I locate it while unpacking bins after moving residence. It’s a crimson Europa spiral-bound A4 pocketbook. The quilt says “USA 1991,” and internal, it is filled with a web page after web page 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 the space of 10 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 every so often toe-curling revel in, however, by and large, 
it was beautiful, nostalgic, illuminating, and surprising as it transported me returned 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. And within three minutes, I’m bilked out of 5 dollars through a Manhattan conman after he offers me three pieces of advice, the last one 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 close-by YMCA. The following night I advanced/regressed to a Chelsea hostel where the lobby smelled like stale urine, and there were six bunks to a room. But it only values $19, and I changed into finance. I was obsessed with making my money finally returned then, but reading approximately 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.
