Towards Points West

Baseball caps and hot dogs. Gritty inner-city streets. Suburban lawns. White picket fences. These are among the many images of America that Hollywood has imprinted on the world outside its borders. But perhaps the most evocative one of all is that of a solitary car cruising on a long, empty highway with open country on either side.

So I was absolutely thrilled to set off on my first road trip in the US.

And yesterday was a good day for it. Summer is over, and the trees are starting to wear their autumn colours. I'd seen pictures, of course, but they don't come close to the reality of fall foliage breaking out in the last days of September. It's hard to keep your eyes on the road when on either side of you are vivid swatches of yellows, oranges and scarlet reds. Pretty soon all of New England is going to erupt in a crescendo of colour, and I can't wait to see it in it's full glory.

But after a couple of hours the colour tone of the countryside had changed from burnt orange to cool grey. As the clouds gathered overhead, raindrops fell on the asphalt and were promptly churned up by the traffic around and showered onto the windscreen in front of me. Meanwhile clouds of mist settled on the trees to our left and right like a ghostly quilt.

By nightfall most people had gone to bed. We'd been accompanied by fellow-strangers through Massachusetts and Connecticut, we'd been part of a throng through New York State. But as we reached into western Pennsylvania, it seemed that everyone else had chosen to retire and renew their journey another day.

Not us.

We stopped at a diner to refuel.

People look different in the Midwest. Out on the East coast they move briskly. They talk fast. There's an energy that spills out of them and impregnates the atmosphere. Sometimes it's only nervous energy. But it's there. And it's infectious.

Hundreds of miles away, far from the coast and its temples of commerce and industry, things are different. People slow down. They seem to amble rather than stride. It's as if their energy has seeped out of them and been vacuumed away.

We still had some distance to cover, and I was not keen to soak in more of the air of apathy at that diner. So we got back into our cruiser and hummed on through the night. Our path was lit by sentinels on either side: reflector poles lined the road to our left and right like an army of torch bearers in endless single file.

We sped on over the Ohio border and deeper into farming country. Eventually we pulled into Akron - birthplace of Alcoholics Anonymous, one-time rubber capital of the world, and our resting place for the night.

13 hours on the road. 5 states. 1,000 kilometers. The journey had just begun.

To be continued...