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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Midnight Cowboy in Memphis

Memphis. The city that brought the world blues, soul and rock ‘n’ roll.

Home to Graceland, the legendary mansion of Elvis Presley, and Sun and Stax studios, the recording studios which introduced us to the King of Rock 'n' Roll along with other greats such as Johnny Cash, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Isaac Hayes…

My ears were salivating at the thought of it all.

That is if they weren’t dropping off. It was cold - very cold - and my great floppy lugholes were bearing the brunt of it.

I was starting to bitterly regret the run-in I had with a rather enthusiastic barber back in Guatemala and wondered what on earth was going on with the weather in this country.

The day before we’d been in Jackson, Mississippi, where the sun was shining and the thermometer was reading 25°C (77°). We had been wearing t-shirts and sunglasses as we caught the Greyhound out of town, passing on the way an electronic billboard flashing a tornado warning.

And yet four hours later up the interstate, as we alighted at Memphis, Tennessee we were greeted by the kind of icy blasts you’d encounter in the depths of winter back home.

The thermometer had plunged to a meagre 3°C (38°F), and it was falling fast.

The rain was beginning to turn to hail and by the time we’d reached our new lodgings the promise of snow hung in the air.

As I stood shivering on the doorstep of our couchsurfing host, cursing the holes in my shoes I realised I couldn’t put it off any longer: the music would have to wait, it was time to go clothes shopping.

I loathe this mundane activity and was looking forward to it with a looming sense of desperation when the door opened and our host, a strapping Argentinian biochemist named Adolfo, opened it.

“Hi you must be Tom and Lara; would you like a beer?”

Things got even better as pizza was produced and Aaron, a fellow Memphis couchsurfing host, schoolteacher and fount of local knowledge, offered to give us a lift to the city’s finest thrift stores.

As we rode out there the next day he gave us the lowdown on the city. He seemed keen to tell us about the crime rate - the second worst in the US apparently. Lots of murders, crack, shootings, the lot.

I’d heard it all before. Austin, New Orleans, Jackson, and now here. The words wafted over me as I ruminated on this apparent obsession of Americans with crime.

It seems to be almost a source of local pride, each city hotly contesting for the sacred title of ‘most dangerous city in America’.

This baffles me given the number of cops there are over here. With all these fine fellows patrolling the street it's a wonder there's any crime at all.

You almost can't move in this country for bulky men in immaculately pressed uniforms and gleaming cruisers, officers of the law from the sheriff's department, the city police, state troopers and other assorted agencies.

It's almost as confusing as the number of radio stations here, all four letter acronyms beginning - now we're east of the Mississippi - with a W.

Still, looking out the window, it was easy to believe Memphis’s claim, the sprawling blocks of low-rise buildings growing progressively shabbier the further we headed out of downtown.

A sign hung outside a launderette, reading: ‘Jesus is Lord. Starch Pants’ (if that won’t make you wash your smalls, nothing will); another, outside a fried chicken outlet, offered ‘legs and thighs. Spicy’, suitably sited next door to a strip club.

We were approaching our destination, the suburb of Nutbush, and two large thrift stores, purveyors of used clothing to the poor, the unemployed and cash-strapped backpackers.

Inside the Disabled Americans Thrift Store, browsers perused pungent old clothing and cast-offs whilst a jumpy-looking cop with closely cropped hair scanned them with beedy eyes, his hand twitching on his belt.

Our accents were soon - once again - attracting considerable attention. Was I from Ireland? a heavily bearded customer with steamed-up glasses asked me, another - a heavily tattooed lady with a tough Tennessee twang - complimented my English tones - ‘your accent is beautiful.’

Gosh, I liked this town already.

And it got better when I reached the racks, the store proving, along with its neighbour next door, a veritable treasure trove of high-quality clothing for the aspiring yet budget-conscious cowboy.

It is always our aim to try and appreciate a country from a local's point of view; as part of this, I indulge, when the chance presents itself to indulge in another Tintinesque tendency and take the 'Thompson and Thomson' approach.

