I've made it to my hostel then. I'm quite pleased with myself for getting this far. Well I'm not going to pretend I'm a great explorer or adventurer or anything. On the flight to New York I've come to realise that I am more than a little concerned about my sketchy preparation and equally sketchy execution. Thing is, though... I don't think the great gentleman travellers of the 18th and 19th centuries would be worrying about which subway they would take to get to the Empire State Building, or where they were going to park in Philadelphia, or which side of the car the fuel cap would be on, or what places they could eat at in Baltimore, or whether or not they would be able to make any sense at all of the road signs, or whether in fact it made any sensible safe sense for them to be driving at all, or whether the whole experience in general would be too debauched and intense at their advancing age (amended to note the guys I was out with last night are still unconscious as I write this, lightweights....)
Well I doubt they would anyway.
They'd just rock up without so much as a spare set of underpants, and proceed to get into incredible scrapes and meet remarkable people, who would show them remarkable things.
Problem is, I'm crap. Any air of calm or competence or control I ever manage to exude is, trust me, a thin veneer glossing over the confusion, social incompetence and panic that lies just beneath the surface. This may not come as a surprise to anyone, actually.
This in mind, my 2 month, trans-continental solo trip should be interesting. Coming out of it alive, right now, seems like a dim and distant fantasy.
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