Not quite done...

We fly out of LA for an en route pause on Hawaii’s Big Island and guess what Bruce does?

He leaps into Hertz and asks if they have a Nissan Rogue.

He can’t quite bear to be parted from a Rogue. Not yet. Just a tiny bit more. Do they have one?

Yes.

It's new. It's silver? Do you like it, says Bruce. He does.

Now it is the silver Rogue. He is happy.

She is just like the olive

green Rogue but silver and younger.

So we’re back on the road.

We’re staying in the Hilton Waikoloa Village resort - it is massive. It has 62 acres of gorgeous coastal land with gardens and pools and wildlife. It is so big it has a boat and a rail service for moving guests around the

property. But we go driving.

Bruce has been here many times before and he has much he wants to show me. He has climbed the massive Mona Loa volcano from sea level, almost died up there falling into a lava tube but, thin air and all, made the mighty climb and recalls every inch of it. He won’t be doing that again. He’s

not 20 any more.

But he can show me all these volcanoes and describe the flora, fauna and geology.

Thus, in our shiny new Hawaii Rogue, we plan a pilgrimage across this most exotic of islands through lava fields and volcanos to the lush, rain-drenched town of Hilo and back along the jungle-lined coast road with its myriad gorges and waterfalls, and Bruce is happy because he can be behind the wheel again - just eke

out a little more road tripping before our grand adventure is over.

He does not need to convince me of the primal glamour of Big Island. It is not like anywhere I have been.

These pitch black lava

fields. The blackscape of the land. And the vibrant soft camel-coloured grasses which adorn it in happy tufts - the one plant which really loves this inky rock scape. I am fascinated. We look at an old cross-country trail, complete with lava tubes.

It is harsh and rough underfoot.

Donkeys were the way to go in the early days and there are signs along the road warning of roaming donkeys.

We make forays to the town and the shops, saving a special day for the cross-island adventure. The day arrives misty and wet and, by the time we are in the middle of the island, drenched in rain.

This is not unusual says my Hawaii Meta-networks Brainstormer mate, Tom Elliott, who lives on the wet side of the island.

He is planning to meet up with us for lunch in Hilo, a plan which does not eventuate in the pouring rain and with Tom’s services being suddenly needed for the retrieval of a beached, endangered whale.

The cross-country saddle road between the two highest volcanos has improved significantly since Bruce first was here but we encounter road works, miles and miles of bucketing potholes and rock piles which one day will make the road agreeable. But not today. It is slow, slow going. But fascinating, seeing the way the massive boulders of lava have to be manipulated. The vegetation changes as we cross the island,

from the dark aridity to wonderful exotica, strange jungle-like ferns and wonderful ground-cover creepers and flowering plants. I get very excited by them and beg Bruce to stop the car so I can get thoroughly wet in efforts to grab a couple of photos. Cars hiss pass us at scarily high speeds.

The closer to the coast

we get, the lusher and more exotic the vegetation until we are in suburban Hilo all of which seems to be one big botanical garden.

It’s a lovely town.

Thanks to Tom’s advice, we find the Hilo Bay Cafe for lunch. It is an elegant fusion place, set upstairs with views of Hilo Bay. The bay is misty and soft rain

continues, but we choose to sit outside on the balcony with the fresh air and handsome view.

Lunch is stunning. The rain eases. I see a wild mongoose among the rocks below. All is good.

We drive back along the coast road which is a wild luxury of lush and luscious tropical verdancy. Winding, vertiginous roads, bridges crossing precipitous inlets and gorges, all dense in

huge-leafed undergrowth.

Fantastic waterfalls cascade down sheer rock faces. We follow an inland road to get a close look at one of the falls. It is quite a long trek through agricultural land and areas of tall-tall grasses.

We find the waterfall just as the skies open up again. An unfriendly

guard demands a $5 parking charge. We are just having a look, not staying or taking the gorge walk, we say. $5 says he. We cut our losses, take a photo and slush back across the bright green plateau past flourishing horse and cattle properties and back to the coast.

Every inch is beautiful.

