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Coming to America.

I first went to America in November 1996, on detachment to Nellis AFB outside Las Vegas.

I was based at Lyneham, we flew Hercules from there. I did not fly Hercs, I looked after rifles and pistols, and occasionally armed the planes with chaff and flare.

But twice a year, the Hercs from 47 SF (Special Forces) Squadron, would fly over to Nevada for two weeks of war games when they would always, and I mean always, get shot down. Chaff and flare did not work.

But still they tried.

I was due to go, then the detatchment got cancelled, and was then on again: did I still want to go?

I did.

For us, America was Hollywood, even the riral bits like Arkansas where families like the Dukes of Hazard lived and played with the local inept police.

I knew America from shows like Casey Jones and the cowboy films my Ganddad liked to watch. And then there was The Streets of San Francisco and later, Starsky and Hutch.

America seemed not just like another country, but another world. Cars were as wide as bars, roads went straight up hill, so that cars took off at flant junctions. It was always sunny, houses seemed huge and was the land of plenty.

I knew no one who ever went to the US on holiday. A friend, Jon, had relations in Canada and he once went there for several MONTHS, it seemed so exotic. Freddie Laker had started Skytrain for bargain price flights to the US, to New York and Florida. We did not go. 1975, 76 and 77 were hard times for us, we didn't have much money at all, let alone for holidays, two years in a row we visited friends in Billericay. Essex. One year adding a week in a "traditionsl" Bed and Breakfast in Southend on mud. We had £5 a day to live on, we ate at a kosher restaurant every night as we got a three course meal within our budget.

So, America was a big deal.

We flew in the aircraft we were going to Service, XV298, a special forces air frame, which had chaff and flare bins all over it.

It takes a while to fly to the US by Hercules. We did the Atlantic in one hop, but landing at Goose Bay, Newfoundald for refueling and half an hour in the bar. I spent the two US dollars I had collected as a child on a can of fizzy tasteless Budweiser. I felt like a king.

We flew to Washington to refule again, then to Las Vegas. Where it was hot. In November.

We were travelling on NATO Travel Orders, so did not need my passport. But we had them, did I want my passport stamped with an entry stamp?

Hell yes.

Outside, was a US Air Force bus, like the school buses from millions of American kid's TV shows, the door was even operated by the driver via a handle.

We were here, in the US. Look at those huge American cars! Oh look, a stretch limo!

Half an hour later we were bored, as we waited for permission to leave for the Budget Suites we were staying in. So very unglamourous.

Each time the RAF went on detatchement to Nellis, they send out a tender to all hotels in the area, and the cheapest was always Caesars Palace who would charge us £$17 a night, that the MOD would pay. But if word got out that servicemen, lower rank servicemen, were staying there then there would be hell to pay. So, we stayed elsewhere, off the strip. Ours was behind the Stardust Casino, where eat as much as you can breakfast was three bucks.

So, we did not use the kitchen in our suites, which must have pleased the maids.

After arriving, showering, we went out to Treasure Island for their as much as you can eat buffet, some beers, drinks with the offgoing shift who were flying home that night at midnight, we then went to The Beach for some drunken frugging and more beer.

The next morning we were up at seven for the van into work, the detatchment brief, then stood down for the day to overcome jet lag. We went to Silver City Casino where domestic beers were seventy five cents a bottle. We went there every day, made friends with the bartender and security guy. And it was the bartender that told us they knew which machines were going to pay out and when. It was fixed. From then on, I only put change in machines, just for fun. Fun seeing the machine light up, deal some cards or spin the reels and find you lost.

You always lose in Vegas.

We went for BBQs over the weekend. Temperatures was in the (imperial) 70s. No one else went camping, none of the locals, if there are any in Vegas. We had the camping ground to ourselves, as no one does BBQ in Novevember. Only us Brits.

We did have trouble trying to buy burgers. To cook.

We kept getting told to go to Burger King or McDonald's. When we were able to explain what we wanted, we were told, you should ask for patties.

So, we knew.

And after two weeks of work, drinking and dancing, we left for home. Flaying in the Hercules again, but able to take home a large item, a bike or Weber from the PX, and then had to sit on the freight all the way home as we were carrying so much stuff, spare parts, empty ammo cans and bike and Webers, there was no where else to sit. My Walkman got a lot of use that trip.

And it was the same in 1999 when I went again, for three weeks, but 12 hour days in the August heat of the desert, eaight hours drinking and patrying did break us all, on my birthday, in Club Rio. We fall asleep at our table and were kicked out.

A year later I celebrated my divorce and passing my promoton course to go back, taking my old friend, Rambo, to Vegas for 17 days. And nights.

