New York, Day 4 – Weight limits

It's my final day in New York City, and I'm writing this after the slightly harrowing journey from Manhattan to Newark Airport, which is actually in New Jersey. This is on account of having booked a very budget airline, which will whisk me across the Atlantic for a bargain price, but will then deposit me at Stanstead as punishment for my thriftiness, and require me to fly from Newark and not JFK.

I prepared for this by ensuring I could take trains here (having learned the folly of engaging with New York City road traffic last time), and bringing my own entertainment, being Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady's Guide to Sex, Marriage and Manners by Therese O'Neill (both hilarious and informative), and Colleen Hoover's Maybe Someday in Audiobook (addictively sexy and romantic – curse your talent, Ms Hoover). Still, the trip involved duelling with the crowds at Penn Station, and wrestling my (by now) 20-odd-kg case up and down far too many staircases (along with public bathrooms, working elevators are also a rarity in NYC).

The reason for my heavy case is that I visited more bookshops today, including Book Culture on Columbus, Barnes and Noble at Union Square, and Books of Wonder. The latter is a specialist children's book store, and I have it on some authority that it's the inspiration behind the store Meg Ryan works at in You've Got Mail. My visit to NYC just isn't complete without a Meg Ryan movie reference, it seems. Sadly for my airline weight limit, I had gifts to buy and terribly helpful staff prepared to take my money.

I confess I bought six books and a book bag, my total spend being so stupendous that I qualified for an extra free book, and thus had to sit on my case to make it close. I regret nothing. But I do make an offering to the gods of baggage handlers (St Anthony of Padua, Google informs me) that my case won't pop like an overstuffed burrito before London. It was an excellent store however, including a rare book section where you could purchase a copy of Where The Wild Things Are, personally signed with a small illustration by Maurice Sendak himself, for $22,500. I stepped back from the case, just a bit.

Ah, Sophia Nash, we meet again ...

After Books of Wonder I proceeded to Barnes and Noble and, after a cunning hunt through the four floors, found The Paris Wedding, face out no less, in a nice eye-level position. This rounded my day off nicely.

So, now, I am waiting for my flight to London, binging on an expensive box of GuyLian seashells, which looked cheap until they added the tax and I did the currency conversion. I have attempted to prepare for the long commute from the aforementioned Stanstead by photographing Google map information (and purchasing expensive, consoling Belgian chocolates), which clearly is a foolproof plan with which nothing could go wrong.

Let's just say that the next blog may contain travel misadventures. Stay tuned.

This travel plan is completely clear and contains all detail necessary to make it door to door.

New York, Day 3 – Long distance

This is a relatively quick one, because it's pretty late. By which I mean, it's late on the clock but I am alert and blogging because timezones and melatonin. Today was my date for out-of-city adventuring, where I caught the subway to Queens, hired a car, and imbued with the confidence of last year's cross-country driving-on-the-right success, drove out to Shoreham on Long Island.

The freeways on Long Island are a little scarier than the I-40 I drove last year. Trucks are thick, and everyone (everyone) speeds. Still, despite one overly long wrong-way detour (which wouldn't have happened if the US would have a little more enthusiasm for public bathrooms), I made it out and back in one piece, so success.

The lab in its glory days

Today, the view from one end, about as close as I could get through the chain-link fence

This trip was to visit Wardenclyffe, the location of Nikola Tesla's wireless transmission station from 1901 to 1906. If you're not familiar with Tesla and this site, read the Oatmeal's amusing and enthusiastic recap, which also links to the campaign to save the Wardenclyffe site from development. Now, the museum isn't built yet, so all you can do is stand outside the fence and soak it up. Why did I bother to hire a care and drive three hours just to do that?

Partly, it's because it's just cool – to see a physical remnant of an amazing scientist from a different era. Too good an opportunity to pass up. The other part is that Tesla figures in the science fiction thriller I'm writing for my PhD. The story is an alternative history where Tesla goes to London instead of New York, but I wanted the sense of where he'd been in his "first life" to inform the "second" that's made possible with time travel. Ok, I'm done with the nerding about that. The trip out was 100% worth it.

Having sat in a car for much of the day, when I had the chance to have dinner with some lovely friends tonight, I decided to walk the 30 blocks to their place, and back. Between that and staying in a fifth-floor apartment, my fitbit is very happy with me.

Tomorrow is my last day in New York before I leave for London, and I intend on more bookstore visits. Stay tuned.

A wall of positive reinforcement from the fitbit, though my feet are sore.

New York, Day 2 – Bookstore adventures

“It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.”

— W. C. Fields

Wall art outside Strand Bookstore

One of my objectives in coming to New York was to see my book on an American bookstore shelf. I figured I couldn't take this moment for granted; it could be the only time in my career I have a book out in the USA. In the way of good travel, however, the decision to come led to some twists and turns of fate that made today a bookstore adventure.

