How to…travel by public transport around the USA

The USA is an enormous country where the car is king. Travelling around by public transport is not the norm and even most guidebooks assume you are driving everywhere. Gathering information about public transport has been time consuming, so to save you the hassle here‘s what we found out.

Buses
It is possible to get around most of the US on the bus, although in comparison to Mexico the bus system is far behind. Greyhound has elicited groans for years, and yes it is grim, but thankfully some better buses, such as Megabus, are starting to challenge their stranglehold.

If you’re first in the queue for the bright blue double-decker Megabus you can secure a table and four chairs in front of a video screen, and if you’re lucky they will be playing films. The seats are comfy with leg room and the onboard toilet is useable. Despite the better quality the prices are often cheaper than Greyhound. We met a woman who had bought a return from Chicago to Detroit (a five and a half hour journey) for $2.50. Buy in advance and you can get a real bargain. They keep their prices low by offering a no-frills service; you can only buy tickets on-line (you get a reservation code that you show upon boarding), you have to put your bags in the hold yourself and they have no bus stations (only bus stops by the side of the road). The only disadvantages that we found are that the service only serves the north/northeast of the country and if the weather is bad you have to wait for the bus in the rain.

The Megabus drivers are great entertainment, each seemingly running their bus in the manner they seem fit. Our Chicago to Minneapolis driver made the rules of the journey clear to its mainly springbreak passengers,
“No chewing gum loudly - no smacking or cracking. Gentlemen please raise the toilet seat and put it down again. Don’t play music loudly - that’s what headphones are for.”

On the other hand Durrl (spelt Darryl on his name badge), our Minneapolis to Chicago driver, was a one man entertainment machine. He was playing his personal collection of DVDs (“I thought the kids might like Iron Man”) and was genuinely sorry when the DVD kept skipping over the rutted roads of the Mid-West. He grinned back over his shoulder, while battling to keep the bus upright in strong winds and rain, until he got the thumbs up from us that the volume was fine. As Blades of Glory skipped itself to the end Darryl changed tack and got on the PA system,
“Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time ever in Megabus history this is your chance to come down to the front and make an announcement over the microphone. Come on down!” No-one budged so Darryl continued,
“We got a beautiful girl upstairs on her way to become America’s Next Top Model and we got some world travellers sitting here right behind me on the lower deck.” A shout-out on the Megabus - it doesn’t get much classier than that! And on he whittered congratulating people for the size of their phone or the food they were eating until finally some passengers came down the stairs and grabbed the mike,
“I’d like to say thank you to the driver for getting us here safely and to say happy birthday to my nieces for Thursday.” A round of applause. Durrl liked that and came back with an Eddie Murphy style,
“O, o, oooh! We’re gliding like Egyptian silk!” This man clearly enjoys his job and made the eight hour bus journey so much shorter. Public transport has never been such fun.

There are, apparently, a few bus companies travelling between one city’s Chinatown to the next (various websites, just google ‘Chinabus‘), but again only serves the northeast at present. The buses are, apparently, of about the same standard as the Greyhound, but are cheaper. Boston bus station has a particularly good array of bus companies serving different destinations.

When all else fails there is the Greyhound. It does connect to most cities in the US and is often cheaper than taking the train. We didn’t find it a dangerous experience, just a depressing one, with some of the worst customer service we’ve encountered on our trip. However, it works and we used it extensively between Texas and Ohio. Check for deals online and, if you can, book ahead because when you book more than three days in advance your travel partner gets a half-price ticket. You need to arrive at the Greyhound station an hour before departure to pick-up tickets (you just get a reservation code online) or to purchase tickets. They never seem to sell out, and if a bus is full they just put on another one for the same journey.

When you’ve bought your ticket put your bags in the queue by the departure gate - you want to be one of the first on the bus so you can pick good seats (we prefer near the front and as far away from smelly people as possible). You and your hand luggage may be subject to an airport style security check and frisk, as was the case in Memphis, so keep penknives, scissors, nail files etc. in your backpack for the hold and not in your hand luggage. Greyhound buses are fairly standard coaches but lack the comfort and movies of the Mexican buses, so take your own entertainment.

Both the Megabus and the Greyhound stop every few hours for a loo and food break. Greyhound seems to have a close relationship with fastfood chains, whereas the Megabus usually stops at a service centre where you can make your own choice.

Trains
Travelling by train is definitely our preferred method of public transport in the US. The seats are comfy with plenty of legroom, there are plug sockets so you can work on your laptop, there’s a dining car and the toilets are acceptable. They are better than British trains in terms of comfort, although delays are also not unusual.

The view from the train is often much better than the soulless, corporate chain lined interstates that the buses favour. The train can take you through farmland and forests and alongside rivers and lakes.

Amtrak runs the trains in the States. You can buy tickets on line or at the station, with online sales offering the best deals. There are weekly ‘hot deals’ and if you are planning to travel extensively during a two or three week period, a rail pass could be a good option.

Turn up 30 minutes to an hour early to collect your tickets (if purchased online) and wait to be directed, or sometimes escorted, to the train. The waiting areas in the stations are generally more comfortable than those for buses.

The only drawbacks for us have been that Amtrak does not operate services across the whole country and only in the northeast does the service seem to be frequent.

Travelling around the States on public transport is perfectly possible, provides a great insight into parts of America you might not otherwise encounter and can even be great fun. If only there was a Durrl on every train and bus!







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Welcome to Canada, from Tim Horton

“Who is Tim Horton?” I asked the immigration official at the Detroit-Windsor border.

I’d never heard of the chap and yet, within a minute of arriving in Canada I was being shepherded towards him by a pleasant young lady with a maple leaf on her uniform.


We’d just stepped off the ‘tunnel bus’, a vehicle which carried us under the Detroit River and across the US-Canada border.

It was only going to be the briefest of encounters with Canada (heading as we were to see friends in Ontario) but time enough, we hoped, to notice and appreciate some of the differences which Canadians seem so quick to stress between their homeland and the US.

Every Canadian we have met during our travels so far has seem anxious to put considerable distance between themselves and their cousins to the south. Without fail every item of baggage they carry seemed to be clearly emblazoned with the maple leaf flag.

I guess it for the benefit for ignorant non-North Americans like myself. Canadian and American, I’d struggled to tell them apart, the only clue being the accent which usually I didn’t pick up on. They spoke the same language, drove the same cars, ate the same food, indeed they seemed so inextricably entwined, did the differences Canadians friends had stressed to me really start with a simple hop over the border?

It started promisingly. There was none of the stony-faced procedures and paranoia in crossing the border here. Just patient smiles, efficient service and an explanation that Mr Horton was a popular purveyor of coffee beans and bagels.

We left the building and entered the bright sunshine enveloping Windsor, Ontario. Windsor…it seemed to ring a bell. Wasn’t it familiar?

