Day One - Over the Pond and beyond
Heathrow to Phoenix and some professional-smokers and noisy neighbours
I guess an American road trip starting on a bus in Middlesex is still a legitimate part of our road trip and that's how the adventure began - on an early morning shuttle bus outside the Ibis hotel in Hayes going to Terminal 3 at Heathrow.
Despite all the horror stories about waiting times to get through security, our problem was getting our tickets to be recognised after our flight times (and airline) were changed about three days before. Our first attempt at self-check in failed with an eventual error message to 'speak with an agent'. We did and she told us to go to Customer Services where our tickets were then confirmed as the changed ones now flying on Virgin Atlantic - and so back to the self-check in booths which again failed with the same error. We spoke to another agent who then guided us to another agent who fought her way through the airport's software to finally send us on our way to security and passport control. All cleared and so to breakfast at Boots with a BLT sandwich for me and Adam had brought his own pain au chocolate. The road trip high life...
Our boarding cards revealed that we were two rows apart so two stories to tell about the people we sat with. Adam mainly listened to a man from Peterborough who had been through a messy divorce when after thirty years his wife went off with another man without, in his eyes, any warning. I was next to a Brazilian man, his American wife and five-month-old baby who were relocating from Doncaster to Seattle, something that probably doesn't happen that often but I'm guessing you can see the attraction.
In the Air
The flight passed by smoothly and I can recommend the two films I watched, Operation Mincemeat (Colin Firth and that Scottish lady who was one of the suspects from Unforgotten) and The Phantom of the Open (Mark Rylance in a lead role for a change which he completely embraced). Adam didn't watch any because he was busy nodding in the right places to the man from Peterborough.
So we land in Seattle ahead of schedule, which gives us longer to transfer, thankfully, as Seattle security turns out to be more disorganised than Heathrow's reputation suggested that it would be. On to a Delta flight to Phoenix where the flight attendants look like rejects from a Scottish country clothing catalogue as they sport a very dowdy dark purple uniform. But all very pleasant and copious volumes of drinks and snacks are offered.
Car Rental Pick Up
All we need now is to pick up our car rental and the road trip adventure can begin. I had pre-registered our booking as the hire company Alamo (wasn't that an American defeat? so should have spotted a warning there) extolled the virtues of how quick that would make our collection process. What they didn't say was that the car hire collection point was a 15 minute or so bus journey away from the airport and that the remaining admin required before we can get our hands on the car keys will be handled by a very nervous young man who is probably on his first day at work and battling with some software which would not seem to fall into the 'user friendly' category as his supervisor keeps issuing him prompts to "tab, tab, tab" and "page through, page down, page down, page down..."
Our keys in our hands and we step into the Phoenix night air which is very hot and dry - something akin to simultaneously opening several oven doors in a kitchen or tumble dryers in a launderette. We discover our car doesn't have SatNav which is going to be something of an impediment on a road trip in this modern era. Thankfully Adam has been provided with an American SIM card as part of his University pack and it works! Google Maps loaded, we find our motel in a twenty-minute drive. It's a relatively easy check in although the receptionist keeps apologising on behalf of the state of Arizona for the number of times I have to initial a document containing phrases about my responsibilities and behaviour whilst staying in the motel.
Welcome to the Hotel Arizona
She hands over our room cards and we step back into the hot, formidable Arizona night. This is a motel so all rooms are accessed from the outside and we walk past some of our fellow guests outside their rooms with cigarettes in hand; professional smokers will endure all climatic conditions in their pursuit of pleasure.
We pass our 'neighbours' and I give a cheery 'Hi' as I feel you should throughout this country. He is sitting outside, their door is open and I can see a young child and lady inside which is strange given air conditioning behind a closed door is surely mandatory in these temperatures? We enter our room and then realise why the scene next door is as I described. It noisily becomes apparent that the relationship of our neighbours is going through, let's say, a difficult patch. Loud, accusatory voices continue for around the next half hour or so until a final exchange of profanities is issued by both parties, a door slams and the man leaves. After 22 hours from waking up in London we are finally able to bid farewell to this long, long day and fall asleep.