And so is our hotel. It is a world unto itself with a number of restaurants and shops and lots of pools as well as lovely

views and a dolphinarium which gives people a chance to swim with dolphins. Most exquisite of all is its seawater pool which is a bay within the hotel grounds. Sea life comes and goes with the tides. The bay is alive with fish of all sizes and types from vivid tropical breeds to large, slow silvery fish. And there are green sea turtles

which meander around amid the swimmers and snorkelers.

We loll by that pool on the sun lounges which have their legs in the water.

We loll on our Makai-Guests-Only sun lounges by the big pool nearest our rooms. One loves to feel a bit exclusive, albeit there are sunning spots and pools aplenty for everyone and the hotel also allows the locals to enjoy its facilities. That is another characteristic I have loved about this place.

I drink cucumber mai tais at the fancy fish restaurant on the high promontory and yet more at the lovely Japanese restaurant. The cucumber cocktail is my new fancy. Elegant, light, fresh - moreish. And we both fall in love with

the Waikoloa Village breakfast buffets which feature congee and kimchi and fish and rice as well as the usual western sweet and savoury breakfast foods plus the best papaya in the history of the universe.

Our lagoon suite is very spacious and we love it - until the renovation work gets going in the rooms

above. This drilling and hammering makes siestas impossible. Hilton seems unable to move us but compensates us by removing all of our breakfast costs. It is not really enough, since the rooms are uninhabitable when the drilling is full-on. I could make a massive fuss but, oh, end of the trip…

I do implore them not to rent out our rooms again until the work is done.

This hotel, which once was a Hyatt, has the most spectacular art collection. Walking its long open-air passages one enjoys an extensive gallery of oriental art treasures. Hundreds, maybe thousands of glorious antiquities and art works adorn the walls, the corridors, and the gardens. There are some European works in the mix,

emphasising the cultural influences involved in the development of Big Island. But, significantly, this is an Asian and Pacific collection of immense scope and value. I go seeking more information on the works, assuming there must be a big glossy catalogue but no. In fact the staff seems surprised at my zeal. They let me have a quaint little DIY guide to the collection. It is as underwhelming as the art is breathtaking.

I never tire of walking past the giant Chinese urns, the ceremonial Islander drums, the fierce masks and idols, fetishes and carvings, the puppets and costumes, the huge protective gods, the whimsical ones, the great and glorious Buddhas and Quan Yins, the Japanese

warriors, the Ganeshas and Bali demons, the fabulous bronze dogs, the delicate embroideries, and the very fine paintings. I feel privileged to be in this place which has been devised and adorned with such extravagant expertise.

The hotel turns on large and lavish luaus each week and we fork out the huge $150 or something each

to secure priority seating and see the show. Our seating turns out to be front row and the evening comes with as many tropical cocktails as one can possibly sink. The drinks just flow and flow. And a vast repast is laid out across the huge open-air dining area. There must be over 500 people here. But there is plenty of food. I shuffle along with my priority queue and pop samples of this and that on my plate but it is not really great food. It is a spread for the masses and its big plus is that there is enough for the masses. Would you like another mai tai? A fairly tired old Hawaiian compere MCs the show. He is a bit of a crooner and sings a few numbers, rattles off some well-worn shtick about Hawaiian customs, has us all stand up and hula and introduces the performers who are to do traditional narrative dances as well some spectacular fire dances. Oh, and the Hawaiian cowboy (paniolo) dance, my particular favourite.

It is a hard-working commercial show. I’ve seen luaus with more cultural integrity but this is good fun on a grand scale with a gloriously hospitable staff.

Oh, my, how those mai tais just keep coming. Hawaii has definitely won my heart. Bruce always knew it would.

There are so many unique phenomena thanks to its newness and isolation. I am just getting to understand them all. The chickens of Kauai are one. Now I meet the cats of Big Island. Feral cats, handsome gingers and calicos, who cohabit peacefully in that black lava world. The hotel tolerates their presence and has its own feeding and neutering regime, staff say. They are very polite cats. Not tame but co-existent.

Six days on Big Island pass like a blink.

Too fast for poor Bruce who just wants to go driving, driving, driving in the silver Rogue. And then, oh, no. Rogue separation all over again.

This lovely car must be farewelled.

The road trek is over. Wheels become wings. It's up, up and away and back to our great white cat.

Sweet San Diego - looking out to sea

The Pacific! Here it is.

