Hello, I’m new in town.

As I came south down US17 (finally managing to work out the route that avoids passing through the main drag of Myrtle Beach and avoid the congestion), I decided to imagine that I’d never been to Charleston before.

I’ve obviously been to a lot of towns and cities over the last three weeks, and each time I’ve approached one, you always look for the early signs as you approach as to how nice it’s going to be.

There was a horrid, jsut horrid place in Pennsylvania the other week, where I came off to stop at a gas station just to use their toilet, and BAAM! *every single* conceiveable chain store that you’ve come to know and love/hate were there. Their huge day-glo neon signs polluting the skyline, to the point where what with the US style of traffic lights [stop signals] being strung across the junction on high tension wires clogging up the sky too, it was actually hard to see the sky & clouds above because everywhere I looked that was a sign for a business. Day Inn, Holiday Inn, Super 8, Motel 6 - were all there. McDonald’s, Arby’s, Taco Bell and Waffle House - all there. And BP and Exxon and a couple of other chain gas stations that I don’t remember where there.

I fumbled with my camera at the drivers seat to take a shot, but the light turn green, the car behind me hooted his horn, and I drove on … and then got the hell out of there, because I was slightly depressed at how characterless the town had been. It could have been anywhere. It was just rubbish.

And yet … strangely … that was my initial impression of this new town … ‘Charleston’ the I approached yesterday. You do of course get to Chuck south on 17 through Mount Pleasant. And they they all were .. the Arby’s the Wendy’s and the Days Inn, littering the side of the road like anytown USA. It’s not until you hit the bridge (and I tried to pretend again that I was new to town, and what my first impression of the bridhe would be upon seeing it for the first time), and cross it and make downtown proper that you quickly get tuned into Chs’s uniqueness.

It’s odd being back. I’ve only been gone 3 weeks and it feels like longer. What will feel like when I return after being 9 weeks on the road? Which is the prospect that now faces me. Car Battery flat and gear stolen from car? If that can happen in 3 weeks, what can happen in 9? *shudder*

Tech-wise, I’ve ordered a new camera which will get here hopefully tomorrow. A new video camera is also back ordered which is a pain, but i’m working on a plan to get it to me sooner.

Tomorrow is a day of getting my main PC back up and running, and trying to remember what the names of all the 4000+ tracks were that I had on my iTunes. That should be fun - not.

Although everything physical that was taken can be replaced, the digital moments that those items recorded though, unfortunately, cannot.

Katie & I visited the town of Bellefontaine in Ohio last week, to the site of the World’s Smallest Street - McKinley street. Actually I’ve since discovered that there is a dispute to its claim as this street here reckons it’s shorter, yeah - whatever. All I know is that we spent quite a bit of time there, and I recorded some amusing multi-angle shots of us ‘running’ in slow-motion ‘race’, which in my head I was already putting to the music from Chariots of Fire - would have been amusing, but no one gets to see it now.

There was some beautiful footage of an abandoned farmhouse that we drove past with rusty cars decaying by nature (that I took photos off and DID manage to keep/publish) was on one of the tapes stolen, never to be seen again.

When we crossed the state line from Tennessee into North Carolina on Monday, I saw and screamed at Katie to stop at this house in the middle of nowhere, which I suddenly saw had a whole collection of license plates adorning one of the walls. The elderly lady in the house came out and explained to us that her husband had collected license plates his whole life (along with rusty farm machinery!) and put them on the side of the house for everyone to see as people drove buy. Considering that I’m doing the lower 48 states, and my photo gallery here of collecting a picture of a plate-from-every-state it was just perfect to see and video, and photo. But not now.

Somewhere in deepest darkest West Virgina, we stopped at a state-paid service area, which was really just an area with picnic tables, a water fountain and toilets … if you could call them that. I’ve seen better restrooms in France (the most disgusting public toilet country in the world) as the ’sit down’ toilet part was just a hole in the ground - and yes, I took my video camera in and got some shots of the whole thing … and of Katie who was so grossed out by it all (and somewhat vocal in her disapproval) that a woman parked in a nearby car heard her and came dashing over to offer up some hand sanitizer - all on video, all good fun, but … gone.

When we met Betty in Ohio last week, we got that on video, as well as the pictures of the same-name place in Tennessee (Amersham) that we did Monday morning, I’ll never see those again. *sigh*

So that’s what you missed. That’s what I’ll never get back, although there’s a tiny part of me that thinks “Well maybe I’ll have to go back AGAIN and do those places again one day”, just to be totally not beaten on the whole thing. Maybe.

