list

In the few days since I left Berkeley to make my way down the Cali coast and across the South-west,

- a bloke has decapitated another on a Greyhound bus. But, thankfully (?), in Canada. Oh Canada!

- I have come to the realisation that I'm old: practically everyone at all the hostels I've stayed at is either a young 'un or people our parents' age who reckon they are young. I'm amused by the former (will update yous on the US girls/Italian guys interaction in a later post) and in awe of the latter. Perhaps, when Fanny and I reach our midlife crisis years, we'll hire a nifty little porche and whiz our way down California's route 1, stopping at hostels and ogling the young folks along the way.

- There were two German women in one of the hostels. At night, both of them stripped down to their knickers (thongs) and climbed into bed. As one of them was in the bunk above mine, I got to see far more of German flesh than I ever wanted to.

- I love the Thai folks: a grandfatherly type adopted me in San Luis and we had a great discussion about SciFi in which he introduced me to Somtow Suchiratkul. I'm currently reading one of his books and it's rather gloomy. Not quite the thing for a holiday. More on that later (though, yes, this is not book review blog! Yet ). Taking on Fanny's recco, I've also bought Wicked Lovely

- My luggage, including that awesome red bag I blogged about a few weeks ago, is lost. Amtrak sent it to Fort Lauderdade (spelling?) but it never got there. It never got to LA (where it was supposed to be). I've haunted the Amtrak office since I found out but to no avail. They say it will eventually turn up somewhere but where? In addition to that bag, it had two pairs of (new to me) shoes, both of which I rather loved; all my uni/work gear (expensive to replace) and, probably most relevant, my notes for the dissertation from the past few years and a few (expensive, annotated) text books.

- Nothing more to be said after that, really. I'm headed to the Grand Canyon tomorrow.