Old Timer Garage

One year ago, pretty much to the day, I was taking off towards the US for the very first time in my life. I was going to make reality a dream that I had had for over 10 years: a road trip in the southwest of the US. And at that time, I was far from thinking that I would go back there 3 times within the next 12 months.

 

The idea was simple: starting from south Arizona where my brother lives, spend a few days in this area, the time for us to get over the jetlag and quickly cross the border to see how Mexico is, then take the car for a two week trip. Northbound first towards Tucson, Phoenix, Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Page, Lake Powell, Hurricane, Las Vegas, Death Valley, Los Angeles and San Diego.

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The points of interest for me were the big empty spaces of the southwest of the US, old cars and in third position the major cities of this part of the country.

Ready to go? Let’s do it then…

Oh just a detail I forgot to mention: my brother has been living in Arizona for a few years which is going to help us greatly as he will come with us in this trip and he has got a car.

I am also going to try and give an idea of how much this trip cost us but to give you a rough idea, we did a trip of more or less 3500 miles through four states et all together it cost us somewhere between 1800 and 2000 dollars per person for the two and a half weeks.

One last detail that can help understand the whole trip, I am French but I have been living in the UK for the past six and a half years so this trip will start and end in the UK.

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So the plan is to arrive in Tucson Arizona since my brother lives at about one hour driving from there and this will be the start of our trip. We will take off again at the end from Los Angeles.

We have been lucky enough to find relatively cheap flights from the UK. Thanks to the new airlines that offer low cost transatlantic flights, we got a return ticket London – Los Angeles for around £500. To this we had to add a single flight Los Angeles – Tucson for around £60 per person.

Since the basis are laid, let’s get started shall we?

It is 3 pm on the Wednesday of the beginning of October and I am leaving the office. I have been arriving every day at 6 am to be sure that I would be able to leave early today. I ride my bike as fast as I can to cover the 3 miles between the office and home. I know the plan by heart, I have been waiting for this moment for the past 3 months. The luggage is ready as well as my wife. I leave the bike in the garage, close the house and we head towards the bus stop.

 

After a few minutes wait, the bus arrives and we get on for a three hours ride to London. A cousin of mine lives there and she is coming with us to the US so we are going to spend the night at hers tonight to be closer to the airport tomorrow morning.

The trip goes without any problem and even without any congestion which is pretty exceptional in the UK and at 10 pm we ring at her door. She is as excited as we are and we spend the rest of the evening discussing the trip that awaits us in the morning while sharing a box of sushis.

There is no rush to go to bed anyway since tomorrow we will be in a plane for 12 hours. Plus, if we go to bed late today, it will give us a head start on the jetlag tomorrow.

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In the morning, it is pouring down with rain. Nothing unusual for the UK but I was hoping for a cloudless sky to be able to have a nice view from the aircraft. I admit it was a big gamble but considering our flight is going to go over Scotland, Iceland, Greenland, a good part of Canada and the west of the US, I was hoping to have a good look at all that… It will be for next time.

After a quick breakfast, the three of us head for Gatwick airport. We have more than 5 hours ahead of us so we are not rushing through the London tube and train networks until we get to the terminal.

When we get there, we check-in our luggage and go through security checks. The most difficult part of the trip starts now: have you ever tried to push two women through an airport duty free zone? It is far from easy. And they don’t make it easy for you. There is even a plush beach taller than my wife in there!

Its price tag helps me a lot in getting things moving again towards the exit of the duty free zone and we are now ready to go and eat something before boarding. (Something worth knowing when you travel with low-cost airlines is that you have to pay for everything, even your meals).

The restaurant where we sit down overlooks the taxiways so I take advantage of this to film the aircraft going to line up to take off.

And at last, it is time to board. We queue with the rest of the passengers to get in the brand new Dreamliner aircraft. I am a frequent flyer but I have never flown one of those so I am very excited about this.

The three of us settle pretty quuickly in our seats, the girls prepare their headphones and check the movies that are available on the in flight entertainment system and on my side, I play with the window dimmer system and film what is going on outside our plane to include it later in my videos.

Just a few more minutes and the push back begins, the engines start and we are off to queue for take-off.

After a 35 second run down the runway, we are finally airborne above the London suburbs. A quick ascent through the few clouds and we are on our way to the north pole before descending back down over northern America.

We won’t see much of all this unfortunately apart from a few gap in the clouds over Greenland, the sky will only clear up when we arrive over California.

A little more filming and a nap later, we are already flying over California. I am struggling to believe that after all those years, I am finally here. I spend all my time looking through the window, the deserts, a mountain on fire and the Pacific ocean…

We land at Los Angeles airport and we are off to pick up our luggage.

This is something I wasn’t aware off before organizing this trip but for any travel to the US, every passenger has to pick up their luggage at the first airport they land at, then they can clear immigration and finally if they have a connecting flight, they can check their luggage in again to their next destination.

So here we are after picking up our luggage, queuing to clear immigration. The first level of control is with a machine. When our turn comes, the three of us go to the first available machine, scan our fingerprints and get a picture taken. My wife take advantage of me having my picture taken by the machine to jump up and down behind me and it is official, I have her eye over my shoulder on my immigration picture.

After that, there is another queue to clear immigration with a border officer this time. When we are called to the desk, the officer takes our passport and ask us where we are going. I let him know that we are headed to Nogales and he answers “what are you going to do there? With a facial expression as if it was hard to understand why we would want to go there. I had to explain him that my brother lives and works there and that we are going to visit him and also what my brother does for a living there and give him my brother’s phone number before he finally puts the stamps on our passports and let us go.

There is just one last control to clear and we will be on our way to our connecting flight.

This time it is our luggage that is being controlled. We have to present the documents we have filled in during the flight before landing and the shortest conversation I have ever had follows: “papers… bye” without even making eye contact.

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I had booked our connecting flight to Tucson with a 3 hour connection in LAX to make sure that we would have plenty of time to clear all the controls and it will have taken us 2 hours and 45 minutes to go through all that and get to the next terminal.

Finally, we board our last flight of the day and the small CRJ1000 gets on its way to Tucson. It is pitch black outside now and the traffic of planes coming in to land and taking off is impressive.

This aircraft takes off very quickly and after a left turn over the Pacific ocean, we are on our way to Tucson. It is a short 90 minute flight in which I will just have time to try and fail to connect to the wifi network of the plane to send a picture to the family before we land at Tucson airport. I haven’t had any sleep since this morning and I am starting to feel tired now that the daylight is gone.

Just a few minutes later, we meet again with my brother who is waiting for us at the exit of the airport and we get in his car this time direction Nogales.

I fell asleep without even noticing in the car and only woke up almost when we arrived at his place. It was a short nap but it re-energized me for the rest of the evening. The rest of the evening was short anyway, just the time to eat a couple of quesadillas and we are all heading to bed.

The plan for tomorrow is for me to get up at the same time as my brother and his girlfriend to go with them to the Mexican border. They will then take a taxi after having crossed the border and I will drive back home with his car so that we can drive around all day and visit the area while we wait for them to come back from work.

Tomorrow the real holidays start. here: 2- Discovering southern Arizona

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