'Just naturally blabby I guess'

Our third and final enormous train journey is by far the biggest - all the way from Chicago to Los Angeles, a 43-hour epic. It sounds like a lot but actually, once you settle into a routine, it's really very enjoyable, and the first 24 hours have flown by. Before getting on we had visions of very quickly becoming sleep-deprived hippies, welcoming new arrivals with a flower necklace and a 'hey man, welcome to the party train!', but sadly, although we are a little short of sleep, that has yet to materialise.

The Union Pacific railroad cuts a path right through the heart of Big Sky country. After leaving Illinois, crossing the Mississippi in Iowa, dropping down through Missouri and passing overnight through Kansas (although we were still just about in Dorothy's state when we woke up, ruining the moment Scarlett had been planning for weeks when she prematurely declared, upon waking, 'I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!'), the train heads south and west through Colorado, New Mexico, where we currently are, Arizona and ultimately California before reaching the coast.

It seems a shame that more Americans don't get out of their cars and use Amtrak, because this train is remarkably comfortable. There's a big-windowed observation lounge, equipped with cushioned recliners, and a surprisingly reasonable dining car, which is staffed by a self-consciously eccentric attendant who is clearly lobbying for his own sitcom, and is a good place to meet fellow travellers. At breakfast this morning we sat opposite a Hispanic mother and child; at one point she asked us to look after her young daughter while she popped back to her compartment. The girl started asking us questions in Spanish,

but since the only Spanish I know consists of 'esto es un robo' ('this is a robbery'), 'vamos Rafa', and 'por favor, mantengese alejado de las puertas' ('please mind the doors'), I thought it best not to say anything at all, but to just smile apologetically, which was a bit of a shame.

The scenery here is, to be sure, just how I romantically imagined it to be, inhospitable and inviting at the same time. Panoramic vistas of unremitting, unforgettable emptiness, just green shrubs and rocky red hills, sweep gently in all directions to the distant snowcapped peaks of what, if my geography serves me, are the Sangre di Cristo mountains. Yep, this is the West alright, and I'm fully expecting to see Butch and Sundance come riding over the crest of every hill. There's something slightly odd about seeing in real life places that are so familiar because of television and movies; we thought that in New York as well.

I find the unchanging nature of this desolate, almost Martian landscape curiously comforting. The hauntingly beautiful scene I'm looking at now is, minus the occasional dotted farmhouses and trackside telegraph poles, more or less exactly what the first European explorers to venture this far into the interior would have seen centuries ago, and what the local Indians would have seen for millennia prior to that. I have the same feeling when I look at old pictures of Guernsey, like Renoir's 19th-century painting of Moulin Huet, in which the beach appears to be virtually the same as it is today. I dunno, I guess the knowledge that human life may be ephemeral, but the rocks re

main constant just reassures me somehow.

New Mexico, of course, remains to this day very much Indian country, the site of the largest reservations. When you consider that, if it were possible to compile a true human history of the Americas, European settlement would constitute only the final chapter of a longer anthology of a much more ancient, but unfortunately pre-literate, people, the fact they are now mostly squashed into artificially created reservations is just desperately sad. I could go on and on about this, but I'll spare you for now; I'm conscious of the fact that I'm beginning to sound like Alice Cooper in Wayne's World - 'Milwaukee has had its fair share of visitors, the Native Americans have been visiting here for thousands of years, only they called it 'Milli Waw Kae'.....'does this guy know how to party or what!?'

Above all, what this rail journey is underlining for me is how incomprehensibly vast this country is. It really is just endless. Consequently it seems faintly absurd that everybody here falls theoretically under the jurisdiction of one man in remote Washington DC.

We've just pulled into Albuquerque, which is not something I thought I'd ever be able to say. So on we go, only another 19 hours left before we reach la-la land. I've just been reading an article about how there is a growing campaign to partition America's largest state, creating 'Jefferson' on the coastal strip between LA and San Francisco, and leaving the interior to stay as 'California'. I shall endeavour to investigate.

- Adam