San Diego is the last moment of leisure on the mighty road trip. Six months gone? Already? Phew. I have been a passenger for six months? Right around the USA. How did I do it?

Bruce and Siri Google, with her pleasant Aussie accent, found the way and I documented it. Little notepad, iPhone camera to the ready. It has not always been easy to grab snaps from a moving car. Sometimes I was so excited taking notes that I forgot to try for the snap. Commitment to the blog has, however, forced me to be attentive and to have an extremely focused role in the passenger seat.

A zillion blessings to the iPhone's resources and my 6-month AT&T phone contract. I loved my US phone number: 650 255 1881. And that it made messaging cheap and easy along with unlimited local calls and a small quota of internationals. It is eminently superior to any form of global roaming - and, indeed, I have been scorched by those in the past.

How did we manage before the iPhone? We had Bruce's huge, comprehensive USA road map in the car with us - but we have never had cause to open it. The world was at my fingertips. So literally and miraculously. Thousands of invisible companions and advisors have been waiting, eager to recommend or forewarn. While Google explains strange landmarks and signposts out there in the landscape, Google Maps makes suggestions, or NOT, for places to eat in backwater towns along the road. In one mid-sized country town we had already parked the car outside the supposedly most popular lunch spot among the town's locals when Yelp reviewers yelped out warnings about cockroaches on the rest room walls and a chef spitting in the soup.

We sped off in relief to find a dependable national chain restaurant - Chilis, Panera Bread, Cracker Barrel, Denny's, Arby's, Red Lobster, TGI Friday's, Iron Skillet, Maccers...

These are fast food at a consistent standard of good. They feature clean rest rooms, too. They are a traveller's wonderful chum across the USA. One learns a lot about such places in 6 months. Similarly with the hotel chains - which chain has gone up and which has gone down. La Quinta, which we have loved in the past, has lost its sheen. I suspect it is in the new cult of emphasising facilities for children - and pets. Travel in the US is now very pet-friendly and, after the odd doggy-smell room, we learn to avoid the pet-friendly hotels. We learned to like hotel chains with points systems and soon have earned lots of points with Marriott and Hilton's H-Honors. We learned to like Trip Advisor, Expedia, and Booking.com, but also to note that not all hotels respond well to their reservations. In some cases it is clear they assign lesser rooms. None the less, when the chips are down and one is in dire need of a last-minute room, Expedia is simply stunning and I trust in it.

We stayed in 59 hotels around the country and if there is a common problem, it is probably the standards of wireless Internet. It is uneven and, of course, insecure. Some places impose extra charges. Some places have systems which don't actually reach all the rooms. In two instances, we could only connect by standing just inside the door or in the hall. It would be hilarious if it were not so absurdly frustrating. In one hotel we had to sacrifice a really lovely room with a fabulous city view and be moved to the rear of the premises to get functioning Internet. They did give us a big discount to go with the inconvenience so all was not lost. It shows that not everyone who books into a hotel is dependent on high connectivity.

Some of the inconsistencies with communications in assorted lodgings have put me behind with self-imposed deadlines for this blog. I need a certain oomph to be able to upload photos to Blogger.

There also have been odd computer glitches with my elderly MacBook Air - and they continue to plague me. One just has to be fatalistic and, as Joan Didion so wisely philosophised, play it as it lays.

We have slipped into a gypsy lifestyle on the road. It has been as if there was no beginning or end but just the state of mobility, the Rogue and us, hotels and us, the road ahead, the next adventure...

Suddenly, here is the coast. The Pacific. Australia is out there.

And San Diego is our nitty gritty, the place

where we have truly to rationalise the luggage and make ourselves air travel ready. No more hotel luggage trolleys laden with food bags, cooler bags, plastic bags, bedding and stuff. We have to shed. We have to send stuff home.

I've chosen our San Diego digs carefully. They have to symbolise all good things and all practical things. I am not

disappointed when we arrive. The sun is just setting and the super moon is rising over Mission Beach. The Capri by the Sea are beautifully-appointed condos right on the foreshore path. We are on the second floor corner where we can see the180-degree stretch of beach and sea

and some of the golden sunset burbs. We can hear the waves crashing onto the beach outside. They slam down in a determination of full moon high tide. The weather is perfect. We throw the windows open to sleep in the pristine sea air and the sounds of the surf.

