Travel Biography - Week 26.

Backpacking USA was Inspired by both Music and Drama.

Some American cities, and even the whole State, are made famous or romanticised by pop music. Towns that would have remained relatively obscure had they not been brought to our attention by the song's high record sales. As already mentioned in this series, Tony Christie's Is this the way to Amarillo? gave me enough motivation to stop and take a look around, spending a day in the Texan city. Likewise, the mention of Los Angeles in Mamas & Papas, California Dreaming, also popular during the 1960s, gave the State an impression of a sunny paradise - even in Winter. Hence, I spent more time in California than in any other State in the USA. Gene Pitney's song, 24 Hours from Tulsa, gave me some motivation to look around this Oklahoma city during a bus service stop in 1995. Then, more related to backpacking, Simon & Garfunkel's America, narrates about a young couple who boards a Greyhound Bus in Pittsburgh to search for their destiny.

Then not to mention the Animals, House of the Rising Sun, a gambling house and theatre in the French Quarter of New Orleans. All these songs I mentioned were in the charts throughout the 1960s, and I remember them all. Along with the TV cop series, Starsky & Hutch, and the big screen hit, Superman, the Movie, indeed, the world of entertainment was the main inspiration for both the 1977 and the 1978 solo trips to America. Also, all these locations were real places, and in 1978, the House of the Rising Sun was a 24-hour gambling venue that was one of many entertainment venues making up the city.

 Superman Movie inspired my 1978 trip to the USA.

How times have changed. Nowadays, try looking for this venue on Google Maps, a website known for highlighting individual businesses, and apparently, this venue no longer exists.

On to Miami Beach, Florida.

I spent three nights at a YMCA hotel in New Orleans, giving me up to four days to check out the location, that is, mainly in the Creole French Quarter, the equivalent of the Old City. Then it was time to move on.

I boarded the Greyhound Americruiser at the Bus Station for Miami Beach, where I would arrive the next day. It was the beach where I alighted, and not at Downtown Miami, a couple of miles further south. Yet, had I had more knowledge of the area, I might have gone as far down as Key West, a coral cay island which is connected to the mainland by a highway. The Keys, a variation of Cays, are the only coral reefs found in the Atlantic Ocean and are on the boundary with the Gulf of Mexico. But in 1978, I knew nothing about them, so much for my failure at secondary school. But not because I was stupid, but because the staff at the school thought that we were foolish enough to be dumped into a slow learner's classroom, and taught the fundamentals I had already learned at primary.

I write this because such sociological thinking annoys me! Instead of being spurred on to greater academic heights, rather, I was put in a box and it was assumed I remain in that box for life. Indeed, it's true that some in my classroom remained in their boxes and were quite happy to stay there. But I wasn't. There is a big, wide world out there, and it had always been my desire to get out there and explore. As I once read at primary school, "Can't do it" stays stuck in the mud, but try will soon get the cart out of the rut. How true! And I won't hesitate to say that the primary I attended whilst still living in London was a good school. In addition, alongside my travels, I also attended voluntary adult evening classes and gained a couple of GCE qualifications - awards well above my secondary school classroom agenda.

At Miami Beach, I walked along a little way and I soon found a moderate-sized hotel. It was much smaller than the row of towering skyscrapers that accommodated wealthier tourists along the Florida coast. But it suited me.

The hotel was situated along a strip of green running parallel to the narrow beach. The air was warm, but it wasn't sunny all the time. At least on one occasion, I saw several lightning flashes from the grey, overcast sky, to the ocean. Coconut palms grew and flourished at the green strip lining the beach. I have never seen this particular species of a palm tree before. Other species of palm I'm very familiar with, especially in western France, southern Italy, Israel, and the southern half of the USA. Even in Cornwall and the Dorset resort of Bournemouth, both in the UK, a hardier species of palm tree thrives. But here in southern Florida, these coconut palms (I think that's what they were) made me realise how close to the Equator I was, compared to all the other places I had visited.

Miami Beach is 25.81 degrees north, just a tad outside the tropical belt. The Tropic of Cancer runs just north of the Cuban capital of Havana, the city lying on latitude 21.51. The imaginary line itself is approx 180 miles south of Miami Beach. This means that I have set a new record for the most southern location I have ever reached, and the record will stand for the next 19 years until 1997 when I flew to Singapore, which lies just 1.36 degrees north of the Equator. However, that record was held for just five days, as afterwards, I flew further south to Australia. Here, in Sydney, is a new record of latitude 33.52 south of the Equator, and a record which stands to this day.

Palm trees of this variety flourish in Miami.