Yesterday I tidied up the car and realised actually the full extent of what has been taken. Yes I’d filed a police report on the camera, video camera, PC, TomTom and two iPods - but then suddenly there were loads of little bits that I realised were gone.

In the video camera bag was spare batteries and a charger, and another external microphone. And an expensive radio mic kit - oh and my nice Sennheiser headphones too. The suction device that allowed me to ’stick’ my video camera to the bonnet [hood] of the car and shoot me back through the window was in their. Even the the mounting clip on my tripod (they didn’t take the tripod, but they might as well have done) was attached to the camera, and it’s going to be a pain in the arse to replace.

Talking of things being a pain in the arse to replace … if I want to get the Sony HVRA1U camcorder that I had before, it’s on “Back Order” from the Sony website, or “7-14 days” from the B&H website. I don’t know where I’ll be in 7-14 days time as I’ll be on the road somewhere. So how do I get it shipped to me? And that’s two more weeks of the road trip GONE without anyway of videoing it. It’s like .. I’ll get only half the trip on video now, which is actually upsetting. I’d set up the whole thing to be one long video documentary and drama.

Which reminds me - the tapes of all the footage that I’d recorded since Maine, of which there was other material that could have been used, I now no longer have.

Oh, and even though I can buy a new Nikon camera, my CF cards and flash unit were also taken. And my super-fast editing PC came actually came with a standard crappy on-board soundcard, which I replaced with a very decent HT Omega soundcard instead (beats the pants off any Creative Soundblaster product) last year for really good audio quality when editing, and now it’s gone. They also took my little Nikon Coolpix point and shoot digital camera too which had some photos on it too. Gone.

Makes me wonder … where in the world all that stuff is now. Has the person that’s got it played back the tape, or looked at the photos on the camera and can see all this? See what I look like, see that there is a journey and a history there, and if it makes them care for a second. Yeah … don’t answer that one, I already really know the answer.

Ok, I’ll stop with the “gone’s” now, it’s even getting annoying to me - except for the final moment of “Oh the little fuckers”, when I realised that they also scooped the $4.25 in cash off of the dashboard which had been sitting there - in the shape of 17 state quarters which I’d collected as I had (of course) started to see if I could get the state quarter in each place I visited as I went around. I’ll have to start that again too now.

I went through Finchley VA and Hampstead NC yesterday. At Finchley (nothing to see, these aren’t the droids you’re looking for) my heart wasn’t in it and there was nothing much to report on. But a drive south down the I-40 listening to music on the CD’s that hadn’t been stolen slowly improved my mood and Hampstead suddenly seemed vaguely exciting.

Then I got a call last night from my friend Tami in New Orleans, who I shall be with by Friday of next week, and the talk of seeing her, being shown round the city and (hopefully) the Police Department of which she works for perked me right up and (finally) got my mood back on track for the next two months.

Gotta swing by Charleston though this weekend, relax, order some new gear with the lovely amount of money that’s been raised, and I’ll hit the road again on Sunday.

Goodness that’s bad, I’ve got to think of some better blog-post titles otherwise any sympathy I may be currently be getting will be eradicated faster than it takes someone to smash a car window if I keep turning out puns like that.

I’m in Raleigh now, in North Carolina. I almost quit and went straight back to Charleston from Greensboro yesterday, but when I saw how everyone had rallied round and support came flooding in for me it soon became clear that I should not give up and and carry on. And even though at the very least I wanted to head back to Chucktown immediately and lick my wounds to recover, I realised my resolve and thus I’ve got to and visit a same-named-underground-stop place down near Wilmington, NC by the end of today (even though I don’t have a camera to take a picture of it!), and then I’ll head back to Charleston for the weekend.

Then, on Sunday - July 5th - it’s time to crack on properly and go for another eight weeks to cover the remaining 35 states that I have yet to touch. So if you’ve just joined on board the Geofftech bandwagon and are thinking “Ok Geoff, enough with the pity posts, let’s see some of America that you promised us”, then the journey will pick up again after the weekend, through until the end of August - so stick around.

I was also somewhat embarrassed, certainly humbled to the extreme when I spoke to my man Ken at TheDigitel yesterday and found out that the various help Geoff pages that were spawned off of Mondays events has got me around $4000 in donation money from people - which is just staggering. And I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to say ‘thank you’ enough to all and anyone who contributed to that amount.

But if you did, then thank you. And if you messaged me, txt’d me, facebook’d me, emailed me - anything and I haven’t got back to you yet, please be aware that I did get and read your message, and I’ve just been a little overwhelmed to be able to respond to all of them yet.

