Up at 6. Dad drives me and Mother to Barnet, arriving there at 8.10.
I go to Victoria station and walk to BOAC air terminal. Check in baggage, retaining cameras and briefcase for the cabin.
Bus to heathrow, buy duty-free bottle of gin for Ulla Asgaard, board plane.
A technical fault, so we take of 50 mins late, at 12.20.
Arrive at 2.20 Boston time after a 7 hour flight, made short by the good company of an American. The plane is only 1/3 full.
American immigration and customs offices are very friendly.
Change $20 USD and bus to the rapid-transit station where luckily an Anglophile helps me negotiate the underground system, ($0,20 USD taken for for anywhere), including a shatteringly noisy second stage from Government Centre on an ancient underground street-car system to Arlington.
My guide shows me the Greyhound station nearby.
I buy a ticket to Houston, (which I paid for at Cooks on Wednesday) and find I have only 10 minutes to wait.
Sit beside very simple American woman who is fed up at waiting 2 hours for the bus. (Her first Greyhound too.) Bus leaves at 4.
Journey to New York, through Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York State, passes through beautiful wooded hilly country, sunny and green (colours spoilt by tinted glass of coach windows).
Forests for miles, no building development.
Arrive at 8.30, driving slowly through miles of ghetto, very sordid. At the bus station – huge, on three floors, I enquire about further journey, have a horrible Hamburger in a crowded bar. Surly, apathetical aggresive people. Then sit nearly three hours with my heavy luggage in a waiting room.
Almost 50% of the people seem drunken, and many can hardly stand up. A homosexual tries to pick me up.
Finally, at 11.30, with a Chinese or Japanese, I board the Los Angeles bus, and sitting on the upper deck I sleep quite well, after my long day with 5 extra hours.
