May 7th-8th

I haven't updated this thing for about 2 months now due to procrastination. I initially wanted to keep a journal every day so everything would be fresh in my mind. But I didn't so I'll have to deal with it.

We slept so well that night in the hostel. I recommend staying at the Backpacker if anyone is in Europe and there's nowhere to camp (camping is free and better). The night before we were trying to find a church that I'd helped out years ago in Cardiff, in hopes that they might help us get Josh feeling better (no luck after poking our heads into every pub and an old church to see if they had a phonebook). In the morning we found the address for the church office, checked out, left our bags in their storage room, and walked around town for a while. It was pretty cold, and the last couple times that I've gotten sick, downing hot coffee all day would do the trick and I hoped it would do the same for Josh. This in mind I pulled out my french press and had the hardest time trying to get hot water from any coffee shop. They wouldn't even let me pay money for water heated above room temperature. Apparently they think you'll rip them off and lure other potential customers away when they see us drinking better coffee. Business is business. We finally managed to get a half cup of hot water from somewhere else and were shooed away with the same concern. It tasted strong and good, and lifted our spirits.

Legend of the Phantom Mumbler
Our coffee was finished and the paper cup rested on the ground. When a gust of wind took it rolling at high speeds across the way, Josh ran after it in order to be the good boy that he is and keep the streets of Cardiff clean. With a few great lunges he met his target and stepped on the fleeting piece of trash, obliviously right into the path of an angry (or constipated) Welshman in a track suit wearing a backpack. With a grin on his face and an accomplished attitude, Josh disposed of the cup, grimly escaping contact with a deadly loogie. Moments after I explained to him what had happened, we spotted the Welshman about ten yards away. He was mumbling things with an angry look in his eyes and throwing up his arms egging us on as he walked backwards away from us. We couldn't understand a word this man was saying, and we tried, but he apparently didn't want to be clear or get anywhere near us. Later, we saw the same Welshman again. This time he had a cigarette (he probably thought it would help with the constipation), and was apparently still bent about us being in his country. As he came within feet of us he took his last drag, threw it at my feet, following with the same familiar phlegm landing almost directly onto the cigarette butt. "Impressive", I thought. He dealt with the situation the same way, walking a distance and then mumbling loudly and waving his arms. Still, we could not make out the words this man was uttering. Seriously there is not a word I could recall. We stood there for a while confused, staring at this peeved character. I started to walk away and saw Josh getting frustrated. We saw the mumbler drop his backpack from afar, like people do when there's about to be in a fight (usually among high schoolers, because most people don't use backpacks after that, unless you go to college and even then there don't seem to be as many fights. Not as common in jr. high because of those blasted roller backpacks they use, and the annoying thing you have to do with those is push a button and collapse the thing. In my opinion these are what cause fights among jr. highers). We deemed this Welshman the Phantom Mumbler, and figured there must be a legend behind this. You know, like those stories of the same strange occurrences of ghosts haunting city streets. Never saw him again.

We finally found the church office and met up with John Vickery. He bought us some coffee and showed us how to get to the world's oldest record store, and took us to he and his wife's house. They were so good to us, giving josh tea and medicine for his throat and feeding us until we were about to explode. They decided to pay for us to stay another night in the hostel and suggested taking the rail and sail deal the next day if we wanted to get to Ireland like we mentioned. What a good couple of people.
That night Josh was walking around town and got invited to a show, so we went. I didn't hear the first band but they supposedly sounded like the remnants, the second was so-so and the third was incredible. It seemed we were the only two in the entire place that enjoyed them, so they invited us to hang out. We were having a good time until these two chicks came in trying to hit on the guys in the band. They didn't get much attention, so they proceeded to talk to us and tell us that Americans were ignorant and weren't aware of the existence of their country. Yeah, I can agree that lots of Americans are ignorant on a large scale, except when you turn around and say something about us being from CANADIA. They felt pretty dumb so they left.

In the morning we got tickets to take a train all the way north to the coast of Wales in Fishguard where we jumped on a ferry to Ireland. Sometimes you just gotta pay.
It seemed impossible to hitch at all when our boat landed on the south coast of Rosslaire, Ireland. It was getting late, and finally got a lift from an Australian family, and later a farmer who apparently took us the wrong way. Josh was feeling like crap again and we were trying to get to Waterford that night where our friends Clay and Jannelle live, and where Ian was waiting for us. At that point it was lashing rain and very dark, so we gave up and had to call Clay to come get us. We waited what seemed ages, meanwhile making up dumb songs and playing my tambourine to pass the time. Finally a couple of the friendliest faces showed up to rescued us. They filled our bellies with lots of pizza and gave us a bed. It had been forever since we'd seen them.
We made it to Ireland.

May 1- May 6th, 2009

Friday, May 1st
We flew into Heathrow 9:45am and got hassled a bit at the UK border because we couldn't give the officer a definite address where we would be staying. We had their "email" (fecebook, which we apparently didn't have) and basically got the be-more-prepared-and-responsible talk. They ended up letting us in (because we were American) after our lecture. We stayed around the airport for a while trying to figure out how to get money for the internet, so we could get money, so we could pay for the internet, so we could get ahold of our friend's sister where we were offered to stay that night. The whole thing seemed to be a waste of time after no luck, so we paid for 2 tickets on the tube to piccadilly circus. After very little sleep on the plane, we felt oddly energetic. After we got off we walked around everywhere with our backpacks tents and guitar, ate subway at Trefelgar Square with the lions, checked out a protest in Westminister Square about the brits interfering in Sri Lanka... we were gonna set up camp in the square where a couple protesters had been "campaigning", not camping mind us, for years, but the peaceful protesters didn't turn out to seem so peaceful, especially toward Americans. So we talked a little to the police a bit and they turned out to have good senses of humor... They gave us some directions to a coffee shop we'd heard about and we seemed to have the hardest time finding it. Finally we found the scooter cafe and hung out there a little, then walked to an internet cafe down the road to check on our unreached contacts... this was around 9pm. Hope was slipping fast and we began to sort out our options. It was a toss-up between hopping on a train and riding it all night or taking it to a spot with a cool name to camp, finding a dark alley and sleep in shifts, or spending a fortune on the only hostel around not booked. We spent 2 hours online and didn't reach our friend's sister until our last 10 minutes before the store closed. It was definitely the hand of the Lord for her to happen to check her facebook at that time. It took forever to get there on the tube, but they were so good to us letting us stay over and take showers and eat and SLEEP.