I’d like to point out my progress map this morning, which is over there at all times in the right hand column of the blog, but I’ll show here in a bigger format. I really have been updating it every day at the end of the day to show the ’same name’ places I’ve been to, where I’ve stayed the night and the gas stops I’ve made & other bits too. And it gets more interesting now as the states get bigger, and the driving distances get longer, and it tests my resolve more.

Don’t forget too, that my twitter feed probably “tells the story best of all”, (as one person put it), and I’ll often say exactly where I am, or what I’m doing, or observing on all the quirky stuff that I see along the way. If you hop onto the Facebook group too (and you don’t have to even be my facebook friend to see/join it) there’s a whole bunch of additional photos there that I’ve been uploading as I go.

I am now scared that the car will get broken into again. When I came out of my friends house this morning, I looked on the driveway and car was gone. Stolen! Oh… oh.. no it wasn’t, it just was just parked 10 yards further down the drive than I’d remembered, momentarily out of sight. But that’s what it does to you … every moment you think now that something bad is happening to it.

We got talking to other residents in the Greensboro neighbourhood yesterday where we were staying. Turns out that a few other cars had been broken into in the last few weeks - it wasn’t an isolated incident. A girl in a car who was driving by and stopped and talk to us, told us that she had gone out “And bought herself a 9mm because of it”. And what was really shocking is that my reaction wasn’t one of “A Gun! My goodness, a GUN!” like it might have been a while ago - instead I just duly nodded and said “Uh hu”, and understood completely where she was coming from.

Final plug : For the autoglass shop where I got my windows repaired yesterday. They had a copy of the News & Record in their shop, and when I pointed out the article of me in it and what had happened to me, I instantly got a discount on the repair, love it. Maybe Greensboro ain’t so bad after all, even the Mayor got in touch to express her condolences.

“All of the problems in world could be sorted out if we all just sat down and had a nice cup of tea”.

I have no idea what Englishman once quoted that (but it must have been an Englishman, right?) so maybe I should lay claim to it now, as it would seem that all the worlds problems can be solved with a nice cuppa, surely?

I started my Monday with a tea, and ended it with one. Somewhere inbetween I discovered my road trip car had been broken into, my main PC, Camera and Video Camera stolen to the total sum of $6000, and then I got very drunk on some Smirnoff, as sometimes … getting a little plastered also helps too.

Actually, that’s not all that happened. For somewhere inbetween that, the Greensboro cops finally bothered (several hours later) to call me back and give me an incident number. A lovely man called Ryan came out to report on the incident and wrote me up in the local paper here. My good friend and local Charleston blogger Dan called me, and kicked off a social networking whirl in Charleston on twitter, on facebook, and a little ‘help Geoff’ world suddenly sprung up out of nowhere. It was beautiful. To Ken, Chrys, Kathleen and everyone that got involved back in Chuck - it was weird to watch that evolve from a distance and online. Dan put me in touch with an well known local blogger Ed here, and his work got the local paper onto me. That felt good.

And then a whole bunch of people called me. And the emails. And then as the social networking whirl took a grip there were the @geofftech tweets, and the directs, and the comments on my facebook wall. And my phone beeped every 30 seconds as a new text message came in, and - overwhelmingly and most notably - the comments on my blog which finally made me realise how many damn lovely people there are out there that read, follow along, and wanted to do something to help.

And yet somehow, saying a humble “thank you”, just doesn’t seem to quite cut it, does it? At all. But perhaps you’ll realise how much thanks there was if I admit to pitifully how you all made me sit here at my laptop today and cry like a girl at the overwhelming response to my plight.

My plight - of course - is one that is totally self inflicted. I am a realist. At several times today I gave myself a healthy reality check and noted that I was course still alive. I’m still walking. I hadn’t been beaten up, or shot at, or had the car stolen. It could have been a lot worse.

But then I got angry just before the reported for the paper turned up, and I got Katie to shakycam-record me again on the tiny camcorder - and some if it will no doubt appear in a final edit one day - as to my overwhelming thoughts on the situation.

I was just trying to get out their to see some of the real USA. The magnificently overwhelming huge country with its mixed dialects and cultures and traditions, and just cram some of that into my short life and make me that little bit wiser, and perhaps smarter. That in some way I could perhaps impart the knowledge and wisdom of my travels onto others in the future. To regal tales of intrigue and wonder of crazy and lovable things that I saw around this fascinating country.

And yet … all I was left with was a notion that Real : USA right now was of some fuckers that took a chance on scoring a GPS system and (due to my stupidity) hit the jackpot with a whole load of other equipment too. Do the little shits that stole my stuff in the early hours of this morning want to get out and see their country? Do they want to explore the world and expand their minds, and educate themselves? Or do they just want to know where the next $100 from a pawned of item of equipment is going to come from to get their high.