Of course, condos are always a bit idiosyncratic. This one requires an electronic pass to move about the building, the grounds, and catch the lift, but a

key to get into the condo itself. The condo is equipped with everything one could need and B makes an express trip to the grocery so he can cook our ritual spag bol comfort meal. While watching the football. The Patriots lost. Oh well they don’t lose many.

I’d like to say we are

doing lots of interesting cultural things in San Diego but we have been here before and we are at the end of a massive lot of doing a massive lot. We’re a bit road weary and I am still not in the greatest health. Shingles are mean.

We perform the traveller logistics. We assess our excess. We shop for the last-minute thing. We pack and post overweight. We cull our car travel equipment - the chiller bags, the bedding bag, the extra

pillows, our little travelling pantry of seasonings and oils and honey and pickles...

We go for walks around lovely Mission Beach, fascinated to find that the local jetty is in fact a sort of hotel with rooms right on it and over the water. We walk the backstreets as well as the beach. We take our folding chairs out for the last time and sit on the beach in the sun. It is a hard sand beach and with the super moon, it is having very high tides.

There are workmen out from before dawn every morning grading the beach and building breakwaters around the lifesavers’ station. All that grazing and bulldozing does not leave a lot of shells or life on the beach - just masses of funny little flies which like to sit harmlessly upon one’s self.

We get into the joy of sunrises and sunsets making this just a couple of beach bum days. The local people turn out to

be ritually devoted to those special times of day on the beach, carrying yoga mats and wee chairs to sit alone along the beach in the tidal swish of sunset. Some burn incense.

They make a beautiful and serene picture, a heavenly human enhancement to the aesthetics of the fading day. We hover on the sands, sharing their meditative spirit as part of the last throes of our great Sa Trek freedom spirit.

Goodbye open road. Goodbye beautiful American skies.

Sigh.

But there is another goodbye to be had, the hardest one of all for Bruce.

Our very last stop on mainland USA is at a Los Angeles airport Marriott hotel whence Bruce returns the olive green Rogue to Alamo.

She has done 14,150 miles (23,000 km) through all sorts of terrain and conditions and she has given us not a murmur of trouble.

We have not scratched or dented her.

We gone through some astonishing car washes with her. We love how

she sparkles in the sun when she is green clean. We have just spent a lot, a lot, a lot of time with her. She has been our cocoon home, the one constant factor in a travelling lifestyle.

She's where we hang out hats, where I have my seat cushion to give me a little extra height and support, where we keep our daily drinks supplies and the little pantry of travel snacks - the adored Chex Mix, fruit chews, liquorice, peanut butter cookies...

And, as her driver, Bruce has grown very attached to her.

The moment he hands her over at Alamo, he goes into Rogue

withdrawal. Poor boy spends a restless night worrying what he has done with the car keys which have been on or beside his person for six months.

He looks contentedly at the map he has kept throughout the trip. He has marked off each stopping destination only after we are stopped and lodged. His plans have worked well - driving only for a few hours on each driving day, driving only in daylight, of pausing for long enough to get to know the places we visit...

It has worked well.

From coast to coast, it is now done.

State hopping

If it hadn’t been for local knowledge, we’d never have scored a passage on the ferry at all. As it was, we have to take the 3.30 voyage rather than the midday one we’d hoped for. And we are lucky to get tickets for that. These Cape May/Lewes ferries ply the waters to and fro all day long and still there are massive queues. This is a very busy country. People are on the move all the time.

But the Americans are pretty good at it.

For instance, this ferry terminal is a destination in itself. It has a great big swanky waterside restaurant with a classy live music performance going on. It seems to be a thing for families to swan over to the terminal for lunch watching the big ferries chug in and out. It’s like the old days when people went to the airports just to

watch the planes. But, in this case, there is a purpose-built lounge, bar, restaurant, and shops to make it all into a big commercial happening thing with a party atmosphere.

The partying goes on among the ferry passengers, we soon discover. There are bars on the ferry. They are enthusiastically patronised. Bunches of passengers are getting rather happy and very noisy.

Not everyone.

We are the sort who like to watch the sea, the passing boats, the disappearing land, and the birds.

