Trans-Atlantica - King of the Road.

The great American road trip. A time honoured tradition that is enshrined in our media as a source of fun and high jinks. Where you can see the world's largest ball of yarn or the world's tallest ice cream cone, pick up celebrity hitch hikers and have mad cap adventures with them as you come to realise they kind of suck and form lasting friendships that will never be forgotten. Bonds that can never be broken. Yes, it is truly an elite group of travellers who get to partake in this fine American pastime and I am now one of those few! My friends, let me tell you a little secret, with all my newfound burgeoning knowledge that I have acquired over the past few days...

Road trips freaking suck!

It shouldn't really come as any surprise, as long car rides in general tend to be an awful affair. I don't particularly look forward to cruising (and I use that word very optimistically) through my own country, and there's much less of it, so a three day trek across the states?0 I wouldn't say it had no merit, but I did learn that not all states were created equal.

Our trip got off to a flying start when we left Kansas far too late and only got three hours into the drive before we hit a blizzard. Have I mentioned yet that the weather in both Kansas and Colorado has been diabolical? I mean, on the bright side it could have been worse in Kansas, the Tornado riddled place that it has a reputation for being, but it has still been pretty miserable on that front. Heck, the Tornado simulator in the Exploration Place felt tame compared to the wind outside on that very day. Either way, we were forced to pull in at Ellis. Another expedition may have fought through the storm and carried on, but we being of a more sensible creed and having a two year old in the back came to the collective decision it was perhaps not the best of ideas.

And wouldn't you know it, the next morning the world was full of blazing sunshine and even the wind that was buffeting our car around on the road was gone. It was as if the whole thing had never happened. We carried on through Kansas, which for the purposes of road tripping isn't much to shout about. Unless you like roads that never seem to end.

Or lots of wind turbines that blink red at night, which honestly makes Kansas kind of creepy to enter after dark.

I also got to see my first tumbleweed of the trip. Admittedly it was under somebody else's car, and yes I was trying to take this picture during said blizzard in Ellis, but one must have priorities!

Once we started hitting western Kansas, we may have lost the advertisements for the world's largest prairie dog (in what looked to be the most redneck of zoo's!) and the sheer delight of signs that featured Jesus poking out of a wheat field but the landscape started to become much more interesting.

From Ellis we took a very ill advised detour into Denver. You remember that homophobic chicken I talked about a couple of weeks back? They don't have a mainstream branch in Washington so we were on the hunt for some tasty, tasty food and figured the Denver one was on the way. Unfortunately it was situated in a shopping mall and we couldn't find anywhere to park, and once you're in Denver? It's not all that easy to get out! We travelled around the road system for a good hour before abandoning ship and heading back to the branch we'd already visited in Aurora. Which involved backtracking. Which is never fun on a roadtrip as long as ours. Denver itself was my first taste of a proper American city, like you see on TV and in films, all skyscrapers and busy streets. It looked fun, but I'm sure I'll be having a much more indepth look at Seattle later.

That added to our travel time significantly, meaning we had to stop over one more time in Wyoming. But once we broke into Wyoming and Utah? The landscape got really breathtaking all of the sudden.

There were views like that pretty much all the way until we wound up deep inside of Idaho (add your own perverse laugh!) and it was easily my favourite part of the trip. Everywhere you looked there were mountains, cool rock formations, snow, all capped by beautiful blue sky. Then we hit Idaho and it was like being in the worst parts of Kansas and Colorado all over again. Dull, flat, uninteresting, with nothing of interest to look at. At the risk of offending anyone from that state, I'll tell you all now - If you want to travel too or through a part of America? Don't make it Idaho. My albeit brief impression just made me never want to go back again, and I was a little disheartened we had to stay the night there - But it turns out Boise? Isn't that bad! Figures it's on the very edge of the state!

One thing I did notice from Kansas right through to Idaho was the massive amount of static. You couldn't seem to touch anything metallic in those states or Wyoming without getting a shock, and after going to bed everyone's hair was on end. It was a fairly bizarre experience, making me think I was in some kind of giant experiment.

We were soon out of Idaho and into Oregon, which brought back the beautiful landscape for the most part aside from the actual trail, which we took some of the trip on. Nobody caught dysentery,so that's okay! There was some great, distinct views to be had, and we took a trip right up a mountain - Which near burst my eardrums but it was a cool experience.

Nothing could prepare me for Washington proper though. While eastern Washington was a collection of flat land, plateaus and cow farms (we saw a bunch of cows in every damn state, by the way, it's almost like America doesn't farm any other animal) western Washington is like something out of Lord of the Rings. My friends had been calling it the Misty Mountains all trip, and having seen them I can't say they're entirely wrong!

As great as the views were, I can't tell you how happy I was to finally pull into the house here. We've been here a few days now and I still feel like death. That's another thing they don't tell you in movies, the whole experience is just really physically exhausting. Honestly, my main recomendation from the whole experience would be if somebody asks if you want to drive across America and you have the opportunity to fly? Fly. Always fly. Road trips are terrible.

So I'm in Washington until I leave now. Hopefully I'll have some interesting things to report, but I'll be headed out to Emerald City Comic Con real soon! So there's that to look forward too in any case! Until next time, stay off the road!

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!