At 10.30 this morning, right after shooting that painfully honest video (which, I admit, I had a hard time watching back today) I was all set for going home. A couple of hours later, when the new-media social networking-world has burst into life, I rapidly changed my mind.

If the irony should not be lost that I have in a very real sense witnessed Real : USA - yes folks, crime is prevalent in these recessed times - then it should also not be lost that my ‘tech’ angle of wanting to blog, twitter and video what I was doing did in fact come to my rescue today.

What do you say when someone sets up a ‘help Geoff‘ website for you? When ‘#helpgeoff’ becomes a Charleston hashtag of the day. Or most of all, when people are willingly parting with their hard earned dollars in these tight-times to cough up for me for new equipment and keep me on going some. Today I learned the definition of the word ‘humbled’.

‘Humbled’, of course, cannot begin to sufficiently describe how it made me feel. No way will “Thank you” go anywhere near towards really thanking you for you help, love and support.

By the afternoon, my mind was made up. I carry on. Because giving up would be … well … just giving up, wouldn’t it? And as another favourite quote of mine goes … “You can’t fail, if you don’t give up”, which means that giving up is not an option.

So love to you all. And at somepoint I’ll reply to my inbox that is now bursting at the seams. But right now, I gotta go put the kettle on and make myself another tea. Liquor may numb the senses, but Brittania bravely conquered the world on tea drinking alone, and I have 35 states yet still to conquer … and try to video it all too.

Wanna help?

Ken (my boss at TheDigitel in Charleston), put up this story about me. From there, are some links to donate a few bucks. The best one to use it would seem is the PayPal link at the bottom of the page. So go to this page and click on the big yellow ‘Donate’ button, and it’ll take you through to PayPal. I’m not begging, I’m just saying it’s there. I don’t want to look like a leech that is sponging off of you all.

If I get a decent camera again that I can document the rest of my trip with (and there is still two months - the whole of July and August looming ahead of me), then believe me when I tell you that you’ll know I’ll take that baby to bed with me each night and not be a dumbass again and leave it in my car.

I am in Greensboro, NC. And this - I’m afraid to say - is a very very real video.

This was recorded by Katie on my crappy backup second camcorder video camera this morning, and hence the poor quality, apologies. Note: There is some strong language.

They took my main kick-arse video editing PC. My Sony HVR-A1U DV video camera. My Nikon D200 stills camera. About $6000 of technology, taken, stolen, gone, kaput. And without it, I don’t know if I can carry on.

They also got the TomTom GPS, my iPod (and with my PC gone, all my music that I’ve built up over the last five years, and if you know me you’ll know how much that hurts), and Katie’s iPod & work cell phone. Gone gone gone.

I did bring my laptop in, so I’ve got that, and my cell phone, and my crappy camcorder video camera. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading and seeing this right now.

Yes I should have brought it all in over night. I know. Don’t tell me that. I know.

The road trip was meant to be the answer to the “So what now?” question with regards to my life, and now it’s fucked, totally fucked.

I don’t think I deserved this. Maybe you think different. Maybe I should just give up and go home. I don’t know, I just don’t know.

What do I do?

I was convinced the most idyllic, beautiful and remote places on the trip were going to be in the mid-west or in the middle of nowhere western parts of America - not so.

West Virginia and Kentucky are officially part of ‘the south’ which I find weird, because geographically speaking they’re not really in the southern part of America to me, but the south is what they are, and the south is what you get.

We stayed at a campground in West Virginia for two nights because we realised it would save the hassle of packing up all the gear, and we could go on an ‘excursion’ to our named place in Kentucky in a day and back, and take in a quick visit to Lexington too.

So we pressed on - to Preston - Kentucky without any real idea of what to expect.

The first sign that we were really in the south came as the gas station right after we’d crossed the WV/KY state line. The gas station was a gas station, diner, and grocery mart all in one. Everyone in their clearly knew everyone else and were on first name terms. A woman in line in front of me to pay was dragging on a cigarette (which just seems wrong at a gas station), and when I eventually said “Just these please” indicating the two bottles of Ale81 and candy bar I was buying in my delightful British accent, the cashier looked at me as if I was from another planet .. didn’t know what to say for a moment .. and then eventually changed gear, found her vocal chords, and in a draaaawl bigger than anything I have ever heard in Charleston said “Will thaaat be aaaaawwwl fah yaaa?”.

Judging by the disappointment of Wapping and Warwick last week, I wasn’t expecting to find much in Preston - another ‘nothing’ town - but what we got was a perfect stereotype of a ‘middle of nowhere’ town.

