I'll Have What She's Having (USA C2C #7)

I started the first day in New York City fairly late, courtesy of a flight that landed after 10 pm, a terminal remodelling project that had relocated cars a bus-ride across the airport (and into a hell of gridlock), and the usual 24-hour New York traffic. And yet, somehow, despite all the people yelling into phones in ten different languages, the sirens and the honking (wow, the Olympic sport honking!) this city manages to be exciting. Perhaps anxciting, but still.

Reuben, the go-all-day sandwich

I remember reading once about why cities are such dynamic places, and important for innovation and change. Putting a huge number of people together in one place facilitates exchange of ideas and cooperation. The outcome is not only diversity of citizens, but of the ideas and businesses and inventions they produce. It's the cliché of opportunity. New York feels like the kind of place that long ago crossed the critical mass for being dynamic and now sits, with the few other super cities of the world, in a class all of its own.

Being up late, I figured I would start the day with brunch at Katz's deli. If you don't know about that, all you probably need to know is that the famous fake orgasm scene was filmed there. I saw Katz's on the foot network last year. Think sandwiches with stacks of sliced meat, delicate corned beef and pastrami, served with pickles and condiments. The walls are covered with photos of the famous. So it wasn't a surprise when I walked in to find a film crew working for Food Nation. It was a surprise when they asked if I'd be on camera. My mission: bite the sandwich, say "mmmm".

Haha, it was great fun, and got chatting to food writer David Rosengarten, who was helping out with the crew. David is obviously a passionate New Yorker, I left with tips for a great dinner venue and some insider neighbourhood information for my research.

From there, I went walking. All the way downtown to the Brooklyn Bridge, through Two Bridges and Tribeca, before catching the subway to Central Park.

Central Park is where New York excels itself. Where else could you do so much within the body of the city itself? I watched a baseball game (I know nothing about baseball, but it was exciting), climbed rocky outcrops, listened to a jazz band and found a zoo, and that was barely a quarter of the distance up the park. It's a necessary counterpoint in what is a mega metropolis, with all the pressure that brings.

Manhattan, Central Park and baseball ... a quintessential NY moment  

It's coming up to dinner time now, but I'm not hungry (I shouldn't think so after the half a cow Katz put on my brunch sandwich) so I'm going to head up to Times Square, and then one last research item to check off. Tomorrow morning, I'm meeting my publisher downtown, which is super exciting. The only thing more exciting is the lovely feeling of soon going home.

I Like Your Accent (USA C2C #6)

Yes, this is Nashville - life size replica of the Parthenon. As you do!

I'm sitting in Nashville airport waiting for my flight to the big apple. It's like airports pretty much everywhere, except there's more than the usual number of people with guitars on their backs. And in the process of ordering my venti Starbucks shaken tea (I have to do something to balance out the amazing food), I heard something I've gotten a lot in the past few days: "I like your accent".

For serious?

To my ears, I sound like Olivia Newton John in Grease: painfully, broadly, nasally Australian, while everyone else is smooth and southern, owning every stereotype you could care to name, because this is the place to do it. BUT it does have the advantage of making me sound different, so people talk to me. Spontaneously. Where'r you from? Haha! My unintentional lure works!

And wow, have they been interesting folk. Like Tony, a trucker I met at a truck stop (he helped explain the fifteen varieties of peanut butter snack in the vending machine), who has seen all the back roads of America, and whose brother runs a NY foodie magazine. And Doris, who showed me the Wightman Chapel on the Scarritt Bennett grounds in Nashville, where Dr King Jr spoke in 1957, and who sang (most beautifully) to demonstrate the chapel's acoustics. She also set me up with lunch in the dining hall. Wonderfully generous. And Damien, a USAF pilot who flies fighter jets and who I just met in Starbucks. I mean, wow. This is the thing that I love most about travel (after the travelling itself) … it makes the world so much bigger. More possible. And yet smaller and more understandable.

RIBS. Half dry, half glazed, all amaze. Get in my belly!

