Preface
I love America. It’s a huge, wonderfully diverse country in so many ways. All of the people I chose to spend time with were intelligent, interesting people. But I read a lot of papers, watched a lot of TV, talked to a lot of people and listened to a lot of radio. And I’m going to be critical. Reading this wouldn’t be much fun if I just said “we went here and it was nice and then we went there and it was nice and then we went home”. But by no means am I tarring all Americans with the same brush. So if you think you’re going to be offended by me telling like it is, then stop right here, put the wrestling back on the TV and stuff another donut into your face.

I have quoted from several sources, and included those sources where possible to ensure accuracy. Everything else is me.

In the style that has become customary to us, we booked a couple of weeks off work, and then found somewhere to go. The Rough Guide to California is correct in saying “Publicized and idealized all over the world, California really does live up to the myth. More than just a terrestrial paradise of sun, sand, surf and sea, it has high mountain ranges, fast-paced glitzy cities, primeval forests and hot dry deserts. The landscape is imbued with history, ranging from rock carvings left by indigenous Native Americans to the eerie ghost towns of the Gold Rush pioneers. In some ways, the West Coast is the ultimate now society. Anywhere so vulnerable to the constant threat of the Big One - the earthquake that will one day drop half the state into the Pacific is bound to have a sense of living for the moment“

An overbooked flight on a previous trip had provided us with $300 each of travel vouchers towards our next flight. This was about £214 at the current rather poor exchange rate, but still more than enough for a flight, the only downside being that we had to pay the taxes and Trailfinders’ commission out of it. Still, £185 for two return flights to Los Angeles seemed reasonable, and so 3 days after booking, our old lumbering Airbus A300 heaved into the sky.

About 2 hours into the journey, I saw something liquid running down the wing. Upon closer inspection, I was worried to see that it was leaking from a riveted hatch in the top of the wing. Now, at 35000 feet, it gets to be about -70 outside, so water should freeze. So, I’m thinking that either this is aviation fuel or hydraulic fluid, neither of which would be a good thing to have leaking.

Eventually, when a stewardess came by, I discreetly asked if there was a flight engineer on board, and briefly explained what I had seen. Now, this flight was almost full, so the last thing I wanted was what happened next - the engineer (a woman, no less!) and two more stewardesses came to my seat and started pointing to the wing, and saying things like “this guy thinks he’s seen something leaking - where was it?”. I could imagine sparking off terror, and everyone rushing to one side, and the plane going down and it all being my fault. Actually no-one took any notice. But this is what she told me:
“I’m glad you pointed that out - it’s just fuel vapour leaking from a bad seal”. Just fuel vapour leaking?! Oh well, we’re only just 35,000 above a freezing sea! Although I did learn something about planes - I knew that wings were fuel tanks, but apparently the wing of most planes has no lining or “bladder” as they called it. And what was happening here was that the vapour was leaking slightly from a bad seal, and then as it hit the frozen air it was mixing with water vapour, making it into a liquid, but which wasn’t freezing because of the kerosene content. Or at least that’s what they told me. They proceeded back to the front, but as they went into the flight deck and closed the door behind them, I was imagining screams of “Oh My God - we’re all going to die!”.

We lived to tell the tailfin, and so it was that we reached Los Angeles Airport, in California:

