my connecting flight was right around the corner from the flight I had just walked off and they let you go there almost immediately. That being said though, the immigration officer there was surprisingly intense - Although that could be just the fact that his accent both intensified and softened everything he said, but he was still more laid back and to the point than his American conterparts... But then he is Dutch afterall, I suppose.

Overall, great little airport, and Amsterdam's schizophrenic gift shops containing traditional windmills and clogs and their widely renown soft drug and red light culture are worth nosing in alone, especially if you're after tasteful souvenirs for the entire family. Shame about the bizarrely conspicuous and somewhat tacky Irish theme pub though...

From there I moved onto the biggie, eight hours from Amsterdam to Miniapolis via Delta airlines. Delta aren't all that bad really, they actually give you free headphones instead of trying to charge you five dollars for them and as the flight was near empty there was plenty of room to move and laze about. Although, one question does arise...

I can't embed video on this device, but give this a click and then please, join me in asking, wtf is this bout of insanity that distracts you from the actual safety content Delta?! Seriously, with my first safety announcement mostly being in anotherlanguage and then that I'm pretty certain that the airlines were counting on me dying in the event of an accident.

On reflection, I think my rant above may be less about airports in general and more about American airports. I don't want to dwell on it, but as soon as we hit Minneaplois my mood tanked. I spoke last time about my fears of immigration and to be honest I did kind of breeze through it this time (apparently nobody thinks my month long stay is as bizarre as I do), but the wait to get there alone is soul destroying. It's the closest to seeing human beings herded like cattle that I've experienced and if there are things closer I never want to experience them. Of course, I also said that fresh horrors would await and I was sadly prophetic there too. As I was coming onto the final door, having cleared immigration, cleared customs, breezed my way through checks at two other airports in two other countries, one single old man behind the very last desk in front of the very last door to my very last flight decides that my passport doesn't look like me.

The phrases typical, sod's law and all others of their ilk don't even begin to cover it.

At one point I had four men pouring over my passport and several other forms of ID I'd desperatly thrown out at that point to show that, you know,people change appearance over time, and my heart was going so fast it was painful. I'm glad they let me in, because I think if they hadn't that would've dropped me there and then. I was feeling pangs from that for almost half an hour afterwards, and if there's only one black mark on this trip then that would be a bloody dark stain for sure.

The worst thing though, physical pain aside, was that I was apologising to them through. Oh, to be British...

Anyway, finally out of federal space and into the airport proper, I was in Minneaplois!

Wait, did it snow in Amsterdam?!

From there everything was... Well, I wouldn't say plain sailing. The flight to Denver was packed full of people, not a single seat free, and so getting on and off was a nightmare. The plane itself had also seen better days, with wobbly wings, flickering lights and a landing that was a bone shaking as they came all thrown into the mix. I'm also not sure if the tanoy was busted to pieces or the crew were completely incomprehensible, as my hopes for a clear safety announcement were dashed by everything they said over it not even sounding English.

The snow being sucked through the jet engines into a delicate white ribbon was pretty though.

Soon enough we reached Denver where I was planning to try and check out the.illuminati murals but to be honest, I was so done in by this point and baffled by the fact they have a train there, that I plain forgot. I did find this wonderful dragon though!

So! I'm somewhat agitated, very much exhausted, but I am here! And it's snowing! So if you don't mind, I'm going to go stare at the pretty white stuff we never see in my town anymore and hopefully return with something a little less rantastic next time. Until then!