I bought sandwiches from Tim Horton’s and glanced at the new currently. There was a imperious looking-lady stamped on the five dollar bill and her regal visage also gazed out from the dollar ‘loon’. Hadn’t I see her before?

Outside the Maple Leaf flag fluttered in the breeze, alongside the flag of Ontario. Something stared back at me from a corner of the latter’s design: diagonal crosses of red, white and blue.

It was coming to me now. Britain! That funny old place where I used to live. The Queen! The Union Jack! Had I taken a wrong turn somewhere?

It became more confusing as we caught our ride and headed north. We passed Charing Cross Road, another city called London, Aldershot, Chatham-Kent and Tilbury. There was Essex county, Middlesex and even Oxford.

I spotted a sign to Leamington ‘ Tomato-growing capital of Ontario’ and another for ‘Dorchester-on-Thames Golf Club’.

This was getting too much. Way back in the olden days, when the British arrived to nick yet another large chunk of land that wasn’t theirs couldn’t they have at least displayed more imagination?

Fancy coming all this way, braving storms and harsh elements, hostile locals and moose attacks, and then naming an their exciting new discovery after a nondescript town in the commuter belt.

I was still wondering about this when we passed yet another Tim Horton’s. That makes it at least fifteen by now in under two hours. These Canadians must really love their coffee.

Just who was this Tim Horton fellow? It sounded rather nondescript a name for a coffee empire magnate, perhaps more like the scrawny kid whom fellow pupils would try to set on fire with a bunsen burner during chemistry lessons.

I soon found out that he was a former hockey player, a sport which I am reliably informed in Canada rivals the world’s major religions.

This helped to explain the other names which weren’t derived from a leafy Surrey suburb. Wayne Gretzky Parkway for instance.

Though many of the names were familiar, the locals had an odd way of pronouncing them. The broad accents of Chicago and Detroit were now well behind us and we found ourselves adjusting our lugholes to a decidedly Scottish-inflected manner of pronunciation, with plenty of ‘oots’, ‘aboots’ bouncing around, coupled with the uniquely Canadian mannerism of adding an ’eh’ at the end of every sentence.

The night closed in and I endeavoured to keep myself awake. It had been twelve hours since we’d left Chicago.

“What are you planning to do tonight”, I asked our ride.

“I dunno. Probably drink beer and throw axes in the back yard.”

Half an hour passed and the Niagara Escarpment rose up before us and soon we were in the streets of Hamilton, home of our friends Doug and Linda, and part of the large urban sprawl (fondly referred to by locals as the ‘golden horseshoe’) stretching around the south-western edges of Lake Ontario up to Toronto.

The next morning we ventured down to the lake itself, one of the five famous ‘Great Lakes’. Across the waters steam rose from one of the large steel mills on which the city’s economy is based. Another stood inactive, work recently stopped as the demand for steel plummeted. Down in Detroit they are not building as many cars as usual.

We headed up Queen Elizabeth Way and into Toronto (or ‘Tron-oh’ as the locals seem to call it). We ate a curry and watched Critical Mass cycling past HMV, Lush and the Black Bull pub.

It could have been London. We had to try something different, something which we wouldn‘t find back home, something local, something Canadian.

“How about wine tasting”, Linda suggested.

Canadian wine. I learn something every day.

Soon we were passing between vineyards, the bright sun blazing down on the cold earth, before pulling up at a smart modern building, all crisp stark lines.

The company Prius stood in a reserved spot out front, smooth jazz played inside. Slender men in designer glasses and tight black tops moved with suitable sang-froid amidst the minimalist décor, polishing glasses and laying out breadsticks. Tim Horton’s this was not.

We were impressed by the sustainable features of the building and soon umming and ahhing over the tasting notes: their wines were ’not the least austere’, offered ‘great fruit parity’ and came ‘buttressed by beautiful acid’.

Oz Clarkeisms aside they did offer something I’d never encountered before: ‘ice wine’. This local speciality involves picking ripe grapes when frozen, yielding less water, the same amount of sugar and a more highly-concentrated juice. The result: a much sweeter wine, which comes in smaller bottles.

Suitably tanked up we headed for the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, just down the road from the famous falls themselves. Amongst the fine nineteenth century buildings stood the Prince of Wales Hotel, The Angel Inn, the Royal George Theatre…(and no Tim Horton‘s). Oh dear: it was all getting too British again.

I couldn‘t help but be drawn to a shop called ‘Taste of Britain.’

Welsh tea towels, DVDs of The Vicar of Dibley, Midsomer Murders and Only Fools and Horses, and a collection of foodstuffs that wouldn’t disgrace our village shop back home. There was Marmite and Typhoo, Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut and Bisto granules, Branston pickle and Lyle’s Golden Syrup, Yorkshire tea…

Yorkshire tea! A week ago I wouldn’t have been able to control myself, my body yearning for a decent brew. Yet now , staring down the barrel of our impending return to Blighty my enthusiasm was somewhat dampened.

Lara, on the other hand was dancing with delight, nostalgia and excitement sweeping her up into a giddy dance on the spot: “They’ve got salt and vinegar crisps! Ooooh!” she squealed as I dragged her outside.

Back in the street my nose sensed the heady waft of bacon sandwiches, my ears picked up the sound of clinking china and from somewhere, I could swear, drifted the solemn tones of a Radio Four announcer.

Was this Canada or the Cotswolds?

It was all too much, too soon: we had to get back to the US.

It wasn’t far - over the river in fact. Just turn left at the falls.

Ten minutes up the road the magnificent Niagara Falls thundered in a roar of mist and spray. Large chunks of ice still clung to the sides whilst on the Canadian side the skyline was pitted by a strange assortment of ugly towers.

There was the usual range of ‘amusements’ somehow deemed essential complements to a natural attraction in North America: Guinness World of Records, Hard Rock Café and of course a sprinkling of casinos.

We shivered before the huge horseshoe falls, marvelled at the sheer volume of water plunging over the ledge and our friend Doug was robbed by a fortune-telling Gypsy (ok it was a plastic one in a machine but one that the Daily Express would surely wind itself up about nevertheless).

It was time to leave. We headed for the rainbow (bridge, that is, not the one hanging down below in the mist) and the joyous queue at the US border. Linda was nervous: she loathes crossing into the US.

“I could do with a cuppa before going there”, she said “Shall we go to Tim Horton’s?”










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World in Slow Motion - Best Travelogue 2009

We won!! After two months of nominations, voting and judging panels, those lovely folks at Lonely Planet have declared World in Slow Motion the winners of the Best Travelogue Award.

Many thanks to all of you who gave us your support and votes.

For those of you interested in the technicalities, we came second in the public vote (with a whopping 1,189 votes - more than the winner in some categories), scoring 7/10 points, and first in the judges decision, scoring 10/10 points, giving us a grand total of 17/20 points. Click here to see the final scores and winners in other categories.