California

Pacific-coast state of the USA; nicknamed the Golden State (originally because of its gold mines, more recently because of its orange groves and sunshine)
Area: 411,100 sq km/158,685 sq mi Capital: Sacramento
Cities: Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, San José, Fresno
Physical: Sierra Nevada, including Yosemite and Sequoia national parks (the former a World Heritage Site), Lake Tahoe, Mount Whitney (4,418 m/14,500 ft, the highest mountain in the lower 48 states); the Coast Range; Death Valley (86 m/282 ft below sea level, the lowest point in the Western hemisphere); Colorado and Mojave deserts; Monterey Peninsula; Salton Sea; the San Andreas fault; huge, offshore underwater volcanoes with tops 5 mi/8 km across; Yosemite Falls (739 m/2,425 ft), the highest waterfall in North America; redwood trees in several state parks, including Redwood national park (a World Heritage Site), Humboldt Redwoods state park, and the Avenue of the Giants; Joshua Tree national monument; Lava Beds national monument; Point Reyes national seashore; Point Lobos State Reserve, with sea lions; Big Sur, coastline S of Carmel; Anza-Borrego Desert state park
Features: Spanish missions, including Carmel Mission (1770), Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa (1772), Mission San Luis Rey (1798), and La Purisma Concepcion Mission, Lompoc; gold-rush towns, including Downieville; Marshall Gold Discovery state historic park; Fort Ross, established 1812 by the Russian-American Company; Hearst Castle, built by newspaper proprietor William Randolph Hearst (begun 1919); Monterey, with the Custom House (1827) and Cannery Row; J Paul Getty Museum, Malibu; California Institute of Technology (Caltech); University of California at Berkeley, centre of student protest in the 1960s; University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA); Stanford University at Palo Alto; Hollywood, with Universal Studios, Sunset Strip, and Beverly Hills; San Diego Wild Animal Park; Napa Valley wine country; Orange County, with Disneyland; homes of celebrities at Malibu and Palm Beach
Products: leading agricultural state with fruit (peaches, citrus, grapes in the valley of the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers), nuts, wheat, vegetables, cotton, and rice, all mostly grown by irrigation, the water being carried by concrete-lined canals to the Central and Imperial valleys; beef cattle; timber; fish; oil; natural gas; aerospace technology; electronics (Silicon Valley); food processing; films and television programmes; great reserves of energy (geothermal) in the hot water that lies beneath much of the state
Population: (1995) 31,589,200, the most populous state of the USA (69.9% white; 25.8% Hispanic; 9.6% Asian and Pacific islander, including many Vietnamese, 7.4% African-American; 0.8% Native American)
Famous people: Luther Burbank, Walt Disney, William Randolph Hearst, Jack London, Marilyn Monroe, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, John Steinbeck
History: colonized by Spain 1769; ceded to the USA after the Mexican War 1848; became a state 1850. The discovery of gold in the Sierra Nevada Jan 1848 was followed by the gold rush 1849–56.
© Copyright Helicon Publishing Group plc. 1998

We soon found our way to the Alamo parking lot, and picked up the car. It was a Chevrolet Geo Metro. On the plus side, including full insurance and all taxes it worked out at £17 a day and it had air conditioning. On the downside it was dirty on the outside, had dents and scratches, and pulled badly to the right. And so we stopped at the next Alamo and swapped it for another of the same, which this time was dirty on the inside, smelled funny, pulled slightly to the right and had dents and scratches. And it’s definitely not a long distance car; no cruise control and only 3 gears, meaning that it felt and sounded like it was doing 11,000 rpm at 60mph. Another tip: go for the next car up!

Our ultimate destination was a campsite in the mountains, but we had a day spare, and so we headed off towards Palm Springs.(Rough Guide)
About 2 hours out of LA we started to see all these windmills which populated the fields and mountains for miles. Intrigued, I wanted to find out more, so we returned at the end of out trip; more about that later. Tired of travelling, we refreshed ourselves at Hadley’s Fruit Orchard, attracted by the opportunity to sample a Buffalo Burger and date shake. When was the last time you paid $8 for a burger and shake? Bufallo meat is interesting; quite tough, but it has a strong flavour to it. The shake was of course real. No partially flagellated non-milk-fat milk-style beverage here - in went the dates, in went the milk, out came a milkshake.We pulled over at a Tourist Centre and for the first time felt the full force of the heat as we got out of the car. The contrast between the dry heat and the clean air of the desert, and the overcast smog of LA is intense. The image on the right shows the current temperature and time at Palm Springs, and it’s not unusual for 110ºC to be the daytime norm.

We soon spotted a leaflet about the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway which promised “the world’s largest rotating tramcars”. The new state-of-the-art Rotair tramcars hold 80 passengers and revolve slowly from within, providing a spectacular 360 degree view of the valley floor and surrounding area. The Palm Springs Aerial Tramway has the steepest vertical cable rise in the United States and is the second in the world. A trip to the Tram’s 8,516 foot Mountain Station is two and one-half miles traveled in less than 15 minutes. As you ascend magnificent Mt. San Jacinto, you will experience different life zones with flora and fauna approximating a trip from Mexico’s warm Sonoran Desert to the alpine wilderness of Alaska.“. (More tech stuff here ).