Having already visited Long Beach in California a couple of weeks earlier, I was able to make comparisons between it and Miami Beach. Of the two coastal locations, for me, I preferred Long Beach. The southern Californian stretch of coast had a wider beach still set in its natural environment (at least, that's how it was in 1978.) Miami Beach is a narrower strip of sand and is heavily commercialised with an endless row of hotel tower blocks. Indeed, although there was nothing unsightly, but had a beauty of its own, when compared with the natural wonders I have seen, I wasn't too impressed. However, one hotel stood out from the rest. This was the Hotel Fontainebleau. Unlike the others, this building was curved, very much like the two City Hall towers in Toronto. It grabbed my attention. To me, this hotel was the heart and soul of Miami Beach.

However, I was also impressed with the tall, often-leaning palm trees. The green strip, an undeveloped area of the coast, provided a lovely walk from the built-up area to my hotel.

Back to New York City.

As with all things, after three nights, it was time for me to make the long journey back to New York. This was crucial, very crucial! I was planning to arrive in New York on the same day I take off for London. By carefully selecting the right Greyhound Bus, I should arrive in the Big Apple around breakfast time. Take off for London was later that evening. This gave me a full day to spend in the city. Therefore, I prepared for the thirty-hour bus ride north from the southern tip of Florida, bordering on the tropics, to the cooler New York City where winters would be much colder had I lived there.

The journey with its several service stops was uneventful. By the time I arrived in New York, I felt unwashed and with stubble - like I was whenever I completed a long journey. How refreshing was the station washroom! After depositing my luggage in one of the left luggage lockers, I went out to spend my last day in America enjoying the sights of Manhattan.

And that includes a trip to the World Trade Center, back then, represented by two gigantic cigarette-lighter-like structures, known as the Twin Towers. In 1978, I would never have imagined that almost exactly 23 years later, on September 11th, 2001, these iconic structures would be history. And so, I had no hesitation in paying to board an express elevator specifically designed for a non-stop vertical journey to the observation gallery, where I spent several hours just gazing across Manhattan from the outdoor rooftop viewing platform.

The time has come to take a special bus to the airport, thus bringing to a close the greatest travel experience I ever had in my life up to then. After such a trip, a month-long cross-Atlantic holiday, I actually believed that this was it. There was no need ever to cross the Atlantic in the future since I had already had two trips there. Packed in my luggage, I had three, maybe four size 110 film cassettes, and I was eager with anticipation to get these slides processed, to show others on a big screen the adventures I had, especially in the Grand Canyon.

The flight was an overnighter from New York Kennedy Airport to London Gatwick. I knew that once arriving home at my quiet apartment, post-holiday blues might set in. However, in the 1970s this form of mental illness was not so intense. Rather, this became a lot more intense after the end of the long hauls dominating the 1990s, especially after the Round-the-World trip of 1997.

A terrible Disappointment follows.

One of the pitfalls any traveller can find himself in is what I call, Touchdown Sunday, back to work Monday. During the 1970s, the outbound take-off was normally on a Saturday, and a normal return touchdown fell on a Sunday morning. It was as if specifically timed this way, to maximise the duration of the getaway yet at the same time, allow a day to readjust to normal day-to-day living. In 1978, I worked at a large engineering company, British Aircraft Corporation, the aircraft division of this huge, State-owned company was based in Weybridge, Surrey, an otherwise insignificant town in the London commuter suburbs.

As there were several departments, each housed in different buildings, with a street running between them. It was on this street that there was a small shop that sold a wide variety of miscellaneous products, including photo processing. My cassettes were sent off. But a week later, they returned, unprocessed, and still in their cassettes. Tudor, who manufactured the films, wasn't able to process slide films, so they returned them to me to ask permission for the films to be processed by Kodak instead. I said yes, and again, off they went. A week later, the tiny slides returned fully processed and ready for projection.

I took this pic of the Twin Towers in 1998.

After buying the projector made especially for size 110 slides, I went through them all, alone in my apartment. So far, so good. Many of the pics came out superbly, and with the image thrown onto the white screen backed by the bright light, it look as if I was looking out of a window instead of looking at a piece of paper. The slide show would entertain an audience.

That is until I began to view the images of the Grand Canyon. All the South Rim images were fine, as was the hike down to Indian Gardens. However, when I snapped the river scenes early on that following morning, the daylight wasn't strong enough to register on the film. The result was that although the river itself came out okay, all the surrounding cliffs and buttes appeared as dark silhouettes. 

How terribly disappointed I was! And there was nothing I could do about it. A lesson learnt in having a cheap camera for convenience.

Was this my last trip to America for the rest of my life? At first, I thought so. But, after seeing those spoilt photos, I knew that one day I'll be back. My travel destiny had just taken a sudden turn.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Next Week: The 1980s as the interlude, where great changes were made.