Bend, Oregon

Wednesday 22 July

The group are pretty much in agreement that Americans are a great bunch of people. After just a couple of days, I'm on their side, they just need to get their voting and representation right. Northern California must be on the redneck side, Obama doesn’t go down all that well.

We had breakfast in a Eureka diner, pancakes, bacon and eggs, bottomless coffee, complete with a couple of sherriffs deputies, cruiser parked outside.

Roadside treats all the way

The local rag had a great cartoon, Obama on a ladder up the side of a big tank marked "public services" in his hands, hanging over the tank, wringing the neck of a chook marked "private enterprise."

The cost of local and state services is a hot issue in the letters to the editor columns, just like home, rates are too high, and unsustainable. Nobody's worked out johnnyreb's theory of what causes recessions - simply, it’s when the costs of services get too expensive for the target market to afford. All Arnie needs to do to fix California's cot-case budget is to halve state salaries,

but pigs might fly.

More laughs from the local rag. An off duty police officer was following a ute home, driven erratically by a group of youths. When he accosted them the driver engaged in some wrestling, putting the cop to the ground, who pulled his gun and shot him dead. The rest of the youths and their father are claiming there was nothing to identify the off-duty cop as bona fide

and...

a black university professor returning home from a trip overseas, couldn’t find the key to his house, so he enlisted the help of his black taxi driver to try and prise the door open. A passing white woman, seeing 2 blacks outside the door with a duffle bag, phoned the cops, resulting in the professor and the taxi-man being cuffed and arrested, nobody believing the likely story.

Only in America, but it could happen at home.

Ribbon of  road north of Eureka

The bar outside could be anywhere in NZ. Again we all agree on the driving standards far exceeding NZ's. Americans are spoiled for roads. While humming along a 4-6 lane highway in mid summer I passed, perhaps 4 other cars per km. Most of the roads are double yellow lined, meaning you aren't allowed to pass. Every km or so there is a "turn-out" bay for pulling off

but mostly the wagon-train syndrome applies, people are happy to stay in line, well apart. Others in the group have picked up on the religious aspect perhaps contributing to responsible behaviour, but I guess the other reason people behave is the cops have guns.

I think it’s great here, but I dunno about arming kiwis. It’s a bit like the notion of us having a kiwi president - who would you elect?

Passed by Crater Lake Natl Park, where we purchased our Natl Parks annual pass. $80 US gets us into any natl park.

Bend's an ex timber town, mostly into recreational service now, pop 81,000.

Crater Lake, Oregon

The bloke i asked directions of when i got stuffed up on interstate-5

said, on his way out the door of the general store with a dozen beer under his arm, 'Hey, you're a kiwi.

'How you know dat i respond?

Oh, I work with a kiwi gang up in the forest, George Wynyard, you know him?

Yeah, yeah. nah, yeah, I respond, and international relations get another boost!

Gotta go

tomorrow's another day