A note to the English here - this isn’t a tram in the Blackpool sense of the word…it’s a cable car. The ticket price was $19 each. For those that know me, you’ll know I am somewhat watchful of the pennies - never a borrower of a lender be, but believe me this is $19 well spent! As you ascend, the whole desert floor opens up below you, and as Palm Springs, it’s 100 golf courses and 3700 windmills become toytowns, the flora and fauna really do start to change. Once at the top, there is a large complex where you are invited to watch an embarrasingly tacky 1970’s style video about the tramway, and on level two a rather good looking restaurant. Once at the top you are in the Mt. San Jacinto national park, with several different walks from a mile or two, to something a little more challenging where you have to fill out a free permit to say when, where, who etc, so the rangers can come and find you “in 2 hours rather than two days”. We had no idea that we were going to be doing this, hence we were not properly dressed for it, but the air was cool so we decided to embark on an adventurous walk. This is what is called the “high dessert”, but the vegetation is lush. The sky is an intense blue, and as we ascended we were soon crunching through snow. Although we were in mountain lion country, our encounter with wildlife was limited to some lizards and a few blue jays. However, our walk had to end after only 3 miles as we came upon a snow-covered path which was not only slippery, but which had a 50′ fall on one side. Having neither spikey shoes, a pointy stick or the will to die, we decided to turn back. Back at base, we explored a couple of the shorter more “touristy” walks, before deciding to see what the restaurant had to offer, and which point we realised mistake #1: When we were sold the tickets we had been told that there was a Ride and Dine package which, for $5 more, allowed us to go up after 4pm and have a meal at the top. What it actually meant was that the meal was available after 4pm, and as we’d wanted to go up in the morning, we thought that would exclude us. And the meal looked fantastic - it was a kind of self-service buffet with big bowls of freshly cooked meats and veg, and delicious deserts. Upon enquiry we found that we could purchase the meal seperately, but that it would cost us most of the next days budget. And so it was that as the mountain cast it’s long evening shadow across Palm Springs, we reluctantly descended back to the valley, but with a desire to return, and (should we feel adventurous) a tent - a night in the wilderness with just the stars and the bears and the mountain lions.

Accommodation was apparently going to be hard to find that night - two large music festivals had ensured maximum revenue for the savvy innkeeper, and minimum chance of sleep for the weary traveller. We were told that Idyllwild was some distance up another mountain, but would “probably have some log cabins”, which sounded like a more rustic alternative to a Motel 8.

We drove up the steep winding roads for a couple of hours as the night fell and the stars appeared in the clear black sky. After some time in the wilderness, we spotted the occasional wooden chalet motel, but the “No Vacancy” sign was depressingly prevelant. It was 11pm when, a few miles out of Idyllwild, we found somewhere. I forget the name of it now, but it could have been called the Bates Motel. The curtains of a front room twitched as the car lights shone in, and the door was unlocked. A dis-shevelled looking woman of 92 started croaking at us, to be disturbed shortly afterwards by her 60-something son, who I’m sure was called Norman. There was a room free, and we negotiated a price of $50. As Norm (Gary, actually, but Norm fits the Psycho theme better) showed us round the room armed with a screwdriver for turning on the fridge, we saw a place stuck in time at about 1972. For all we knew, the Partridge Family were in the room next door. Reluctantly we showered, and fell asleep on a very comfortable bed.