We're so pleased that people out there like this blog and are dead chuffed for our work to be recognised; it makes for a nice ending to our trip.

There are just three weeks until we're back in the land of tea and crumpets. But before then there are plenty more stories to tell...

Thanks again.
Lara and Tom



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Back in Minnesota

After nearly nine months on the road, coming back to Minneapolis, where I lived from 2002-2003, is the closest that I have come to feeling at home for quite some time. It is also a gentle reminder that our homecoming is just around the corner.

With less than a month remaining, the end of our trip is in sight. Our sailing date from Philadelphia to Antwerp has been brought forward by nine days so we have had to change our itinerary and prepare ourselves for our return. Over the past few weeks Mission Mississippi has taken us from the deep south to the extreme north of the United States, from the mouth of the Mississippi in New Orleans to its source in Lake Itasca; from crazy Mardi Gras parties to the frozen wilderness of northern Minnesota and everything in between. For me, Minnesota is the beginning of the end, time to start preparing myself for the ‘real world'.

Minnesota has an extreme climate which reflects on people’s personalities. It fluctuates between -20 and +40 ° C between the seasons of winter and road-mending (the locals favourite joke). We arrived on the warmest day of the year so far, when Minnesotans were bemoaning the long hard winter and preparing themselves for the frivolities of spring and summer. In the Twin Cities (of Minneapolis and St Paul) the snow had melted and people were starting to thaw out - the streets and bars were full and coats were open. However, in the north of the state the snow was still thick, people were huddled inside and you could walk on the frozen water of the lakes.

We noticed that people didn’t seem quite so fascinated by us Brits in Minnesota, as very few random strangers had commented on our accents or inquired as to who we were and what we were doing, in contrast to the warm reception we had received in the southern states. I don’t think it’s because people are any less friendly, for they are, but they are just more reserved and perhaps think it rude to ask. The difference is much like that in Europe between the austere Finns and the gregarious Spanish. Perhaps that is why I am drawn to Minnesota so much - it does remind me of Scandinavia, my mother‘s homeland. It is known as the state of 10,000 lakes, is covered in silver birch and pine forests and people go to their cabins in summer. Indeed many of the settlers in Minnesota came from Scandinavia.

I also hold the climate partly responsible for the three pillars of Minneapolis/St Paul culture - theatre, heavy drinking and politics. The cold drives you indoors to drink, think, talk and create. Minneapolis has the biggest theatre scene in the U.S., after New York City, including the annual Fringe performing arts festival. The Twin Cities can also be politically outspoken, as recently demonstrated by graffiti outside the National Republican Convention. The array of liquor stores and funky bars is testament to the drinking culture.

It is strange to return to a former life, one that has been carrying on in parallel in my absence. It is like visiting history. Minneapolis looks the same - my favourite liquor store, coffee shop, bars, the Wedge supermarket - and most of my friends are still here. Even more remarkably people still remember me and have been incredibly nice (and not just Minnesota nice) to us - buying us drinks and dinners, taking us to diners, housing us, entertaining us at the roller derby and theatre and mending our increasingly temperamental laptop.

Minneapolis doesn’t look as aesthetically exciting as, say, Chicago, and isn’t a major tourist destination, but underneath it is full of quirky and fun places to explore. It has an interesting mix of Germanic/Scandinavian settlers, resettled Hmong and Vietnamese, Mexicans and more recently Somalis. It makes for a fantastic array of restaurants. It is also one of the more progressive cities I have been to in the States. People cycle (even in the below freezing winters it has one of the highest commuter cyclist rate in the States), shop at co-ops supporting local agriculture and the gay scene is blooming. It is also a hotbed of not-for-profit organisations, such as my former workplace, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, where we gave a presentation and a radio interview that will be available at Radio Sustain next week. People in the States have been some of the most interested in our trip so far - it really seems to spark the imagination in a country that is waking up to the realities of climate change.

We’ve been crazily busy in the Twin Cities as I tried to fit a year’s memories into one week so there has been little space for reflection. Now on the eve of our departure from Minneapolis I’m starting to reminisce, about our trip around the world in slow motion and about previous departures from places I love. It’s going to be hard going home. Minnesota has been a wonderful trip back in time and has also provided a gentle insight into what is to come back in Blighty.







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Turning thirty at the roller derby

“It’s springtime!“ boomed the commentator at the Minnesota RollerGirls roller derby. An exciting time for Minnesotans as they come out of frozen hibernation and a big day for me as the first day of spring is my birthday.

The Legendary Roy Wilkins Auditorium in downtown Saint Paul was full of thousands of roller derby fans revved up on springtime warmth and ready to cheer on the Minnesota RollerGirls. I had no idea what to expect. Then the lights started flashing, the music started blaring, the blue-haired commentator started shouting and out skated (roller skates, not blades) the Rockits and the Garda Belts. Two teams of feisty women in florescent minidresses and brightly coloured, pattered pantyhose (a much more fun word than tights!).

Roller derby has been reclaimed and revamped from the ashes of its 1970’s predecessor. As the programme clarifies, ’Hair pulling, punching, etc. went the way of macramé and satin jackets.’ That said, roller derby is still a full-on contact sport. Ten women (five from each team) are on the circular track at the same time - two jammers, six blockers and two pivots. The pivots lead the pack around the track while the jammers try to make their way through the blockers to the front. Points are scored when the jammer passes members of the opposite team. Blocking tactics are pretty ferocious - pushing, shoving and pulling are all par for the course, with girls going flying off the track into the audience, crashing down on their knees, belly and bum. We winced when Dudezilla, co-captain of the Rockits, collided with two others and had to sit out the rest of the show.

The best part of watching ten women whizz around a roller rink isn’t their short dresses (although Tom may disagree), but their names. All players have an alter ego that the commentators clearly enjoy: There’s Harmony Killerbruise, Flora Flipabitch, Venus Thightrap and the crowd’s favourite, Suzie Smashbox, which was chanted around the auditorium. My favourite is Chinese Takeout, my former flatmate, now an Atomic Bombshell celebrity. These girls really are superstars around town - you can buy their player cards, people queue up for autographs and they get recognised when out on the tiles. They do it all for love not money - training three times a week, competing in tournaments and volunteering in the community - for all the money raised from ticket sales, sponsorship and merchandise goes to charity.

When it’s all over Wet Spot, the janitorial artist, does a final lap of the track cleaning up spilt beer and firing T-shirts into the crowd through an automatic drainpipe.

Fun as the roller derby was, we shunned the official after party in favour of my favourite bar in Minneapolis - Nye’s Polonaise Room. Nye’s is an eccentric bar with an eclectic crowd. It’s all heavy velvet, thick carpets and candle light. White-haired locals sat around a piano and crooned karaoke oldies; hipsters laughed and sipped martinis; a transvestite chatted up the doorman and through the double doors in the polka bar the (self-proclaimed) world’s most dangerous polka band was in full swing. An old man alternated between growling down a microphone and playing the trumpet while his large-kneed partner remained seated playing the accordion. People young and old did bad dancing in front.

