David Lowry

Found this a day or two ago: written back in September 2006… May as well post it!!

September 30 2006, by David Lowry

Route 66 trip is over, I’m back home and JK is in Boston; who KNOWS what he could possibly be doing in Boston.

As a follow up to Jonny’s above: yes, New Mexico sucks, the County Line BBQ place was excellent and Katie the waitress was indeed quite baffled at our disbelief of the size of the chocolate cake!

Arizona is a pretty nice place - Grand Canyon, plus the petrified and painted stuff. Didn’t get to Hoover dam cos someone was inconsiderate and crashed their car so it was closed for two days. The place we stayed in and posted that email from was nice - friendly folk. It’s called the Travel Inn and is in Flagstaff, AZ.

Vegas is a dirty (though very clean) hole, 200 miles from anywhere; expensive and tacky. Caesers Palace really is opulent and huge. We got lost in it trying to find the FAO Schwartz (who can guess what challenge that one was for) and nearly got thrown out of that area because we were wearing ’shorts and tennis shoes’ and approaching the scary loud R&B club.

Driving through the desert wasn’t so bad. Not least because driving around vegas took at least two hours more than planned (strip is huge and the whole North/South thing on a circular road is just stupid - plus lack of road signs (”here’s a hint, you guess the rest”) which Jonny will I’m sure post/rant about at some point. (which meant it was night time..)

Los Angeles is a scary place - they have a CSI Series dedicated to it remember; but Santa Monica is lovely, a couple of hundred folk move there every week which explains all the homeless people which is sad to see and a lot more visible than at home. But we DID find the end of route 66 point after three days of not looking in the right place! Swimming at Malibu beach was class, Jonny was scared of sharks or jellyfish or something and didn’t really get in. Wuss.

Oh yeah - now that we’re home I at least can reveal what the rental car was: Mazda 6 V6 3.0 24c with Semi-automatic gearbox. WOW! We asked for (and paid for) an A-Class (lowest) type and this was a C-4 Class; which I think is the highest below Premium brands and things like Roadsters. Beats any of the 1.0/1.2 litres that I’ve driven before!! Nice of Jonny to tell me yesterday how he had never driven on a Motorway before the I-60 south of Illinois!! (yesterday: as we drive along a 6 lane highway through Los Angeles)