The next morning, we drove into Idyllwild, and, on the recommendation of many others, breakfasted well at Jan’s Red Kettle, and then went exploring. Idyllwild is a ridiculously quaint unspoilt tourist trap with houses and shops built from logs. No McDonalds here, that’s for sure. Again, we had to press on, and a couple of hundred uneventful miles later, we arrived at the campsite. When I say campsite, it’s actually a kind of trailer park/holiday park. But not quite. Difficult to explain, but in short, the idea is that you come here with your big mobile home, pay the fees, plumb into the electric and water, and that’s where you stay. The facilities are excellent, with a gym, 2 pools, a hot-tub, sauna, several tennis courts, a restaurant and about 300 acres of grounds. They also have permanent rental trailers, and that’s where we stayed. It had all we needed - a kitchen, TV, bed and of course the most essential thing in any hot region, some good air conditioning, and a lot cheaper than staying in a motel. Average temperature reach 102 degrees during the day, so a couple of miles in the pool was the order of the day at mid-day, and we took some tennis lessons. The rest of the time we just lounged around, and that is where we stayed until the tenth. We had been briefed about mountain lions, rattlesnakes and bears (althought the coyotes weren’t going to cause us problems) but apart from a rather unwell looking tarantula, hummingbirds and lizards were about as exotic as it got.

On the third of May, the 9am TV news told us not to worry if we hear a loud “boom” in the southern California area at about 9:05am. The Space Shuttle had been diverted from Florida due to bad weather, and was now going to land at Edwards airforce base. Sure enough, as I lay on my sunlounger watching the skies, I heard a distant but heavy thud, and there, across the sky in the far distance was a small streak moving across the sky very rapidly. It dissapeared beyond the treeline, but the action didn’t stop there. The next day, the stealth bomber (the large black triangle thing) passed silently overhead, accompianied by another small military jet. It’s not often you see those two in the same week (if at all!).

It was the 10th of May before we moved off, having enjoyed hosting and attending some excellent barbeques, and taking lessons from a master barbeque-ist on the art of cooking meat. These people really know how to barbeque - none of this sausage and burger in a bun nonsense, oh no. Big thick juicy marinaded steaks are the order of the day. For my part, I did some shish-kebabs and chicken quarters, and miraculously poisoned no-one, although I embarrased myself at beer-time. You see, beer is the common currency of friendship over there (think “King of the Hill”). Give someone a can, and they are a friend for life. Except that in England, Lite Beer means lower sugar content, but generally same alcohol. Over there, I found (just a little late) that it means virtually no-alcohol, but I made up later in the week with a big box of Corona bottled Mexican beer, which always goes down well.

Yosemite and Mariposa Grove

One of the many many friendly couples we met lived in Leemore, a couple of hundred miles nearer to Yosemite, which was our next destination, and glady accepted the offer of a place for the night on the way. John and Elaine have a beautiful house, and I was amazed at how cheap really good property and land is once you get outside of the city. For what they paid for a lush four bedroom house, you wouldn’t even buy a one-bedroom flat for anywhere in the south of England.

But that’s not to say everything is cheap in the USA; that’s Big Myth Number One! We have this nonsense every now and again about how much better value stuff is in the USA vs Britain. In the states, bread is £1.20 a loaf, fruit and veg costs about a third more (even though they are such a huge producer of it), and items like Coke are about the same price as England. And this is in the supermarkets. Oh, and then there’s the tax which is always added at the point of sale. That’s not to say there aren’t bargains to be had, but if you are from England and are thinking that by going to an outlet mall in the USA you are going to get the same pair of Levis but cheaper, you’re a little deluded I’m afraid!

We started out at 7am for the 3 hour drive to Yosemite. As we drove across the plains with their endless vineyards and huge irrigation channels, we decided to put talk radio on, seeking a change from hearing Dido’s “Thank You” played for the 7 millionth time that day. Talk Radio really is something else - especially some of the right-wing talkshow hosts. More on that later.

Finally, we arrive at Yosemite.

Area in the Sierra Nevada, E California, USA, a national park from 1890; area 3,079 sq km/1,189 sq mi. It includes Yosemite Gorge, Yosemite Falls (739 m/2,425 ft in three leaps) with many other lakes and waterfalls, and groves of giant sequoia trees. It is a World Heritage Site. The varied topography of Yosemite’s wilderness hosts about 1,460 species of plants in over 40 recognized plant communities. These, in turn, are home to numerous invertebrate and vertebrate species, including 78 species of mammals, 247 of birds, 17 of amphibians, 22 of reptiles, 11 of fish, and numerous invertebrates.

