Step It Up

By Steve Roach

A three month odyssey through the United States of America and Canada, covering more than 12,000 miles by car, train, ferry, snowmobile and inflatable tubes.

Join the author (and his long-suffering girlfriend) on their spectacular adventure of a lifetime as they:

Cross Canada by VIA Rail!
Snowmobile in the Rocky Mountains!
Take in the strip joints of New Orleans!
Attend an Ultimate Fighting Championship event in Las Vegas!
Sleep in an Ice Hotel!
Challenge the authority of Disney World despots!
and get chased out of Georgia by murderous locals!

From the safety of your armchair, read about their adventures in New York, San Francisco, the Redwood forests, the Grand Canyon, Big Sur, Niagara Falls, Florida Keys..... the list is almost endless!

The perfect book for anybody thinking of visiting North America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Roach
• Release date: Apr 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301224890

Steve Roach

Steve Roach is a UK based author working in the travel writing, fiction and children's book genres. Steve's travel books are light-hearted and fun, covering such diverse journeys as a 3 month road trip around North America, a grand tour of Europe in a VW Campervan, a grand tour of Scotland in a campervan and a month long cycling trip through France from Cherbourg to Perpignan. Steve's fiction is an altogether different prospect, aiming to take the reader to some very dark places. Frequently bordering on horror, these novellas and short stories involve intense research to really bring the subject matter to life. Finally, Steve also writes children's books, in collaboration with artist Simon Schild.

Book preview

I don’t like flying. Unfortunately, this means I travel far less than I really ought to. The girlfriend has been waiting for a two-week holiday in the sun for over 10 years. To compensate, I’ve taken her all over Europe, once in a VW Campervan (where it rained solidly most of the time), but every now and then I get the urge to take her somewhere extraordinary. Once, I even took her up the Tar Tunnel. Happily, this isn’t a euphemism but a real place (near the Ironbridge Gorge in the Black Country).

The United States of America, however, is really extraordinary. I’d always wanted to go there, but figured that if I was going to have to get on a plane then it had better be worth it - I’d rather be remembered as a guy that went down at the start of an epic journey than the guy who went down on the way to two weeks in Tenerife. I asked her to book four months off work. I asked my own Managers for the same leave of absence and to my utter astonishment, they agreed. I booked tickets. We were going to America.

Actually, I don’t mind flying – as the old joke goes, it’s crashing that really bothers me. A flight to America from the UK, in the shortest instance, is going to be 3460 miles, mostly over ocean, at a maximum height of 7 miles. A catastrophic failure within a commercial airliner will result in a very sharp descent and about 4 minutes of terror. It’s those 4 minutes that really get me. It’s those 4 minutes that usually keep me from going anywhere near a plane.

The only thing that seemed worse than falling out of the sky in an aeroplane was the idea of being eaten by sharks when fleeing a sinking ocean liner. So, a plane it was.

The leaving date cast a shadow over the weeks leading up to our departure. I would find myself daydreaming about crash scenarios. I took an OCD-like concern in the wellbeing of airline engineering staff. It only takes one of them to have a bad day and forget to tighten a bolt and we’d all be doomed. In the depths of a growing despair, imagining an airport scene where my girlfriend and I watched in tears as our plane took off without us from the reassuring safety of terra firma, I realised that I needed to do something about the problem.

Some people would simply get smashed on the flight and hope for the best. I’m not a good drunk. I rarely drink at all, and the thought of having a drunken panic attack and vomiting everywhere at 30,000 feet was rather off-putting. I opted for a more refined method of coping – hypnotism. The hypnotist was a man who looked very much like character actor Stephen Tobolowsky. His office was in his house, in an attic that had been converted into a work studio. Once a week for 6 weeks, I drove over to this house and trudged up the stairs. Once the course of treatment was over, I’d be £400 lighter. It seemed like a small price to pay.

