Spouting Cave

In a land where cars reign supreme, and the time to travel from one city to another can take days let alone hours, a trip on the fabled Greyhound is often viewed unfavourably by many Americans. Before I left Scotland, I was assured by a few friends and family members with personal experience not to believe the horror stories that circulate about the bus, that passengers tended to be simply poor Americans and Mexican families, and that the bus drivers were very clued-up. And indeed, as we rattled down the Californian coast on my first Greyhound trip, a nine-hour voyage from San Francisco to Santa Barbara, everything seemed suitably ordinary. That was, until we reached Santa Maria at around 8pm, 60 miles from my destination. A gaunt man of around thirty had boarded the bus and immediately began to remonstrate with the driver. "You're tellin' me I can't have a cigarette until Santa Barbara ?" "I ...

Having finished university, and feeling very much in limbo, I decided to fulfil a long-held aspiration and cross the Atlantic. In several discussions people often enquired, "Why the United States?" Although they were probably just making conversation, and not necessarily looking for an in-depth explanation, I don't think I've ever been satisfied with the bland responses I've offered them, so I'll try to put that right here. My inspirations are multi-fold. To name a few, they lie somewhere within Coen brothers films; blues music; New Orleans; Phillips O'Brien and Simon Newman History lectures; the 'great open road'; Martin Luther King's 'I've Been to the Mountaintop' speech; that scene in the Godfather II when a nine year-old Vito Corleone arrives in Manhattan off the Staten Island ferry; and pretty much every Bob Dylan song. I realise that these are scattered and cherry-picked representations of the nation and that they might read a...