Minneapolis, 24/8-2004

Last letter...

 

    Well, end of the line… I am sitting back in Minneapolis, waiting for my flight home after tying up all the loose ends that remained.

 

    The last leg of the journey took me through a lot of places where I’ve been visiting earlier, but traveling with 3 other guys it was nevertheless a very different experience. We went deeper into the Grand Canyon, got more drunk in Las Vegas (in places of more questionable ethics) and went surfing in San Diego. It was in other words a guy’s trip, and it was a good way to end the traveling. However, as it turned out after I dropped my friends off at the airport I’d have to drive just a little bit further before I could end the road trip.

 

    As it turned out I didn’t have the paperwork needed to sell the car in San Francisco. Something apparently went wrong when the department of motor vehicles over here found that the address on my registration for the car didn’t match the address on my driver’s license. Now, my driver’s license is Danish, and it doesn’t have an address at all but this apparently didn’t stop some pencil pusher at the office to hold back the registration. “So what am I supposed to do?” I inquired in my most pleasant and ingratiating tone of voice. “Well, come to Minneapolis and pick it up”, quoth the bastard…

 

    Now it is some 2068 miles from San Francisco to Minneapolis but ok, sure, I have nothing better to do…So, 37 hours of more coffee than the human body is designed to process, and more country music than the human psyche is equipped to withstand I was back in Minneapolis.

 

    I’ve all but sold the car now (gonna drop it off at the dealer’s before going to the airport tomorrow), and so I just have time to drink the leftover beers and write this letter before turning in for one more night in the US.

 

    Summing up the trip, it has taken me about 3½ months to travel through 4 time zones and 45 states (I missed 5). The trip counter on my car totaled at 23461 miles or 37748 kilometers, a mere 2327 kilometers shy of the circumference of Earth at the equator. In the process of the trip I have learned a couple of things about the States. Being a giving person I’d like to share some of them…

 

    And finally:

 

    And that as they say, was that. I’ll be home on the morning of the 26th so I’ll just say that the website has been updated with the latest pictures, and I’ll see most of you soon in Denmark and the rest of you (hopefully) some time in the future.

 

    Take care,

 

Martin