The toilet made its presence felt with its attractive odour and the sound
of its contents slopping around dangerously. What made matters worse was
that our bladders were as full as the loo. So we drove on in stony silence for
some time, with still nothing but fields and cows around us. Either the
pressure in our bladders began to affect our minds, or the view was very
inspiring because Emma suddenly slipped into poetic trance, noting for the
journal that 'the black ribbon of the road rippled along the barren plains
towards the forbidding mountains’. The emptiness was briefly interrupted
when we noticed two coyotes crouching over a dead animal. Fears began to
creep in that we would die of bladder explosion (can that happen?) and
provide the next meal for the scavengers.
As time passed, we started to drive up into the mountains and
suddenly we saw a building - would it have a restroom? Irony of ironies, it was
a waste treatment site! On the other side of the mountains however we found
a little cafeteria in a place called McKittrick. People in a similar state to us
must have been stopping there to 'spend a penny' for years as the entire bar
area inside was covered in hundreds of thousands of one-cent pieces. These
were glued to every available surface, walls, floors, and ceilings, even the
legs of the pool table. A labour of love...or of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder!
From here we drove back into the open plains, for which America is famous.
Either side of the roads electricity pylons and telegraph poles marched into
the distance - with the promise of civilization ahead. After some more small
towns, including Buttonwillow where huge piles of cotton lined the road, we
found the promised civilization. McDonald’s, petrol stations and Denny's, the