There was the the most rustic looking general store ‘Blevins Store’ that you have ever seen in your life. Four old guys sat out the front on the porch, one whom was actually whittling away on his whittling stick. It was everything you might imagine of a quaint old general store.

The guy inside with his wispy beard and big peaked cap looked at us a bit worried, but I got in first and paid him a compliment - always pay people a compliment and they will like you. “What a fantastic store you have here”, was my opening gambit, and we were off and running and he explained he’d worked there for 40 years - all his life, collected photos of his customers that he stuck up on the wall and loved his tiny village.

There was a local newspaper article from a few years back on the wall about the store - describing it not just as a General Store, but as ‘A way of life’ for the village and it’s villagers. And I swear the yellow faded photo of the store from the front featured the same four guys that were sat out front right now - they’d probably been there for 40 years too.

It was slightly dusty and musky, and had products on the shelf that hadn’t moved in months. It. Was. Brilliant.

But then it got awkward as we were clearly just gawping at the store, so I dove into the refrigerator and got two more bottle of Ale81 - non standard sized bottles this time … with a longer neck … that I’d never seen before.

“Eww can get um thiiirty sense back on um buddles if eww bring um back to tha store here” we were informed, but we pointed out that we were on a long trip and not passing back through Preston at any time in the foreseeable future.

We headed onto Lexington to the afternoon. We caught up with my friend Kathleen who I know from Charleston back visiting her mum, we explained about the rustic store. “But that’s not all of what Kentucky is like!” she said seemingly almost worried that I would have a tainted point of view of her home state. But it’s a good taint, Kathleen, I loved it.

The sun set as we drove back east along Interstate 64, through the Daniel Boone national forest, and West Virgina opened up to us again in its vast, open, expansive beauty. And this is a relatively small state, I remember thinking to myself, “How’s it gonna look when I hit one of the really big ones later on in the summer?”. Too much to think about.

I took a swing of my Ale81, and preston. I mean … pressed on - this time back to camp and tent, to watch the sunset, and cook dinner camp stove style.

I could get used to this.

I got the rainy day I wanted, or rather - a rainy night.

The first dots of rain must have splashed against the outside out the canopy of the tent at around 3am in the morning, and continued to explode against the smooth stretched surface for the night few hours, pattering away in a never ending random fashion, mixed in with the rumble of juggernauts passing on the interstate behind the row of trees on the edge of the campground. A noise guaranteed to bring you frustration for its ability to keep you awake, but also lending a sense of wonder because it very much felt like it was you against the elements .. and so my night in West Virginia passed.

We’d left Columbus Ohio the day before, stocked up on cookies, goodies and treats given to us by the wonderful Betty who’d got in touch with me. Betty’s name had popped up on my blog comment and twitter, and she’s been trying to guess where we going in Ohio - her home state - right up until we went to Greenford. Turns out that once we hit Michigan she thought we’d be off and away, but when we turned around and headed south again and I tweeted that Columbus was on our route she emailed me and wondered if we’d like to meet. Would I? Of course I would!

Seems that Betty is a huge fan of London, the tube, follows this infamous London Blog too (who’s idea it was to take this trip), and I think it’s not big headed to say that she was a little honoured to meet me! Turns out that Wednesday evenings is her local knitting group meet up, and that they all hang out in the delightful Whetstone Park in Columbus, knitting, gossiping and eating the lovely potluck treats that people bring. I signed a tube map for her, she signed my road trip t-shirt for me, and we spoke to everyone that was there before darkness fell and we were on out way. Betty writes about it all on her blog here.

I quite liked Columbus - a college town, it seemed clean and friendly and well laid out. busy without being too busy, big without being that horrible ‘American big’ that i have seen so much where everything is so spaced out that it just lacks character. Columbus had a bit of character about it.

Next stop: Liverpool, West Virginia - which turned out to be a tiny village in the lovely rolling green countryside - a bit like being on the farm in northern Virginia a few days prior. Before we got there thought, we stopped at a state-rest stop just a few miles from the OH/WV border, and were somewhat appalled at the lack of the facilities present. You’ll be thrilled to know that i all captured it on video, but it was a direct take on the ‘hole in the ground’ toilets that i thought you only got in populated third-world-countries, you know… like… France. Shitting directly into a hole in a ‘cubicle’ with no door does not leave you with a good impression. It was “flush with the elbow” time, and Katie protested so much that a kind woman in a nearby car offered up some of her sanitizer to wipe her hands down with.

We made Liverpool [Liverpool Street] shortly after, with both of us fearing for our lives a little as we wound left and right and up and down along the edge of a hill of a very winding road that needed repair. the GPS got most confused more than once and told us to turn down roads that weren’t there, and we ended up at one point on a road that it knew nothing about. Better mapping required in this (literal) neck of the woods, please, TeleAtlas.