It started this morning with a meeting with my wonderful publishing team at William Morrow, after which I asked for bookstore recommendations. One (of the very long list!) was Strand Bookstore, a three-floor wonderland of pages, including a floor devoted to rare books. This also happened to be the location of an author panel tonight called "Romance: it's complicated", featuring Sarah MacLean, Marie Force, LaQuette, Julia London, and Elizabeth Lim. Damon Suede excelled as the moderator, asking poignant and insightful questions (the above quote was one he raised during a discussion of the common misconception that romance is "simple"), and all the authors were articulate and intelligent.

I've never been so captivated by an author panel. They discussed the relationship between romance and autonomy, the nature of happiness as a subversive act, the correlation between the rise of modern democracy and modern literacy, and above all, the rejection of sentimentality as a label for romance. As the title suggested, romance has never been straightforward, IRL or in fiction.

The Romance: it's complicated panel. From left, Damon Suede, Maria Force, Julia London, LaQuette, Sarah MacLean, and Elizabeth Lim.

Despite moments of intense sadness (Sarah's apt comparisons between the foundling hospitals of historical London and the current children at the boarder horror makes me so upset I can barely type about it ... as I write this, Twitter is blowing up over the Corey Lewandowski belittling a child with Down Syndrome separated from parents at the border. I am at a loss as to what's wrong with us as a species in my rage right now.), this was an amazing group of authors, speaking in a spectacular venue, and with important things to say. As (I think Marie) said, love is a social issue. I can't imagine a time when that has been more true, both here in the US and in Australia. I feel very privileged to have been able to attend.

My book, with more inches than I could ever have hoped for. Super thrilling.

And of course, a little icing on this cake was that I did see my book on the shelf! My own micromoment of subversive happiness, amongst the mucky world we live in right now.

Tomorrow, I'm taking an excursion out to Long Island, so I'll post next about that. Stay tuned.

New York, Day 1.5

I'm writing this from a grotto table in the back of Mud Coffee bar, downing an oversize mug latte and waiting for a breakfast involving bacon. I'm in the odd, in-between day of polar-earth position time zone change where, like Byron said, morning has come and went and come and brought no day. Or at least, no sleep. The journey here was two flights racing the sun across the Pacific, split by a strange dash through the bowels of LAX, necessitated by the rules of US Customs which decrees that to fly on anywhere else, we all must queue, clear customs (a labyrinth of crowd control lines), collect our bags, queue, drop our bags back, queue some more, clear security again, and then re-board the same plane, just in a different seat.

The ensuing delay of all passengers making the onward trip to New York (for all other connections, leaving later than us, were given express cards but we were not) meant we were rather badly delayed. We thus missed whatever slender airspace window had been allotted to us and spent a good deal of time circling JFK, touched down late, and then spent some more time waiting on the runway.

By this stage, the pilot was announcing the "annoying delays" in increasingly bewildered tone. After that came another hour or so on trains and subways before I finally put my bag down. However, as I'd re-watched Gravity during the first flight during a patch of turbulence, I should be grateful for the safe arrival, however late. Watching space stations and satellites smash themselves to pieces around Sandra Bullock as she tries to make it back to Earth is a rather special experience while you yourself are ten clicks off the surface of said earth in a shaking aluminium and composite can. I can recommend it to everyone.

I elected this time to stay at an Airbnb apartment, reasoning that staying with a local would be a different and hopefully positive experience. My mistake was apparent soon after arriving, not because of my host (who is lovely, if erring on the strict size of house rules), but because it's New York, which means a tiny tiny apartment with one tiny tiny bathroom (I shall never complain about the size of my workers' cottage at home again). In a hotel, I never worry about how many times I might need to visit the bathroom because I sank two pints of soda water while waiting at a nearby bar for my host to arrive. I also don't worry too much about old and narrow sewerage pipes and how much toilet paper one might be able to use before it becomes a plunger issue.

Then there's the emerging First Rule of Airbnb, which is, We Don't Talk about Airbnb. That is, should anyone ask, I'm staying with "a friend", and though I intensely resent having to tiptoe around the clandestine subletting issue after having paid via a legit website every single time, I of course will not say anything about it. Except to the bartender across the street before said prohibition from mentioning Airbnb was made clear to me at this place. Ooops.

Let's say I survived the night, though much of it was spent not sleeping but listening to Story Club podcasts (and the comic stylings of David Cunningham), flicking through several hundred blocked TV channels, and fretting about what I could wear for the 31 degree heat when I'd packed for a Brisbane winter. When the sun did come up, the view out of the window of the fire escape stairs put me in mind of Vivian's apartment in Pretty Woman. Sadly, no Richard Gere in a limousine was waiting down the four flights of stairs. Probably because, a) I'm in the wrong city for the metaphor, and b) my loved ones are on the other side of the globe. So I walked several blocks to this café.

This degree of sleep dep makes me feel woozy. Hence the industrial mug of latte, though all the coffee in the world will not make up for having been too cheap to buy roaming (or local) data, and having left the comforting radius of the apartment wi-fi without confirming directions to the right subway stop for my trip downtown. That one I'm going to have to wing. I know I have to walk west. Really, what could go wrong?

Next time, I'm going to post about meeting my New York publisher, and adventures in New York bookshops. Stay tuned. For now, breakfast is here. :)

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.