It’s a curious thing to undertake. It went against my every instinct to allow a strange man to take me into his attic, dim the lights and put me in a sleep-like state. Somewhere, in a dark corner of my mind, lurked the thought that if he were so inclined, he would be able to fiddle with me whilst I was under and I would wake up none the wiser. That’s a terrible admission, I know, but that’s something that concerned me. Or, whilst we’re on the subject, he could fill my mind with a set of instructions, such as: ‘Rob a bank and bring the money to me. You won’t remember the robbery once it’s over and you won’t remember me either.’

So maybe these doubts clouded his ability to put me fully under. Even so, he did succeed in getting me onto a plane, for which I will always be grateful.

I was nervous for the entire flight but managed to refrain from flipping out. I even enjoyed the take-off, and the sensation of being lifted from the ground. Just under 7 hours later, the plane landed safely at New York’s JFK airport. We now had 90 days on American soil – no internal flights, just a series of hire cars to see us through.

90 days may seem like a lot but America is a big place. Some of their States are bigger than my own country. Most of them, in fact. Even if I liked flying, I would have chosen the driving option, if only to ensure that we saw the country at a slower pace from ground level, rather than skipping big chunks and viewing it through the clouds. This would mean a lot of driving, and many days I’d spend 10 hours or more behind the wheel. Thankfully, I like driving.

I went with a preconceived idea of what we’d find and found most of my expectations to be wrong. During the next three months, we found ourselves delighted, disappointed, blissfully happy, blisteringly angry, confused, surprised, welcomed, amazed and appalled. Sometimes all in the space of a day.

NEW YORK

We stand in a long queue at Immigration and wait. Ahead of us the line clears, interminably slowly. One by one, we step up to the counter and suffer the scrutiny of the people who protect the American borders. It’s not in their nature to be happy to see us, for everybody that passes through must be evaluated for the level of threat they pose for the American people. It’s a very serious business, reflected in the faces of everyone involved.

We have our eyes photographed for retinal identification. Quite what the point of this is I’m not sure – I’ve never had this information extracted from me before, so there’s no point of reference, not even with my passport. We are asked a few questions about who we are and what it is we do back in our home country, and the Immigration Official finally decides that we can be allowed into the country.

Outside, after collecting the luggage, we stand at the Airport entrance and look for a taxi. Half a dozen people approach, separately, to tout for our business. Before we came, we were advised not to go anywhere unless it’s in a yellow cab, an official New York taxi. Apart from the fact that you may be driven in an unlicensed ‘cab’ to a flat in Harlem and gang-raped, there’s the issue of price. Once you’re in their car, they can charge what they like, and they can change their mind before letting you out.

An official taxi pulls up and we tell the driver we’d like to go to New York City. Inside our yellow cab, there’s a chart against the back of the driver’s seat.

Anywhere in New York City for a fixed $45 from the airport, or:

$2 - Initial charge

30c - Per 1/5 mile

20c - Per minute stopped or slow traffic

50c - Night surcharge

Plus the passenger pays any incurred toll expenses.

The fifteen mile ride into Manhattan is an understated beginning for our great adventure, and maybe even a little depressing. Most of the way, the area reminds us of the dingier parts of Britain. Ignoring the architecture of the houses and the obvious difference with the American road signs, the route could easily pass for the ring road around, say, Nottingham. The houses look like council properties, the road is lined with railings that look the same miserable grey colour as ours, and dying plant life withers on embankments, choked by exhaust fumes. We see Budget Hire vans, Staples stores and so on. I don’t know what we were expecting, but this wasn’t it.

Our hotel is the Pennsylvania, junctioned at 7th Avenue (the Fashion Avenue) and West 33rd street, opposite Penn Train Station and Madison Square Garden. Like most Manhattan buildings, it’s enormous.

The lobby is spacious, clean and bright. The check-in process takes longer than Immigration. There must be fifty people waiting in line, in front of a hundred feet of gleaming Reception desk, but there seems to be only one member of staff actively serving. Other smartly dressed employees meander about behind the desk, pick up bits of paper to staple them together, and wander around some more.

