Observations of America

Recently I embarked on a 1,200 mile road trip of the States from D.C. to Memphis in a Mustang convertible, since I’m a massive stereotype. Instead of writing a trite travel blog, here’s just a few of my more general observations of the US while I busying Keruoacing.

• Washington D.C. and Nashville are tourist towns, while Knoxville and Memphis are working cities with tourist parts (and in Knoxville’s case really only the Sunsphere from the World’s Fair, which you may know from that episode of the Simpsons when Bart gets a driving licence).
• Meanwhile in Glasgow, Virginia (population 1,200 and 1 dinosaur) they give no shits where you’re from. It was the only place we weren’t asked, and the only place we were dying to tell. Perhaps they’re sick of Scottish Glaswegians hitting up their small, country town.​

• Several of the people we got talking to were planning trips to Scotland, which for them is the trip of a lifetime. Beyond the initial “really?” reaction, I really should make more of my own country.
• Sticking on the Scotland theme, whisky is an absolute rip off. $15 for a shot of, to us, pretty basic Scotch.
• This is doubly annoying since it’s damn near impossible to get drunk off Lite beer. That’s how Americans can brag about drinking so much.
• Not just whisky though, everything is EXPENSIVE. Sure we were in tourist areas, but hotel rooms, car parking, beer, tatty gifts, it was all pretty much double the price you’d expect to pay in Europe. Except for gas (petrol), which was about half the price.
• And of course, tipping. Basically add a fifth on to all food and drink (and tours, and taxis, and valets…). I get that the rate of pay for workers in the service industry can be as low as $2 per hour, but Jesus Christ America, pay your serving staff a decent living wage!
• For being, arguably, the most advanced country in the world, some things the Americans do are still really backwards. For example signing credit cards to pay for things. Realised I hadn’t even signed my card until I got over there. And taking the tip off afterwards, sometimes weeks later, making two payments? C’mon, we’re not far off just using our face to pay for things back in the ‘Old World’.
• That said, so many people have Apple Airpods, a really remarkable amount.
• Something that did surprise me, you rarely ever get coins. In the two weeks I got around a buck and a half in change, I assume to aid in rounding up tips. Same if the bill came to $10 and you pay with a twenty; you don’t get a tenner back, you get a five and five dollar bills.
• Of course money goes everywhere through American society, and in the brief times I did catch TV, they’d managed to sponsor things it’s against the law to sponsor in the UK. The news, halftime reports, actual reports… At the end of one adbreak there was a sting reassuring you, “you are watching the news” before going into another ad.
• As a positive however, I found the average quality of ads was higher than it is back here. About half were shit (they love the mechanic of someone talking direct to camera stating the proposition, “Do you have problems with…?” “Have you ever thought about…?”), but the other half were pretty funny, even if the product/service was dull, or the majority of the ad was straight, they had a bit of personality or a sign off joke that helped make them a bit less arduous.
• SO many health ads. It’s an interesting part of the American psyche that despite being the world’s dominant power, they always play on the paranoia of being under threat. Militarily, home security, or indeed with your health. And of course every one with the proviso, “Consult your doctor,” before listing 20 seconds of side effects, including cancer, irreparable deformities and death.
• Stores with signs “No weapons permitted.” Since it’s not a given.​

• While Clearcast (the UK’s ad approval service) is clamping down on disclaimers, making them more prominent, in the US they are so small and so fast as to be impossible to read in full.
• Effortlessly segwaying into another thing that’s fast, public scooters have really taken off (weyyy!) in the States. Download an app then pay a dollar a mile and off you go. There’s hundreds of them zipping past you, and abandoned in the most random places, wherever someone ran out of dollars.
• One thing you don’t find abandoned on the street, litter. Remarkably litter free. Whatever they’re doing, we need it over here.
• Pretty obvious but the scale of America is something else. Like the sat nav telling you to continue straight for 200 miles. That’s the equivalent of a straight line from Glasgow to John O’Groats.
• For so many of those miles the freeway is flanked by thousands and thousands of trees. What’s on the other side of those trees, you wonder.
• Undertaking is perfectly acceptable on the freeways. Wish I’d known this before the last day, which would have saved a lot of bumper watching.
• Deer are dead easy to sneak up on. Hunters make it seem so hard, being still and silent, staying upwind to avoid the scent etc, whereas you can roar up to them at 50mph in a Mustang with the roof down playing Springsteen at a not insignificant volume, and you’re past them before they can even think “Holy shit what’s that?” Saw about a dozen at the roadside in Shenandoah that way.
• We were away for almost two weeks, and something that started in Washington, continued while we were in Knoxville and Nashville, and which hadn’t even finished by the time we left Memphis, was the NBA Finals. I don’t get the point in having seven games to settle a final as opposed to one all-or-nothing event. How can you get excited about any given match, when there’s more to make up from any mistake after? And that any game between the fourth and seventh could be the last one since it’s first to seven? I just don’t get it. Oh yes, money.
• A final that did finish on the other hand was the Stanley Cup (amusingly when we were in a Canadian, bar surrounded by hysterical hockey fans, while we sat in the best seats in the house only half watching). It was Game 7, tied 3-3 so it really was a final, and much the better for it. However big business once again got in the way, when it came to the St Louis Blues lifting their first ever Stanley Cup, the moment of victory was actually about ten seconds of the suited, balding commissioner posing for photos handing the trophy to the captain before he could lift it above his head, cheer and go celebrate with his team. Give us uninhibited, spontaneous joy and emotion, who cares about the commissioner? Rubbish.

Anyway, aware a lot of that might have come across quite negative, which I never meant for it to be. America remains to me an incredible place, but having been seeped in American culture here in Britain its charms are more well known. The people are a delight, the scenery is spectacular and there are so many “only in America” experiences I’m thrilled to have had. I saw the Wright Brothers’ original plane. I drove through a cloud. I honky tonked all over Broadway. I’ve been in the home of The King. And I also ate a grilled spaghetti bolognese sandwich. Only in America.