Saturday, May 2nd
In the morning Ashely and Ben cooked us breakfast and we headed back into town. We looked up a bunch of coffee shops and kinda made our own coffee tour of london and rated the Flat White in Piccadilly Circus the best cup of coffee we had in london. There were a bunch of decent record stores and I couldn't help myself. Frank's Wild Years and Boys Don't Cry. We walked around everywhere finding some really amazing parts of the city, heading back to our friends' house where we stayed again that night. My perspective on london and england for that matter was changed, seeing that last time I was there I was 16 years old with my youth group in what seemed to be the trashiest parts of town.

Sunday, May 3rd
So we tried to get ahold of Daniel Fox in South London to meet up with him and go to their church in the morning, but never got a response. Had breakfast in the morning and jetted out to catch the tube to camden to stop at a record store we'd looked up, happening to show up right before an accoustic show was being set up. The store was packed by the time we came back for the show and the only way we could see was through the store windows, and they turned out to be sweet. Afterwards we asked about merch and bought a cd and they threw in another for us.
It seemed impossible for us to get out of London, so we put forth more of an effort to move on. We took the tube to Abbey Road and saw that patch of ground near the top of most internationally worshipped places in the world. It was so hard (and we didn't hide it much) not to laugh at the shutter-happy tourists stopping in the middle of the crosswalk to get pictures taken, egging on the road rage of locals trying to get from A to B. Some German photographers came up to us seeing Josh's guitar and asked to take pictures of us doing the cliche catwalk we thought so hilarious. Turned out they were putting together an article about the London music scene for a newspaper. Knowing that most Germans can't tell the difference among accents of English, we hoped they would think we were local, so we gave them a band name presenting British flare. He figured out we were from California, but it sounded like they'd still publish it. We moved on from there and took the tube to the furthest we could get, which wasn't too far due to the blasted common European deal that railways are in parts shut down or on a different schedule. But the guy at the last stop said there was a bus that ran to the end of the lane and hinted that nobody checks for bus tickets. So we took a double-decker bus for free all the was to Chesham, which could have been the coolest town we'd been to in England. We found a nice campground where we left our stuff to explore, and in town we had a nice hot meal and went to sleep happy about everything.

Monday, May 4th
Bank holiday. Every once in a while here the banks take a day off, and so do lots of businesses. But the same restaurant from the evening before was open so we treated ourselves again to the luxury of a hot meal when we woke up around noon. After was Cafe Nero. Terrible.
We got on the road and hitch hiked from the B485 in Chesham to the A40 to the M40, and took that all the way to Bristol. Some places hitching rides took longer than others, and some drivers seemed less sane than others. Nevertheless we traveled a good 80 or 90 miles and got dropped off near a bridge. Josh started feeling flu-ish. bummer. There were some trees, so we camped.

Tuesday, May 5th
This morning around 5:30 I felt oddly well rested and couldn't sleep at all. So I set off into town to find some coffee, but absolutely nothing was open. I came back to camp and walked to a lookout to the bridge, sat there for a while, read my NT and just enjoyed everything. Now we're packed up and at a coffee shop sitting and buying every hot drink that would make Josh feel better. He's pissed he's sick... I kinda think it would make things a little better in a way if I got sick too... This is probably the first downer we've had this trip. But I'm so happy, so much has happened and we're only 5 days into the trip. We're ready for anything.

_________________________

So we got the worst ride that actually set us back and dropped us at the most un-tactical spot to hitch hike. Eventually we headed to a rest stop, where we did as much as dance with signs for rides. "Going north, sir?" was every time followed with "Nope, going south. Wish I could help" or nothing at all. Nothing frustrated me more than the automatic downgrade to scum of the earth because of the sharpee on cardboard sign. I mean come on, at least look me in the eye and don't pretend to be distracted by something far off like superman charming snakes in the parking lot.
...
Hours passed and we changed locations once again. After a while two guys who came from Spain, one of them from Oregon, picked us up and drove us out of their way close to the border of Wales. We couldn't have been more thankful to get out of that wretched place. We hitched another ride all the way to Cardiff from a silly Welsh man listening to Nick Cave. A long walk to Queen Street and a desperate search to find a place to stay not camping. We found a hostel at a decent price (price definitely didn't matter at the time) and booked it for the night.

i'll add pictures on here later.

Freedom

from the every day 9-5 american dream.  Of course it's inevitable and very reasonable to most any civilized person to settle down and find establishment somewhere, but timing varies.  I'm still young and have a lot to experience; my time has not yet come, and neither has my good friend Josh Cassidy's.  Through clinical trials and truck driving we raised enough to get out for a while.

We fly into London in about 6 days on April 30th 2009, and fly back to Phoenix June 18th. We have no structured plan, but a general idea to put our thumbs to use and book it north to Scotland and Ireland.  We'll be traveling with backpacks, a guitar, harmonicas, and two tiny popup tents, our diet being mostly bread.  I've decided to make a blog and sort of document the trip via internet cafe during that month and a half.  Thus concludes my introduction.

Gregory