No one goes to vegas for 17 nights. In November. Half of it closed.

But we did party just about everywhere that was open. And when I say party, I mean prop up bars in casios all up and down the Strip.

But Vegas is not America. It's in America but is not typical.

My next trip tot he US was to. New Hampshire.

New Hampshire is in New England, is pretty much empty, and is like the Arctic in Winter. As I was to find out. There is, apparently, a place further north than New Hampshire, called Canada, or something. I think you get there through the back of a wardrobe where you'll meet a talking moose or something.

Anyway.

I had a friend.

We had a thing.

As much as you can have a thing via e mail and long distance telephone calls. We wrote every day, and spoke a lot. He ex was going to kill me if I set foot in New England.

I did set foot in New England, at Boston Logan airport.

He did not kill me.

And in time things settled down and we met up and we played Crib. But that was years in the future.

New Hampshire is about a two and a half drive from Boston, up the interstate and up the Turnpike. I think it was autumn I went, it was warm and the fall colours were golden. She lived in a trailer in Rochester, and all went well for a week. But the reality of me being in the RAF still, based in UK and she bringing up two children on her own meant it was just pipe dreams, really.

We remained friends, and even I thought about moving there, we had plans to live in Portsmouth NH, I looked into health insurance and jobs I could do, but the dream died. I guess it would have been interesting and exciting to live there, but, it wasn't meant to be.

Just up the road from the trailer, was Walmart. One day I needed something and said I would walk, I mean, it was less than half a mile. Did I want to borrow her car?

Her eldest son was sent to keep watch on me.

The road up from the trailer park was through woods, we could just about walk beside the road without getting run over. Drivers were surprised to see people walking, and some even moved out to pass us with more than a few inches gap. But then at the main road, with the store opposite, there was no foot crossing, as there were never anyone walking. So we had to dash between the traffic to get across.

Then, once in the store, I got my own personal shopper, helping me find what it was I was looking for: a DVD or CD or something. Apparently no one has a personal shopper in Walmart. I did.

There is aonly a small stretch of coast in NH, and it seems that most of it is private land, so to see the sea we had to go into Maine, which was like just next door, and we drove up to Bangor, via York Beach and Orgunquit. I lkked Orgunquit, a fishing village, looked perfect in the fall. We stood on the pier watching fishing boats sail out. Was very nice.

She had a family friend, Garro, who lived in a rented house in York beach, just down the road from the picturesque Nubble Lighthouse.

The next year I saved up my annual leave and had three weeks there, a week on Cape Cod and two in New Hamsphire to celebrate Christmas before flying back home on January 2nd.

Cape Cod in December is cold. That I found a hotel open did not surprise me. I had my favourite fleece coat, which I still use, some jumpers, and thought I would be fine.

I nearly froze to death.

Zero degrees Fahrenheit is cold. Colder still when you are on an arm of land jutting out into the Atlantic. And when it was windy. Well, cold doesn't enter into it.

One night I walked from the motel into town, ten minutes, for dinner. I was so cold, I had a bowl of Chowder, followed by another, just to warm up.

I drove to Rochester after my freezing week on The Cape, a week before Christmas. It was fine.

It snowed.

Four feet.

I did not snow fell in feet. I mean I did, but thought that was for mountain tops and things, not on actual towns. Four feet of snow is a lot. Walmart cleared their car parks before the roads were cleared, and after the second storm put another four feet down, there were walls of snow 12 feet high beside the roads were the ploughs had pushed the drifts.

It was fun, and pretty. I went out in the weak sunlight between storms to take a few shots. But we did did risk getting run over by snowmobiles as no one elese was mad enough to walk on the heath, that was for snowmobiles to drive flat out, leaping of mounds of earth and snow.

I survived. There was talk of a third storm coming in, the night before I was due to fly back. No worries about the flight, as four feet in New Hampshire equalled an inch on the coast in Boston, I just had to get there.

The snow arrived early, and heavy snow in NH was nothing like I had seen. We dropped her sons off at friends as we were going to head to Boston to get me there for the flight, 12 hours early, but would be there.

We drove out of town in blizzard conditions, driving at 30mph as SUVs whizzed by. We passed them later as they drove off the road into the trees, unable to turn at the speed they were going.

We reached the interstate. It was closed. I wasn't going to make it to the airport, no way.

We turned back.

The roads were near impassable, he Mom lived in Dover, yeah, NH, and she had a spare key, we might just make it there.

We did.

And so we spent the night in her Moms house, as the snow, literally piled up outside. Next morning we had to dig a path out to the road for her Mom to get in, the car was buried under a drift. We stayed another day.

