The road trip has come to an end and I’ve flown back to South Carolina for the remainder of my time here. I saw South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada, ending in Las Vegas for a few days before returning to the East.

Las Vegas was good fun, because I did the Vegas that most people probably never do when they go there. I mountain biked trails, hiked in canyons, viewed the streets and the casino strip via bike whilst the road was closed, gardened around cacti and cooked in a lovely kitchen belonging to my friends B & K.

What started out as a couple of months escaping from bad times back in the UK has turned into life experiences and challenges in a multitude of things that I’ll never forget. During the roadtrip I learnt a lot about myself and other stuff  ‘out there’ and I got fitter and happier in the process.  I found there are thoroughly good people out there who will open their lives up to you, there are people who are eager to show you around their neck of the woods and help in any way they can to make sure you have a good time. I also learnt that McDonalds willingly hand out cups of hot water with creamer for free when you’re needing a tea fix with one of your own proper tea bags and that their free WiFi is an oasis of happy-fix and a lifeline to friends during those long miles on the interstate. I experienced that biking 30 miles uphill is hard but the difficulty is easily outweighed by the satisfaction of being able to do it. And I was glad to prove to myself how little I need around me to be truely happy. My happiness doesn’t exist in the things I own but in the experiences I have which is why I’m at my happiest being at the gym, out running, biking trails and laughing with my favourite people.

I discovered that El Paso is not a nice place to drive through and that the desert is so much more awe inspiring than I’ve ever been inspired from photos. Saguaro cacti don’t just exist in Road Runner cartoons and they are so much taller than I’d ever realised, they also don’t hide you well when you need a roadside pee.

Police in far west Texas are plentiful and full of vengeance, whilst police in Arizona are keen but reasonable and flatter easily when you make a little small talk in a different accent.

East facing mountains look stunning with the sun setting behind them and darkness in the desert is darker than anywhere else.

Driving 600 miles in the USA is far more relaxing and easy than driving 100 miles in the UK.

Mississippi has nothing I wish to mention and Louisiana is boring to drive through although it has a lot of highway running on bridges over swamps and lakes and it did provide us with our closest tornado encounter by way of a dark heavy wall cloud looming in the sky above us. Some brief excitement.

South Carolina and Georgia have more road kill but I don’t know if this is down to a larger concentration of stupid animals or drivers and I didn’t get many photos since the kill was mostly on the interstate roads as we whizzed by. Had I been able to jump out with my camera I’d have had a Fox, Rabbit, Armadillo, Vulture and a Bob Cat to add to my collection. I’m sorry you’ve missed out on that. I really am.

Spending a week on a road trip with someone you’ve only just met is rather like being thrown in with a mobile room mate except the pair of you live in the driver and passenger seats of a small car without separate bedrooms to escape to. Fortunately I never felt the need to escape my co-pilot as we found common ground in photography, biking, music and the surroundings we passed through.  It wasn’t until after we arrived at our destination he dropped the bomb that it’d irritated him on occasion when I cracked my window when I was hot, but he was cold and that every time I exited the driver seat I left a pile of trail mix I’d dropped during eating while driving. I returned the complaint by telling him he chewed his gum with his mouth open. Quite loudly.

I found B an interesting person to be around. He had an odd way of expecting to know people everywhere. Just like the day we’d stopped at McDonalds off a random highway exit in a random town for a cup of water, Apple Pie, McFlurry, Coffee and WiFi fix. We halved the McFlurry and plonked it on our Apple Pies and immediately felt guilty about our deteriorating diets but justified it with having cycled 60 miles the day before. As we pulled out of the car park and waited at the traffic light a guy went through the green in front of us on a road bike. B’s eyes locked on to him, he immediately lurched forward in his seat staring at the guy who was rapidly disappearing out of sight to the left of us and exclaimed ‘WHO IS THAT?’

My initial thought had been ‘wow, he’s (the cyclist) holding a good pace’ and I can safely confirm I’d never had thought to think ‘who is that?’ because in my head it’s pre-accepted knowledge that it’s unlikely I’m going to know anyone I see when I’m thousands of miles away from anywhere I live.  A similar scenario happened when B was having trouble negotiating a turning out of the hotel car park because there were several large works trucks parked opposite the exit (which turned out to be the entrance). B moaned a bit and then leaned forward for an exaggerated stare at the empty parked up trucks and griped ‘well I don’t know who they are…. Why are they here?’ I just smiled, thinking the logical reasoning is that they were staying at the hotel but their trucks had been too big for the parking lot. It seemed to bug B for the next few minutes as we drove down the road he glared in the rear view mirror still puzzling over the identity and reasoning of the trucks situation.

It was the same passion B gave in obsessing over routes on the map. Even knowing that we were on the right road, going in the right direction it puzzled B as to why there was another road running adjacent to the one we were on that eventually linked up with the one we were going to be on. My reaction to the situation was that of comfort in knowing we’d end up on the road we’d aimed to end up on in the same amount of time. But B bounced into action checking and cross checking the paper map and Google Maps and then questioned how we’d got on this road rather than that road and why did that road exsist. By which point we’d nearly left the road we were on and joined the road we’d originally planned to take. Infact on one occasion the mystery over what road we’d taken which wasn’t the one he thought we should have taken but we got to the same place anyway – actually continued to bug B when we’d arrived in another state!.

B’s never ending desire to analyse and know the unknown really demonstrated his scientific mind. A mind well studied in Geology which made for interesting perspectives whilst driving through the landscape West of Texas. My view of the south west no longer settles in my mind as just ‘mountains’ and ‘desert’ but rather Metamorphic, Igneous and Sedimentary landscapes, with a smattering of granite and sandstone. I feel much wiser.

So here I am, back in Aiken less two local biking buddies… I’m finding it hard to get inspired to get out on my bike today because it’s cold although once I get out from the shady tree lined streets in town the sun will be warm.

Best get on with it, put the laptop away, get changed and let the dog at this pile of trail mix I leave on the sofa.