The literal me has the beginning of a cold as the figurative me walks out here in the desert toward Winnemucca. The literal me hopes that this cold comes and goes before we leave for Europe in a couple of weeks. Both the figurative and literal me will ignore it as I walk, and think about Wales in 2003. We have at last made it into London, and are working our way to our hotel. I fell instantly in love with London. The story picks up there.

Importantly, London has help for its new lovers--especially those who come from the Western United States. We were informed on the ground at cross-walks which way we needed to look. We would look that way. It was really helpful. As we later found out, other places would do well to help us out by placing similar markings.

In our trek to find our hotel, we asked a few people on the street for directions. We quickly learned something; directions in the U.K. are bad, almost as bad as the directions received in Kauai. In Kauai, the directions are, “Go up past the green hill and turn right through the river of trees.” These directions would make sense, I guess, if you had lived on the island for your entire life. But of course if you lived on the island your entire life, you would not need landmarks for directions. In the U.K., people do not use vague landmarks for directions. Instead, people have varying meanings on what constitutes straight, left and right. Straight can mean a left or a right or backwards, or anything else but what I would consider straight. Left often means right. Right has no precise orientation on a compass. Not only do the directions vary from my understanding, but there is no agreement among those living there as to what direction is what. It can become very confusing. So after a little bit of this directionless direction, we became, especially in overly tired, stinky state, a bit agitated. Finally, Dorey asked at a Starbucks about how to get to our hotel. They said it was left at the next corner. At the next corner, we took a right, and voila, were there. Where we were was pretty spectacular, indeed.

Oh, a cliffhanger. More later. I have walked 717,940 steps in 59 days. This is 339 miles from my home in Alameda. I will be in Winnemucca in 49 miles.