At the Turkey Fork Road general store, the old boy behind the counter eyed us with suspicion “South Carolina plate? At my store?” and helpfully informed that “We were in the middle of nowhere really”, when I asked him what town we were in.

We moved on, stopping a few miles down the road to quench my thirst for my latest photographic bent - I’m getting a fixation for some reason about abandoned rusty cars that have been left to the elements, and we found a farmyard barn where five cars (including VW beetles … should have been WV Beatles considering what state we were in, geddit?) and I snapped away at the photogenic deterioration of what many years ago must have been someone’s pride and joy; A car that someone paid good money for, a car that a first date was picked up and taken out somewhere, a car that might have taken a woman in labour to the hospital to give birth, but now … left to rust and make we wonder about its history and past life and previous owners.

A quick pass through Charleston .. not that one, but this one. South Carolina’s name sake, and capital city of West Virginia. I think a fair summary would be to say “It’s not as flat at the one I’m used to”, and then we headed out west to the nice town of Milton & Huntington for the night, and we’ll make Kentucky today (Friday) at some point.

We’re getting good at setting up the tent now, in under 3 minutes last night. We also cooked a bloody decent meal as well on the stove and generally had all our shit together. It can get quite addictive this living rough and camping on the road you know. Maybe when I go “home” I won’t want to go home at all .. but continue to be a roaming nomad around whatever soil I put my feet on the ground. We’ll see. I have 37 more same named tube stations places to go visit first.

So what are you doing for 7 days in July? I’ve got a little problem …

One my ‘definite’ signed up companions has renegaded on me, and left me with an open spot for some good time road trippin’ across ye olde US of A. So in what could be a dangerous move, I’m advertising it up to anyone that may be reading this …

You’ll need to fly into New Orleans for Saturday 11th July, and then it’s a weeks drive from there up to Chicago on July 18th - which would be a good dropping off point, if you fancy coming with me.

You can be from the USA or anywhere else, as long as you can get yourself on flights around those times. You may also be expected to drive a little and operate my video camera too!

And just because you’re the first to get back to me (or get back to me at all!) does not guarantee you getting in. You might after all be a nutter, as I will vet you before I agree

Previous Geofftech stalkers need not apply. You know the email, it’s this one -> geoff@geofftech.co.uk

I am in Columbus Ohio. It is hot. Unusually hot, and I am grumpy.

I shouldn’t be too grumpy, because bizarrely I’m a day ahead of schedule. I wasn’t mean to be here until today and instead I’m leaving Columbus shortly instead for the deepest darkest depths of West Virginia and the ’stop’ along the way. And this is a good thing - I was always really worried that I would have do loads of ‘make up’ driving to catch up with myself, but so far I am averaging around 4 hours of driving a day, and it’s working out really well.

I am grumpy though due to my headache. It’s the unseasonably hot weather for Ohio, and the irony now is that a few days back when I was fed up with it raining? Well … I could really do with a cool rainy day right now.

But at least we have a video … yay! From the depths of the abandoned mining town of Centralia PA, to the rolling countryside of northern Virginia, and into Detroit Michigan yesterday where we checked out the world’s largest tyre. Go Play!

It’s all fun fun fun this road tripping isn’t it? Or is it?

I picked up the first of my companions on Monday - Katie - as she joined me for nine days and we immediately headed north from Ohio towards Detroit, Michigan. Now people I know down in Charleston have told me about the area, and for the many that have seen Michael Moore’s Roger and Me - which he made over ten years ago will also have a view on how depressed this area is. We also got a warning from our server in the cute ‘Better Half’ diner in Sandusky OH on Tuesday morning that “Things still really hadn’t got better” and .. they hadn’t.

At some point during the trip, I’ll be encouraging all of my companions to blog at some point. Katie was more than happy to write about what she felt about Detroit.

When I learned that my leg of the trip with Geoff included Detroit, first, I figured out why this leg had not been picked up by somebody else already, and second, I knew I would be in for something different. Little did I know how big of a mark Detroit would leave on MY map.

So this is the real Underground USA, folks. It’s not all sunshine and roses, quirky roadside attractions or charming American towns with idyllic smiling faces. Although those things are much appreciated and equally noted, you have to acknowledge the good with the bad, and the current societal and economic state of the US overall is not a good one, and heaven forbid that what is happening in Detroit spreads elsewhere.

We got the hell out of Detroit - to the point where we didn’t actually visit Royal Oak - our ‘tube’ stop for this state. Yes …. I know, I missed one, and I’m ok with that … but I didn’t really want to see another street of failed business, begging people and a general air of depression.

