Friday June 10th 1983 - Delays

The day after the general election. Maggie has won by a landslide. All the turkeys voted for Christmas. Surely they couldn't expect anything other than more of the same. Workers are being sacrificed for the benefit of the wealthy. I try to shake off the gloom. We are off to the US, our long planned trip, to the land of the free and Maggie's best mate Ronnie.

Saturday 11th June 1983

The weather is still dull, miserable and overcast. The smell of sulphur in the air is worse. LA feels like a suffocating, grimy place, not the playground of showbiz stars we expected.

Breakfast is served on cardboard plates with plastic cutlery.

Scene across desert

Sunday 12th June 1983

We make our own breakfast, very health: water melon and pink grapefruit. By 8 am we are leaving the motel. First stop to get ice before setting off for the Apache Trail. Finding ice here is easy. There is ice with everything.

Bird perched on saguaro cactus

Monday 13th June 1983 

We set off just before 9:00am. It is starting to become our custom that we call for the day's food and ice as our first job after breakfast. A 1 lb bag of ice costs $1.

The traffic is much busier today, maybe because it is Monday and people are back at work and school but we decide to take the local and more scenic roads rather than the interstate.