Denver

We stayed with Chippy near the university. He seemed as harmonious with the tall buildings and craft beers of Denver as he did last time I checked in on him in tiny Atsumi Onsen, perched on a hill overlooking a pile of tetrapods and the Sea of Japan.

We went to a ball game, a completely different experience to the games I went to see in Tokyo Dome. Out another night, Champ and I met a charmingly drunk guy out celebrating his birthday who called a big guy called Jr from Oklahoma on the other side of us a douche-bag. Jr didn't see him so charmingly drunk - cue fireworks. Chippy later informed us it's usually at this point you yell, 'Hit'm!'. I ate a 2lb burrito that sold itself as, 'As big as as your head!' and another evening we shared the most ginormous pizza I have ever beholded and devoured.

We also added one more to the list of National Parks visited and went to the Rockies. It was just as breath-taking and grand in scale as Glacier. Huge swathes of forest lie before roadside vantage points, here and there a solitary dun coloured tree amongst the green and every now and then, a corner turned, an entire hillside of these sick trees or worse, dead, gray trees. Pine beetle is the villain. Refreshingly, the park literature stresses the power of nature and explains their policy of damage limitation and proper forest management (better spacing between trees apparently helps) in the face of something beyond the control of man.

How my geta finally bit it

Sometime just before Las Vegas on the road, my geta bit it. They're wooden sandals, summer festival garb for people in Japan but I wore them a lot, mostly because I like the clip clop clip sound they make as you walk.

The soles wore down from a chunky 1 and a half inch to slivers at the heel, cutting me down to my rightful size at the same time. Back to being a sub-six-footer again.

I clashed the toe against rocks and curbs here and there and towards the end, this removed great thick pieces. In fact wherever I went the soles shed splinters, once the flimsy thin rubber soling had flaked off.

All the way from Japan, up the Californian coast, across to Montana and down to Las Vegas there are coarse carpets, sidewalks and rugs, floor-mats and door-mats and old creaky wood floors bearing the sign of my passage, a scattering of splinters. Now if I can just make it back to Vegas, there's a splinter trail all the way back to Japan..

Vegas

Hot machines and cold drinks, ice cold, ice cold water for a dollar hawked on corners and under shade by cryptobiotic beggars and hotel staff with voucher coupons for buffet meals. Vegas was noticeably hotter than anywhere previously, mercifully, a dry heat.

A lot of people seemed to have come from a lot of different places. Everyone gambles, or had gambled once. Inside the casinos there is no glamour. Past the promenade-side bikini girls on blackjack tables, the lure gulped, croupiers have a drawn, jaded look to them. They speak to you without looking directly at you, referring to ‘them upstairs’. They’re fallible too, something I didn’t expect- occasionally they knock something over, a pile of chips or the glass marker set on the winning roulette number. The most cheerful we met was the man in charge at a cheap poker tournament Champ entered at the Tuscany. When Champ lost at the show with pocket aces one hand, the guy remarked at how remarkable it was.

The gamblers are no better. An old-timer tubed-in to an oxygen tank. Great big people on tiny stools. Bellies hanging over the craps table and all magpie eyes follow down to the table. Beyond the Strip, bail bonds shops hablamos espagnol and wedding chapels display the winners and woes of Vegas, baby.

We stayed in a giant loft downtown with a 17th floor rooftop pool overlooking sin city. Penelope the Chi-wa-waaaaa never did stop barking at us with her inimitable throat-croak bark although the three-wheeler Pappy was friendly enough. Our best hook-up yet, I don’t think we’ll stay anywhere nicer in the States than at Erin’s place. Thanks Erin and Thanks Ian!

3 weeks off my life

French toast stuffed with cream cheese, topped with cinnamon apples

Utah

Rich green vegetation petered out to the desert, deep rose rocks and white streaked red boulders, stunted sagebrush and dust in the air.

We stopped off in Park City, picking up friend from Uni Laci en route and then headed further south to Moab. Arches National Park was spectacular, pocket-size compared with Glacier or Yellowstone and filled with signs advising adequate water intake and warning not to stray from the path and tread on 'cryptobiotic crust' - a substance used to kill superheroes, or seal coffins. Not really. Lichen, fungi and bacteria that really soak up the heat and take years and years to grow and develop into a tiny cluster of black dots. We looked hard but couldn't see any.

