Los Angeles (Sunday 7 August)

I took on the LA bus service today, with varying consequences. The first effort resulted in getting lost while looking for the Queen Mary. This grand old oceanliner from another era is now permanently anchored in Longbeach Harbour and is home to shops and restaurants. Neither of the two bus drivers I asked knew of it let-alone tell me how to get to it. How could something so big be so invisible to the bus drivers of this city?

While walking around lost I stumbled onto a typical American ‘diner’! You know – the ones where you can sit up at the counter and order pancakes and applepie or eggs over-easy (what ever that is), and endless cups of coffee while being waited on by some friendly young waitress! The coffee mug is constantly being topped up if you don’t stop them. ‘It’s bloody annoying when they do that’ says Steve next to me. ‘You get your milk and coffee just right and they wreck it by topping it up with black coffee’. It doesn’t stop him coming here every Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday. What was the food like? Pretty ordinary. Plenty of fried potato arrived with my mushroom and avocado omelette and the quality was of something I could have created myself. But this place was packed. The ‘diner’ seems to be an important part of the routine for locals.

Back on the buses and I head for the other end of LA. I end up in Hollywood, for no other reason than that is where the bus took me. It was the end of the line. I get off for a cup of coffee then retreat. Sorry, I get more of a buzz out of eating at a ‘diner’ then walking down Hollywood boulevard.

Health still not perfect. Ironically the side effects from the drugs are similar to the symptoms of my condition so I’m not sure how I’m to know when I’m cured!

Everywhere I go I try to look for the defining feature of the city I am in. For LA it is the smoggy backdrop and the unusually shaped palm trees that dominate the skyline. This may be a feature of other west-coast cities so I will continue my research.

Oh…another feature of my time on the buses. Now that I look back on it, I was the only white person on all of the buses I travelled on today. I’m not sure what that means!