A journey is not a series of highlights. And after Las Vegas, you need to cool down first. From Mrs Paris's beautiful pool and the rooftop bar, the chronicler had to walk for kilometres through all the glitz and glamour towards the airport and the bus terminal. Giant casinos, huge hotels, fountains and rushing waterfalls, huge electronic billboards that really scare you with their flashes of white. Now he has seen it in the flesh, even from the saddle of a racing bike. Hook on.
City police; one picture, that's all there was to it. The bus is about to leave
Somehow incomprehensible, this art world in the middle of the desert. It's also incomprehensible how you can choose this as your retirement home, like the elderly couple who initially sat next to him in Able&Baker. For example, you can't even go outside the city and take a walk in the woods. There isn't one!
The chronicler sits in the Greyhound between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The current driver is a hit. Already grey-haired, a serious figure with Asian roots, he raps the announcements about the rules, the stops and other events into the microphone. The chronicler can't help it and has to clap.
Outside it is cloudy and boringly flat. Orchards to the left, orchards to the right, the central reservation of the interstate a sea of pink, red and white oleander bushes. Between cities like this, the need for transport is high and the bus is correspondingly full. In LA, the chronicler barely escaped travelling death by breaking the rules. It was his tenth Greyhound tour, but the staff were keen to get on his back again. "The bike has to be in a box!" Even though he had come here as a transfer rider with the film economy packaging. The box variant would be rubbish anyway. There is far too little storage space in these Prevost buses for today's suitcase sizes. A racing bike in a box would take up half a compartment. "I know you now," said the man in charge. "Next time you're not coming with me!"
This is where the chronicler gets a bit cheeky. Whoever is blocking other bus manufacturers in the USA from getting a foot in the door here is stupid. Every European overland vehicle has storage heights that the wheel could stand in and this split windscreen has not been available in Europe since the 1980s.
What the chronicler failed to mention the whole journey: From New York to here, there is also a lot of South America in the country. All signs, from the toilet to the supermarket or the bus, are bilingual, in English and Spanish. And the people are omnipresent. As a poor part of the population, they sit on the bus with the chronicler in large numbers, often without any knowledge of English. They are simply there and make up a large part of the population, especially here in the south. Sitting next to him is Gabino, who is less than forty years old and comes from Mexico. He speaks perfect American and is just starting a removal company with a relative using a lorry. He is missing two teeth at the front for a symmetrical smile. Given his income, it will probably stay that way. He is on his way to a niece's graduation party. Gabino is not interested in politics, but he doesn't complain either. His answer is: 0-0-100. He doesn't want a photo of himself.
Even if it's boring at the moment, on Palo Alto and Google Plex, the chronicler is happy and is thinking about getting on his bike today to have one more day in the Valley of Fast Thinkers. First a coffee and something sweet in Tracy and see what happens.
It's evening now. He stayed in Tracy! The idea was good, but the wind was the kind from the bellows that would have been enough for mouth-to-mouth breathing. So he decided to stay, looking for coffee and cake and a hairdresser. The city makes a homely impression, clean, beautiful green spaces, a kind of old cinema as an art centre. In general, this idea of arriving in large cities and starting out within a day's journey of them presents him with a string of pearls of generally unknown but often very charming small towns.
The hairdresser's shop right at the beginning was actually closed, but the boss was in the shop with her daughters, asked him all the questions and sent him round the corner to a barber. Her name was Samantha, she revealed 0-0-100 without hesitation and didn't want a photo, although it would certainly have enriched the photo collection. She sent her two young daughters to a public school. When the chronicler expresses his dislike of this class segregation, she provides the reason. Religion is not taught at the municipal schools, but this is a matter of concern to her. A modern young woman!
He has to wait for the barber. Not for excellent little cakes from a small Asian baker, with a disarming smile and a very precisely braided thick, black and grey mottled plait. Together with an Americano, "only half water please", a delight!
Carlos lays his hands on the chronicler's head with care and skill. After all, he doesn't want to turn up as a scarecrow on Mr Google tomorrow. Of course, Barber also has to be asked and delivers what would otherwise be 0-0-100. He was born in the States, is of Mexican origin and is twenty-three years old. He likes Mesut Özil and Toni Kroos and is interested in cultural similarities. Sure, I'd love a photo and should send it to him, please.
Carlos knows what he's doing
Between Los Angeles - where he just changed trains - and San Francisco - where he doesn't want to go - lies the headquarters of Google. For the chronicler, it epitomises the recent enormous upheaval of the everyday world and the tool that makes this kind of fragmentary exploration of the world possible at all. That's why he's going to wash up again tonight to be ready for the visit. Whatever they are prepared to show him there or whether they let him in at all.
Then it will soon be good!
Your reporter, live from Tracy.
Toilet at Mrs Paris H. and at the Quality Inn
PS: This kind of travelling has plenty of them: big differences
PSS: There's football on the telly at the moment. Germany Ukraine, broadcast by the pro-Trump channel Fox, English commentary, funny pronunciation of the names.
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