One guy in the queue, who looks a lot like Drew Carey (and considering where we were, may even have been the real Drew Carey), shouts out ‘STEP IT UP!’ and is ignored. Over the next five minutes, as the queue doesn’t move, he gets increasingly agitated and clears a little area by flapping his arms and sighing loudly. The rest of the queue compresses either side, giving him some space. Any moment, he may pull out a gun and shoot one of the hotel staff. We’ve all thought it over, so despite being a headcase he has earned some sympathy.

‘Welcome to New York,’ I tell Steph.

Finally, we get to our room. After the opulence of the Reception area, it’s a little shocking to discover our room is small, dark and rather pokey. The carpet’s filthy and the bedside lamp is broken. Through our window, we can look down on this part of the city, and see the roofs of a few shorter buildings. Even this view is iconic, unmistakably New York.

We leave our bags and head out. There are thousands of people, all moving with determination, eyes straight ahead and focused on their route. They stop at junctions and wait for the lights to change, and then they all come forwards at once, a tidal wave of smartly dressed flesh.

We’re hemmed in on all sides by skyscrapers. The roads are seriously busy, and it seems there’s never more than a minute or two of relative silence before the sound of sirens fill the air and some emergency vehicle comes blaring by, forcing its way through the traffic.

We quickly affirm that New York is one hell of a noisy place, but nobody comes here and expects anything less. It’s a metropolis, and is almost like a living, breathing thing. Alive. These streets will never be empty. At all hours, cars and people, the lifeblood of this city, are in perpetual motion.

Pick a bunch of things that describe your typical city - noisy, dirty, congested, crowded and so on - and multiply them to the power of ten, and there you have New York. Everywhere you look, huge buildings loom. Billboards and signs are stuck to store fronts and any available patches of concrete and glass, accumulating in scale and density until you get to Times Square, where you’re literally surrounded by neon and plasma. There is never silence here. People shout, cars honk their horns in a symphony of impatience. It’s amazing.

We wander around the shops and stumble across a store that sells a lot of NYPD gear. I need a coat so I buy a jacket with the NYPD logo on it. It’s that particular shade of blue that the cops over here wear, and the jacket looks so official that whenever I wear it people ask me if I’m a cop. This seems all the more fantastic later in the trip, when a bad dye job leaves me with custard yellow hair, but there you go.

Apart from it being the shortest distance to fly, there is another reason we chose New York to begin our trip. Rather than drive 10,000 miles across America relying on the girlfriend’s dubious sense of direction for navigating, I had made the advance decision to make a GPS system our first essential purchase. The city is filled with gadget shops selling all manner of technological appliances, so we try a few. It appears that the Italians have cornered the market for this kind of thing – most shops are staffed by Italian assistants and they’re all versed in the hard sell. As soon as we enter a store, they’re by our side.

‘Hey! Come here, come here! Whaddya want?’

Nobody seems to have heard about the Tom Tom Go GPS. I read a review of the brands back in the UK and this seemed to be the best one. It is supposed to come with the North America maps already preloaded - you just turn it on and you’re ready to go. The assistants try to sell other brands, GPS-ready-mobile-phones and suchlike, but I stick to my guns.

Eventually we try BHI Electronics on Broadway. The two gents beckon us inside and ask us whadda we want. Ravi has heard of TTG. He doesn’t have it in the store but he can get it within the hour. He wants half the money now - $400 - and half on delivery. As we’ve had no better luck, I think we might as well go with this, and hand over $400.

Five minutes later, sitting in a coffee shop, I hope I haven’t just done a very stupid thing. I have a vague fear of returning in an hour and being stared at, and asked:

‘What $400? Get lost!’

However, when we get back, they smile and welcome us inside the store and, like displaying a firstborn son, proudly produce the Tom Tom Go. As there is a clearly displayed ‘NO REFUNDS’ sign, I get it out of the box to test it. There are eight accompanying cd’s. My stomach sinks. The maps don’t appear to be preloaded and we’ll need to use a pc.