The fee for a car is $20 for 7 days, and allows entrance to any other National Park too.
The complete guide to Yosemite can be downloaded in PDF format http://www.nps.gov/yose/guide/yguide.pdf, and can be read online at : http://www.nps.gov/yose/guide.htm. Here are some facts:

History of Yosemite
Native Americans
Indian people have lived in the Yosemite region for as long as 8,000 years. By the mid-nineteenth century, when native residents had their first contact with non-Indian people, they were primarily of Southern Miwok ancestry. However, trade with the Mono Paiutes from the east side of the Sierra for pinyon pine nuts, obsidian, and other materials from the Mono Basin resulted in many unions between the two tribes.

The native people of Yosemite developed a complex culture rich in tradition, religion, songs, and political affiliations. Making use of the varied local ecosystems, they used plant and animal resources to the best of their abilities. The pattern of oaks and grassland noted by early visitors to Yosemite Valley is probably a direct result of the intentional burning of underbrush practiced by native people.Mariposa Battalion Enters Yosemite Valley
Although the first sighting of Yosemite Valley by non-Indian people was probably by members of the Joseph Walker Party in 1833, the first actual known entry into the Valley was not until nearly 20 years later. After the discovery of gold in the Sierra Nevada foothills in 1849, thousands of miners came to the Sierra to seek their fortune. Their arrival resulted in conflict with local native people who fought to protect their homelands. Because of such interaction, the Mariposa Battalion was organized as a punitve expedition under the authority of the State of California to bring an end to the “Mariposa Indian War.” The Battalion entered Yosemite Valley while searching for Indians on March 27, 1851.Early Tourists and Settlers
Writers, artists, and photographers spread the fame of “the Incomparable Valley” throughout the world. A steadily increasing stream of visitors came on foot and horseback, and later by stage. Realizing he could make money off the tourism, James Hutchings became one of Yosemite’s first entrepeneuers. Hotels and residences were constructed, livestock grades in meadows, orchards were planted, and as a result, Yosemite Valley’s ecosystem suffered.

Protection is Sought for Yosemite
Inspired by the scenic beauty of Yosemite and spurred on by the specter of private exploitation of Yosemite’s natural wonders, conservationists appealed to Senator John Conness of California. On June 30, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill granting Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias to the State of California as an inalienable public trust. This was the first time in history that a federal government had set aside scenic lands simply to protect them and to allow all people to enjoy them. This idea was the spark that allowed for Yellowstone to become the first official national park a few years later, in 1872.

Later, John Muir’s struggle against the devestation of the subalpine meadows surrounding Yosemite Valley resulted in the creation of Yosemite National Park on October 1, 1890. Military units with headquarters in Wawona administered the park while the State of California continued to govern the area covered by the original grant. Dual control of Yosemite came to an end in 1906, when the State of California receded Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove to the federal government. Civilian park rangers took over from the military in 1914. Two years later, on August 25, 1916, through the persistent efforts of Steven Mather and Horace Albright, Congress authorized the creation of the National Park Service administer all national parks “in such manner and by such means as to leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

Around the turn of the century, Hetch Hetchy Valley became the center of a bitter political struggle when the City of San Francisco wanted to dam the Tuolumne River inside Yosemite National Park as a source of drinking water and electricity generation. In 1913, conservationists led by John Muir lost the battle when Congress passed the Raker Act, authorizing the construction of O’Shaughnessy Dam.

Increasing Visitation Requires Management Plans
The day of the horse-drawn stage drew to a close in 1907 with the construction of the Yosemite Valley Railroad from Merced to El Portal. While a few automobiles entered the park in 1900 and 1901, they were not officially permitted until 1913.

In 1925, two major concessioners were consolidated into the Yosemite Park and Curry Company in order to reduce competitive expansion of facilities in the park.

Impacts resulting from increasing visitation in Yosemite Valley became apparent. People camped throughout meadows and dramatically increasing automobile traffic driving on unpaved roads left the valley dull with dust each summer. As visitation and need for year-round services increased, Yosemite Village was relocated from a location in the floodplain on the south side of the Valley to the present Yosemite Village site on the north side.

