Salt Lake City & Monster Tour To LA

The journey to Salt Lake City runs smoothly. A few more times up to over 2500 metres, down into valleys. A cowboy mountain pasture brings a longer stop. When I arrive in Salt Lake City, I quickly find the house of my new host Julie.

My car insurance is good. I want to pickle Pete Cruiser. Driving a black car across a white salt desert would be something. After 50 miles along the Salt Lake, I give up. The desert is too far away to be conquered in an afternoon. What remains is the knowledge that the world speed record was set not far away. There is a good wind on the way back. But there’s not a single access to the Salt Lake for 50 miles. I drive back annoyed, do the shopping and cook the two girls something.

We go into town. Michael Franti from Spearhead is playing for free in the park. He’s mutated from an Aids rapper into something like the new Bob Marley. Everyone knows him as the social conscience of America. Two guitars conduct 5000 people. There’s weed in the air everywhere, and the crowds cheer when he rails against the Iraq war. On the way home I make the wrong stop, get lost, find a grocery store that sells me beer in the Mormon state even without an ID. I find my way home late at night, watch student courtship rituals with amusement, empty the beer with them and fall into bed at one o’clock.

In the morning I leave before eight. I have 700 miles to Los Angeles ahead of me. I only make refuelling stops. Coffee for me, petrol for the car. Eating up the miles. The landscape slowly becomes a desert again. I’m lucky in Las Vegas, no weekend traffic jams. Life was good here. There was a flyer in the Sin City Hostel. Shoot with a real machine gun! Back: For the health of our customers and employees, we only use lead-free ammunition.

chaos begins 100 miles before Los Angeles. The highway becomes six lanes, the driving behaviour and traffic density is like Holledau before Bayern Munich. Just like the Germans, the Americans only drive on the left. I’m pleased that overtaking on the right is allowed and mutate into a line of convertibles. Soon 14400 miles or 23000 kilometres on the road are over. On the last few metres I almost have an accident in the blind spot.

Visibility is getting shorter and shorter. The horizon is like a toilet block, lemon-coloured: piss yellow. And the water begins behind it. On the opposite carriageway towards Las Vegas, the mega jam has been creeping for 50 miles. Los Angeles is Sodom, without the Camorra. A quarter of all angels leave heaven every Friday to sin in the desert. LA could probably eliminate half of its smog with three simple steps. The steps are: Legalise gambling, strip clubs and public drinking.

The only stay I was offered was West Hollywood. It sounded good, and it got even better. Off the freeway, I immediately find open WiFi, hit the last few turns without getting lost and arrive 3 hours early. Where am I? Right under the hills of Beverly Hills, next to Sunset and Hollywood Boulevard in a beautifully quiet residential neighbourhood.

My host Chanda arrives three minutes after me. I’ve arrived three hours earlier than planned. That leaves time for entertainment. We pick up two more of her friends and drive to a Hare Krishna restaurant in a convertible. Pay and pray. Exactly the opposite of New York: what looks cheap is expensive there.

Then it’s on to a free screening in the centre of Fox Studios, where Chanda works. New film by Michael Moore, Sicko. A masterpiece. He finally takes a back seat and talks slowly. Rejected 9/11 relief workers are fed for free in Cuba. Delicious and sad.