I’m not sure what women of my age are supposed to be doing - having a successful career, buying houses, making babies perhaps? - but right now I am having fun doing random things in strange parts of the world.







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How to…travel on the cheap in the United States of America

Travelling without spending in the States requires a mixture of kindness and knowledge. Kindness on the part of generous people in America and knowledge based on conversations and experiences along the way. Here are our tips for travelling on the cheap in the U.S. of A:

Accommodation:
Couch surfing rocks. This international network of nice people allows you to search for free beds in people’s homes across the U.S. (and the world). You get to meet and live with the locals in exchange for good conversation and the odd beer. We have stayed with some incredible people from musicians and comedians to hipsters and surgeons. Accommodation varies from a pile of blankets on the sitting room floor to a B&B style private room.

Being friendly and meeting people. It‘s amazing how far a smile and a British accent goes in the States. We‘ve met people on beaches and in cars (fellow ridesharers) who have kindly invited us to their homes. Americans are so much more willing than the British to go out of their way for a stranger, giving us lifts across hundreds of miles and buying us meals. We’ve been bowled over.

Travel:
Craig’s List rideshare gets you where you want to go, as long as you can be flexible with the dates. Simply google Craig’s List in the area you’re staying about a week before you want to leave and post an advert in the rideshare section. We were very successful in the southwest, but not so successful in the south. Since petrol is so cheap in the States, splitting fuel costs nearly always works out cheaper than taking public transport, although it‘s not as good for your carbon footprint. You also get to meet some great people who sometimes are prepared to take the slow route to show you the sites and the best places to eat.

Greyhound special deals. The Greyhound is miserable - not dangerous, just depressing. Avoid if you can, but if you must then check their ‘Hotdeals’ for cheap tickets. Booking more than three days in advance allows the person travelling with you to get a half price ‘companion’ ticket.

Megabus has reached the States and is cheaper than Greyhound. Service is limited mainly to the northeast, but it’s expanding all the time. Chinabus takes you from one city’s China town to another and is again cheaper than the Greyhound, although service is more limited (mainly northeast).

Amtrak is more expensive than the bus, but you can get some great deals. The rail pass could work out if you are planning to travel extensively during a two or three week period. The website also offers ‘hot deals’ which can be cheaper than the Greyhound on certain routes. The trains are very comfortable so sleeping on them overnight is possible, thus saving money on accommodation.

Food and drink:
Tap water is potable, so refill your bottle. Restaurants are usually more than happy to oblige.

Happy hour. Most bars offer deals during ’happy hour(s)’ on drinks and food. It’s always worth asking before placing your order.

All-you-can eat buffets. Some restaurants, especially those serving southern cookin’ and pizza, have lunchtime and/or dinner buffets where you eat as much as you can for a reasonable price. Like Mama Hamils lunchtime feast for just $8. You’ll be full for the day.

Giveaways. Look out for free events serving free food in the local entertainment news (like the street gig and hotdogs we found in Nashville). Products are sometimes being promoted on the streets so keep walking by in different disguises to stock up on free samples.

Supermarket tasters. Some supermarkets leave out delicious and plentiful tasters, which can mount up to a sizeable meal. Costco gives away loads of food, although you will need to go in with a member. Treasure Island in Chicago is also generous.

Free breakfasts at Holiday Inn. Apparently it’s easy enough to walk in with a confident stride and help yourself, although we haven’t tried this ourselves.

Dumpster diving is a popular food shopping experience in some parts of the country. Again, we haven’t done it ourselves, but are led to believe that there are rich pickings to be had for free in the skips out the back of supermarkets. Post-midnight is prime diving time. Here you will find trays of pasta sauce where maybe one jar broke and soiled (but didn’t spoil) the rest; out of date bread, crisps and other dry goods that will last forever; dented tins of food etc. If you’re prepared to wash your find you can stock up for weeks.

Fun:
Free music. Check out local entertainment listings (usually in a free mag) for free gigs and events.

Museums often have a free or discounted entry day each week. Have a look on their websites and plan accordingly.

Other stuff:
Clothes. Travelling through the U.S.A.’s many climatic zones requires many changes of clothes. So if you get caught short in a snowstorm, as we were, head to the local thrift (second hand) store for bargains galore.

Internet. Libraries offer free use of computers and Internet for up to two hours. Most cities also offer free wifi hotspots in cafes, bars and public places. Useful if you’re travelling with a laptop. Google ‘free wifi hotspots’ to find the nearest places.

This is how we have survived a month in the States on our last few pounds and the tumbling exchange rate. It takes a little more time and effort but has greatly enhanced our experience and understanding of this enormous country. However, don’t take it too far or you could end up being mistaken for a hobo.







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It takes a train to laugh, it takes a Greyhound to cry

We left our sunny, idyllic retreat in the North Carolina mountains and headed north, destination Chicago. Back to the real world. People, traffic, roads...and the dreaded Greyhound bus.


I braced myself as we entered Knoxville's Greyhound terminal, knowing what to expect. The waiting room presented a depressingly predictable picture: grim-faced broken people looking forlornly into their future through a miasma of poverty, anger, body odour and rubbery takeaways.

They were the same sad characters of previous encounters: the heavily tattooed thug, just out of chokey; the struggling young mother, cursing at her unruly child; the lost, lonely Mexican, hunched up beneath his cream plastic cowboy hat; the red-eyed hobo, two weeks shy of a bathtub; the sullen scrawny redneck, desperately drawing on his last Marlboro...

Over at the counter the same miserable, monosyllabic staff moved slowly behind the counter, scowling at this pitiful ragtag of humanity. From high up on a wall the same old scare stories screamed out from Fox News, where hysterical reporters brought news of an 'Alabama bloodbath'.

These places must surely be some of the most miserable places in this great country. If there is a hell then surely the condemned travel there by Greyhound. Not then, the kind of place you wanted to spend a minute more than necessary. And tonight the bus was late.

The passengers were becoming restless. A slightly unhinged-looking hick standing nearby huffed heavily and said loudly to no-one in particular 'Call George and have him order me a boddle of Ger-ray Goose.'

I shared his irritation. We had a connection to make in Cincinnati and, whilst we had left ourselves an hour and twenty minues to makes the two miles between train and bus stations, we were starting to wonder whether that was enough.

Half an hour ticked by, 45 minutes, then an hour. Finally our carriage arrived.

The driver, a squat little man sporting an ill-fitting jacket which flapped around him like a penguin with sudden weight-loss, could offer like reassurance that he would make up any of the time lost. He snarled at us from under his ragged smear of a moustache: 'what were you thinking of, only leaving that amount of time to make your connection?'