The hapless Scotland Yard detectives, faithful companions to the boy reporter, always like to adopt the traditional costume.

Here in Memphis that meant only one thing and soon I was striding out into our new wintery world with a brand new uniform. This consisted of the following:

One pair of cowboy boots - $10
One pair of jeans - $5
One thick corduroy jacket $5
One heavy check shirt - $3

Combined with my Mexican cowboy hat I thought I cut a fine figure, ready to blend in perfectly with the locals around me.

Striding down the street on my two inch heels I thought I looked like Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy; Lara reckoned more like Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain. Better steer clear of the rainbow flags for a while.

By now the snow was falling thick and fast, it was starting to get dark and there was little sign of a bus.

A shopkeeper had kindly looked up bus times for us, one of her customers had even offered us a lift and now we met yet another friendly local who offered us a ride.

‘Mah name’s Werr-sleh. People call me White Lightnin’. Wow - a bona fide musician, and a guitarist to boot. He reminded me of the purpose of our visit to Memphis - to seek out the blues - and we thanked him for his club recommendation, Wild Bills, a place we’d already heard of

White Lightin’ had another piece of useful advice: ‘You’re in Nutbush, maaaan - this is the hood’.

Time to go. A bus finally hove into view and we hopped aboard this skeleton service, the air inside so cold we could see our own breath, the seat cushions soaking wet from the leaking roof.

Once more I wondered what one would do without a car in a town like Memphis, marooned like a stranded sailor in an ocean of concrete.

We made to downtown and the one saving grace of the city’s public transport system - the Main Street Trolley.

This lovingly-kept line runs old trams which come complete with varnished wooden benches, odd knobs and levers. Ours also came with a friendly driver called ‘Mow-reece’ who complimented me on my new garb.

As the tram rumbled gently over the heavy rails I relaxed into its warm, comforting embrace reflected on the fine people of this city and the south in general. Once again the South had impressed us: the warmth of its welcome, the friendliness of its people; the kindness of strangers.

Half an hour later, as we kicked the snow off our boots back at our lodgings and brewed a restorative cuppa the news came through that we were in the middle of the heaviest snowfall for forty years, some parts of West Tennessee receiving up to a foot of snow.

We were back to survivalist shows back more. Snow-bound and stranded in the deep south: would Tom and Lara survive?

Stayed tuned and find out next week only on WISM.







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We love happy minutes!

Is Jackson, Mississippi, the friendliest city on earth? Based on our experiences, yes it is.

Our introduction to Jackson started on a super note when our Couchsurfing host, Lizzie Wright Super Space Ship (her stage name) happened to be in New Orleans and gave us a ride from our hotel door straight to her house.

She kindly took us for lunch at Mama Hamil’s, a fine example of the flavours, fat and bounty of Southern cookin’. While choosing between turnip greens, creamed corn, chicken dumplings and ribs, Tom said hello to the man in the chef’s hat in the kitchen. This turned out to be Bob - the fourth generation of Southern cookin’. He introduced us to Mama (generation number three) and she introduced us to all her friends. I felt a bit bad on Lizzie as she had to go back to work, but we weren’t allowed to leave until we’d exchanged contact details with Mama and promised to track down her distant love, “Somewhere near that museum,” in London. We were presented with a bottle of homemade barbecue sauce and left stuffed full of incredible food and hospitality. I don’t think they get many folk from out of the country around these parts.

My suspicions were confirmed as everywhere we went people met us with genuine interest. They wanted to know who we were, why we were in Jackson and wished us a good trip n’all. In a salsa class my painful footwork was quickly forgotten when I opened my mouth. A random guy who’d heard me in a coffee shop earlier stopped me in the street with a, “You gone and changed your pants,” introduction. And when we took our limping laptop to the local computer co-op, they have it a 'tweak', asked, “Where y’all from,” and let us go on our merry way without a fee.

