mattwhite.me

We ain’t in Kansas any more, in fact as far as I can tell Kansas City almost isn’t either, it’s right on the state line with Missouri. So the drive today has been right across Missouri to St Louis which is a fairly run down industrial city. There wasn’t much to see in the city centre, but it’s Sunday so no complaints there. St Louis is known for the Gateway Arch which is pretty impressive if a little pointless (in every sense of the word). No real plans for the rest of the day, I’ve been getting in to the NBA playoffs so I might catch a game or two in the hotel bar tonight, tomorrow I’m driving up to Chicago for a few days in the windy city. It’ll be nice to have a break from the driving for a while.

The drive took over nine hours in the end, partly due to heavy traffic in Denver and partly to me being stopped twice by the police. The first time was a fair cop (if a little harsh) I was doing 80 in a 70 zone. I picked up a fine but I think he took a little pity on me when he heard my accent, so nothing more that that. The second stop is still a bit of a mystery to me, I was sticking studiously to the speed limit and there was no other traffic around. He asked to have a look in the boot (sorry trunk) of the car and to open my suitcase. After that we had a chat for a bit and he let me carry on. As I was driving on afterwards I was trying to work out why I was stopped and can only think it was because of the California license plates, maybe they pay a little more attention to out of state drivers?

Just a quiet night in front of the television now I think, it’s been a long day.

I’m such a crappy tourist, all I’ve done today is wander round downtown Denver, read a couple of newspapers and snap a few photos. But it’s such a lovely day and the 16th Street Mall is a really nicely done area that I was very happy. In fact I’ve just popped back to the hotel for a couple of hours to catch up on a couple of emails and then I’m heading back, apparently it’s a good area for nightlife as well with a good few bars, cinemas etc.

This is all just too relaxing, tomorrow it’s the longest drive of the trip, I’m heading all the way over to Kansas City for the weekend, hopefully should take about 8 hours but with traffic and whatever I guess it could take longer. The nice thing is that I’ve no schedule to keep so I can just dawdle along and enjoy the sunshine and scenery.

After a wet and snowing Salt Lake City, yesterday I drove for a few hours about half way to Denver. Rawlins is just a small town in southern Wyoming on the I-80 with the whole selection of motels to choose from. Today I finish the journey to Denver in Colorado, another 300 miles or so.

The drive yesterday was long but very easy, I barely had to turn off the cruise control the whole way. And rarely will you get to drive such a stunning road, it included desert, canyon and mountain. By the time I arrived in Salt Lake City it barely felt like I’d been driving at all even though it had taken over six hours (that might give you an idea of my average speed, for driving 430 miles :o) ).

I suppose it’s not surprising but the centre of Salt Lake was absolutely deserted yesterday in the brilliant sunshine but I wasn’t prepared for this morning.

Snow was about the last thing I thought I would be dealing with, yesterday it was over 70 degrees, today it’s barely above freezing. Oh well I suppose I get to see the “real” Salt Lake from the Winter Olympics a few years ago.

I had heard the Blue Man Group’s albums and of course seen the TV adverts for Intel which they star in but didn’t really know what to expect from the whole show. In short it was great, a combination of comedy, rock music, audience participation and just plane strangeness. The show finished with an enourmous amount of tissue paper being passed over the audience from the back of the theatre to the front and then piling up on stage. In contrast to the Cirque du Soleil yesterday there was no massive engineering feat, although the lighting and stage generally were inventively done, instead they were relying on the charisma and skills of the Blue Men themselves (plus their backing band). If you have the opportunity I’d definitely recommend you get a ticket and have a look.

As I was going to the Venetian I bumped into Declan and Terri on the way to their wedding. They looked really happy (Declan maybe a little nervous). I hope you have a great honeymoon and life together guys.

We were planning to meet up later in the evening but by 10 o’clock I was just dead on my feet, all the walking up and down the Strip and a lack of sleep this week is really taking it’s toll. Plus I’m up early this morning as I have a long old drive to Salt Lake City to do today. So, I’m just off to get some breakfast and then it’s time to hit the road, 420 miles to go today.