Day 2 in Moab and I took myself off to conquer a bike trail called Slickrock. The day was not without it's triumphs and tragedies. In a word, it was grueling. In another word (because one word is never enough, unless you're a poet and have an excellent sense for timing [I'm not, I don't]), it was punishing. To put them together, it was grueling and punishing.

I had about a litre and a half of water and some of that high-power suncream you really have to knead into your pores before you stop looking like a panto ghost and before long I'd tied a white tenugui towel around my head too, to try and deflect the sunshine a little. It was f*ckin hot.

The trail itself undulated over Navajo sandstone with sharp descents pitching you against steep climbs, short and wicked and increasingly impossible to conquer. In the end, I pushed the bike on the up, handlebars up above my head it was so steep. On the down, the nature of the rock, all pocks and divets, curls and odd bobbles and ruts, meant that you had to keep a keen eye on what your tire ran over and far down the trail to see what was next and where to go.

After 4 miles or so the heat got to me and my energy levels started depleting in half-lives. I had to break as much as I cycled, each hill was a real challenge I steadied myself for and the water started running dry. Once I dropped the bottle and it bounced down the rock into a bush. Here I'd seen clumps of black dots that could have only been cryptobiotic crust. I hesitated. And then decided if it was going to be me or the cryptobiotic crust, I knew which I was going to save.

I eventually completed the 10 mile loop to find a sign sprayed on the rock I'd not seen at the beginning. It pointed to me, in the direction I had come from with the word 'EASIER'. It pointed with my direction of travel with the word, 'HARDER'. And I remembered an American I'd spoken briefly with (Me: Tough huh? [with manly frown] HIM: That part was [with deeper manly frown]) who had spread himself out just so, at this very point, and sent me on the harder route. Bastard.

One final triumph, I did manage to convince a pair of Frenchman I was French too with a simple 'Ca va', 'C'est difficle' and 'Mais oui', curtailing the conversation before the game was up with a haughty 'Bonne chance' and speeding off.

Yellowstone National Park

So far it's been roughly a drama a day. Run-ins with scary drunk bar flies in motel bars, cops, guns, sketchy areas and monstrous burritos that threaten to burst my stomach. And we haven't even got to 'Nawlins yet.

But on the way to Yellowstone, disaster struck.

I won't say who. But maybe you can figure it out since most of the traveling companions are in fact inanimate toys (two handmade felt frogs and, recently, a large bobcat puppet). One traveling companion forgot to screw the oil cap back on after we'd diligently topped up the engine greaser. Roughly 300 miles later we discovered this.

Bob the sales assistant in the Auto Parts shop was remarkably understanding when we told him we didn't know what model Nissan Sentra we'd been driving since California. Same situation in England, the guy would laugh in your face and still joke about you, in a supercilious way, for another week.

Yellowstone has an embarrassment of riches of natural freaks, volcano tableland, white scree like dusting of first snow with firs popping out, mud-pots and mud volcanoes, bubbling innocuously like brown rice left on the boil to soupy brown gruel, geysers puffing out water and shooting vapour clouds up tall as you can see from far, cool aquamarine pools and turquoise hot springs crusted orange round the edge by God or scientists know what minerals. And all of it, all of the good stuff was accessible by car.

The wildlife was a gimmee too - elk stroll the streets in tiny Mammoth at the northern end of the park. We saw an adolescent wolf cub picking it's way through the grass, oblivious or indifferent to the traffic that had jerked to a halt and a column up on top of the bank, binoculars and digi vidi cams brandished. Three times we passed bison by the road. Twice we watched rogue bison casually stroll down the road toward oncoming cars. There was some kind of funky swan-goose everywhere and rich vegetation held it all together in the park.

Another thing of note - I ate steak and freedom fries for the first time. Champ paced it all wrong and couldn't finish his, so I heaped shame and embarrassment on him by chomping through a small ice cream (it really wasn't small, portions are at least a size up here) for desert.

Glacier National Park

From Seattle, we drove into the future. It was the longest drive at 650 some miles and by the end of it patience was frayed, cutting words had been uttered, awkward punches thrown, throats clawed at and torn, blood all over the upholstery no deposit coming back now and Champ's limp, lifeless carcass stuffed into the trunk.

Not really. I've been reading Dave Eggers and he's been rubbing off on me. Print fingers and bits of text and paper scraps stuck all over me.

