LAX to Needles

I navigated my way to LAX International Arrivals by means of identifying skit's aeroplane during taxiing to the gate and keeping that as my bearing. Once there I was left wondering, had she been through already? Her plane had arrived before mine but how much before? skit had immigration, baggage retrieval and customs to deal with and I did not.

And so I checked the area, the seats and nearby shops and eateries. No sign of her. And so I joined the people waiting at the gate and started to play "guess the flight". The people that were coming out were definitely Chinese and so, I reasoned, from the flight before skit's, judging by the scheduled arrival time.

Eventually the flavour of disembarker became Pacifican, if that is the correct term which I doubt, and I continued to wait impatiently for skit.

People watching was kind of fun. There was someone at the gate waiting for a "Mr J Hardy" according to the card he held in front of him. The last time I was at International Arrivals, I saw a sign for "Stephen Fry". Come, collect all the comedians that engage in Radio 4 style silliness.

As I waited, I wondered how I would greet skit. Should I be joyful or reserved? Of course, going hand in hand with this train of thought was the question of how I felt about meeting her and spending two weeks on a holiday with her. And so I ultimately decided on reserved as the most appropriate way to display my nervousness about whether things would go smoothly and about whether we'll be annoyed by each other too much.

When I saw her emerge from customs, dwarfed by the backpack she carried, we exchanged a nod of recognition and she manoeuvred around the obstacles to reach me. Once face to face I said something like "I'll try not to smell you- I understand you are stinky" (in reference to her last message to me before she boarded the plane) and we hugged. Possibly she deserved a little more "Oh my God, it's been too long, how I have missed you!" but one has a reputation to maintain.

One trip to the toilet (each), one purchase of Evian (each) and one nearly empty bus later, we got our hire car from Enterprise. I agonised over who to rent from for so long, reading customer reviews and researching cars. In the end, I chose a non-budget (but not too expensive) company to avoid the horror stories of unreliable cars and unexpected charges. Most of what we paid was in airport fees and taxes anyway (plus a premium since we were going to return it to a different airport which I don't regret) and indeed, there were no extra charges even for adding skit as an additional driver which was superb.

Our car was just great. A Ford Fusion with a penchant for mind games and purveyor of unhelpful advice. The dashboard display informed us when "Mykey" thought we were going too fast and "Mykey" would beep just to drive the point home that 75mph was pushing it. And then at 80mph, Mykey would just refuse to go any faster. For roads where the speed limit was 75mph, this was somewhat frustrating. This didn't often happen on the roads leaving LAX though; these roads were chockablock with traffic and it felt like it was taking us an age to get out of LA. The city stretched forever.

We stopped at around 3pm for a late lunch in a shopping mall. It seemed rather dull but oddly appropriate that skit's first port of call in America should be a shopping mall. We ate burgers, again, appropriately. Due to a mix up with the order, skit ended up with four portions of chips. It was vaguely amusing (to me anyway).

In the end, we drove until about 8pm. We discovered an odd feature about our car in that there were interior lights that grew obvious as darkness fell. These lights were purple. They lit up our bottles of water in the cup holders and gave an ethereal glow to our foot wells. The aforementioned mind games had begun. Some time later in our trip, the lights were orange. And we have no idea why they changed.

8pm took us to Needles on the border between California and Arizona. We drove through the Mojave Desert to get there but it had been dark since leaving LA so all we saw was an expanse of "dark". Needles was a glow on the horizon that spread out to the north and south, a band of lights, and it appeared to be a large town. The next day we were to discover that it really wasn't- it was just very linear running along a river.

We took a random turning off the interstate and onto a minor road with the transition between the two being ridiculously rough and pot-holed as if no one admitted responsibility for a few metres. A Best Western stood before us and not having the patience to explore the area and shop around, we just pulled into the hotel parking and booked ourselves a room. We were informed that we would get double the points if we also stayed in a Best Western Plus on our trip but not knowing what points meant and not expecting to stay in a Best Western again, we ignored the information. We ended up staying in Best Westerns whenever we could, of course, except for in Kanab when we randomly became disloyal to the chain.

On registering, we were asked to describe our car. We managed the make but when it came to car colour, we hesitated. We decided that it was probably grey and put that on the form. On returning to our car, we confirmed that it was grey and moved the car and our bags to our hotel room. The next morning, the car was blue. Mind games. It changed colour quite frequently depending on light conditions.

That evening we went to a restaurant somehow affiliated with the hotel. Obviously it was cheaper for the hotel to outsource to a restaurant to provide meals than to run a restaurant itself. Having had huge burgers in the middle of the afternoon, we weren't terribly hungry and stuck with salads (which we failed to get through) and shakes (which I think I failed to get through too, not being helped by how it was topped up considerably).

It wasn't a hugely eventful day. skit had begun telling me stories of her trip so far but it needed a few days for her to complete her tale. It was great to be back in her company. Just... very easy. And pleasant. There is still a lot of dancing around each other in attempting to gauge the other's feelings and not tread on their toes too much but it never feels like a chore. For me at least. But then, when we walk in pace together, it is always skit matching her stride to mine. It doesn't work the other way or indeed with compromise. I didn't even realise until this trip. But whatever, the nerves were dispelled.