Visitation exceeded one million in 1954 for the first time, and by 1976 over two million people visited Yosemite. In the mid-1990s, visitation topped four million. In the early 1970s, the National Park Service established one-way road traffic patterns, eliminated cars in the far east end of the Valley, offered free shutle bus transportation in the Valley, converted the parking lot in front of the Valley Visitor Center to a pedestrian mall, and generally encouraged visitors to enjoy the park by walking or using public transportation.

I took a few photos (in the album), but nothing can compare to the sight that greets you as you exit the tunnel which is the entrance to the glacial valley. Anyone who has been will agree that it really does bring a tear to the eye. After a couple of hours, you’ll want to scoop your jaw off the floor and carrying on driving into the centre, but be warned, you’ll find yourself getting severley distracted by the waterfalls, the crowning glory of which is Yosemite Falls, mentioned above.

Chubby Checkout and the Fat Boise

Again, I was taken aback by the proportion of grossly obese people; I’m not talking about someone a little overweight, a little chubby, or perhaps could do to lose a few pounds. I’m talking about monstrously and unhealthily obese. Great heaving wheezing masses of mobile lard. People who’d life expectancy will be 20 years less, and who can expect to add diabetes and cancer alongside ridicule to a list of ailments. And the excuses are something else. “I’ve got thyroid problems”, or “I’m big boned” are the older lamer excuses, but some of the 55% (1998) of overweight Americans actually believe it’s because America is a large land mass, hence gravity is greater, so they are shorther and therefore fatter. Let’s not beat around the bush, it’s because the diet is appalling. Donuts for BREAKFAST?!? No way! I know I’ve visited this subject more than once before, but it really is a sad and shocking thing to see in real life. Up until recently, walking wasn’t the done thing but…

Rush Limbaugh, rolling blackouts and the Car Culture

That said, Americans may be forced to take a rethink on the car culture. At the beginning of 2001, gasoline was $1.40 a gallon. By May it was $2.00 a gallon, with rumours of $3/gal by July. So now it’s time to have a bit of a chuckle. You see, nice as they are, Americans have a fairly robust “fuck you” attitude to anyone or thing which may do anything to impede their lifestyle of sloth and waste, even if it’s at the immediate expense of a resource. Ah, the pick-up truck. In England, we’d call some of these vehicles “monster trucks” and show them off as some kind of freak show. In America, this is the pride of the redneck or hillbilly (of which there are many). V12 8 litre engines running 10 miles a gallon if you’re lucky. But the tables have turned - speaking to someone who supplies parts to a big car sales lot, apparently some of the bigger pickups or SUVs (Sport Utility Vehicles) have fallen out of favour, leaving many unsold as people turn to more economical vehicles.

An article on a website by a chap calling himself Rack Jite sums up right-wing talk radio, the king of which is a Rush Limbaugh, a hateful fat pig of a man who’s venom I forced myself to listen to for a couple of hours, and I can honestly say this (from the website) is an accurate summary of a Rush Limbaugh show:

Percentage of time spent on topics on a day of the Rush Limbaugh Show picked at random and transcribed:
36% General Liberal bashing
25% Bashing Blacks
11% How wonderful Rush is
10% Dittoheads
9% Bashing women
9% Environmentalist bashing(slow day)
0% Opposition to anything Rush says

The site goes on to say:
I heard today that more than twice as many conservatives listen to talk radio than do liberals (which I am sure the radio industry has been aware of for quite some time). Also keep in mind that people who call these shows are far more extreme in their views than those who do not. Even CSPAN which is as unbiased and unaligned as humanly possible gets about ten times as many calls from conservatives and libertarians than they do liberals or moderates. Another interesting indicator regarding the preponderance of right-wing loonies on the air is that there are so many of them; those wealthy enough to have nothing better to do and the millions of White Mongrols who sit unemployed in their trailers drinking beer and playing with their guns, so mad at the world, they find it imperative to let you and everyone else know just what ignorant little gits they are”

On this day, Bush was due to make a speech on the spiralling cost of petrol, and also the power shortage that California was facing. I found an article, originally appearing in the Orange County Metro (pp56, 58, 50) February 8, 2001 titled “The Electricity Crisis”, by Peter Navarro, an associate professor of economics and public policy at the University of California-Irvine. The article is duplicated in full here, and gives a good view on the power crisis.