Seagulls follow the ferry excitedly feeding in the wake. Some like to fly beside or aloft over the ferry, seemingly suspended in the air. Riding on the upper deck, we are sometimes at eye level with them. Great big Atlantic gulls. Wonderful. Jonathan Livingston seagulls.

There are a lot of dogs on the ferry. There are a lot of dogs everywhere, as it happens. Dogs are accepted family travellers. They are in all the hotels. It is the era of the four-star hotel dog. Just $15 a night, I'm told. Some hotels offer designer dog beds and treats to encourage the canine custom. True story.

So, I suppose I am not surprised to see so many

dogs on the ferry.

I am surprised to see Mennonites, though. I am always surprised to see Mennonites - gentle, quiet, homely souls in their buttonless frocks and little headpieces.

It is a glorious 90-minute voyage across the pea green Delaware River estuary and then we are in Delaware.

Oh, bliss. Look. Corn fields. Tall, feathery-topped corn. I have seen cornfields right across this mighty country. I have seen them from little, bitty plants across the vast expanses of Wyoming and South Dakota. I have seen them getting bigger as we travelled east. I have become attached to the sight of them. They are not quite so lush here but I am so glad to see them again. I break out the Chex Mix in celebration.

Here in Delaware we are driving past settlements with mown verges and flower beds. There seems to be a lighthouse motif repeated along the roads. There are rental shops for almost everything: chairs, umbrellas, scooters, bait. You can rent bait?

More corn crops. Fields of soy. Corn. Lovely neat, sleek crops.

Delaware is Vice President Joe Biden's territory, says Bruce. Politics seems prominent with election signs of all sorts dotted along the roadside:

I.G. Burton for District Governor, Fred Shade for County Council, Kathy McGuinness for Lieutenant Governor, Max Schaff, Sam Wilson, Mike Miller for Congress. They flash past too fast to photograph.

Where it is not rural, it seems to be full of new developments. Aha, that one looks like the template the Sims computer game creators used. I used to build virtual houses like that back in the days when I played The Sims. I drift into nostalgia for that favourite computer game. Such are the indulgences of the eternal car passenger. This Alamo Nissan Rogue of the mysterious deep green hue has been a sort of home base for at least 10 weeks now.

We pass through Georgetown, very neat, a classic little American darling town with lots of restaurants.

Bruce is looking for chicken BBQ stands. Delaware is famous for chicken and he remembers its roadside BBQ chicken as one of the great yummies of this world. No sign of chicken. There are farm stands, instead. This one touts Candy-Lopes as well as peaches and cherries.

Fields of corn and soy. Woodlands, Open pasture. Farm stand selling corn and watermelon.

A massive billboard looms. Bridgeville - If you lived here, you would be home.

Hmm. What smarmy idiot thought of that?

Bridgeville seems to be a sprawling, flat town. It seems to be mad on billboards. I wouldn’t want to live there.

Back into countryside and it is more diversified agriculture. As well as corn there are crops of sunflowers and apple orchards. Did I mention corn?

Sign: Don’t Reach For Just Any Peach.

Corn.

Ma & Pa’s Farmstand - corn and cantaloupes.

Delaware is certainly a fecund little agricultural state. There is charm to this intensity of small home-grown enterprise. The farms themselves are becoming prominent. Huge handsome farms they are, too. And more produce stands. We grown our own corn, brags one. You don’t say. Another farm stand advertises Lopes. This one’s a fruit market. It has peaches and lima beans.

We don’t stop at any of them since we are looking for the remembered chicken BBQ stands.

It turns out they have not vanished. They simply are shut. They’re a lunch thing and it is getting late now.

Bruce swallows his disappointment and promises me curry for dinner.

We drive past a massive dairy farm and suddenly we are in Maryland.

Altered State, I trumpet brilliantly.

Bruce flicks me a sideways look.

Sign: State Law. No Texting. No hand-held phones.

More corn fields. Now the farm stands are replaced by acres of mini storage compartments.

The sky is lowering. Clouds are massing. We are coming in to Denton. Car yards and strip malls. Walmart, Dunkin’ Donuts, Subway. We cross the Choptank River and marvel at its name. The sun is casting elliptical rays through the cloud layers. It is like a religious painting. Co-incidentally, there’s a huge solar panel farm. It extends for many acres. We wonder what it powers.