‘Whatsa the matter?’ asks Ravi.

‘We don’t have a computer. We need to load these maps!’

‘Use ours!’ he says, pointing to a precariously wall mounted pc tucked away in the corner. ‘No problem!’ he says, smiling.

Further inspection reveals a preloaded memory card, containing all major USA roads. I try this and it does seem to contain everything we need to get along. I start to wonder what the cd’s contain. I ask the guys if we can take the TTG away and check exactly what we need to do, and come back in the morning to use the pc if we need to.

‘No problem!’

Back at the hotel, I unpack everything and inspect the goods. The memory card does indeed have every major road preloaded. We can zoom in on New York, Boston, Florida, Los Angeles, wherever. The cd’s contain every other bit of information we’re likely to need. All minor roads, hotels, public transport terminals and stations, right down to shopping mall sites, museums and tourist attractions.

I can’t get a satellite signal from the hotel room, so we go back into the streets of New York to try and get a reading. Everywhere we go, the tall skyscrapers block the minimum lock of three satellites needed for triangulating our position. We stumble into W34th Street and find the sky opens up a bit. Within a minute, the GPS has our position and shows us we are indeed on W34th Street. The joy is indescribable, at least for me. Steph watches me grin like an idiot and wonders aloud why it cost $900 to get a box that tells us where we know we already are.

I quickly put it away - walking around New York with an expensive piece of kit like this at arm’s length is surely asking for a mugging.

NEW ENGLAND

Next morning, we’re up early. Our train leaves for Boston at eleven so we don’t have the luxury of hanging around. We check out of the hotel and start off towards Broadway with our luggage. We make the mistake of thinking that it’s only a few blocks, there’s no harm in walking. Big mistake, and one where we learn to appreciate just how big New York City really is.

We’ve had no time to see the sights and really get a feel for the place, but the trip will be bookended either side by New York and we can do all of the usual touristy things at the other end. I’m not much into the planning side of things where travel is concerned. I once cycled from John O’Groats to Lands End using only an A3 map torn from a road atlas, and my America trip planning wasn’t that much further advanced. There were a few bookings for car pickups, a train trip across Canada and a night in a Canadian ice hotel, but the only real thing that dictated our route was a booking for an Ultimate Fighting Championship event at Las Vegas in five weeks time. This meant the trip would be split roughly in half, the first going east coast to west coast, and then back again.

By the time we get to the BHI store, we’re in a bad mood and sweating. The guys greet us warmly and usher us inside. The shop isn’t that big to begin with, and they let us dump all our gear in the middle of the floor and boot up the pc for me to use. All of this is done happily, even though we are obviously in the way and limiting the room for any other customers to come in and browse. To top it off, Ravi even goes to the coffee shop next door and brings us drinks!

We’re there for about an hour. I buy a new memory card from them, and download the more detailed versions of New England, Ontario and Quebec, Oregon and California. Once we’re all set, we thank them profusely and promise to send them a postcard from our travels.

We take a cab to Penn Station (opposite our hotel) and get our train tickets with a few minutes to spare. There’s a mad dash as we find out that we can’t get on the train unless our luggage is clearly labelled. We run back to the info booth, all the while hearing the boarding announcements for Boston, and spend an agonising couple of minutes waiting as some slowcoach in the queue ahead is taking their time over some trifling matter concerning directions, which the attendant repeats three times.

We get some blank labels, hurriedly scribble out our information, and make it back to the train just in time. The train seems bigger that our UK counterparts, and there’s plenty of room for the passengers. It also seems to be very well maintained and clean. We stow away our luggage and then look out of the window as we leave New York behind. The city gives us a final iconic view of skyscrapers under a clear blue sky, and then it’s gone.

A trolley-dolly comes round with coffees and sandwiches and we buy some breakfast.

