I located it while unpacking bins after moving residence. It’s a crimson Europa spiral-bound A4 pocketbook. The quilt says “USA 1991,” and internally, it is filled with web pages of tiny, neat block lettering in black ink. It’s my handwriting. It’s my journey journal from 28 years ago, when I did a solo circumnavigation of the US over ten weeks, preventing in 23 cities. It didn’t disappoint. And rather than sating my desire, it ignited an extended-time period love affair. I’ve lower back quite a whole lot every 12 months because then. I merely read that journal from cover to cover, and it proved to be an ever-so-often toe-curling revel; however, by and large, 
it was beautiful, nostalgic, illuminating, and surprising as it transported me back in time. The journal opens in London. I spent more than one week there at the beginning of the trip, attending the Reading Festival and staying with my antique pal and fellow track journalist Andrew. They – foreshadowing alert – changed into entrusted with looking after my leather jacket until my return. I turned slightly off the airport bus in New York at Port Authority Terminal when a kindly black man sporting some form of the laminated card on his chest asked if I needed help finding accommodation and delivery. Who realized the MTA hired beneficial parents to assist travelers? Of direction, they don’t. Within three minutes, I’m bilked out of 5 dollars through a Manhattan con man after he offers me three pieces of advice, the last being that this isn’t always a safe part of the city at night. And it is nighttime.
I spent my first night in a coffin-like room in a nearby YMCA. The following night, I advanced/regressed to a Chelsea hostel where the lobby smelled like stale urine, and there were six bunks in each room. But it was only $19, and I changed into finance. I was obsessed with making my money finally returned then, but reading about my spending behavior makes me sound insane. I might stay in hostels ($12-$19 a night time) or reasonably-priced motels ($25-$30) and spend a few bucks on breakfast and perhaps five or six greenbacks on lunch and dinner. But then I’d go to the Museum Of Broadcasting and spend $eighty on the Complete Encyclopaedia of TV Shows, books on The Brady Bunch and Gilligan’s Island, a CD of TV subject matter tunes, and a Rocky & Bullwinkle T-shirt. You see, I had priorities.