I was gobsmaked. I still can't find the words to describe such a service. So instead I'll leave it to Tanis, a friend of our back in the mountains: 'It is pitiful, lowbrow, and ultimately chavish.'

An hour late, we boarded the bus and headed out into the gathering darkness, chugging up the Interstate and over the Kentucky border. We passed large brown tourism signs for horse racing, the state's famous 'bourbon alley' and even for a local restaurant, 'Colonel Sanders Cafe - KFC birthplace.'

Sadly no local delicacies for us, as we headed on to the town of London, pulling in at a Burger King. Different London, same plastic restaurant, same cardboard food. Once more we were prisoners of the Greyhound and the Interstate: dull, lifeless, predictable.

Except for one thing: this being Kentucky the god-botherers were also in evidence. The Ten Commandments hung from in a frame over the counter; leaflets at every table asked 'Do you know for certain that you will have eternal life?'

Keep eatin' them burgers...

Back out on the road the religious zeal continued. 'Jesus can turn March madness into pure gladness' a church sign proclaimed. Clearly the 'buckle of bible belt', which we had been told we were entering upon arrival back in Nashville, is rather large indeed.

It provided little comfort to us in our current predicament - time was against us. The air temperature was dropping (38F / 3C); our anxiety was rising. Would we make it?

An hour later the traffic started to thicken and the sky suddenly lit up with the glare of a million lights: Cincinnati, our transfer point. The bus rolled downhill towards downtown, crossing the Ohio River, the state boundary between Kentucky and Ohio.

An historical faultline along which the nation was divided during the Civil War it also marked a transitional point for us - we were leaving the South behind and entering the North. I had little time to ponder the significance of this before our bus pulled into the terminal. 45 minutes late.

The empty streets of Cincinnati were soon speeding past us as our taxi headed to the train station. Our friendly Senegalese cabbie gave us a potted history of the city's background before we pulled up before an impressive but decidedly empty-looking building. Dim lights shone from inside but not a soul moved.

'Are you sure this is the train station?', Lara asked nervously.

We heaved our bags out, entered a cavernous entrance hall and gasped in the gloom. It was a fabulous art deco interior, replete with marble pillars, ornate lettering and huge murals depicting stages of the region's development.

This was bizarre. All this grandness and yet no people. A landlubbing Marie Celeste where time had stood still and people had moved on. It was a museum (quite literally), not a train station.

Finally - right at the back - we found it: a modest little sign pointing to closed door 'Amtrak.' We walked through, entering a small art deco waiting room and a completely different travel experience. A friendly fellow behind the counter was only too happy to serve us and the other handful of passengers who sat around on handsome wooden benches.

Sensing our bemusement he outlined the history of the station. We were sitting, he assured us, in a station that once saw 200 trains a day (400 during World War II), a key stop on the rail lines heading east and west. Today that service has been radically reduced. To just one. Six days a week.

I was gobsmacked. How could this be? The railroads, once the glory of America, the vital arteries which opened up the West, traversing mountains and deserts and defying Indian attacks in order to carry freight, passengers and freighthopping banjo players, now reduced to this. One train a day? It wasn’t even a skeleton service.

Despite this ignominious decline, our Amtrak employee obviously took pride in his work, recounting the sad story of the railways as he personally escorted the small group of passengers down onto the platform.

We shivered in the cold as he told us of the establishment of Amtrak, the back in 1971, created out of the nationalisation of the private rail companies. As he told it, the company was deliberately neglected by a government which had decided that rail had no future, hoping the passenger service would simply wither and die.

The next year, 1972, Cincinnati station saw its platforms reduced from twelve to one. The future looked bleak and the line itself would probably have disappeared if it weren’t for the determined efforts of an influential Senator from West Virginia.

Today the service still runs, leaving New York and chugging slowly westwards, arriving at Cincinnati at 1am, not ideal for the locals but thereby allowing said Senator to appreciate his beloved West Virginia countryside during daylight hours. A small price to pay surely for preserving this vital public service.

It was a small train as well, composed of only three passenger carriages, a dining carriage and a sleeper. The ever-helpful staff escorted us to our seats and we sank back into the huge, comfortable seats, luxuriating in our acres of space, two seats apiece - a decent mini-bed for the rest of the night.

The onboard atmosphere couldn’t have been more different to the Greyhound and its paranoia, pent-up aggression and hopelessness. It was friendly, relaxed and surprisingly jolly at such an hour.

Train and bus: they couldn't be more different experiences in the US, yet another example of the great extremes which characterise this country.

I found myself wondering how could this supremely wealthy nation, rippling with massive economic muscles, swaggering with technological might, could have such a poor public transport system.

They had built the railroads through hostile terrain and opened up the West, erected lovingly-designed buildings and inspired many a romantic song but then somehow they abandoned them, convinced that rail had had its day and roads were the answer.

Was it down to the American love of cars and the power of the auto industry? Did it stem from a personality trait buried deep within the American pysche? The desire to be independent, free from government intervention, the master of their own destiny? Or is the country simply too big to cross quickly by train?

I still didn’t have the answer as I woke up hours later, the bright winter sunshine crowbaring open my heavy eyelids and flooding my vision with the flat icy cornfields of Indiana. They stretched on morosely for mile after mile, the relentless monotony broken up only by clumps of bare trees, chunky red barns and grain silos, dark shadows against the swirling snow.

The scenery was't the only thing to have changed during the night; the accents were noticeably different too, the drawl of the mountains now supplanted by a nasal twang. ‘Howyoodoin’?’, a lady enthusiastically greeted us. The intonation was unmistakable - we could only be drawing in to one place: Chicago.

Soon the small towns gave way to one long urban sprawl, the sidings crowded in on both sides and we drew in to ’the Windy City’.

Chicago. The hub of the country’s railway network, a city that grew upon the iron road, its astonishing population boom driven by the expansion of the railways and the industry that followed it.

Another train station echoing to former glories, and a huge, grand waiting hall straight out of The Untouchables (which indeed it was). I felt I were back in a museum again rather than the nerve centre of a modern, fully functioning public transport network.

Entering the street outside the station looked rather an anomaly, squeezed under the towering, sleek skyscrapers, hidden away like an embarrassing old uncle. It was light years from Japan, even aged in comparison to home. Would they ever catch up?

Back on the Cincinnati platform we’d been assured there was a chink of link at the end of this long, dark tunnel: Amtrak enjoyed its highest-ever passenger numbers last year and President Obama has already announced more investment in train services.

Is this the first step towards a resurgence of the railroad? On behalf of all Americans who don't own a car I truly hope so: as our experiences have shown it takes a train to laugh, it takes a Greyhound to cry*.

*With thanks to Bob Dylan







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Moonshine in the mountain moonlight

"Howoooll!" went the hillbillies as they gazed up at the full moon. Glug went the moonshine as it slipped down their throats. This was the sunset/moonrise scene atop a fire tower overlooking the Great Smokey Mountains on the North Carolina section of the Appalachian Trail.