I had to call British Airways to get a new flight, and inform my NCO I would not be at work monday morning. I sent photos of the snw and explained how deep it was, now 12 feet had falled in ten days. He would not listen. Maybe it was that that upset him and turned hm against me. Anyway, he killed my career by average grades and I had just over three years left in.

I would return to NH two more times, the second for three weeks during my terminal leave from the RAF, before flying over to Seattle. NH in the summer is something else, thank goodness for air conditioning is all I can say.

Inbetween, there was a kind of falling out, and I did not stay with her one autumn, instead staying in a small fishing village in Massachusetts called Rockport.

Before then, I took an offer of Mum's penpal to visit Arkansas.

I had no idea about Arkansas other than from Whacky Races and Achy Breaky Heart. I had no idea what to expect.

I flew into Oaklahoma via Chicago, and Linda's son and his wife picked me up to drive me the three hours back to Ozark.

What I saw was interstate. Just the one. And millions of trees. Gazillions.

Arkansas was towns and villages among trees. But over the fields was the Arkansas river, a tributry of the Mississippi, and nearly half a mile wide.

We did, one Sunday, take the Chevy to the Levee and drove along the embankment, drinking beer from the coolbox. Against the law, but we drve back through fields to avoid the police. I survived.

I got even better service at the Walmart there, they have very few Brits in Ozark, Arnasas I guess. But they had me. Several times.

I struck up a really good friendship with Jason and Cheryl, so went to stay with them two more times, including in 2005 at the end of my terminal leave holiday, when I flew in from LA, then we flew to Vegas for three days of proper partying.

Arkansas is home to the hillbilly. The high school football team at the Ozark Hillbillies. Jason delivered propane, and I went out with him loads of times on his delivery truck, meeting people who really did live off grid, one man met us weating red long johns with a flap at the back. I really should have taken more photos of those trips.

Especially of those who lived in the woods, up the dirt tracks in the hills.

Ozark had been the home, that first year, of the first series of The Simple Life, some reality TV show. I had no idea who Paris Hilton was, but it was big news in the town, of course, and for a while Ozark was on the map, until Ms Hilton got a bad name, and the town sign, "The home of The Simple Life" was removed.

I was taken up into the hills, and from a place called White Rock the only thing man made was the logging track we drve up, snaking through the trees in the valley below. The state's name, The Natural State, is well earned.

What happened after my last vist is too sad to recount here, showing that not all sotories have a happy ending. I won't be going back to Arkansas anytime soon.

Rockport was a different matter. I flew out of Feyatteville to Boston, drove up to Rockport to fid it a dry county, meaning that no bars or restaurants could serve alchohol. I would have to drive to Gloucester, the next town along, to buy six packs.

But it is a picturesque town, out of season, I walked from the hotel down to the harbour at sunset, it was warm enough not to wear a coat, and I remember woodsmoke hung in the air, it was glorious.

I had clam chowder on the pier, and watched the post-season baseball game on TV as the Red Sox played the Yankees, and there was much excitement as the two bullpens and benches ended up having a huge fight. The whole restaurant stopped to watch the fight.

The pier at Rockport is called Beaskin Neck, because of an old legend. And why not? It also has a net store, painted red, and hung with floats and clled "motiff #1", as it is supposed to be the first hostorial building on the east coast. Or something.

I revisited many of the places I had before, this time in hig Fall, when the colours were perfect. I caught the train into Boston, twice, to walk round the city, something I would do with Jools only a couple of years ago.

I chose Rockport because it was at the end of the commuter rail line from Boston, so I went into the city two days to look around and take shots. Something, again, Jools and I did two years back.

Boston in the post season when the Red Sox were playing the Yankees was wild. I thought we in the UK with soccer had a monopoly on being passionate about sports. Boston went mad, there were cars covered on cars and trucks, and the bars were packed. Boston pulled back from 3-0 or something, to draw level 3-3, so went to a 7th game, and I took a taxi to Gloucester to watch the decider in a bar with actual beer. Red Sox lost and the night fell flat, but they got revenge the following season.

And on the last night, I went to the swankiest restaurant to have dinner. I'm not a keen seafood eater, but they told me fried clam was wonderful, so I had that. And sometime in the wee small hours I got very, very ill. The next morning, when I checked out the hotel owner said that out of season sometimes restaurants leave stock for a second night, and the clam was probably bad.

Something was bad, and I had 12 hours to kill before my flight. I ended up wandering around Salem, which was decked out like some kind of Disney-inspired halloween theme park. It wasn't too crowded that time, but when Jools and I went through two years back, you could not get near the town centre due to crowds. I'm sure the witches, or those assued of being witches would be pleased to know their suffering sells so much tat in the 21st cenury.

And that was that.

La I flew back after two weeks, on time.