I should of gotten the car checked out sooner If I’d of been smarter, but alas - I am not.

But stopping to find a garage, to take the car in and say “I think there’s something wrong with the battery, but I’m not really sure” sounded time consuming against my schedule, and so all like all good problems - I ignored it and hoped that it went away. It didn’t.

Yes, the car had had trouble starting a couple of times a few days in, but I pressed on regardless thinking that I’d get it checked out back in Charleston when I pass through their on July 4th weekend. The car however, had other ideas.

I’d literally just pulled up and stopped in Harrow, PA - one of my stops - when I took a call from a friend. It was raining slightly. Call finished, and I tried to start the car again … only … no joy, at all. The engine pathetically half-turned over and then failed, and I slowly realised that I was in need of some help!

It could have been worse. I could have been stuck out “in the boonies” as someone said, but as it was, I was a two minute walk away from a gas station, who helpfully lent me their local phone book and I scanned all the numbers under ‘Auto Repair’ for a local garage in Harrow. There was one - just one!

So this is Scott, from Vanderlely’s. my knight in shining armour, who after some initial confusion on the phone (He didn’t get what I meant when I said “Do you sell car batteries?”, but when I said “Do you sell car badderies?” he understood me just fine) drove out to meet me in his truck, and after (thankfully) confirming that it wasn’t the alternator that was duff, just the battery - he jumped started me, and I drove the mile down the road to his garage where he fitted me out with a new one.

Well, I say ‘garage’, but it was actually more of a vintage car repair shop as Scott was a man that liked his cars - really like his cars. And he spent most of his time collecting old vehicles, repairing and racing them. He showed me around his garage full of collectable vehicles including the town’s original fire truck from fifty years ago which he’s lovingly restored.

Suddenly I realised that it was almost fortuitous to have broken down where I did and meet this guy, because now I got to look at the cool cars that he had in his garage. He’d lived in Harrow all his life (40+ years) and at the weekend went out racing in classic 1970’s car. I was lucky that he was in work today, because the racing for this weekend had been cancelled because of the rain.

Scott replaced my battery with easy, making me realise how inappropriately experience I am in all things cars. A battery (sorry, baddery) is something that sounds simple but even I would struggle with. Scott replaced the cheapo K-Mart bought and now dead previous model, with some super heavy-duty king sized monstrosity, and the car fired up into life beautifully.

I left Harrow and visited Centralia a couple of hours driving to the west - more of that in a video to follow later this week, and you’ll see why.

I also got Acton, New Jersey and Camden in Delaware down and ticked off the list before heading west into what will now be the start of a long nine weeks.

This first week has been quite ’snappy’ .. a lot of places done because they’re all (relatively) close together, but starting tomorrow when I hit Ohio, the places are going to be more spaced out and I think I’m really going to start to feel like I’m on a long summer roadtrip at last.

Let’s just hope the battery dieing in the car is the only auto-drama I’m going to have …

… is of course a song by LCD Soundsystem.

It seemed pertinent though, because there came a point yesterday where I just felt like I was fed up of the city, of traffic, of stop-starting at junctions and lights and paying tolls all the time, and all I really wanted to do is just quit the city, and get out into real rural America. But it’s coming .. I know it’s coming, I just have to get the North East corner out of the way first.

Of course, the other to do when you’re driving around downtown Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens cursing at the appalling traffic and extortionate tolls for the bridges and tunnels, is type the search phrase ‘New York’ into your iPod and see what it comes up with. Madonna, U2 and this terrible Pet Shop Boys song are the obvious choices, but LCD less so. In the end though of course, there was only ever going to be one clear winner of musical choice …

I kinda feel like I’m done with New England and the north east corner now, so I’m leaving New Jersey today and am heading west through Pennsylvania and heading over towards ‘the hand‘ of Michigan. Producing video on the road is quite a chore(hey, i’m not complain’ I’m just saying), and I dare say at some point during the trip I’ll make a video about how I make a video and all the equipment that I’m carrying with me to enable me to do this.

I’m sat in a Starbucks right now typing this up - the internet connection in the Days Inn motel broke last night, meaning I’ve had to run across here this morning to get me some bandwidth, so it does take my Starbucks count to 2. I’m also introducing a brand new tally this morning, namely - “How many times I hear The Eagles and ‘Hotel California’ on local radio stations”. This morning I realised that I was hearing it again for the second time in a week, and it reminded me that in one of Bill Bryson’s books (The Lost Continent) he does indeed pick up on the same thing - no matter what genre of radio station you’re listening to, sooner or later you’ll hear the Eagles.

