Dave Gorman - the writer of many a funny "boy-project" book, along with his then flatmate Danny Wallace, has proved to be our nemesis. Or has he? Well, Duncan was at home last week for a couple of days and his parents gave him a book that they had been told about.
"America Unchained" by Dave Gorman... the back page reads "The plan was simple. Go to America. Buy a second-hand car. Drive coast-to-coast without giving any money to the Man. What can possibly go wrong?"
There goes MY book deal...
Monday 22 March 2010
Tuesday 16 March 2010
Providential clumsiness
While studying away in the lounge yesterday evening, I heard an almighty bang from upstairs. Probably just Duncan standing up too quickly and smacking his head off the roof - not normally something to worry about, but in this instance anything was more interesting than reading up on the ins and outs of dealing with confounding factors in epidiomological study design...
Semi-expecting to be greeted by a bleeding corpse with a massive dent in its head at the top of the stairs, it turns out that in turning round too quickly Duncan had knocked his printer over and as it fell to pieces, out fell his passport. He'd been looking for it for a few weeks now and no stone had been left unturned. But thanks to his oaf-ish clumsiness, he now not only has a broken printer, but a valid passport too!
Another step toward getting us closer to America!
Semi-expecting to be greeted by a bleeding corpse with a massive dent in its head at the top of the stairs, it turns out that in turning round too quickly Duncan had knocked his printer over and as it fell to pieces, out fell his passport. He'd been looking for it for a few weeks now and no stone had been left unturned. But thanks to his oaf-ish clumsiness, he now not only has a broken printer, but a valid passport too!
Another step toward getting us closer to America!
Saturday 6 March 2010
Thursday 4 March 2010
Update, Bad news (part 1), Good news (part 2)
Hello, I'm back. Studying and the like have gotten in the way of my plans. Not just the updating of them on here, but the actual hard planning of our actual trip.
Since last updating, we have got accommodation guaranteed in Pella (IA), Tampa (FL), Atlanta (GA) and possibly in Toronto (ON) and Montreal (QC).
Firstly, the bad news - the cost of car hire has finally dawned upon us. Duncan did a little bit of research on various carhire websites, with the lowest cost being in the region of $2000-$3000, with one even quoting $4000! Duncan being under the age of 25 would also have cost a right arm and leg to insure. While we both like the idea of a company being responsible for call-outs and fixing us up, this is not a sum of money we want to part with for 8 weeks of driving.
On a much happier note, our friends Peter and Lynsey are getting married on September 18th in Florida. We both hope to make it down there for the happy day, but it does slightly throw a spanner in the works in terms of our driving route from east to west. Our initial plan had been from NYC across to Ohio and up through Michigan and down through Wisconsin, through Nebraska and over to south California. However, my Masters course doesn't finish until the 27th of August and Duncan has to be out of America by October 26th. I'm hoping to be able to be on American soil from September 1st. We could potentially drive the first part of the route and fly from Chicago to Florida for the wedding and then back to Chicago.
However, possibly the most exciting news is that 2 of our friends, Richard and Matt are spending 9 months in Canada ski-ing and working from the end of November. So, if we can buy a car of our own, we can drive it across the country and then sell it on to Richard and Matt. We both have little to no knowledge of fixing and running cars, so we are a little anxious about doing this. But, if we can get friends in Cleveland to look into getting us a good 2nd hand car then we can drive down to Florida for the wedding, and then after the wedding head west through some of the more southern states. This evening we passed a car with it's bonnet up and a woman looking forlornly at her grubby hands and staring deep into the engine with an almost complete admission of defeat. We both immediately looked at each other and said "that could be us". But surely that's part of the fun - being stuck on a dirt track, in the middle of nowhere, waiting by the side of the track for some redneck in his tractor to drive by, pick us up and fix our car while his slightly odd-looking and smelling wife force feeds us apple pie. They're the sort of stories I want to experience and remember in years to come.
I have yet to buy my flight tickets, but I'm slowly getting on to that. Just the small matter of assignments and some more exams first. You may also have noticed reference to Canada - this does render the blog title useless, as we'll be taking in more than one country. But our driving adventure is east to west in America, so the title will do just fine thanks.
Since last updating, we have got accommodation guaranteed in Pella (IA), Tampa (FL), Atlanta (GA) and possibly in Toronto (ON) and Montreal (QC).
Firstly, the bad news - the cost of car hire has finally dawned upon us. Duncan did a little bit of research on various carhire websites, with the lowest cost being in the region of $2000-$3000, with one even quoting $4000! Duncan being under the age of 25 would also have cost a right arm and leg to insure. While we both like the idea of a company being responsible for call-outs and fixing us up, this is not a sum of money we want to part with for 8 weeks of driving.
On a much happier note, our friends Peter and Lynsey are getting married on September 18th in Florida. We both hope to make it down there for the happy day, but it does slightly throw a spanner in the works in terms of our driving route from east to west. Our initial plan had been from NYC across to Ohio and up through Michigan and down through Wisconsin, through Nebraska and over to south California. However, my Masters course doesn't finish until the 27th of August and Duncan has to be out of America by October 26th. I'm hoping to be able to be on American soil from September 1st. We could potentially drive the first part of the route and fly from Chicago to Florida for the wedding and then back to Chicago.
However, possibly the most exciting news is that 2 of our friends, Richard and Matt are spending 9 months in Canada ski-ing and working from the end of November. So, if we can buy a car of our own, we can drive it across the country and then sell it on to Richard and Matt. We both have little to no knowledge of fixing and running cars, so we are a little anxious about doing this. But, if we can get friends in Cleveland to look into getting us a good 2nd hand car then we can drive down to Florida for the wedding, and then after the wedding head west through some of the more southern states. This evening we passed a car with it's bonnet up and a woman looking forlornly at her grubby hands and staring deep into the engine with an almost complete admission of defeat. We both immediately looked at each other and said "that could be us". But surely that's part of the fun - being stuck on a dirt track, in the middle of nowhere, waiting by the side of the track for some redneck in his tractor to drive by, pick us up and fix our car while his slightly odd-looking and smelling wife force feeds us apple pie. They're the sort of stories I want to experience and remember in years to come.
I have yet to buy my flight tickets, but I'm slowly getting on to that. Just the small matter of assignments and some more exams first. You may also have noticed reference to Canada - this does render the blog title useless, as we'll be taking in more than one country. But our driving adventure is east to west in America, so the title will do just fine thanks.
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