Of course, I don't mind the food either. I didn't mention this yesterday, but on my way through Memphis, I stopped at The Bar-B-Q Shop for lunch (after a little white-knuckle interstate off-ramp negotiation). I think I saw it on the food channel a few months back. OMG, the ribs, and the hospitality. Delicious in a way I can't explain, and I didn't need dinner. I probably don't need to eat ever again. Go there if you're ever in Memphis.

Tomorrow I'll be in New York City for the final two days of my trip, so it's goodbye to the South. Thanks for having me. It's been grand.

Connections and layovers (USA Coast2Coast #5)

Today, I finished the long drive from LA to Nashville, a distance of 2000 miles (3600 km). It's a little further than driving from Cairns to Melbourne, on the coast road through Brisbane and Sydney. Doing that in four days didn't leave much opportunity for exploring off-interstate (unfortunately). I would have loved to dive off into New Mexico or Texas, or just about anywhere. Instead, I made the most of the places I stopped. Last night, that was Fort Smith, AR.

Twilight by the Arkansas River

After the relatively dry expanse of the western states, it was instantly refreshing to come over the Arkansas River. Fort Smith sits in a loop of the river, and has a long history. I met lovely people here – I mentioned yesterday the staff of the Central Discount Pharmacy, and after that post I went out to the Fort Smith National Historical Site, where I've set a small scene from my next book. The sun was going down and the visitor centre was closed, but that was fine with me. I was just there for the riverside of the park.

On my way there, I happened to meet a wonderful group of primary school teachers celebrating the retirement of one of their members. They were looking for someone to take a group photo, but we were soon talking and it was lovely then to chat with them. They embodied the generous hospitality I've found in the south, and after travelling on my own for a few days, they really lifted my spirits. Thank you, Lana, and all your group!

After that, a short walk over the hill took me to the bank of the Arkansas River. At sunset, despite the proximity to the interstate and downtown, it's a tranquil place, inviting reflection and quiet. There's a moving monument for the Trail of Tears. I sat there for a long time, thinking about what it might have been like to leave the home you love for a horrific journey to an unknown place. How would I feel if I could never go home? It's too awful. And yet, these things are still happening in our world. Twilight lingered there for a long time, and then it was dark, and I went back.

Tomorrow, I have most of the day in Nashville for research, time for a breather from highway driving, before flying to New York in the evening.

Stay above fifty! (USA Coast2Coast #2)

“Trinity: You always told me to stay off the freeway.
Morpheus: Yes, that’s true.
Trinity: You said it was suicide.
Morpheus: Then let us hope that I was wrong.”

— The Matrix Reloaded

• 35 mph = 56 kph
• 50 mph = 80 kph
• 75 mph = 120 kph

The correct answer is "keep right"

A couple of days before I got on my flight, Speed was on TV. I rarely watch anything on the teev these days, so the fact I caught it seemed liked a sign. Of what, I'm not sure. Now, I love Speed. I even use it in teaching narrative structure because it's very nicely structured. But before I arrived in LA, I sometimes struggled with the plausibility of the plot. I mean, how far does Dennis Hopper's bad guy thing his plan is going to get? There's only so much road. I thought a bus driving at 80 clicks for a couple of hours was far-fetched.

Yeah, well, LA is a tad more vast than I gave it credit for, and the motorways go on and on forever. And there can be traffic jams at stupid hours, like at 5:30 this morning when I was driving out of the city. One-hundred percent gridlocked not moving jammed. Insane. After that was thick, thick fog in the mountains, fog that made the rising sun into a gold coin, floating disembodied from, well, everything. Fog so thick you could barely seen anything, except the lights of the trucks in front bleeding through as little dabs of red.

Finally, I made it out into the spanking-along interstate, turning off onto the I-40 before I accidentally ended up in Vegas. Despite the constant stream of trucks, it was a relief to be out on the open road. Driving in LA put me very much in mind of the freeway chase in Matrix Reloaded. I bet the screenwriters had LA in mind when they wrote it, even though I think it was shot in Sydney. Haha, Sydney, you're such a n00b. There's no photos of my driving there because, well, that would have been suicide. 