I get the GPS out and turn it on. Within a minute, it’s picked up our location and the 3D map simulates what’s happening outside the window. To me, a man who once (as a young boy) nearly fainted with excitement upon seeing a ZX Spectrum display 8 different colours on a tv screen, this tiny box seems like the pinnacle of human achievement.

I monitor our progress out of New York State, into Connecticut and then Rhode Island. About an hour in, we see some snow on the embankments, and the further we go the snowier it seems to get. We haven’t got much in the way of clothing for the cold, so we may need to go and buy some things when we get to Boston.

We disembark at Boston South Station and one of the first things we notice is a sign on a platform wall:

NO SMOKING - GENERAL LAWS CHAPTER 272 SEC 43.

PUNISHABLE BY IMPRISONMENT FOR NOT MORE THAN

10 DAYS OR BY A FINE OF NOT MORE THAN $50. OR BOTH.

Going to prison for ten days for smoking a cigarette in the wrong place seems a little steep to me, but later in the trip we’ll see signs that state the penalty for littering is $25,000! There’s a zero tolerance for the small crimes, and it appears to be working. I don’t see anybody smoking, and it’s a very long time before we see any litter on the highways.

We go outside and find ourselves calf-deep in snow. It’s freezing and we’re really not dressed for this kind of weather. Had I done my research, I would have known that snow would feature a lot in our travels and would have probably come prepared, but on the flip-side it means that we didn’t have to drag a load of snow gear through the streets of New York.

We haul our luggage around town and I get the GPS out to look up nearby hotels. I had a vague idea that we’d be able to find some old 17th century guest houses but we seem to be a few centuries too late.

We eventually discover the Omni Parker House Hotel. The lobby is opulent in that over-the-top way you find in the more expensive hotels. Even the lift doors are covered in gold engravings. The place costs $139 for the night - plus tax (which is apparently cheap for these parts).

We check in and catch the lift to the twelfth floor, a ride that’s quick enough to send me mildly giddy when we walk down the corridor to our room. Later, the exact same thing happens again, in the very same spot, but lasts longer. Steph doesn’t experience it though, so I’m left wondering if I have some medical condition I need to start worrying about.

We go out and look for a restaurant. The streets are curiously empty and we can’t seem to find a thing. A black fellow with an American accent approaches, tells us he’s from Scotland, and asks for five dollars. We tell him he’s obviously not from Scotland and don’t oblige him with any money. He mutters something and wanders off. Considering he didn’t shoot us, I’d say the encounter went rather well.

After this, we’re a bit warier about walking too far. We come to what we guess is the centre of town and everywhere we look are gangs of youths on the street corners. It’s dark, they’re all wearing hoodies and I begin to feel like we’re on some sort of indie film set. A vague sense of menace hangs over the scene. I need to stop reading the Daily Mail.

We have no idea if Boston’s a nice place or not, but at that moment it doesn’t look it.

Eventually, we go back to the hotel and eat there, wondering why we simply didn’t do that in the first place. The food’s great, the restaurant is decorated in the same lavish manner as the Reception area and the waiter is very attentive. It’s a very pleasant, if expensive, experience.

The next morning, Boston is a cold and miserable place to be. We decide not to look around and crack on with the trip. At that moment, the vast continent lay before us, waiting to be discovered, and it didn’t seem unreasonable to put Boston to the back of our minds and head out into the rest of New England for a look around there instead. We can always come back later.

We walk to the train station and get a cab to the airport, where we’re due to pick up our first rental car. By the time we arrive, it’s snowing heavily.

The Alamo girl suggests we take a look at a Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) because of the terrible driving conditions, and we’re inclined to agree. We already have to contend with driving on the wrong side of the road, and now we have to do it in the ice and snow as well. For an extra $70, we can upgrade, and so we do.