Back home I might view such friendliness with suspicion - you just don’t do that in London. But having already met so many kind people in the States this was just taking it to the next level.

Sneaky Beans was the next level. The staff in this incredibly friendly coffee shop were fascinated by our trip and didn’t charge extra for a large, rather than small, tea, recognising that it was indeed only a bit of extra hot water. Such logic and charm. I’d seen the pants guy in here, Tom met the owner and chatted to most of the customers and a girl we’d met at a Zydepunks gig the night before buzzed over to say hello.

While I was blogging in Sneaky Beans Tom sneaked off for dinner. He came back beaming but looking a little confused. He’d just been bought dinner by the man in Lenny’s Subs. They’d just been chewing the fat over an Italian meat sub and when it came time to pay he just wouldn’t hear any of it.

Jackson is truly amazing. Free barbecue sauce, free tea, free computer fix, free dinner and so many genuinely friendly people. As the words of Lizzie’s latest song twinkle, “We love happy minutes!” and in Jackson every minute was happy. “Y’all come back now!”




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Lonely Planet Travel Blogger Awards 2009 - Vote WISM!

We have been shortlisted in the Lonely Planet Travel Blogger Awards 2009. Hurrah!

A big Thank You to everyone who nominated us in round one - now we need your support again in round two.

In this final round of the awards the winners will be decided half by public vote, half by a panel of experts, so your vote counts!

Winning an award would give a huge boost to our efforts to promote the joys of slow travel and provide information to others who'd like to try it themselves so please vote for us.

To do so simply visit the awards website here, select 'worldinslowmotion.com' in the best travelogue category and press vote. Thank you very much!
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Fat Tuesday

The toilet queue in CC's Coffee Shop consisted of a red indian, a giant baby, a man in a pink silk tuxedo and top hat, a woman with a rubber ring around her waist, a real policeman and a male nun. Mardi Gras Tuesday is indeed fat, if not phat. It is Lost Vagueness on a city scale.

Outside the streets of the French Quarter were a hazy cocktail blur: two white trash girls posed against a dustbin lorry, a group of pirates played ten-pin bowling in the street, a man with eight nipples was feeding eight plastic babies and an alien on a bike cycled by. It was a Monty Python daydream.

I was on the verge of exhaustion having spent five nights on the beer and mezcal begging for beads. For beads is what Mardi Gras is all about. On Fat Tuesday I had to summon my last golden beads of energy to enjoy the mayhem. Tired, I had risen to the sounds of Mardi Gras TV. Watching all those people screaming for beads made my bead addiction twitch and I had to get out on the street.

Canal Street was rammed. Families had set up camp with chairs and so much picnic food that even Yogi Bear would struggle to get through it all. The Zulu krew parade, celebrating its one hundredth year, was advancing down the street, the people on the floats chucking out throws. Throws are the coveted beads or, on the bigger parades, better. The Zulu krew is famous for its golden coconut throws. I don't know what came over me but I became fanatical about catching throws. It was pathetic. There I was, a grown woman jostling and jumping above the eight year old infront of me to get those beads with a special glowing medallion or a giant plastic toothbrush. I had become a bead whore. But in my defense, so had the whole town. In the end I gave the kid the toothbrush, but I was hanging on to my beads! For someone who doesn't like Made in China, useless, plastic tat I was possessed. I needed beads, and no matter how many you have you always want more. I didn't need the beads quite as much as my bead-hungry friend Dan, but I still wanted beads. Collectively we grabbed 20kg of plastic beads, which are now being distributed at Dani Gras in The Saloon, Minneapolis (reuse, recycle etc.).

We tried various techniques to get beads thrown at us. Laying on the English accent and pleading seemed to work. However, the men on the floats wanted boobs for special beads and they were getting none of that, thank you very much, I'm British don't you know. No matter what Angela and I did (apart from bear breast) the boys always got more beads, even Drew, when he didn't want them. Tom was the Bead King with the winning method of doffing his flapcap madly in the air and proclaiming, "I say, excuse me, can I trouble you for some beads perchance."