Just a long journey.

But we did drive into the future, over the Continental Divide and into Mountain Time.

Hold on.

...and into Mountain Time.

I like that. I wish everything ran on Mountain Time. It sounds better than Greenwich Mean Time. Champ repeatedly (he likes to tell his stories more than once), repeatedly taught me (his words) something he'd seen on the box, a programme with Stephen Fry where he poured water from a bottle on one side of the Continental Divide and said eventually that water would flow to the Atlantic and then poured it on the other side and said it would flow eventually to the Pacific. Every day's a school day with Champ in tow.

When we hit Montana, we ploughed through valleys hugged by big round boulder looking mountains that took an age to slip from the windscreen, down the chassis and into the wing and the rear view mirror. Houses lost in utter remoteness. More horses than I've seen outside of the Cotswolds. Big sky country.

We got stopped for speeding by a friendly ranger with a gun who allowed me to step down from the vehicle to search for my license in the trunk. Madcap, frantic, Champ was throwing his underwear and dirty shirts on the backseat everywhere and foraging in the glove box, in amongst apple cores wrapped in waste paper for the time being while I flung about maps and flyers and town guides in search of the rental agreement. We must've looked like a right pair of idiots. Then I popped the trunk to reveal even more mess and 2 dozen beer bottles, some empty some full and the ranger asked, Uh, have you boys been drinking this morning? Come on old chap, it's not even noon.

We took Going to the sun road through Glacier National Park. The scenery was vast. As much as I hate those expressions 'In other words' (weren't the first ones clear enough?) and 'Bigger than words' (what does that even mean?!), Glacier was pretty big and very otherly. Huge, expansive Lake McDonald and St. Mary Lake pinch the park around the belt. Along the banks wall-side and down the banks to the valley floor wildflower sprout, purple bunched fireweed and swathes of alpine daisies, Indian paintbrush and so many others of every colour like Eden or a Miyazaki Hayao landscape when put together with a bright blue sky and deep green grass.

Seattle

I get dry skin on my hands sometimes. By the time we reach Seattle, the fluctuations in climate from San Francisco up the coast have started to take their toll. Palm swirls and finger prints, knuckle creases all stand out a little whiter where the moisture has gone. Well, it’s either the climate changes or the diet. Coffee and a cream cheese bagel for breakfast again.

Apparently football isn’t popular in America. They call it soccer here and say things like ‘hating soccer is more American than apple pie, driving a pick-up, or spending Saturday afternoons channel surfing’ (Tom Weir of USA Today). Now. Tom, I can’t speak about apple pie or pick-ups but I can tell you... we do plenty of Saturday afternoon channel surfing in England too.

Champ and I decided to conduct a mini-survey.

Our 2005 edition of the Lonely Planet Shoestring USA and Canada guide led us to a dead-end when we first arrived looking for our hostel. The hostel had moved. But we did find a queue of Barcelona FC fans outside a posh hotel and a big team bus sat waiting too. Turns out Barcelona had just been in town and demolished the Sounders, Seattle’s team, 4-0.

The Sounders pull the biggest football crowd in the States, at an average 30,204, just a fraction more than the Mariners’ average gate last year (28,761). They say Seattlites like their soccer, so we decided to put it to the test. We’d ask 5 people if they knew when we could catch the next Sounders game.

As it happened, the survey was put to bed with the first interviewee. We asked a valet attendant outside the Space Needle and he said he thought they were out of town let me check I think the next home game is on the 20th, and he confirmed with a piece of paper, the only piece of paper tacked to the wall of his cabin that read ‘Sounders Schedule’ in black marker.

Portland

The coastline was shrouded in mist, a white gloom studded here and there beside the road with pink mauve and purple wildflower. Sea and cliff gave way to a river chase, low banks and rickety jetties all the way. The trees looked rounder. We passed piles of logs and rows of stars and stripes flying in RV resorts.

We stayed in the Hawthorne district of Portland, bussing back and forth across the river to drink in microbreweries downtown and wander. We criss-crossed the suburbs of Hawthorne, all easy chairs on the front porch and lots of colour. Everyone in town seemed to be our age or roundabout and everyone seemed to have a tattoo, or a piercing or at least some kind of funky hair going on.