A better ’stats’ graphic to come, when I get a chance to sit down and design one.

Stats so far:

States Completed : 7 ~ Miles Driven : 723~ Amount spent on Gas : $196.23
Starbucks Drunk : Two ~ ‘Hotel California’ heard : Twice
Roadkill Spotted: Five

I keep having to remind myself that they’re not all going to be as fast as this.

The New England states all nicely packed in together meant that I can hit many ’stops’ quite quickly in the first few days, but there are going to be some moments in the weeks ahead where it takes three days to get from one place to another.

Leaving Epping, I headed straight through New Hampshire to touch Vermont. Making sure I was playing Keane as I passed through the town of ‘Keene’ I ended up staying at a KOA campground for a second time in Brattleboro VE. I was actually in a crappy mood by the time I got there because I couldn’t find it (the GPS does NOT always know where things are correctly!), it was late, dark and I was tired but I eventually settled in.

The morning stop was just up the road - Putney. Which has already caused some controversy, as on the tube map, the relevant stops are either East Putney or Putney Bridge, not an exact match but close enough for me. If it’s going to bother you that a few of them are tenuous like that, then you might as well stop reading and following along now! There are going to be more more like that where the name is not an exact match.

Putney wasn’t really open when I got there because it was 8.30am in the morning. I’d got up early and checked out of the KOA reception bang on 8am when they opened, but not before Beverly told me about a Black Bear that had come through a few weeks ago. A what! I was expecting bears out in the National Parks of Colorado, but Vermont? She showed me one of the claws that they’d kept from where it has been taken down … the local sheriff took the decision to shoot it dead instead of just tranquilize it.

I’m also amused by the amount of signs around the place pertaining to snow & ice, because they do get three foot of snow in the winter. But a “Warning! Falling snow if you park here!”, sign in the summer of June looks a little silly. I snapped a photo, also too of a Vermont license plate - I’m starting a collection where I’m going to try and get one of every license plate in each state.

I headed east, back into New Hampshire to the delightful town of Plaistow. Interestingly, there was no coffee shop of gas station (which is always the best place to go to strike up a conversation with someone), instead there were a chiropractor, optometrist, and craft shop. And beautifully maintained gardens and war memorial around the centre piece building if the town with a clock tower - the town hall.

I end up going inside, and have a lovely conversation with Sean - the Town Manager. He tells me that New Hampshire has the lowest crime rate of all the states in the USA, and being as close to the state line as they are with Massachusetts, they do good business here as MA has a sales tax of 6%, and New Hampshire … ? No sales tax! He’s obviously proud of his town and of his state.

“Is it true that 80% of the state though is trees and forest though?”, I ask. “It’s something like that, yes”, he replies, “And that’s why there’s low crime … it’s basically just wood and logs here”, and we chuckle. I also get him to sign my t-shirt : I’m trying to get one person in every stop/state to sign a t-shirt I’ve had made to say that I was there.

I ended up leaving sooner than I wanted because it felt like I could have pulled up a chair and we could of chatted all afternoon, but traffic was against me and I had to get to Gloucester - a lovely tiny fishing village on the east coast of Massachusetts - whilst then trying to beat the rush hour traffic back down in Boston that night.

Alas, the Boston traffic got me, I got snarled up, I swore, I took wrong turnings, and what should have been a 60 minute journey was almost a two hour one as I got back with Mike & Melissa so that we could go to the Red Sox game who were playing that night.

Thursday I pressed on and covered Warwick in Rhode Island, and Warwick in Connecticut. And there is almost nothing to tell you about them - because Thursday was a crappy day. It rained, I drove. It rained some more, and I got caught in traffic jams. Then it rained a bit, and then my TomTom kept guiding me to Starbucks branches that had been closed down, and then it rained and I got wet some. It was a miserable day, and I was fed up of driving alone for so many hours with no one to keep me company.

There is nothing to tell you about Warwick RI, because it is really just a district of small suburban villages that is in the shadow of Providence. Although there is a big shopping mall there, that is an identikit shopping mall just like any other in America with a lot of miserable looking people. Maybe they were just pissed off that it was raining continually too.

Wapping CT, turned out to be even more disappointing and I got out as soon as I could, talking to no-one, because there was no one about because they were all inside sheltering from the continual rain. Did I mention that it rained yet? Like, ALL DAY Thursday it just rained, and rained, and rained some more.

It rained all the way down the I-95, as I maneuvered amongst giant trucks that were going faster than me in the slippery and dark conditions, and managed to not get killed to arrive back in New York in time for a beer and to realise that tomorrow would be better.