On Fat Tuesday the beads were flying: From floats, balconies and locals handing out beads to the beadless. On the infamous girls-gone-wild Bourbon Street girls were going wild. Boobs were being flashed on the balconies and in the street in exchange for beads.

Music flowed down the streets. The parades were full of school marching bands and the French Quarter and Faubourg Marigny were full of second lines. These impromptu brass bands strike up a jazz beat in the street and you can tag along waving a handkerchief, umbrella or just grooving.

Mardi Gras is all about consumption - beads, beer, hurricanes and hot dogs. It is beautiful to see a city so alive after such a recent tragedy, even having the gall to have cocktails named after it. Mardi Gras is exhausting all consuming - perhaps that's what makes it Fat Tuesday. I was warned before I went that I would leave with my tail between my legs, and that I did.
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Louisiana - Bubba this, Bubba that

Another day, another city, and another regretful farewell to a town tempting us to stay and dawdle.

We were even sorrier to turn down the many kind offers from Austin’s friendly locals.

These ranged from borrowing our host's beautiful E-Type Jaguar and cruising the backroads to ‘going out to the ray-aanch' with another local 'getting loaded n’ going hun’in armadillos with my AK-47 and crazeee shee-eet. ‘

Another time.

Now we found ourselves in the company of another friendly local, a jovial local journalist called Kate, heading for the Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans and even more excitable than us.

We zipped along a quiet country road, past pecan plantations and water towers, their spindly shapes sticking out of the earth like grounded sputniks. Large hawks on sat brooding on fenceposts and the smell of skunk hung in the air.

We headed east, past ranches studded with oak trees, their bare branches silhouetted against the pale early morning sky. It was strange to be back in a world of seasons; oddly familiar and comforting.

We stopped at a roadside café, filling up on kolaches, Czech pastries, and 24 oz buckets of coffee, before hitting the road once more. The freeway rose up ahead of us and we ascended the flyover, its pillars baring the lone star insignia.

Back to the billboards:

“Get the trucking job you deserve”

“18 wheeler wreck? 1-800 Lawsuit”

“Cowboy. Your all -American dealer”

A couple of hours later Houston hove into view, its skyscrapers glistening in the sunshine, greased in Texan oil. The fourth largest city in the US, it took a good hour to pass through, and still Texas stretched on and on.

The scenery had changed by now into one dominated by petrochemicals, a land of oil refineries and chemical plants, powering the economy and poisoning the residents.

Flames shot from the top of tall chimneys; others billowed plumes of white smoke. We kept the windows wound up and grimly considered the fact that not for nothing is this region nicknamed ‘cancer alley.’

Finally the border came up and our first sight of a confederate flag, flying proudly from a house. Solong Texas, hello Deep South. Or rather, so Kate reliably informed ’Where Y’at?’

I was eagerly anticipating visiting Louisiana; it's a state with a distinctive identity all of its own, quite seperate from its neighbours and the US in general.

Food is always a good indication of such changes and, round these parts, the menu had turned distinctly fishy.

It was ‘Bubba this’ and ‘bubba that’, just like Forrest Gump had told us, before we pulled into Steamboat Bills for lunch.

Shrimp gumbo, crawfish pistolets, po-boys and drinks with more ice than a Greenland glacier. The accent was different too, with a liberal peppering of ’y’all’ in every sentence. This was cajun country.

Suitably sated, we picked up our first beads for mardi gras, the cherished souvenirs thrown out by floats and begged for by the crowds (purple for justice, yellow for power, green for faith) and headed on.

Lake Charles offered more refineries, along with rusty train trucks at sidings carrying ‘high grade octanes’ and the odd 'nodding donkey' pumpjack sucking up oil beneath the swampy surface.

