Lucky You! Lucky Me!

Another Sunday morning, another church service. I'm still a non believer in this whole religion thing, but it's providing some form of routine to the journey.

We arrived in Washington D.C on Friday, and spent Saturday recovering from the night before.

The plan today is to sightsee around the City on bike (kindly lent to us by Matt & Trang).

The pastor this morning said this quote, which I rather liked...

"as I kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. I then realised that God doesn't work that way. So I stole a bike, and prayed for forgiveness." - Al Capone

It's a Methodist church we're at this morning so no crazy Mega Church antics today..

In other news, I've finally come down with a cold... Just like clockwork.. My body just can't seem to handle the start of Autumn..hopefully with enough green tea, multi-vitamins and tissues I'll get over it in a few days..

Well that's all for now.. I'm going to make a better effort of blogging on the fly from my iPhone from now on out..

Thanks for reading.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Church St NW,Washington,United States

Everyone Loves a Top 10.

Ok, so heres the thing.. throughout this trip i've either: Eaten, Drunk, Smelt, Seen, Heard or Experienced something that is worthy of being ranked... out of 10.

So although i'm a little late at starting this.. its better late than never..

So with a short fanfare i give you

ADRIAN'S FANTASTICAL RATING OF ALL THINGS    OUT OF 10!

This list will try and be maintained and kept up to date, with some items being moved higher or lower depending on what places can top others

Top 10 Burgers:

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• 2: brgr: 287 7th Avenue, Manhattan, NY was a most excellent burger. gutted i didn't order sweet potato fries with this one... 
• 1: BT's Burger & Fries in Charlotte, NC (Rivergate) This is top because it was recent, and i remember it more vividly than some others i've had along the way... again made the mistake of not ordering sweet potato fries!

Top 10 Beers:

There's been a lot of good beer along the way.. and plenty of not so good.. again, i should have kept better track of what was good and so forth.. i will keep it updated from now on...

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Top 10 Coffee.. Places:

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• 1: High Point Coffee: Oxford, MS had a Vanilla Latte, and boy was that shit good.. i mean... really good! 

Top 10 Fastest Free WiFi Places:

• 10: Starbucks in Memphis we went to was painfully slow.. i felt like my life was ebbing away..
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• 1: Right now i'm getting good speed from the folks at VCU in the starbucks on Cary Street, Richmond. 

Top 10 Places to get bitten by Mosquitos:

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• 1: THE SOUTH!  if i had started this sooner, i could have kept a better list of places that were worse than others.. but generally the south has been where we've been chewed up worse than anywhere else..

We're on a political journey..

I haven't really mentioned all that much about the main sort of purpose of my trip in my blog.. mainly because i'm mainly here as the photographer/ Tourist.. so i've left the politcial anaylsis to my fellow traveler Andreas whose writing his own blog... www.wahlfahrt2012.de

however.. i might start posting things about the run up to the election that either amuse me, or i just think are rather interesting.. 

Obama 2012 Literally Buys Literally...

Have a quick read of this article from the great master bloggers at Gizmodo..

i thought it was funny.

anyway.. off to go jump in an waterlogged abandoned quarry. 

Ciao for Now.

Fast Forward: Charlotte DNC.

Alrighty then, going fast forward my adventures somewhat to talk about today's events. That's right.. I'm blogging as things are happening! (that's a scary thought!)
So as the tittle suggest, I'm bringing you the trip live as it happens (well happened) here in Charlotte.
So, the morning started with an early start, due to my first CouchSurfing experience, which went very well. The lady that put 'us' (that's a separate story) up was very kind and left me a key out so I could come in late as she'd gone to bed.
So I drove around Charlotte for a while trying t find breakfast places. The satnav did its usual thing of take me to all the places that had shut down..
Finally found a cheap and cheerful place serving typically southern style breakfast: bacon, eggs, and grits.

After filling up the tank (in more ways than one) I decided we should park somewhere on the outskirts near the streetcar line and go into town that way...

Upon arriving in central downtown, it seemed the circus was already well under way... First stop however was: AT&T. Thank the lord for mobile Internet again!
After a bit more mooching around we settled on another Starbucks session to charge and use wifi.

I got bored of that fairly quickly and so decided to go explore the city some more... The following images are what I saw on my 'travels'...

