Sweet. What did you think of San Fracisco? What did you think of the US in general? 5 tanks of gas? What the hell were you driving?

Fucking hell, I loved San Fran, but, what with Paul driving all those damn one-way streets and all, we didn't see much in that damn fog.

Bah. After ten hours it feels no different than Canada. Every once in a while you get jolted by offers to "Fire a Machine Gun!" or booklets at the post office requiring everyone between 18-25 to register, "but not for the draft, just in case," or friggin' Vegas itself, but that's how it is.

AHAHAHAHA, it was just a plain and simple Toyota Corolla, I think; the fuel consumption was amazing, though!

Hah @ one way streets and fog.
US felt like dirty Canada.
Replace asians with mexicans and blacks.

Didnt make it to Vegas :(

Dirty Canada - perhaps in the cities, and not all the cities at that: Seattle and Portland, maybe; San Fran, definitely not, it was spotless; Hollywood and LA in general felt like Richmond and Las Vegas was very tidy, of course, except those "call girl" ads floating around everywhere. Interestingly the infrastructure (minus the desert, somewhat reminiscent of Osooyos) really reminded me of Canada. We've absorbed too much American culture and branding to be distinct from it, I think.

Well, I'll bet you didn't drive for about twelve hours each day, either. ;)

At any rate, why does it seem to me you're saying that the switch from Asians to Latinos and Blacks is a bad thing? I felt kind of lonely without Chinese faces around, actually; all my friends here are Chinese, except a couple of people.

At any rate, it was great either way. ;) Like I told Paul, America is a great place for para-leftists like me to take a vay-cay, because there you don't feel the need to be so Canadian, all nice and polite, you can just be like everyone else. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." ;)

SF felt dirty, probably because of the difference in the age of buildings.. I spend my time in Vancouver and Richmond, and most of the houses here are relatively new.

I'm going to have to disagree with you about infrastructure. If I had to summarize US in one word it's going to be "highway". They sure do love their highways.

I drove more than 12 hours a day. Our road trip was 5 days, with the first and the last day spent on the road. 15 hours, 1,300kms, 3 tanks of gas. Family guy movie, Sin City and South Park. Good times :)

I didn't mean for my race comment to come off negatively. It was purely an observation. All of my friends are of asian descent :) It was a bit different seeing a major minority (haha) group.

Fuck Americans. No, let me rephrase that. Fuck impolite assholes. When I hold a door open for you, I expect a "thank you". When I say "thank you" when you pass me a drink, I expect a "you're welcome". Take some time out of your busy highway driving life and acknowledge people around you. At any rate, I'm not going to abandon all the years of "thank you" and "You're welcome" and "how's it going" training. It was hard, and I fully intend to use it everywhere I go.

I think the difference in our perceptions of SF stems from you looking at how things actually look, whereas I looked at a more general profile of the city, the way it looks as a whole; plus, we weren't there for too long.

Well, yes, "highway," definitely, but once you're in, say, downtown LA, with the malls and the chain stores and the franchises, it could be any place in the US or Canada, as far as I am concerned.

More than twelve hours a day? Are you nuts? Heh, man; no, awesome, awesome.

I take the race thing back, since I think I might have misunderstood you, because I absolutely agree. What is interesting, however, is that despite a high Cantonese-Chinese speaker density here in Vancouver, the language has no status; certain states in the US, however, are officially bilingual with languages such as French or Spanish. I loved the Spanish-American, branding, though, with restaurants like El Pollo Loco, heh.

Interesting; even in the middle of a Grand Canyon highway, at a one-pump gas station, the scary (inbred?) hick lady was really nice to Paul and I. Then again, we didn't really mingle with the populace much.

It wasn't the politesse that got to me, however; in fact, the people were mostly alright. What bothered me was the government, what with the meat-inspection upon entry to the country, the very, very interesting notices at the border crossing regarding some people entering the US now being given RFID tags (so their movements could be tracked, obviously), as well as the entire "Department of Homeland Security" bit. One of their initiatives, advertised in pamphlet form at the post office, is the Selective Service System, which is essentially a draft...but not a draft! Read this:

Almost all male U.S. citizens, and male aliens living in the U.S., who are 18 through 25, are required to register with Selective Service. It's important to know that even though he is registered, a man will not automatically be inducted into the military. In a crisis requiring a draft, men would be called in sequence determined by random lottery number and year of birth. Then, they would be examined for mental, physical and moral fitness by the military before being deferred or exempted from military service or inducted into the Armed Forces.

In other words, it was impossible for me to be on US ground without feeling the politics surging throughout the nation; I guess that's why I simultaneously love American culture and fear and loathe the way the nation is being run. The trip was an amazing experience, though, any way you look at it.