Driving on LA freeways is exactly like this, except with fewer cool Ducatis

Anyway. From there, came lots of pale ribbon roads across wide valley floors, disappearing into the distant smoky mountains. Felt like real progress to be eating each leg up. A flash of the Colorado River was an incongruous, icy mint blue, and then came the border. As soon as you enter Arizona, the speed limit goes from 70 to 75 mph, but let's face it, most people are doing more than that, and there's a constant left-right ballet as you pass trucks and then pull right again so that all the non-trucks doing 90 can pass you.

The only safe-ish shot of the road is a boring shot of the road

So many trucks ...

A dust devil chased the highway, crossing over and fizzing out just as we were on a collision course. That made me pause. There's signs up at the truck stop about dust storms in this area. I knew they can get bad storms roaring through these plains, and Flagstaff has even had an out-of-season snowstorm in recent years. It's up in the hills there, with pine forests all around. Once you spit out the other side, though, all the snowcaps are in the rearview and it's just exposed plains, and the wind today is roaring through. Roaring. I'm nowhere near Tornado Alley yet, but you have a sense of being at mercy of the elements.

At least by the time I hit Winslow, I was fairly into the right-side driving thing. It's still a conscious effort, but I'm no longer terrified by left turns. I've checked into a motel room smelling strongly of air freshener, and only slightly less strongly of cigarette smoke. The sun is bright and harsh. It's not unlike outback Queensland in the winter. Bright clear days and dangerous sun. Things still happen that I don't understand. Like trucks putting their hazards on while they're still driving. Really need to google what that's about. Still, success.

Tomorrow, will be crossing New Mexico and entering Texas, and listening to the end of the audiobook that's kept me company today – Colleen Hoover's November 9. Incidentally, it's a love story about a writer writing a love story, with lots of meta references to the tropes of romance, and the characters happen to live in LA and New York. I didn't know that when I picked it out. A coast to coast story for a coast to coast story research trip. Very nice.

USA Coast2Coast Day #1 – Spaghetti Junctions

Driving in LA is much like driving in Sydney, except bigger, faster, and with more palm trees. There's freeway onramps that instantly become offramps and if you're not savvy enough to change lanes at top speed before this arrangement ejects you, you enter a compulsory Mr Squiggle on the road map trying to get back again. Entering a worse area of gridlock is compulsory in such cases. Then there's the hotel that the GPS insists you've arrived at, except it's across a concrete road partition and you're on the wrong side. Note: This will require forty minutes of corners, lane changes and spaghetti manoeuvres to correct. You can then collapse in a grateful heap on the lobby floor, because now you can stop chanting, "keep right, keep right, keep right!" under your breath.

The hire car company will fail to have the GPS you were told was "confirmed", and ask if that's "ok". To their credit, they will bend over backwards to find one if you present the right shade of colour-drained face. Staying awake for 24 hours will assist with this. However, you will also be required to pass the "but the one-way drop fee is $200 more than you were quoted" hurdle. Once that's done, though, you can finally be on your way. Just be sure not to put the weird footbrake on (because the rental people left it off, and you have no idea what on and off is with it, so you put it on and drove down the road with the car alarming at you.

You will arrive at Santa Monica Pier under the most broiling of skies, with rain spatting down and the ocean all angry, and far too early for a coffee and not at all like a carnival. You'll catch yourself thinking that this looks a lot like the Gold Coast, until you look up at those hulking mountains and realise it's not just another city, but another continent. That you just flew over that huge expanse of Pacific, and everything you love is such a long way away. Everything will be vast, and the road and the city go on and on. But there's rest to come, and you got here in one piece – and met some interesting people along the way, and there was chips and the best ice-tea ever. And a few laughs about the sign in one of the bathrooms. And tomorrow you'll drive across the mountains and see what's on the other side.