Things I came to know on my solo 4200-mile cross-continent ethnographic research trip. Pt. 1, People & Practicalities
I’m thinking a lot about my work on Hejira at the moment, having just submitted a piece of writing about it, & it also being around the time of year I returned from recreating the main 4200-mile cross-continental road-trip on which a lot of that album was written; the conflicting bright flowers & looming dark skies always remind me of that.
I came to know much more than I bargained for on this journey, & certainly more than I needed for the research itself. Here are a few of the more light-hearted surface observations about people & practicalities:
Practicalities:
Doing it!: I like to make unreversable decisions. The one unreversable action that was the difference between doing this and not doing it was booking the flights.
Accommodation (1): The biggest payoff was Couchsurfing. I Couchsurfed 60% of the trip, which saved me 60% of the total cost, & better still connected me to more & more people as I went.
Accommodation (2): Air B’n’B’s are sometimes also brothels… & you won’t always clock from the ad ;-)
Accommodation (3): There was always a hotel if I needed to leave somewhere quickly (which I did). They’re a bit like pubs: you don’t see them when you’re not looking for them, but they’re everywhere where you are.
Driving: Driving on the other side of the road is ok, there is a flow to it & you just slip in. That, as in Europe, wasn’t a problem, the US style of driving - particularly in the northern territories - was.
Planning: There’s no salad in the desert. I knew I had to plan food, water, & petrol driving across it, & soon realised I had to also plan things to keep awake with too. Fortunately my Pantera records came to the rescue.
People:
Language: American English is DRAMATIC. I parked by a hydrant & later found myself paying a fine in a post office for being a FELON.
Cowboys: Cowboys exist.
Nicknames: People in the desert have genuine nicknames like ‘Bullet Bob’. I was asked to look for this person at one point.
Guns: Someone wanted to show me their gun collection at one point… & they didn’t mean their muscles.
Connections: Good people know more good people.
Hospitality: I hate to say it - my ancestors are turning in their graves about this - but the Americans really put the Europeans to shame when it came to hospitality. I really had the best ever welcomes & hospitable experiences in the US.