Spent Saturday driving across Western Texas on I10, ending up in El Paso. What a dump! Anyway I was so tired I didn't really care. Dan snapped me comatose on the bed after the 600 mile drive. We did stop for a burrito breakfast in a great Mexican eating place in a small town a few miles off the main road though. The walls were adorned with pictures of the founder, who started the place in 1929.

Yesterday was a better drive, mainly because we left the Interstate. Had a great time driving trough Tonto national park, where thousands of saguaro catcus grow on the hillsides.

Ended the day in Phoenix, AZ, staying at its oldest hotel . They had a pool party in the the 100 degree heat. We were the only hotel guests there, everyone else was local young people. Sofas and strange aging punks. Weird atmosphere altogether, made weirder by the furnace-like heat of the night.

Day one of Texas. We ended the 500 mile day in Austin. The part we stayed in is right by the University, and is very reminiscent of Berkeley, CA, with the same mixture of students, old hippies, psycho burn-outs, falafel places, cafes, etc. But the intense heat (over 40 during the day, well over 30 dgrees at night) gives the place a slow, dreamlike quality.

We're staying in The Star of Texas, a nice old bed and breakfast,

apparently favoured by visiting professors at the University; a Victorian house with a porch and rocking chair in front. The're a nice breeze from the slowly spinning fan in our high-ceilinged bedroom -- but we also have a discreet aircon in the floor.

Arrived New Orleans around noon. I left Dan to chill in the Motel room while I reccy-ed the French Quarter in the sweltering heat. Ate a great lunch of fresh oysters and shrimp po-boy in the famous Acme Oyster House.

In the evening Dan and me took a lovely paddle-boat ride on the Mississippi. After we got off the boat, the town was coming alive with jazz music, but we were both too tired and sticky to party.

From what I've been told, New Orleans is a very rough and mean city outside the tourist areas, and I can believe it -- almost a Neapolitan feel in some streets.

The "dead" guy in the photo is actually asleep, passed out from the sticky pre-thunderstorm heat. It looks like he fell asleep in mid-dial on his phone.

Due to a HAL-like malfunction in Kate, our SatNav, we've ended up having to stay tonight in a Holiday Inn Express in the middle of nowhere, somewhere North-East of Tallahassee, FL.

We've spent the last couple of days in the Carolinas and in Georgia. Yesterday visited the charming, crumbling but extremely up-market Charleston. We stayed overnight in Savannah. Today we spent a few hours taking a boat trip in the wonderfully-named Okefenokee Swamp, a mind-numbingly huge, truly prehistoric and dream-like ramified maze of alligator-laden, insect-infested brackish water channels. The photos we took did not do it justice, so I include only one.

Georgia is a wonderful state, hot, sweaty and slow.

We're not stopping in Florida on our trip, which to me has a pretty unpleasant redneck feel after Georgia. Of course we won't see Miami or the Everglades, but so what.

We got some real Southern Hospitality to go along with our pancakes, sausage and biscuits, from the gang at Hog'N'Bones in Waycross, GA. Also some snazzy free tee shirts!

I took the video after stopping for a break on a little side-road early this morning. I loved the birdsong and the lush foliage.

After a disturbed night at the motel, (graduation day revellers in the next room), we managed to get going at six a.m. Drove through North Carolina, enjoying the lush greenery, ending up at the delightfully tacky Myrtle Beach in South Carolina.

Drove through six states today -- New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and ending the day crossing the incredible Chesapeake Bridge to Virginia Beach, Virginia, where the photos here were taken.

Of all the places I've visted in the U.S. (a lot of places!) Virginia struck me as unusually well racially integrated. Plenty of mixed race couples to be seen.

Spent a brilliant day yesterday with Vered and Trish. Walked along the High Line, an arial greenway that was a disused elevated railway. The photo with the little girl shows one of the more bizarre features, a "movie theatre" where the screen is actually a window overlooking the street below.

Up early again this morning, ran across Queensboro bridge at dawn, accompanied by the roaring early morning traffic.

19th June New York City

Woke at 4:00 AM. By 5:00 I was out running in Central Park. Even though it was barely light, lots of people were out, mainly cyclists. My Forerunner couldn't get any GPS so I don't know how far I ran, but it must have been about four miles. Even at that hour, it was warm and humid.

The roads and paths in Central Park twist and curve so as to utterly confuse my sense of direction, and I ended up completely lost -- which is something I always like to do.

When I got back to the hotel at 6:00 , Dan was still asleep (how does he manage to get over jet-lag so quickly?) so I went out for another hour or so and snapped a couple of New York things.

Outside the NBC Studios a crowd of kids were screaming as the Jonas Brothers were doing a sound-check for a Breafast TV outside broadcast. I . After a breakfast (Pancakes/Bacon and Eggs) Dan and I went back there. The crowd was a lot bigger by then.