Above them stood adverts for ‘www.myhurricaneikeclaim.com’ and 888-IKE-CLAIM-4U’. Burning carbon and unnatural weather events: was the irony lost on them?

The freeway turned into a huge elevated section, soaring over swamps and bayous, Foot-thumping cajun music blasted over the radio and I started to mentally revise my French vocabulary. How do they pronounce the French words around these parts?

We soon sped over the Mississippi, a large bridge affording us views of state capital Baton Rouge, the capitol building in the foreground, flaring gas behind.

Lara changed the frequency and a preacherman came across the airwaves, mellow Hammond organ in the background.

“It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a bottle of Jack Daniels in your hand” he smoothly purred, his speech speeding up as he continued, “it doesn’t matter if you’re about to snort a line of cocaine. Jeeeeeeesurrzz’ll save yer!’

He had worked himself up into a frenzy by now.

‘Hallelujah! Hot dang he luuuves yer!’

We left these reassuring words hanging in the swampy air behind us and headed on to New Orleans, ‘The Big Easy’.

Another raised freeway, this time water all around us. A cluster of tall buildings rose up out of it some way ahead: New Orleans.

We swept down off the flyover, their posts now bearing French-style fleur-de-lys and into the French Quarter.

Already the party was in full swing, and the parades were up and running. Time to gather a few more beads and, somehow, find a bed for the night.

“My friend can put you up”, Kate offered “We’ll put you in the bordello room“.

Welcome to New Orleans. Happy Mardi Gras!

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Mission Mississippi: From mouth to source on a shoestring

Back in the U.S. of A, this time without a fistful of dollars. After eight months of glorious global travel our coffers are running on empty. With two months of travel ahead of us in one of the most expensive countries on our trip it’s time for a new tack: Mission Mississippi. We are going to travel from the mouth to the source of the Mississippi, with a few detours either side, spending as little money as possible.

Our first visit ten weeks ago showed us how kind and generous people can be in the States. Couch surfing and Craig’s List rideshare are our new best friends. As are all-you-can-eat buffets and thrift stores. Travelling on the cheap will not only help to spread our few remaining dollars, but will also spread the love, taking us to people and places we wouldn’t otherwise experience. We are going to milk this land of bread and honey and seize all the opportunities it affords, cheaply.

Couchsurfing is a global community of travellers and hosts connected by an almighty website and a desire to meet new people. You can search in most towns and cities and find from a handful to an army of people who are offering a couch (or bed if you‘re lucky) for free. That’s right - free accommodation! It’s a reciprocal deal and we will host travellers on our couch when back in Blighty.

Many Couchsurfing hosts are more than just a crash-pad. Like Hollywood resident and comedian Austin Blank (watch this space) who took us to hamburger joints, pizza parlours, sports and titty bars and gave us a real insight into the Los Angeles film and television industry.

Craig’s List is a list of online classified adverts where you can do pretty much anything frompurchasing a parrot to hiring a handyman. They also have a rideshare section. Not knowing what would happen we posted an ad on the Los Angeles Craig’s List asking for a lift to Phoenix. Within hours strangers were replying offering their services. We ended up in a car driven by a mouldy microbiologist (or at least the socks on the dashboard and peanuts on the car floor were moulding) squeezed in with a college student who hadn’t been to sleep that night and a retired chap called Dick.

This merry carload knew how to work the system and do it cheap. We had lunch at Costco, wandering the aisles and filling up on the plentiful tasters. We learnt how that you can just wander in to a Holiday Inn and help yourself to breakfast, whilst making the most of their power sockets and wireless internet. We were also offered a bed by kind Dick. He lived in a retirement neighbourhood surrounded by six golf clubs - a part of America we simply wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

Based on these experiences I believe that Mission Mississippi will succeed. We have a few friends to stay with along the way and I look forward to meeting more through Couchsurfing and Craig’s List. Travelling on the kindness of others will be a little more challenging, a bit more Internet dependent and whole lot more fun. USA on a shoestring here we come!

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