Oh, look, an outlet mall. A glossy, crowded hub of joyful consumerism. I look longingly.

Onwards we drive. Rivers, waterways and trucks, lots of trucks. Here comes the famous Chesapeake Bay bridge, a cable suspension bridge across the glorious, great bay.

That is one mighty view. The water is dotted with boats, barges and jet skis. People are playing on little beaches on the bay shore. Some are fishing off rocky groynes. It is the end of a hot day.

Now we humming along the road to Baltimore between walls of trees. And Bruce has a conniption.

What! Signs to the National Security Agency!

In my time working in the intel community it was completely secret, dark secret, he gasps. It used to be you couldn’t even mention the acronym NSA.

As if just to annoy him, there are more signs. NSA employees only. NSA deliveries here. There’s a stern cyclone wire fence but Bruce is still scandalised.

He points out the mass of power lines going in. They’re processing the world’s communications with huge supercomputers in there, he says.

But we’re on home turf now. This is Bruce’s old stamping ground. This is where I came 20 odd years ago when first we met. We’re nostalgic.

Soon we are unpacking in the Columbia Homewood Suites by Hilton.

Our destination for family reunions.

And what is that I spy across the way?

It is the Royal Taj Indian Restaurant - and the promised curry becomes delicious reality.

Beer, Brats, Bowling and Bikes - Milwaukee

Looking for lunch in small town America

can be challenging. I often turn to Yelp as we hit a main street.

Today turns up a truly OMG moment when the cafe we are considering turns out to have scored the worst reviews I’ve ever seen. One reviewer had spotted a cockroach in the loo and another reported seeing the chef spit in someone’s drink. We keep driving.

Sundays are tricky in the small towns. Little is open. So it is that we pass hungrily through several flyspeck towns before, in some sort of ravenous desperation, we stop in

quaint little Kewaskum Village, Wisconsin, where the motorbikes are whooshing noisily through the streets.

We’ve spotted a funny little Coffee Corner cafe and we are going in, no matter what.

And we behold two lovely, hearty country girls bustling behind a high counter of delicious-looking patisserie and wraps and in front of a ceiling-high blackboard listing almost every gourmet coffee and coffee style that there is. Several student types sit at tables or counters with laptops. Newspapers lie invitingly on

tables.

We just can’t believe our luck.

Since we are in the cheese state of Wisconsin, I order their gourmet multi-cheese melt. B opts for a Caesar salad. We both order macchiatos. The coffees are superb, the salad’s ok but my Wisconsin cheesy treat

is just died-and-gone-to-heaven gorgeous.

Our destination today is Milwaukee. It’s a tough old city and I’m here to tell you it has terrible roads.

Bruce says its big thing is the Three Bs - Beer, Brats and Bowling.

We bucket our way into the city over ribbed roads, past vacant lots and derelict buildings.

The city proper looks more prosperous and some of the

buildings are truly handsome old things.

Our hotel is the Aloft, right on the Milwaukee river. Fabulous hotel and I am thrilled with the river and city view. My first impression as we unload the car is that it is a seagull city. The mournful songs of herring gulls. They not only wheel through the air but they occupy the river like flocks of ducks, feeding enthusiastically on something that seems to ride on the current.

Our exploratory walk takes us over the river and into, of all things, Irish Town. It is one Irish pub after another.

We retrace our steps and head towards the business district.

Here is the fine old newspaper in the most massive building with the most ferocious security I have ever seen. A big signs warns against bringing weapons into the premises.

Getting into the premises at all looks like the issue to

me. I wonder where the door is.

There’s a big beer emphasis in this part of town. Faux German facades on buildings, bars…and lots of restaurants.

As we check the menu of a modern-looking Italian restaurant, a bloke snappily dressed in shorts and runners and sitting alone at an outside table calls out that we’d really like this place. The food is fabulous.

Well, the last time a local gave us that sort of recommendation, it was brilliant. We tell the bloke so and a conversation ensues. He invites us to sit down and have a drink with him. He’s buying. And, by the way, he has never eaten at this restaurant. He never eats after breakfast.

Only drinks. And smokes Mores.