Apologies if any of these shock or offend. But this is the norm over here in the US. And the democrats have caused offence to many religious and pro-life groups who support Anti-Abortion and Also Anti-Homosexuality.

In amongst all this craziness though, we came across some wonderful street music, in the form of a brass band playing some wicked jazz tunes. It was quite the contrast to see and hear everyone enjoying Jazz music on one side of the street, and anti-Semitic and anti-homosexuality on the other.

God bless America ehy.

And all this, and Obama has yet to give his speech... I shall update y'all later with anymore craziness.

Location:Charlotte, NC

Ark-en-sas. Thats how i'm gona' say it.

Next Stop was Little Rock.

i did not see the little rock the town is named after, nor am i sure there is one.. but i did see a whole lot of Bill Clinton related 'stuff'.

We arrived in Little Rock very late in the evening.. after a long drive from Dallas.

as usual, the sat nav directed us to the nearest Starbucks for free parking and free wifi. God Bless you Starbuck.

it was another hot and sticky night in the van, and yet despite another thunderous and violent storm unleashed on us during the night (which i slept through.. thank you ear plugs!) it wasnt much better heat wise the next day either.

having mistakenly left the fans on all night, we were in need of a jump start, so after making the call, we duly sat in the starbucks

 drinking coffee until our recovery man made it there.

The main purpose and thing to see in Little Rock was to see Bill Clinton's Presidential  Library. i personally enjoyed seeing the very industrial looking bridge next to it, and riding the 'street cars'.

Having only really spent the morning here, we were done.. after speaking with a very friendly man in the library we had two places to visit on the trip to our next main stop: Memphis. 

The Lone Star State.

Oil, Guns, and Cowboys.

Thats's basically Texas in a nutshell. Sure i could go on for hours about its rich and diverse history. But i won't.

I was excited to see one thing whilst i was in this state. A REAL LIFE FRICKIN' RODEO.

I was not disappointed.

Our only stops in the state were Midland (for a few hours) and Dallas. I know, i know... should have gone to Austin... maybe another time.. but we wanted to see the general demographic of Texas. The white republican.

What better place to go find such people than at a good old american rodeo.

i took 400 pictures at this event.. needless to say many weren't keepers.. but i witled it down to just 68 in my flickr album.

I think this one says it all.

This was saturday night, the next day we went to church... you can re-read the post i wrote about that here. 

The next place to visit was far less intense than Dallas had been.

A Picture Speaks a Thousand Words...

Hello again.. so you be wondering why my map says i'm in North Carolina, yet my last post was talking about New Mexico.

Well, that would be because of a few things:

1. I'm busy having fun and am being too lazy to write blog posts.
2. I'm a pictures person.. writing doesn't come all that easy to me
3. Internet access is infrequent and i spend more time editing pictures and uploading them when i do have access.

Now, i don't want to come across all whiny about this.. so i am going to try my darndest to correct this..

So here it goes, hold on to your butts as thing are about to get wild.

Having left Las Cruces we set course for the dessert.. in particular the White Sands Dessert. This place is home to a few different inhabiters. Firstly: The US Army and their missile research facility. 

We visited the museum they had their.. but there was a whole army base there for those who work there and do research. That was fun and all.. but they had a V2 Rocket there on display which got me angry about how very little was mentioned in the museum about the destruction this weapon brought to London.. and instead it was glorified, as the rocket that put man on the moon.

Next up was the White Sands itself.. an area of dessert that was composed of fine gypsum powder, and formed moving sand dunes.

We had fun jumping around on the dunes and somebody also had a lovely chat with the local park rangers about his driving style..

Needless to say we were dripping with sweat after all this frolicking around in the dessert, so as we drove further East it was quite remarkable to see how different the landscape became...

New Mexico - Lincoln National Forrest

We drove the rest of the day right the way across the ever changing landscape of New Mexico until we finally reached our destination for the day: Carlsbad Caverns.

Having got their too late to enter that caverns that day, we instead planned to stay the night in the van and gaze at the starts... for you see the sky was alive that night...

The next Morning was spent 800ft below the ground exploring the largest underground cave system in the western hemisphere.

After finishing up, we pointed the van's nose East again and entered the Lone Star State: TEXAS.