I’m moving to New York tomorrow. I start with that simple statement because as I write this I’ll keep looking at it and hopefully it’ll finally sink in that it’s actually happening. It’s been months (or what feels like months) of paperwork and documents and visa shenanigans and emails and calls with my HR department to…
There was a man wandering up and down Canal Street in New Orleans shaking a collection tin at tourists in Hawaiian shirts. He was watching everything that went on along that road and every now and again he’d notice a traffic violation and scream things like, “No left! NO LEFT! I’ve scraped three people off…
We were looking for a bluegrass station on the car’s radio. Driving along this lush Blue Ridge Parkway highway in the Blue Ridge Mountains, North Carolina, bluegrass felt appropriate. We didn’t find anything so we ultimately settled for a Johnny Cash greatest hits CD my friend had in the glove compartment. As the outsider here…
There’s a big hole in America. There are many jokes I can make there but because this is a family-friendly website, I won’t. The big hole I’m talking about is of course the Grand Canyon, over which I did a south rim helicopter tour. The Grand Canyon covers a lot of the south-west of the…
I was once on a train from Salt Lake City to Denver and after midnight John Malkovich started playing a harp in the lounge car. Okay, it wasn’t actually John Malkovich but when he spoke the likeness was uncanny. And you can just imagine John Malkovich chilling out playing the harp, can’t you? He has that feel about him….
Here’s what happened on a day trip to Antelope Island on the Great Salt Lake, Utah. When you think of America as an outsider, you think of certain places: New York, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Chicago, San Francisco. They’re shown in movies and TV shows all the time, recognised by their skylines or by their…
I had dinner with one of my college professors while I was studying at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Now, I know what you might be thinking and, no, there were no candles, no footsie under the table, no raunchy taboo love-making back at her two-car, leafy suburban home and she certainly wasn’t…
I like quiet places. I like libraries and bookshops, I like cycle rides into fields full of cows and big skies, and I’m pretty sure I’d like the eerie aftermath of a nuclear explosion. And talking of eerie, I also liked Lake Erie, the smallest of the Great Lakes in North America. Here’s what happened…
Apparently Niagara Falls is a popular honeymoon destination. I wouldn’t know, but I trust Google (probably a little too much). Having spent a day at Niagara Falls I find it astonishing that newly-weds want to go to Niagara Falls to have some steamy consummating sex to the sound of roaring water. I mean, lots of…
There’s only one book that’s ever made me cry. Winnie the Pooh came close, The Koran left me right on the verge, but it was Jack Kerouac’s On the Road that put me over the edge. It wasn’t like Toy Story 3 crying, and not even your-team-getting-relegated crying, it was just a bit of face moisture. If I’ve…