We bussed back the first night and a man with a waxed moustache that pointed like compass needles sat opposite. Champ was transfixed by the moustache while the man apparently stared at my sandals. He recognised they were from Japan, said he had a friend who had a similar pair and all the while I beamed like a fool for someone had recognised my sandals were from Japan.

Also, I beat Champ 4-1 at pool in Portland.

Redwoods

In many ways, the Redwoods seem like the dream American sight-see.

For one, it's an American experience- as much as the term 'American' can be invested with anything, 'big' seems about the right fit. The Redwoods are big, the biggest around, the biggest on Earth, the tallest living thing on Earth.

(That said, blue whales are pretty darn big too, and I'm not sure if you stood up a blue whale next to a redwood which would reach further into the sky.)

The trees are so tall you have to stretch out over the dash and crane your neck to the very edge of the field of vision of the windscreen, just to grasp the magnitude of their height.

For seconds, it's a car experience. Roads wind through groves thick with these trees, themselves ancient, sacred monuments for native American peoples that lived in the area. You needn't leave your car to enjoy the trees- you can drive to Jedediah Smith National Park, drive through, and drive back home. And here's the part that sealed it for me -
You can even even drive through a tree itelf

For $5, straight through a car-sized hole at base of the tree scored on the inside with technicolour stripes from close scrapes, straight through to the gift shop on the other side.

I took an early morning dip in the Pacific, 20 metres away from the door to our hostel. It was so cold my muscles ached and I didn't shiver when I came out not 3 minutes later, instead tingled all over.

That evening, as the light weakened over our black sand beach, I found myself in the water again. Champ and I played cards, drank beer and ate chips, and then suddenly saw two fins arc through the surf in front of us. They crept closer, dipping under and reappearing in another location, until it seemed they could get no closer. Trousers off, t-shirt soaked and waves towering over, I halved the distance between me and the dolphins before they didn't resurface, scared off to somewhere else. I got out once again, this time shivering.

The road - San Francisco to the Redwoods

The road trip didn't get off to the best of starts.

An early (ish) wake up undone by a 2 and half hour queue for the car was a bit of a buzz-kill. Champ and I tag-team queued, first he left me queuing to get out of the sun (he burns) and next I left Champ queuing to get out of the queue and pick up a coffee two blocks away.

Over the Golden Gate Bridge well into the afternoon and along the most dramatic, epic coastline I've ever seen. Steep cliffs and bluffs and wide open beaches with not even enough people on them to scratch together two teams for a kick-about or pick-up and more sea than I've ever been able to take in at one time.

Further along the road wound up and down and round and we could see eight corners away further down the coast as the landscape itself jutted into the sea just like the map-maker'd drawn it. Windswept trees doubled over away from the sea and crooked telephones poles, mist and fog and cloud cover for the rest of the day until we break through it not thirty minutes later.

San Francisco

In an exercise of Kerouacian fly off the pins and onto the page write-wise this next transmission will come unadulterated and straight up from all I've seen with these good-bye eyes in the fair, foggy city of San-Fran-Cisco.

Dressed in sandals and a scarf the cold hit me off guard, me not the cold dressed in sandals and a scarf and even that's a lie they're not even sandals. Sisters or cousins of sandals but no sandals. I digress.

Autumn came early this summer for me and perpetually the season is in flux back to the verity of it all. 'This is it, This is all' sang a pack of modern day hippies in Washington Square park, themselves dressed in great coats and beanies and playing double bass and banjo and singing while dogs ran unfettered round them.

Every one is after a buck but every one seems to have a skit, from the beggars to the buskers and the bike rent people. I'll take change for verbal abuse said one beggar and another told me he'd tell me where I got my sandals (they're not sandals I thought) but he didn't he just told me they got onto my feet right there in front of me so I gave him a buck for being a wise-ass and bold too but I might have thought him just an ass if I wasn't in America and doing my darnedest to sprekkie the parlez of this place, which is manifold and many.

We've eaten in many places with names- Lori's Diner, Dave's Bar, Jack's Bar... We had burger, pizza, bagel and burrito in that order for our first 4 squares. There haven't been many green vegetables, nor any other colour vegetables.

Thanks be to Andy H and Greg- the burritos in the Mission were mind-blowing and gut-stuffing, and the Marin Headlands on a bike a highlight. Cheers Jarrett for a class night out at Rickshaw Stop, lots of fun. Thanks Ian, staying downtown was way better than it would have been out on Fisherman's Wharf.