Planes, bikes and automobiles

Our road trip was coming to an end. We were on the final leg of Route 66 heading to Santa Monica. But to get to that seaside resort, we had to drive through the great, sprawling city of Los Angeles. This section of road swiftly became my most hated road of all time. It is well known that residents of LA have an almost physical aversion to walking which means that the car is king. I'm not arguing about the need for a car; the sheer size of the city underlines the automobile necessity. What I am going to moan about is the traffic.

Where do all the cars come from? Where are all the people going in their cars? And my most pertinent question: how do LA locals deal with this madness on a daily basis? As we drove from our hotel towards the coast, we got engulfed in the longest, widest mass of cars I've ever seen. Six lanes wide on either side of the carriageway and both moving at a crawl. I cannot recall the name of the road due to the fact that all these arteries cutting through LA are pretty much identical to the unaccustomed eye. All huge, beige coloured ribbons of concrete with repeated signs and flooded with the same insane volume of vehicles.

It took so long to get anywhere that you had to give yourself a good few hours head start to get to where you wanted to be at a certain time. We left our hotel with the plan to get to Santa Monica and we arrived AN HOUR AND A HALF LATER. This was a 19 MILE journey. Our destination was in the SAME city. We were driving a CAR. How is this possible?

Anyway, moving on (breathe), we reached the Pacific Ocean. And it was beautiful. My mantra is always 'Life is better by the sea' and it was certainly true on that day. I watched the blue sea lap against the pale, golden sand and my traffic stresses eased. Unlike the hoards of sun seekers at a British seaside when the sun shines, the California sands stretched on for miles with only a handful of people enjoying the scene. The numbers swelled as we headed towards the more commercial areas such as the world famous Santa Monica pier.

It was on this pier that our Route 66 journey reached its end. The official end of the Mother Road is the end of the pier. As driving down the pedestrianised pier is frowned upon, we left the car in the car park (not the freeway, the real car park) and walked to our final destination. In some ways it was a bit of an anticlimax, but it definitely felt good to get closure. We might not have started the road in Chicago, but we finished it in the right way. The romance surrounding the significance of this end of the road was everywhere. Memorabilia boards, souvenir shops and signposts EVERYWHERE! But I suppose that was what we had come for. We had driven off into the sunset as far as we could get without sinking the car.

Now all we had to do was turn around and head back the way we came. From the edge of the pier we hired bicycles to help us make the most of the short time we had by the coast. We spent a few hours cycling down and up the beach cycle path, past lots of beach communities and stopping for a little while in Venice Beach. It was as colourful, relaxed and oddball as I'd imagined. Passing the range of tie-dyed artists, book sellers, tattoo studios, jugglers, dancing violinists, fast-food stands and the magnificent roller-blading, electric-guitar playing rasta-man, I wondered how anyone got anything done. But I guess it's a different way of life there. I have a feeling I may never be cool enough to pull off that lifestyle, but for a few hours, cycling along that beautifully eclectic community on the beach, with the sun shining on me, I became part of that rich tapestry of life.

Later that day, I had to make another journey. This one would be a little longer (even taking into account the traffic-extended car journey time). I was to continue my journey by plane to head across the Pacific to Fiji and then to New Zealand. Inside my head and my heart was a storm of emotions. I had been looking forward to this leg of the journey since I had the tiniest germination of an idea for these travels. I had spent my whole life anticipating my visit to New Zealand and so I was incredibly excited. But I also felt a sadness gnawing in the pit of my stomach. I had spent the past 15 days experiencing new places across America with my Dad and my brother, who I hadn't seen for the previous two months. Before I met up with them I had gotten used to travelling independently. Yet since our reunion, despite their ongoing, small irritations, I had grown used to having them around. Now I was to strike out on my own again, heading to far away, exotic lands without seeing close family for another two months. It was like the initial separation all over again.

My stomach began to do backflips as we drove to the airport (a situation that wasn't helped by the fact that despite leaving extra early, the evil LA traffic still almost hindered my check-in timing) for me to start this next part of my journey. I kept the goodbyes brief at the passenger drop off point; if the next few months were to go anywhere near as quickly as the past few, I'd be back having a cup of tea in England in the blink of an eye.

And in the meantime, there was a hell of a lot more world to see. New Zealand has a long way to go to live up to my expectations. Only one way to find out if they do. Hoist that backpack up and in the words of Whitesnake: Here I go again on my own...