OK the plan to go over to the Grand Canyon has been put off, it’s a long old drive and the cheapest helicopter or plane tour I can find is $400, which is just ludicrous. So instead I booked shows for last night and tonight, yesterday was Cirque du Soleil, Ka. The theatre was hugely impressive, probably a thousand seat with huge scaffolding type areas right around the auditorium. The stage itself was made up of 3 or 4 moving parts, and not just moving in one dimension but the pargest part was able to rotate in all 3 dimensions, so that the performers were climbing up and down it, falling off it and more. All massively new and different, but in comparison to La Nouba I got the impression that they were relying more on the engineering and less on the skills of the performers themselves. Yes it’s cool that someone falls a hundred feet of the top of the stage when it’s up on end but it doesn’t really compare well to the trampoline acrobatics of La Nouba.

I’m being picky, it was still great, maybe I was just spoilt with the show that I saw first.

Tonight I’ve got tickets to see The Blue Man Group over at the Venetian, so today it’s just more relaxation and maybe a few hands of blackjack.

I’ve done the first proper drive of the tour, from LA to Las Vegas. I was expecting a quiet journey but the roads were absolutely packed the whole way. Still it only took 4 hours to do the whole journey. I had forgotten how crazy driving in LA is, the freeways are like the M25 on speed, everyone overtaking, undertaking and cutting across each other. As I was leaving the LA area a jeep in front of me must have had a tyre blowout or something because it did a 180 degree spin, went across all three lanes of traffic and came to a stop just short of the crash barriers. It was amazing, the driver didn’t even stop, just indicated to pull out into the traffic as though nothing had happened.

Talking of Jeeps, that’s what I have ended up with, an enourmous Jeep Grand Cherokee in dark blue (ideal for the 80 degrees and bright sunshine!). It’s actually ideal for the long journeys, just eats up the miles and swallows the bumps in the road.

So now, I’m in my room on the 25th floor of the New York New York hotel and casino, right across from the MGM Grand. A really cracking view out across the city and desert. I guess I’ll head down and have a nose around the casino tonight and use all of the free food and drink vouchers that they gave me when I checked in. Unfortunately tomorrow is meant to be thunder and rain so I’ll probably hang around the strip, and then if it’s nice on Saturday try and get to the Grand Canyon.

Well it’s 6:15am here at JFK and I’m waiting for the first flight I’ll be taking today. There’s no Wi-Fi here so this probably won’t get posted until Dallas or the hotel in LA tonight.

This journey so far has been very easy, I just stayed on UK time so that getting up this morning was a lay in rather than another early start. Yesterday I arrived at the hotel on 6th Avenue by 3pm so just went and had a walk right down to the Empire State building and then back up Broadway. Even though I’d done nothing all day I was tired so got some dinner, watched a little TV and took an early night (well 8pm US / 1am UK time).

Unfortunately this morning the shower in the hotel was cold, I waited for ages but it refused to warm up, not nice having a freezing cold blast of water first thing in the morning, but I suppose it woke me up anyway. When I told the front desk so they could get an engineer to look at it they halved my bill, not what I had asked for but it made up for it rather well.

Oh yes, I need to comment on Max Jet. As suspected it’s not a true business class as BA or Virgin have theirs today. Rather I would compare it to the old business seats which didn’t convert into beds. The plane was half empty, and even if it was full I have never seen so much space between seats, that’s really the most impressive thing about the plane. Everything else is rather tired, the plane is from the mid-80s apparently. Because they’ve only been running a few months I think they’re still getting used to the service. Not that it mattered but lunch took almost 2 hours to serve with a huge wait between plates. If the plane was full who knows how long it would have taken. The entertainment is provided by portable media players for each seat, they get handed out after take off and have about 10 movies, some TV and music videos and some plain music as well. It’s OK when the seat next to you is empty as you can use the tray table to hold the player but again, if full, you’re going to have to have your table out the whole time. The other annoyance was that there are no power points for laptops in the seats (a result of the seat being 10 years old I guess) which means you’ll need a couple of batteries to make it through the whole journey if you want to work.

All in all, for £400 return this is truly unbeatable, the equivalent service from BA or Virgin will cost at least twice as much, but if you paid the normal price it works out at £800 return and for that I think I prefer one of the traditional carriers. Given that yesterday was a special offer and the plane was still half empty it wouldn’t surprise me if they folded pretty quickly, but if you’re looking for a new carrier and flying to/from Stansted suits you then well worth a look.