My USA cross country trip
After leaving my job in yank land (California), I found myself with several weeks to kick about. I boxed up my posessions, securely wrapped them in dark shrink wrap and took myself to the post office. It was about $200 a box to ship, as they were rather large and heavy, but I managed to post all boxes, bar one, back to the UK. I had to wait for my final pay packet to come through before I could afford more shipping fees. This left just myself with no job or commitments, a small suitcase of clothes, a box of stuff and some credit cards. Time to complete that West to East coast to coast roadtrip I had always thought of doing but never got round to.

I loaded up the car, but unfortunately the box was a bit too big to go in the boot so it went on the back seat so I could post it when money came in. So off I set from San Jose, California. Destination: Orlando, Florida. I was to fly out back to the UK 2 weeks later which gave me time to spend with my family out there.

There was a lot of things one could do between those two points of the map, but i was in a hurry to meet up with family in Orlando so opted to only stop in a few places - the Pima military aircraft graveyard in Arizona being one. Besides, I had seen lotf of Americas touristy things in the last few years. I set myself an optimisitic target of three days travel time from coast to coast, stopping at night for motel kips.

The trip was mostly good fun, the aircraft boneyard was a great place to see - especially so when a friend who is stationed there took me on a tour of the 'being decomissioned/decomissionsed' ICBM's (gaz me for pics if you like). One thing that stuck in my mind about these harbingers of mass destructions was that some of them are not actually as big as you would expect. It was quite a sight to see massive CAT diggers literally munching their way through old bombers and helicopters.

While winging its way down through New Mexico then off into Texas, I-10 has these occasional curious checkpoints where I-10 runs close to the Mexico border. These are invariably staffed by over patriotic border police types are itching to catch illegall immigrants and drug smugglers. It was at one of these points, quite near to El Paso, that my car was pulled over and the border guy leaned into my window. He looked young, quite new to the job I imagined. First came the immortal question

"Where are you from Sir?"

"Well im coming from California, but originally from the UK if thats what you mean"

"ID & Registration please Sir?"

*provides California Drivers License and the Car registration*

"Do you have a US passport Sir?"

"No, I have a US work visa. As you can see from my license, I have had lived here for over 5 years"

At this point his torch goes on and gets shone into the back of my car, where the border control guy notices my large box, wrapped in dark shrink wrap. This got him, shall we say, rather agitated and shouty. Calls were made into a radio. The area was instantly floodlit. Camoflage wearing men appeared from a large building not far away. Things like "get out of the car NOW!" were yelled and large automatic weapons were pointed in my direction. One pair of brown trousers later and im out of the car, faced down on the ground, handcuffed. Out the corner of my eye I notice that they have hauled my box out the back seat and are ripping it open.

"Welcome to Texas," I thought to myself.

After establishing that the huge shrink wrapped box on the back seat was not, in fact, the huge slab of canabis they had suspected it was, they were rather apologetic to say the least. Not that they helped me re-pack my box though. I'm not sure why the first guy thought someone would travel across the states with a box of drugs on their back seat for all to see either.

I made Orlando 4 days after leaving Cali which, considering one tourist related stop, a gun border/drug running incident and sleeping time, was not a bad final score I reckon. I used to live in ex Soviet central asia, and i will say that the US checkpoints on the I-10 reminded me so much of there.
(shamen Geekius Maximus, Sun 17 Jul 2011, 20:59, Reply)