Wilson's final thoughts

I've made it back to Denver. 8,700 miles, 280 hours of driving, 14,000 feet in elevation change from the Pacific to Pikes Peak. Burned some gas, ate some burgers, got wet, got hot. Took a few pictures along the way.

Time to take stock of the last 50 days.

Diggin' on human power in Wyoming

America loves the motor car (well in fact they love girt big trucks masquerading as cars), so much so that most touristy places I go end up with a 1/2 mile exclusion zone around the car park beyond which 80% of Americans will not walk.

This is A Good Thing because it means the application of a little human powered activity i.e. walking or, in this mornings case, paddling, results in accessing proper wildscapes without screaming kids, revving engines, yakking people or white socks pulled half way up to the knees.

The Bird 'Ghetto on a Good Day' Burger - 19/25

The more places I see, the more it reinforces how incredibly important personality becomes in a restaurant. Branded chains drown under a wave of greying conformity, no matter how brightly coloured their arches. Mom & Pop places should have personality oozing given their independence and owner/operator control, but too often they make no statement at all and end up just as grey and forgettable as the generica.

In any endeavour where you want to have people take away positive memories and experiences , you can't do that unless somebody somewhere in the organisation puts a big old stake in the ground and says This is what we are about. It doesn't have to be complex (it's usually better not) or be grand, but as long as you have something concrete to hang your business, band or restaurant off that's what matters and it's what will lift you out of the murky depths of average.

The Bird had it in spades for me. It's an idiosyncratic pub just South of Jackson, Wyoming. Opened in 2010 by two New Yorkers via Berlin it's become the #1 Restaurant on Tripadvisor in Jackson (all this I found out after the fact as I was tipped off by some locals from my namesake town earlier in the day when I enquired 'who makes the best burgers around here' and got told, "Hands down, The Bird").

My own private America

Get off the map and stay off it

Spent 4 days touring round the depths of the National Forests of Klamath, Shasta, Trinity and Lassen, a huge area of mountains and forest taking up most of Northern California. In the process, I have become adept at snaking out awesome spots to overnight at, preferably with a river close by for morning dips. Had some epic drives, which completely blew Sat Nav Lady's mind (or maybe it was the canyons, fog, switchback roads, deep forests). I lost count of the number of legal U-turns she was desperate for me to make to force me back onto main roads. The more she does it the more I relish ignoring her..

In which I visit Endor

Do you ever have those moments when something seems to reach into your brain, grabs a fistful of consciousness then yanks you out of your meatware to really appreciate where you are or what you're doing?

As I'm an old geezer who remembers turbo buttons on computers and the gently glowing 66 that meant you were a player, I get it frequently when holding a modern mobile phone; the sheer computing power stacked into something so small, the array of things it can do. Camera, calculator, diary, video camera, music player, organiser - and it makes calls too. Take yours out now and really think about what it's taken to put all the stuff in the palm of your hand. If you don't find yourself thinking isn't technology amazing, you're not concentrating hard enough.

My first sniff of the 'real' Pacific

Technically, scrambling about below the Golden Gate Bridge should count, but somehow the fog and grey-ness that day didn't feel real. As I travelled North from San Francisco, climbing through Mount Tamalpais state park got me some fantastic above the clouds views and then later sheer distance from fog trap of the bay at Point Reyes seashore got me proper Pacific up close.

Like many things I'm finding on this trip, it's the little things that can catch you out when you shift cultures to another country. For example, if you ask for a side order of something in a restaurant in the US, you'll often have it delivered as an appetiser, rather than as, you know something on the side with your main dish (go figure). On the roads, you can turn right at a red light if it's safe and overtake on any side on the freeway. The point I'm making is that some stuff you take for granted or do automatically in one place, can have dire consequences in another.

Pause for thought - lessons learned and tunes rocked

I've made it 'Frisco. Took a few pictures along the way.

A useful time to pause and take stock on the last 2000 miles or so.

The 40 mile detour I'll never regret

Travelling down US191 towards Canyonlands National Park, my eye was drawn to a sign labelled 'Needles Overlook'. The Needles are one of Canyonlands most famous areas, stuffed with fins and spires, so I thought it would be worth a look. When I turned off at the indicated point, I was met with a sign saying Needles Overlook, 20 miles. No prizes for figuring out that's a 40 mile detour there and back...

Leave the baggage behind

 

The original plan was to go uni-bag, take hand luggage only to avoid baggage handling hassles and waiting around. Okay, so I caved and ended up with two bags, but technically one of them counts as a handbag (BA allows a handbag or laptop bag up to 45cm x 36xm x 20cm in addition to carry-on hand luggage of 56cm x 45cm x 24cm).

My tesselation skills (which are astounding, nay almost magical in their application) resulted in a nicely pared down basic kit:

There is no spoon but there is a scoring system

Humans are largely creatures of habit and partition. We like to know what's what, who's who and where things are. Some of us even invest a little energy where the real juice is, in 'why'. Labelling and boxing up stuff helps our brains model and process information quickly. Without that ability the sheer volume of input streaming across our cortex into the thalamus would utterly overwhelm any ability to respond rationally or fast enough to make a difference.

Simple questions with far reaching answers

There I was, balancing the books one evening, all pleased with myself at the nice little nest egg I'd built up for a rainy day when the thought suddenly popped into my head: what are you actually saving for? You've got enough squirrelled away to cover yourself for a few months off work here even if it does rain later.

Which led to a relatively simple question: so if I don't have to go to work for 5 months, what could I do?