After three weeks of travelling between America's sprawling southern cities - Austin, New Orleans, Jackson, Memphis, Nashville and Chattanooga - we finally escaped into the wild, travelling up into the North Carolina mountains. Wesser Creek is a totally different world, the kind of place that Davy Crockett might have lived and just over the hill from where Cold Mountain was set.

We were late to the rendezvous point, but no matter, for our hillbilly chum was happily entertaining the passing Jehovah Witnesses with his banjo playing. Loaded up with our Couchsurfing host's tie-die, the roads started to narrow, the rivers started to proliferate and the scenery turned to trees and mountains. Fresh air!

Isaac and Tanis, befriended over run and banjos on a Belize beach, live in an 1850's wood cabin high up on a hillside in a forest next to a creek. It was the warmest day of the year here, so far, and spring fever was in the air. The earth was warming, taking a relieved breath and letting the melting snow gently seep in and transpire out. Daffodils were budding and wood anemones were blooming. The red cardinals were chirruping and the wild turkeys gobbling (while remaining mysteriously hidden).

Infected by nature's stirrings - everything was waking up - we quickly packed up the car and went camping. Lake Fontana's dammed water level provided a sandy campsite on the lake bottom. We paddled out to our secret cove and spent a night under the spring sky around a campfire listening to some of the world's finest banjo music. The Freight Hoppers reside in North Carolina and keep the spirit of old time music alive.

An hour's canoe paddle across the lake, in the company of a beaver slapping his flat tail on the water's surface, is Hazel Creek. This former thriving timber town was evacuated in the 1940's in preparation for a reservoir for which the waters never rose. The trees have now grown back and all that remains are a few stone walls and almost a thousand graves. It's a spooky negative of a bygone era.

Back at the cabin, tired and dirty, we set a fire burning underneath a large metal horse-trough filled with spring water. Within a couple of hours the water was hot and we could sit outside underneath a star spangled sky and soak in this hillbilly hot tub, taking in the mountain air and calls of the tree frogs.

We were treated to a mountain feast of fresh river-caught fish, corn bread, fried potatoes and ramps. The latter are potent roots of wild onions that have been known to get children sent home from school for the lingering odour they leave on the diner's breath and pores. They taste damn good though.

It's a mighty fine life in the mountains. The purpose of being is to have fun and appreciate the natural world. People go slow and enjoy. Suits World in Slow Motion travellers just fine! So the rest of our stay revolved around sampling local ales, walking up mountains and through forests, listening to the banjo and looking out for the evasive wild turkeys.

Tom couldn't have been happier, jamming with a local banjo ace and being presented with his hat as a memento. And I couldn't have been happier when we finally spotted a rafter of wild turkeys and howled at the moon.

The rain and the cold were about to set in when we left Wesser Creek, so we left with our magical memories intact. It'll be another few weeks before the folk of North Carolina will be able to camp out under the stars and howl at the moon again. I do believe that the turkeys have set in for the season though.

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Mission Mississippi: A step too far?

"Are you guys homeless too?" asked a camouflage clad hobo with a split lip. I began to wonder if our frugal wanderings had gone a step too far.

Eating a packed lunch on a bench in our new cold weather thrift store clothes with Tom's burgeoning beard, perhaps we did have more in common with the bums on the benches around us than we realised.

I immediately scoffed "No," in response to the hobo's question, but then thought about it and, technically, yes we are homeless. We live out of a bag, we eat a free lunch where we can get it (a hotdog from a free music show in Nashville on this particular day), we use free internet at the library (incidentally Nashville must have the most intellectual hobos in the world given the numbers in the city library), we buy our clothes in the second hand (thrift) store, we don't have a car and instead ride the Greyhound and we surf couches. It's a fine line.

I don't want to look like a bum, so on that day I swore to smarten myself up, or at least choose a different bench on which to eat lunch.

My promise to self didn't take long to break when we met our Couchsurfing host for the evening who took us home for a dumpster dinner. Josh hasn't bought food from a supermarket since February 14th 2007 (a fussy girlfriend apparently). Instead he dumpster dives. In the middle of the night he pops round the back of the neighbourhood grocery store (the larger the better) and goes 'shopping' in the skips.

I've heard of freegans before and thoroughly applaud their cause. There is far too much waste in the world. People in the UK and the US throw away about one quarter of their food each year. However, when presented with a cooked from frozen burger on an out-of-date bun with green beans, all of which you know have been rolling around the bottom of a filthy skip, it does make swallowing a little hard. Gulp. We ate it though and we were fine. Josh reports no illness whatsoever from his three years of dumpster diving.

So yes, we're on a really tight budget, but no, I don't want to be a hobo. Perhaps it's time to dip into the overdraft, instead of the dumpster, after all.

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The deep South - A musical odyssey

‘I’m going to Jackson, I’m going to mess around. I’m going to Jackson, look out Jackson town.’

- Johnny Cash and June Carter

“Are we going to Jackson just because of Johnny Cash?”, Lara asked?

No, I replied. But I had to admit that he was at least a partial motivation for it.

The state capital of Mississippi lay on our route, the second stop on our musical odyssey through the Deep South.

Leaving behind the jazz of New Orleans we headed for the blues of the Mississippi delta. And not without some trepidation.

Back in The Big Easy Fox News had screamed at us about a recent jailbreak in South East Mississippi: ‘Lookout folks - it’s lockdown in the county!’, a worried-looking chap with a large microphone reported excitedly, ‘these guys are bad and dangerous!’

Prisoners on the run in Mississippi; I was sure I’d heard that somewhere before.

Back on the road the string of Mardi Gras beads led all the way up through Louisiana and across the border, seeping into Mississippi gas stations, cars and the roadside diner where we pulled up for dinner.

Sat amongst red-eyed revellers I looked up from my BBQ pork po-boy to catch the new President’s address to Congress. Somewhat boy-like himself, Barack Obama gave a confident address, commanding the attention of the house and even a few of my fellow diners.

Again I sensed the renewed wave of optimism, one which has appeared since our brief visit in December, and to which people are drawn, desperate for a candle in the gathering economic darkness.

It‘s particularly interesting to witness the first few days of the first black President’s administration unfold here in the south, a region forever associated with the horrors of racial discrimination and still struggling, many believe, to fully shake off its hangover.

Entering the state capital of Jackson we look out for the visible effects of the unofficial segregation we've heard about, where the racial divide often seems to replicated economically.

Tied intimately to this are crime patterns and our host, the delightful Lizzie, stakes her town’s claim to the apparently much-vaunted crown of ‘crime capital of the US’ (Americans seem as obsessed with this as the British are with house prices), but it doesn’t wash with us.

If our part of town is anything to go by it seemed a pleasant enough place - letterboxes at the end of drives, basketball hoops in driveways, BBQs on lawns - and populated with perhaps the friendliest locals we have encountered all trip.