It’s a lovely vehicle but I’m momentarily confused as to how to even begin driving it. Everything is weird. It’s an automatic, so there’s no gear stick. I go back and ask the Alamo staff for some help and a girl comes and shivers in the snow to give me a quick rundown on the controls. After she leaves, I spend a few minutes further orienting myself, doing some basic things like finding out where the light and wiper controls are.

We pull out of the lot and are soon negotiating a mess of snow covered roads. The air is filled with a blizzard and it’s hard to make out the signs. Without the GPS, we’d have been in real trouble.

We head for Cape Cod. Without the stress and arguments of studying maps, we soon settle in to enjoy the car and the scenery. I brought some cd’s with me, compilations of our favourite music, and pop one into the stereo. We’re soon coasting along and feeling just fine.

The scenery consists of trees lining either side of the Interstate, and snow everywhere else. There are individually designed wooden houses peering down from embankments. That’s pretty much it.

We cross a really high bridge and enter the Cape Cod and Islands area. The snow turns to sleet, and then rain. Even with the GPS, we have no real idea of where we’re going and decide to simply pick a hotel and get inside for a coffee. We end up in Yarmouth, at the Colonial House Inn, chosen from a list simply because the name stood out.

We park up and get a soaking as we stand in the rain trying to work out how to lock the car. Finally, when we complete what should have been a simple task and we’re sure all the doors are locked, we go inside.

A fifty-ish doll with lots of hair and a strong accent is waiting. She takes us through the main house, across a short external boardwalk and into an annexe building. Our room is at the back, up some stairs and down a creaky corridor. After we’ve dumped the bags, she shows us the main attraction of the place - there’s a huge underground section, complete with a swimming pool and a tasteful lounge, decorated with old and expensive furnishings. There’s even a Jacuzzi, tucked away by the pool.

Whilst we ‘Ooh!’ and ‘Wow!’ a little white dog comes sniffing around. It belongs to the owner and is just as friendly.

Steph has a Jacuzzi whilst I have a sleep in our room.

We think the hotel is so nice that we decide to stay another day and use it as a base to explore Provincetown and maybe New Bedford. That’s another plus side to the lack of planning – on the fly, if we find somewhere we really like, we can stay a bit longer.

Breakfast is a curious mix of fruit, crumpets and muffins, served by a very noisy waitress that comes over and speaks to us every few minutes. She has the chainsaw buzz of a strong, New York accent.

We mention that we’re thinking of going up to Provincetown. Right on the tip of a kind of curling peninsula, Provincetown seems to be the place where we’ll see working whalers, guys in big jumpers smoking pipes and mending fishing nets on the wharves. Maybe there’ll be some tall ships docked up too.

‘What’s it like up there?’ I ask.

‘Awww, it’s full of faggots. Good luck with that one.’

We head up that way, thinking the waitress’ summary may well be a tad harsh. It looks nice enough, so we park up and get out for a look around. We immediately see two men walking down the main drag holding hands. And then we see two more. Shop windows have posters featuring men in leather trousers and caps, flexing their muscles.

Now, I’m not against this kind of thing, but I’d have preferred the tall ships and the woolly jumpers, to be honest. It’s more of an indication that the America we were expecting to find is no longer here. Of course men no longer sit mending fishing nets in woolly jumpers, preparing for a lengthy fishing trip in an old wooden sailing ship. The world has moved on from my stereotypical expectations, and I can’t have it both ways. The world containing GPS systems is the same world where the great whaling days are long gone, where the fishing wharves and Old-World buildings have made way for industrial units and homogeny.

It’s a crushing disappointment, and my distorted view of America is blown apart and updated everywhere we go. Is it really travelling, when everywhere now looks the same?

Falmouth seems pretty quiet, with an empty beach under a grey sky. Across the flat and miserable-looking Nantucket Sound, we see Martha’s Vineyard. It doesn’t look in the least bit enticing.

The day is brightened considerably upon the realisation that we have a large tub of rice crackers that aren’t very nice, and we’re surrounded by a mob of greedy seagulls. I toss a handful of crackers into the air and there’s an instant explosion