What an interesting exchange. Of course, we buy the next round and we learn lots about him, his family and, importantly Milwaukee. He asks if he reminds us of anyone. Er, yes. A few years older, he could be Alan Alda. He’s a rabid right-winger and owns lots of guns, he says. He hates the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel because it is too liberal.

An aggressive African-American beggar approaches us, leaning over the table and wanting to shake hands with us all. Our new friend takes his hand and tells him off very firmly,

then turns his back, rifles though his billfold and gives the man money. At that moment, two men erupt from the restaurant and tell the beggar to go away. To my astonishment, he challenges them. Voices are raised. Chests puff out. I am rattled. No, terrified. The beggar lopes away, shouting abuse behind him. I say I am glad no one had guns. One of the men says, of course he has a gun. He’s a policeman.

Our new friend says he does not have a gun with him. He's taken to carrying a simpler defence weapon. He produces a high intensity flashlight and briefly blinds me with it. I am not pleased.

But I am impressed. I want one.

A middle-aged bloke turns up carrying a basket of tennis balls. My tennis coach, says our friend who is three sheets to the wind by now. We’re going to play.

It is hard to imagine.The coach gets a drink and then disappears to have a cigarette unseen.

I wonder what sort of tennis this will be.

We take our leave and toddle off down the road looking for dinner.

We find a nice umbrellaed table on the street at Buck Bradley’s Saloon and Eatery. It is in one of the very old and lovely buildings on this Old World Third Street.

Nothing to drink, thanks. We order hearty meals. The beggar turns up again. What the? Even I swear at him this time.

Buck’s turns out to be not only a decent restaurant but also an historic one. It is in one of the earliest buildings in the street

and it brags the longest linear bar east of the Mississippi River.

It is absurdly long.

When they’re busy, they need five barmen to cover it.

It is not busy tonight.

We meander off for a pleasant riverside stroll to look at the history of the area and commune with the huge herring gulls before we repair to our lovely hotel room and the traveller’s regular duty, getting a load of washing through the guest laundry.

This is our first Aloft hotel. It will not be our last. It

is a relatively new chain and it has been designed with aesthetics and originality as well as superior logistics and ergonomics. The rooms are compact but feature a long wall couch which enables very neat organisational possibilities for guests. The desks are at the window. Downstairs there are 24-hour refreshments in an area which materialises into a hot breakfast cafe in the

mornings. The pool is terrific. The lounge areas are beaut. The WiFi is snappy. We sleep like logs. Yep. Aloft is on our travel radar now.

There is something we HAVE to do before leaving Milwaukee; visit the Harley Davidson Museum.

This makes the fourth B in Milwaukee's B bonnet.

Bikes! The Harley museum is a big deal. People come from all over the world. We’re not aficionados but we admire Harley Davidson as a successful employee-owned company.

The museum is immense.

I hear all sorts of accents among the visitors, fellow Aussies among them.

Despite the noisiness of motorcycles, the Harley museum is hushed.

There's a sense of reverence. Bikers speak softly. They wander about slowly, in awe. They point and photograph and nudge each other.

There is a great deal to admire. It is a museum equivalent of shiny Harley chrome.

The hundreds of bikes on show go right back to the crudest first concepts

...things with leather straps instead of bike chains.

They include all sorts of commercial manifestations of motorbike, sidecar bikes, war bikes, racing bikes, show bikes…

There is a massive wall devoted to bikers, each little square image contained a picture and video profile of bikers male and female.

There is a vast wall of petrol tanks.

There are biker belts, badges of all the Harley clubs of the world, helmets (not that they wear them hereabouts), engines, stabilisers…

While most of the museum, which is on several vast storeys, is do-not-touch, it culminates with a big section of bikes on which one is invited to sit and pose and fantasise.

Yes, of course I do. I pick a snappy gold number and ham it up.

Between you and me, I can't imagine anything more hair-disturbingly nerve-wracking than travelling on one of these, let alone than here in one of America's no-helmet law states.

We return to the dear old olive green Rogue,

packed to the gunwales with luggage, and purr off to see if the vast coils and loops of spaghetti highway junctions whence one must leave Milwaukee will defeat Bruce's astute navigational skills.

Only momentarily - and we are off on the road to Chicago.