Once again our accents went down a treat, provoking gentle curiosity and kindness at every turn.

As an aspiring young musician Lizzie soon introduces us to the local music scene - it’s not the delta blues but we do catch a blistering performance of zydeco music,a Louisiana speciality.

Every Jacksonian under the age of 30 seems to be busily engaged in making their own albums and we soon find ourselves in Lizzie’s own recording studio, contributing suitably plummy English accents to an her self-penned anthem ‘Happy Minutes’.

With the infuriatingly-catchy lyrics still whizzing around my head I remember Johnny Cash and - now being in Jackson - I ask around about the 'Jackson' song.

No-one seems sure - it's more likely to be Jackson, Tennessee, Cash's home for many years.

More curious American words enter my homemade and burgeoning American English dictionary. Round these parts everything seems to be described either ‘awesome’ or ‘big ass’.

I’m not the first to notice that for many Americans, in Basil Fawlty’s words “It’s all about bottoms, isn’t it?”

Leaving Lizzie to another jamming session we headed north and soon I found my feelings for this land turning once more from admiration and love to irritation and loathing.

Without our own set of wheels we were prisoners of the pitiful public transport system. In these parts, this meant there was only one option - the Greyhound and its regular helping of stony-faced staff and ‘no soliciting’ signs, the unwashed and the unwanted.

It pained me even more to stick to the interstate, speeding right past the towns of the delta, the breeding ground of the blues and a place I’d been eagerly anticipating for many months. Better luck in Memphis.

I glared out the grimy window, the flat unrelenting landscape only broken up by bulbous water towers and roadside hoardings advertising for medical centres (most of them baptist), the latest Willie Nelson concert and one naming and shaming two grim-faced fellows for ‘convicted sex crimes against children’.

Public lynching may be a thing of the past but here the stocks still seem to remain.

The blue skies were gone by now, their place taken by dark swollen clouds which turned to cold drizzle as we stopped in another anonymous town for a short break.

Our amply-proportioned fellow passengers piled out and waddled over to a nearby restaurant out to restock with fried crawfish and fries.

Friday night Fish and chips, Southern style.

A lone Mexican alighted amongst them, his cream plastic cowboy hat shining out like a beacon and bringing a smile to our faces, a reminder of the millinery delights south of the border.

Down in Mexico he wouldn’t stand out from the crowd but here he looked lost and alone, adrift from his homeland in search of a better income.

An hour up the interstate the Tennessee flag fluttered in the strengthening breeze and Memphis hove into view.

Home of the Blues, Soul and Rock ‘N’ Roll, surely here we would find our much-sought after live music here.

After a vain attempt to catch the blues in the raw form, unadulterated, deep down and dirty, at a small venue out in the suburbs we slid through the snowy roads back into town, driven to the juke joints of Beale St.

Once hallowed haunt of blues artists they now seem a hollowed-out core, commercial operations catering for the Hard Rock café crowd and offering watered-down fare.

The picture was the same the next day at the legendary Sun studios, where Jerry, Johnny and Elvis cut their first records - and at Graceland, the gloriously over-the-top home of the latter.

With their music still ringing in our ears we headed on once more to another great music city lying to the west - Nashville.

Another Greyhound. Another stony-faced, round woman on the desk. More pungent passengers and hopeless hobos.

Their spirit crushed, our fellow passengers sat morosely in the waiting room, drawing back into the hoods of their loose-fitting leisurewear some kind of proxy amniotic fluid.

Gordon Brown’s weary face stared out from CNN, his drawn features a stark contrast to those of the sprightly new US President. The coverage showed them talking earnestly over coffee and tilting their heads behind large dais at a press conference.

The rolling newsbar brought the latest economic woes: Northern Rock loses billions in the UK since being nationalised; Ford sales have plummet 48% in the US. Barrack and Gordon stood shoulder to shoulder: these problems are ‘global’.

An hour later we were heading west and, if the large roadside hoardings we passed were anything to go by the lands we were entering are even more redneck: gun and knife shows, fishing appliances and baptist pastors staring out from their lofty perches.

We stopped briefly at an old bus station in a town called Jackson. Is this the town Johnny sang about? There was no time to find out, as our fellow passengers hastily stubbed out their cigarettes on the tarmac and we continued.

The snow remained on the ground as we headed east and we found ourselves amongst low hills, the first since Mexico.

The generously-built lady next to me tucked into a meal of fried chicken and corn bread and we passed a large tour truck painted in the Stars and Stripes, ‘Freedom and Family Tour’ emblazoned boldly across it.

Country music. We had to be nearing Nashville, ’the music city’ .

I couldn’t help listening to Bob Dylan‘s ‘Nashville Skyline’ in anticipation.

Half an hour later the aforementioned skyline itself gleamed at us, the smart towers of downtown glinting orange in the sunset.

The streets looked smarter, the atmosphere more austere in comparison to Memphis. Everywhere I looked I saw a church - we were, as our couchsurfing host, Jason, put it ’in the buckle of the bible belt’.

Together with his wife, Tamee, he has counted 17 churches between his house and the café where we dined: baptist, evangelical, church of god, seventh day adventist to name a few.

Such is their popularity that the police have to come out to direct traffic on Sundays.

To the backdrop of live music (cajun, once again) our conversation turned to the musical delights of this city.

Not only the home of country, there’s hillybilly here, and rockabilly, and in the engrossing Country Music Hall of Fame we read all about them.

Dolly Parton, Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Merle Haggard, they all crooned at out us from video screens, replete in their cowboy hats and rhinestone jackets.

The streets outside rang to the sound of the fiddle and the southern drawl, drifting out from venues on Broadway and even loudspeakers at road junctions.

Yet to me one voice stood out from them all: the deep, sonorous sound which sends an earthquake through me every time I hear it.

“Hello, I’m Johnny Cash”

And so it was that we found ourselves in a cemetery, after dark, in the small town of Hendersonville.

With the help of Jason’s whizzy iPhone (every American seems to have one - cricked necks and arthritic fingers must be a big problem here) we located the grave of the Man in Black.

He lay next to his wife, the love of his life, both graves etched with passages from the bible. It was a modest plot on a small grassy slope, overlooking people’s backyards, a couple of gas stations and a hotel.

I stood and looked at the final resting place of my musical hero. Jackson to Hendersonville.
Mission complete.

But the musical odyssey continues. We‘re making for the mountains. There‘s a man waiting for us there, and he‘s brandishing a banjo…







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Elvis.com: Taking Care of Business

"Nothing really affected me until I heard Elvis" - John Lennon


We boarded a plane today, something I never thought I’d be doing on our travels around the world without flying.

This was no commercial airliner though, and indeed it was going nowhere, parked up on a piece of tarmac just off a busy highway.

Clearly the former owner had been a person of some means: this jet was blinged to the max. There were lush thick sofas, leather seats, a double bed, gold seat belt clips, even gold leaf basins in the toilets.