So, whether or not you read the whole article and understand how the current crisis came about, the fact is that it did. And the crisis is two-fold; for the generators, for ever kilowatt they sell, they lose money. The more they sell, the more they lose. The other problem is that the system simply does not have the capacity to cope with demand either in terms of generation capacity, and in some cases in terms of transmission capacity - at peak times, if certain areas of cities did not have rolling blackouts, the whole thing would melt down.

And then there’s Wind Power.

For any eco-friendly scheme to work, it has to be financially viable, and wind falls into this category. Apparently, a wind farm can be constructed in a year and pays for itself in four years. Typically, it takes 5 years to commision a coal-fired station, and as for nuclear - well, several thousand years to decommission, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe that one has actually paid for itself yet. But don’t mis-understand me - if nuclear fusion (the holy grail of nuclear science) could be made to work, I’d be all for it. But for the moment, it doesn’t, coal costs 20c/kwh to generate and wind costs 5c. Which has pissed Southern California Edison off no end, because they were forced to buy power from the wind generators. Except they didn’t pay for about 4 months of it. The whole situation is a mess. But this is the most bizarre and ironic twist; the greatest enemy of wind power is…the environmentalist! I kid you not. Apparently, the blades kill hundreds of birds: rubbish. The rotation is typically 40 cycles/minute. Any bird crashing into a 150 long great white thing is not long for this world anyway - it just doesn’t happen. Then, apparently the windmills take away the habitat of desert rats - er, each windmill has four small feet and a control box. Oh, and then they spoil the view, apparently. Yeah, all that sand and scrub grass looked great before these windmills came along. Duh! What do these people want? But then, the fundamentalist environmentalist has never been about thinking, it’s been about empty barrels making the most noise. Take bypass protesters in the UK - isn’t it funny how the people making the most noise are never from the locality, and understand nothing of the scheme? For example, the Winchester bypass has reduced the volume of road surface, the air pollution has been drastically reduced, and the quality of life for residents has been greatly improved. But there are the same monkeys up the trees every time; as the LA Times said in an article about the May 1st protests round the world [of this type of protester]: “How nice that these spoilt brats are well paid enough to be able to afford the time off work to pursue their violent ways round the world!”. And there was me thinking Americans didn’t do irony.

Which brings me back to Rush Limbaugh; one of that day’s targets was (and is, apparently quite often) what he terms “environmentalist wackos”. But not the kind of which I’ve just been speaking. The kind that dare to suggest that one way to deal with the current fuel crises would be for car manufacturers to produce more economical (and hence less polluting) cars. Not neccessarily less powerful cars, just more efficient cars. Cars which would cost less to run. How dare they suggest that anyone should have to bend one tiny bit! No, get up to Alaska as quick as possible and get some drills going. Although with Senator James Jeffords’ defection, leaving the balance of power with the Democrats, that may not happen.

But America is not the great polluting evil it is often made out to be. OK, per capita, Americans pollute three times more than anyone else. But states like California are (and have been for a long time) forward thinking in their approach. There are strict smog laws. In cities, you see signs on main routes pointing to electric vehicle charging stations. And now think of some of the most polluted cities in the world: A University of California pollution report says “the city of Athens, for example, pumps all of its waste, untreated, directly into the ocean.”. And the smog pollution in Athens has many people permanently wearing breathing masks. Of California, another report says:

Industrial smog mixes with pollution exhausts from cars and trucks and then with sunlight to create the ozone smog. The American city that has suffered the most from ozone smog is Los Angeles. In the late 1930s, the city began to expand, and by 1945, it was the fastest-growing city in the United States. By the early 1960s, there were more cars and trucks in southern California than in any other areas of similar size in the United States. Large amounts of car exhaust, unique terrain, and lots of sunlight- combine to produce serious ozone smog in Los Angeles. By the mid-1980s, ozone levels in the city often measured more than three times the level now regarded as safe by the EPA. Los Angeles eventually reduced its low-level ozone. Air pollution controls in the 1990s got rid of many of the pollutants released by cars and trucks. However, the ozone levels remain high, regularly violation the EPA standard. Los Angeles is not alone in failing to meet the EPA’s low-level ozone standard. During the summer of 1990, for instance, ninety-six cities and counties in the United States repeatedly went over the level considered safe by the EPA (Stille, 1990). The problem is even worse in many foreign countries. Ozone smog hangs over dozens of cities from Athens to Tokyo. Even some rural areas are threatened by ozone smog. In Thailand, Brazil, and some counties in eastern Africa, the burning of crops to enrich the soil and the burning of forests to clear land regularly produce high levels of ozone. The smog often becomes so thick that it reduces the brightness of the midday sun to a faded twilight glow (Sharon, 1989).

Cooling down

One thing that uses a huge amount of power is air conditioning. I’ve heard environmentalists in the UK pointing to the amount of air conditioning the Americans do as the source of their troubles. But for most of America, you could not live without it. I’d love to see one of the “holier than thou” Brits spend a month in New England in July without air conditioning! But there are several ways of reducing the house temperature without using refrigerative cooling systems, which many people are apparently unaware of. For example, there is the Swamp Cooler or evaporative coller- this is simply a tank of water, a pump, some matting (sometimes in the form of live vegetation or straw) and a large fan on the outside of the house, drawing the air over the matting and blowing it into the house. This works very well in dry climates (which are often the hottest) but are no good in hot climates. Then there is the Whole House Fan, simply a large centrally located fan which can turn over the entire volume of air in the house in about 5 minutes by drawing in the air through windows and dispersing it into the attic. Typically, this is better in climate where the outside temperature falls rapidly in the evening. Once the cool air has been drawn into the house, then further cooling is achieved with air conditioning. The point being that while both the evaporative and circulative methods pay for themselves in one season, these are not common items, pointing to the “I can’t see further than my nose” culture than afflicts some Americans.

Just one more little blackout-based anecdote. What’s the other thing that uses a lot of power? A clothes drier, right? And where is it very hot and dry? Most of California, right? So, obviously, you’d hang the clothes outside on the line to dry. Obviously.
Unless you live in one of the hundreds of thousands of houses which come under the auspices of one of several thousand housing associations, which specifically prohibit the hanging outside of clothes, even in your own back garden because (and I quote) “it promotes a slum-like appearance”. Stop looking at your calendar, it’s not April 1st!

Amsterdamitall!

And so home. The return was a little interesting - we were due to fly LAX to Detroit, and then a connection to Gatwick. However, a delay meant that we would have missed our connection, and so instead we were to fly KLM (NWA’s partner airline) to Amsterdam, and then into Heathrow. Now let me give you a piece of advice - if you possible can, fly KLM rather than NWA (although Virgin is really the most ideal, but a little bit more pricey). It may make the journey a little longer, but it is so much classier. The other thing I should mention is where to sit. In an ideal world you want to be up front, or at least forward of the wing, then a window seat and then legroom. Ask for a forward window exit row if you can. Being forward of the wing makes a huge difference in noise - all you get is a faint buzzing sound, as opposed to 9 hours of thundering roar. And for a tall person, an exit row is ideal…so much legroom! And the whole show on KLM is so much classier than NWA too - the in flight entertainment and the food is better for a start. I slept well on the flight back, we touched down in Heathrow on Sunday, and our luggage arrived with us by courier on Monday.
The cost? Well, we overspent. It worked out at about £750 each. But then again, I saw a competition in a magazine. 7 days (6 nights) in a four star hotel in Boston with flights was apparently worth £2000. So 16 days visiting some of the greatest sights in the world, with car hire, eating well etc for £750 including flights and all the “twiddly” bits isn’t bad at all. (For camparison, to take a car the 35miles from England to France for 7 days is £400 on the ferry - outrageous!).

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is that.

29th May 2001

Tags: america,travelogue,usa
Categories: america, travelogue