Back in Blighty

Touched down at 6.45am this morning - haven't slept since what must have been 1.30pm yesterday British time, one brief nap in the car coming back aside. It's been a good, enjoyable holiday, although the usual sadness associated with holidays ending hasn't been so pronounced this time. There are probably two reasons for this - one is that while the holiday was great fun, I'm still not a massive fan of the US. The people we encountered weren't exactly evil or anything like that - in fact, I'd go as far as to say they're not much worse than we Brits, but considering my low opinion of my own countrymen, that's hardly a recommendation. The stench of uber-capitalism was ever-present during our stay - I didn't get too mad at all the SUV ads, but that's because the UK is following in the US's footsteps in that regard.

There was only one moment where the conservatism of the places we visited was brought home to me - I deliberately took my Queen t-shirt, and wore it on the last day of our tour in Utah, and one of the Americans on the tour came up to me and said she admired my "bravery" for wearing the t-shirt in St George, a Mormon town/city we stopped in for lunch en route back to Vegas. Makes me laugh in a way, but in another it did intimidate me a little. Are conservative bible-bashing Yanks that insecure about themselves? Anyway, as we ended up in San Francisco by the end of the day it was a moot point.

San Francisco was great - its West Coast pace is similar to Vancouver's, and it was hard not to draw comparisons between the two. I ended up realising that despite its surface unity, the United States is a disparate collection of states whose inhabitants have very different opinions on life - even within states (like anywhere else) it's hard to draw firm conclusions about people, as evidenced by our bus tour guide in San Francisco making a point that his city didn't vote for Arnie as governor! These things should be self-evident, but sometimes you need to experience them directly for yourself to appreciate them.

Pluses of my American experience other than the obvious scenic spectacle was the environmental aspect. Americans seem reasonably keen to recycle - at least outside of Vegas! - and hybrid SUVs are now emerging. Minuses? On the last day I spied an article on the front cover of the San Francisco Chronicle which suggests the US is increasingly looking to its own continent to satisfy its thirst for oil (although the tone of the piece suggested the paper wasn't happy with the American need for so much oil) - namely a mention of the Canadian shale oil deposits in Alberta.

Now we can look forward to Canada again - that's the second reason why the sadness isn't so pronounced; our next holiday is only three months away! Let's hope the wallet holds out...