But then this wasn’t any old plane: this was the Lisa Marie, and this wasn't any old owner - this was the former plane of none other than the King of Rock ‘N’ Roll, Elvis Presley.

And whilst the Lisa Marie may once have flown through the clouds, taking Elvis on tour or indulging him in spontaneous missions (taking his dog to a vet in Boston, visiting Denver for peanut butter sandwiches, visiting the Rockies for half an hour to show his daughter snow) today she was going nowhere, parked up on a piece of tarmac just off a busy highway.

She stands as a dusty display in an outdoor museum, just one of the many exhibitions at his old stomping ground, now a pilgrimage site for his legions of adoring fans, the Mecca of rock and roll: Graceland.

Welcome to elvis.com : Taking Care of Business.

TCB. Elvis’s favourite acronym was emblazoned on the back of the Lisa Marie and his other jet, Hound Dog II, on his cars, throughout his house and even on his clothes.

It seemed rather a naff slogan for such a cool cat, surely more befitting of a small-town haulage company rather than a man who could make girls swoon with a single shake of his hips.

Indeed the slogan seems more pertinent since ‘The King’s’ death, Elvis bequeathing us not only a great musical legacy but a whole retail park dedicated to his memory.

For the dedicated Elvis fan the dollars start flying out of your pocket the minute you turn into Elvis Presley Boulevard.

If you've time on your hands (and at Graceland you need it) you can stay at Heartbreak Hotel (situated on Lonely St, naturally) or park up your RV (those enormous bloated caravans Americans seem to insist on taking with them, as it they’re anticipating an alien invasion) on the campsite behind.

The house is, of course, the big draw and Elvis's former manor perches on the top of a grassy slope opposite the visitor centre, accessible only by shuttle bus.

The visitor is shepherded straight through the front door of the building, more a large house than a great mansion and straight into the Presley family’s inner sanctum for a voyeuristic glimpse into their private, intimate, lives.

It felt strange to walk through their rooms, inappropriate - almost ghoulish - to intrude into their world, handing over fistfuls of dollars for a thrilling peek at how the family lived, commenting on the furniture and the crockery, staring at the framed photos of beaming parents and happy children.

I couldn’t help being aghast at the ludicrous décor of course, frozen as it is in a weird 1970s timewarp, a decade notorious for bypassing all acceptable boundaries of taste.

Not one to be outdone Elvis smashed past these boundaries with great zeal, choosing to decorate each room to its own individual theme.

The visitor moves between these rooms rather like contestants did between zones in the Channel Four game show The Crystal Maze.

There was the TV room (black, white and yellow colour scheme, mirrored walls and ceiling, and a bank of three TVs for simultaneous viewing - an idea borrowed from President Johnson, apparently); the pool room (thick, heavy material from floor to ceiling, like a dingy bordello) and the lounge (a ‘jungle’ room, complete with slippery leather furniture, indoor waterfall and thick, green shagpile from floor to ceiling.

A fellow visitor standing next to me couldn’t help but be impressed: “I gottasay, boy, he’s classy!”

We proceeded to the raquetball room, one a playground for Elvis and friends, now lined with rows of platinum discs and, inside glass cabinets some of his legendary costumes: sequined jumpsuits with massive lapels, tight at the crotch, flared at the ankle and split down to the belly.

From the screens on the wall the King struts about in such costumes, the final word in bad taste.

This coverage of his later live shows showed a decidedly pudgy Elvis, sporting the kind of sideburns you’d expect find in a zoo behind bars, gyrating before adoring fans and sweating heavily through innumerable Las Vegas shows.

The mawkishness cranks up another notch still when we come to the ‘meditation garden’, the final resting place of the King himself. Private family graves; public shrine.

In front of a tinkling fountain, his grave, between those of his family lies festooned in flowers and toys, limp star and stripes and notes of heartfelt professions of adoration.

Fans still flock here from far and wide. One enormous wreath on display was sent from the ‘United Elvis Presley Society Belgium' (United? Was there a split into factions, I wondered? Perhaps a divide along ethnic lines, the Flems disapproving of the Walloons interpretation of Blue Suede Shoes).

Away from the house there was more of course: an exhibition dedicated to Elvis’s many films, another to his many cars, and one entirely about his days in the draft.

The latter provided a particularly fascinating insight into the Elvis phenomenon.

When they heard that E.A Presley was due to be drafted the various branches of the armed services vied for his services.

One glance at the images of the impossibly handsome young batchelor - already a pin-up for many -willingly doing his duty and its clear why they would have been keen to have him in their ranks.

The propaganda value alone during this time of the Cold War must have been almost incalculable.

A grinning Elvis poses happily whilst having his head shaved at an Arkansas boot camp, a rugged Elvis in military fatigues tinkles with his tank deep in the Bavarian woods. Soviet propagandists must have been green with envy.

Yet even a hardened, cynical military general cannot have calculated the value of Elvis once he’d passed to other side. Beyond the grave Elvis is still generating millions of dollars.

The merchandise stands wall-to-wall, at the exit of each exhibition and in every shop in between them. There’s Elvis posters, pens and steering wheel covers, keyrings, CDs and films, t-shirts, ringtones and playing cards, dolls, monopoly and karaoke sets...

But it doesn’t stop here: for the more ambitious there’s an opportunity to let Elvis into just about every corner of your life.

You can get married at Graceland’s ‘Chapel in the Woods’ or listen to Elvis every minute of the day on Elvis Radio.

Indeed if you have the money there seems to be no limit.

Fancy a go on Elvis’s pool table? All yours for $100, with a certificate of authenticity and a Polaroid of the moment thrown in.

Or perhaps you’d like to splash out on a replica Elvis jumpsuit, complete with buttons and sequins. Yours for only $3,300.

Elvis might have passed away some 25 years ago but the tills are still ringing. The King is dead, long live Elvis®.

When the shy boy from Tupelo, Mississippi strolled in through the doors of Sun Studios back in 1953 he didn’t know he’d be launching a music career that would define a generation and change
the world.

Such was his popularity that when he died, aged only 42, in August 1977 hundreds of thousands turned out to see his casket.

As we chowed down in the ‘Chrome Grille’ café (sat in a Cadillac, of course) I munched metaphorically over the Elvis phenomenon and couldn’t help drawing a parallel between Elvis and the United States.

Big, brash and lovable; thrilling, exciting and new.

Extravagant, excessive and greedy; tacky, tasteless and wasteful.

Could he have appeared in anywhere else other than the United States?

Like him or not, even today Elvis retains his legions of devoted fans. Indeed he seems as popular as ever, a simple search for him on google returning 52,600,000 results.

And whilst people still come to Graceland, streaming through the gates in their hundreds of thousands every year, his songs will keep spinning and the tills will keep ringing.

The King is dead, long live Elvis®. U-huh.







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