Day Four – Friday 18^th September

Today I was off to see Steve – a British guy I know who has been living in the States for some years and who had very kindly invited me to go and stay at his home for a few days. The bus to Harrisburg was not due to leave until 1pm, so in the morning I decided to go for a quick look round Central Park. I checked out of the Hostel and put my bags into the storage room before getting the subway to Columbus Circle, which lies on the Southwest corner of the park. Loads of horses and carriages lined the streets around the park, most of the horses seemed a bit fed up. I wandered into the park and quickly found out how easy it is to lose your sense of direction in there. In stark contrast to the grid system of the streets, the paths in the park wind around in a very haphazard manner. It was quite a good retreat from the city though, there were places where you couldn’t see any buildings or hear much traffic. Most of New York’s homeless population seemed to live in the park – but I was at no point hassled for money. I wandered about for a while, and then headed back to the youth hostel where I picked up my bags.

Bus Ride

The bus ride was not the most fun part of my trip. It was okay at first because I had spent the last few days walking miles and it was good to be able to sit down and not think about anything for a while. The bus trip was about six hours as it was not a direct route. We went through Newark, Mount Laurel, Philadelphia, and King of Prussia. The New Jersey part of the bus ride was good because I found quite a fun talk radio station called New Jersey 101.5. People would phone in to discuss issues of the day such as a stupid new law in NJ that meant that kids under 19 were not allowed to drive after a certain time in the evening and not allowed to have more than one friend in the car. This was stupid, as the hosts pointed out, because it meant there would be more cars driven by young people on the road than before! They also pointed out that while there are more accidents involving young people than older people, when you take into account miles driven, young people actually turn out safer than older people – an argument I had never thought of before, so I remembered it for future discussions with people about safe driving. They also talked about the Bill Clinton thing and whether or not the video should be released, but soon they were out of range and I couldn’t find a decent radio station for the rest of the journey. In Philadelphia they made us change buses which was a complete pain – and it was at that point that I wished I had taken the train. The train would have been a lot more comfortable and a lot less cramped, and only a bit more money.

Steve’s House

I arrived at Harrisburg bus station at about 6.15pm. I wasn’t sure if I would recognise Steve as I hadn’t seen him since I was a kid, but when I got off the bus and saw him waiting by the car I instantly knew it was him and, luckily, he recognised me. It was a twenty minute drive back to his house where I met Steve’s kids, drank some beer in his basement bar, ate his T-bone steak (it was good to have some proper food after three days on sandwiches and burgers) and met his wife Denise, who was great fun and had an exceptionally contagious laugh! I also met Steve’s neighbours Ken and Donna who just wandered over into the bar through the unlocked French window. I was particularly taken with the suburban American lifestyle – the house was huge (Steve said it was only a small house by American standards), they had a large plot of land with a big climbing frame thing for the kids, and the only fence was a wire one buried under ground that electrocuted the dog if it strayed too far from the house. All the neighbours just hung out together and wandered into each other’s houses and drank each other’s beer and ate from each other’s barbecues and everyone was loud and American and called each other "buddy" and it didn’t feel over the top or "too" American. British people who say they don’t like Americans obviously haven’t met very many because all the people I met were just really nice, friendly, normal people. I was glad to get away from the hustle bustle of New York City and actually see what real America was like.

Day Five – Saturday 19^th September

We slept late, had some breakfast, and I went out with Steve to the place where he worked. He had to move some trucks around ready for loading. On the way back we stopped at a bar, but I had forgotten my ID so, as I’m 21 and you have to be 21 to drink in most of the US, we went back home. On the way we dropped into a huge store called "Beer City" from where Steve bought some crates of beer and I bought some cigars for my dad. A huge shop like this dedicated entirely to beer and cigars would be unthinkable in the UK, but here it was just the normal way of things. I got my ID and we went back out to a closer bar called "Your Place." We drank a few beers and shot some pool at which Steve totally thrashed me. My excuse was that the balls and the table are funny in America. In reality I can’t play pool in England either but it was fun anyway. The bar, just like most other things, looked and felt exactly as I expected it would - except that the beer did not taste at all weak and horrible as I had been told it would. The beer was very nice.

Gilligan’s

In the evening we went out to a restaurant called Gilligan’s. First we went over to Skip and Teresa’s house and drank some of his beer and played some more pool in the bar in his basement - it seems everyone has a bar in their basement. Then we all drove out to the restaurant and I had a huge plate of delicious spicy chicken wings followed by something tasty with steak and bacon and cheese and things in it. I remember we all sat in the restaurant and chatted for ages afterwards and I remember it being a lot of fun – but I must have had too much beer or something because I don’t remember any of the details. After that we drove home (I do remember singing loudly in the car to a Phil Collins song on the radio which is very odd because I don't even like Phil Collins). I went to bed.

Day Six – Sunday 20^th September

I got up at 11am and went with Steve and the kids and we went to City Island, which is a little leisure park on an island in the middle of the river. We went for ice creams and I chose peanut butter fudge flavour because you can’t get that flavour back home and it was absolutely delicious – except that there was far too much of it as I went for adult size double cone size (not kiddy size with only two huge scoops) and by the time we finished both Steve and I were sick of ice cream. Next we went to the arcade and I played Adams Family pinball and won lots of little red tickets which were then used to buy sweets & little plastic lizards for the kids. It was all terribly laid back and relaxing. On the way home we went shopping for the barbecue Steve was planning that night. Walking round the supermarket the little girl, Ashley, insisted on holding my hand which was awfully cute, especially since I’d only met her a day ago! We got a whole trolley- (or cart-) load full of food and drove home with it. After that we went down and drank some beer in the basement bar to have a nice rest before the barbecue.

Before long Denise’s 24 year old brother Matt turned up. He had been planning to show me how Americans partied by taking me out with a bunch of his friends to a blues bar and onto a night club – but unfortunately he had recently cracked some vertebrae whilst falling off of a mountain bike. "We were gonna get you so wrecked, man," he said. Perhaps I had a lucky escape after all!

Dinner Al Fresco

Later the food was sizzling on the barbecue and the rest of the guests had arrived. Ken and Donna were there, and Skip and Teresa, and soon we were all munching on burgers and corn and shrimp/prawns and it was a veritable feast. I mentioned something about how good the food was in America, but on the other hand how you just couldn’t get things like pasties and steak pies and sausage rolls. Steve had to explain how the British have some kind of obsession with wrapping their meat in pastry – something Americans found somewhat bemusing. Pastry is for making apple pie – you can’t put steak and kidneys in it!

Steve had to drive to Philadelphia (or Filthy-delphia as Ken called it) at midnight, so he went to bed at six. After the guests went home I watched some TV with Denise. I ended up staying up late to watch Back to the Future. I saw Steve again just before he headed off to Philly – I briefly considered going with him for the ride but decided against it as the next morning I was due to go back to New York. I’d got to really like it here – it was so relaxing I wasn’t particularly over the moon at the prospect of getting back to hectic New York. But I figured I would enjoy it once I got there – and there were still a few things I wanted to see.

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This page was last updated on October 20, 1998