Last Friday I pushed the frontiers of what I know of America by hiring a UHaul van to go and pick up my boxes, my bicycle and canoe, which had just cleared customs. For those of you who don't know it, UHaul is the McDonalds of the moving business in America; they are on every street corner, they're dirt cheap and not too good for your health (if you have to deal with their call centre, or get hit by one of their trucks).So I left the island for the first time: drove up Broadway and over the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey. The bridge is the first one to span the Hudson river (downstream its all tunnels) and its stunning: a bit like the Golden Gate, all huge curving pipes so high it gives an expansive view across the breadthy river. I wasn't brave enough to grab the Kodak moment. On the other side, I experienced something which is a guaranteed groan-enducer in New York: the infamous New Jersey Turnpike, a toll road where you have to pay according to how long you drive down it. And on the other side of that, after much dreary suburbia, lay Newark City and a group of paunchy, middle-aged men armed to the teeth, behind the kind of metal detectors the people in Heathrow only dream of. Yes, this was the US Customs, who with that amount of firepower on their hips are surely doing a good job of protecting America's frontier.
They stamped my documents, I collected my stuff and my eight square metres have become a lot ... cosier.
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