h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well - we've been here in the USA a good few days now. It hasn't been easy to get online because the little netbook we brought with us was hopeless, but I only just realised that it ought to work with hootoo because the site is not really so demanding on the system, so here I am.

Have we found America? I pretty much think so. I had always said that if I ever came here, and it would only be the one time, I would have to go to the West as it was more likely to be different from Europe.

We have seen wide expanses of mountains and steppe-type countryside. We have eaten burgers, but proper ones, and we have been convinced that "Everything is awesome".

With comments from the American researchers here on hootoo over the years, and from reading and communing with Americans stationed near us in Germany, I reckoned I knew most of the oddities. One or two things have surprised me:

- You are expected to eat your cereal with a teaspoon. No larger spoons are provided at breakfast anywhere.

- hotels do not provide shower gel. I have been washing with soap, which is always provided.

- and on that subject: I didn't bring any toiletries with me (except a couple of little sample sachets in case I needed to manage an overnight without luggage, which, as I have already reported, we did). My intention was to buy everything here and then leave it with my son and daughter-in-law for their use or for possible future visits. What a shock! Even cheap brands in a cheap supermarket were no less than $7 for the smallest possible bottles. And not a great choice, either. I was imagining the selection we would have at home: rows and rows of different types and flavours for about 2 euros 50 for a bottle of about 200 ml.

Food I find is perfectly on a par with European food, pricewise (if you looked hard enough) and portionwise. I should have been warned then, when I ordered the baby barbecue ribs. The price was quite high, but that particular restaurant was pretty expensive. I was brought a plate fit for Obelix! I said "You should have told me I was getting a whole pig!"



Our travel agent had booked the car with a car hire firm I wouldn't usually use because they're more expensive than others, but we have had occasion to call on them a couple of times now. The first one was when someone crashed into us on the motorway, and we pulled out at the next exit which was an airport and got a new car in no time.

The second occasion was when we had just arrived and after a day or so the car kept signalling that an "oil change was due". This seemed odd, but we contacted the local office and they said it was probably because they had done the oil change in advance of the 3000 mile warning and there was no need to worry, and they cancelled the warning, which was getting more and more insistant, no problem. This gives a completely different meaning to the phrase "love Hertz"!

Our road trip is nearly finished now, and we are looking forward to a few more days with our little grandson, who I am missing awfully. But I don't think anyone would wish us three uninterrupted weeks in Silicon Valley, even with the joy of seeing him every day. It's not really holiday material.

" You are expected to eat your cereal with a teaspoon. No larger spoons are provided at breakfast anywhere." [TC]

I happily use a tablespoon for eating my cereal every morning. Perhaps you could pick up a tablespoon in a shop and bring it with you when you go to breakfast.

"hotels do not provide shower gel. I have been washing with soap, which is always provided"

Hotels seem to vary widely. I'd be willing to bet that there are American hotels that do provide shower gel.

"I didn't bring any toiletries... My intention was to buy everything here and then leave it with my son and daughter-in-law. What a shock! Even cheap brands in a cheap supermarket were no less than $7 for the smallest possible bottles."

I'm not sure what items you have in mind, but maybe some of them would be available in the Dollar Store, where they'd be a dollar each.

Great journal, TC

A tablespoon, paulh? I couldn't get one into my mouth - even a gob as large as mine. We tend to use dessertspoons for cereal.

Many's the dish has been ruined because the recipe said 'tbsp' where it should have been 'tsp'.

So, TC, looks like you are having a good time.

Which bits of the West did you visit?

I went in 1975, and took in LA, Arizona and the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest. 3 weeks in Laramie, Wyoming with family friends, a week in our friends' friends' log cabin and their gold mine, then Colorado, a week in the Tetons, Utah and back for a short break in SF.
7 weeks, mainly by Greyhound or Trailways, although we borrowed our friends' car to visit the Tetons.

Enjoy the rest.

MMF

The Painted Desert and Petrified Forest, and the whole of south west Utah (Monument Valley, Arches National Park, Bryce Canyon etc) are magnificent. I hope you get to see at least some of those, TC.

"A tablespoon, paulh? I couldn't get one into my mouth - even a gob as large as mine. We tend to use dessertspoons for cereal."

Different strokes for different folks, Icy. For all I know, U.K. tablespoons are bigger than American ones, just as U.K. gallons are bigger than American ones. All I can be sure of is the line in an Anthony Newley that says you should never eat soup with a knife. On that we can agree....I hope!

There was a young man from New York
Who tried to eat soup with a fork.
At the end of a week
He was thin as a leek
And said "Bring the next course--make it pork!"

A mediocre limerick I remember from a mildly funny book I had about the age of eleven. At eleven you remember it regardless, and then it remains with you for life.

A lot of those classic limericks are, well, classic.....

I remember them, too. Can't figure out why I loved the one about birds nesting in a man's beard.

Ah well, that was Edward Lear. He is exempt from criticism.

There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, "It is just as I feared!—
Two Owls and a Hen, four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard."

- The Americans don't know what Bitter Lemon is. And I thought they *invented* it!

- There is constant noise everywhere. Mainly due to air-conditioning. Cars have to go "beep" when you lock them, or at least "peep". Everything else has to make a noise, too. There's no getting away from it!

Ironically, many of the cars that are going beep were not made in America. I always thought the beeping was a European/Japanese thing....

We got through 3 cars in the end. The second one due to the accident and the third one when the second one lit up with a tyre pressure warning.

American petrol stations do not have compressed air freely available as they do in Europe and even the local Hertz office couldn't help us there, and could only give us a new car!

So we had 2 American and one Japanese cars. Both the American ones beeped on locking, but the Japanese one didn't even have a remote controlled key.

That's strange, because the newest version of the entry-level Nissan I own has a remote controlled key. My model, which is four model years old, does not, but it's the last year of that version....

I've seen plenty of gas stations around Boston with air. California doesn't follow the rules everybody else uses. It expects to lead the pack and have its methods copied by the rest of the country over time.

Don't people carry foot pumps any more?

I used to, but it gradually went to pieces, literally. I couldn't foot the cost of a new one, so now I go without.