And we're off again...

Our original plan for Part 2 of the trip was to head to Iceland, Greenland and Alaska before embarking on the epic drive from the west coast of the States to the east. Well, Iceland went out the window for problematic volcano reasons, Greenland is apparently swamped with mosquitoes at this time of year and Alaska is just too damn expensive. So... we decided to skip those bits and get straight to the mega drive. That is after a pitstop at Ash De G's pad in Vancouver to buy a car (it's easier for foreigners to buy a car in Canada than the US in case you were wondering). We'd been to Van (see, local lingo) a few years back and whilst we did a few things this time - walked along the waterfront to Granville Island and ate a load of sushi in Kits with Scott and Claire who we'd met on the disastrous Nepali rafting expedition - it was great not to feel any tourist pressure and just focus on the car-buying exercise. Which was not as fun as we had first thought...

Back home we had visions of getting a classic American convertible - picture the look - big Jackie O sunglasses, scarf around the neck and the wind in our hair. And that's just Ant I'm talking about. Or - big truck with monster wheels and a statuette of a naked lady on the dashboard who shakes her booty as you go around every corner. Well, sadly the reality was no soft top and no naked ladies. Instead, we got dodgy, leather-jacket-wearing Iranian second hand car salesmen trying their best to convince us (and themselves) that the 1998 beige sedan had indeed been driven by a 'local, one female owner who took it to the dealership twice a year for a service'. Hmmm, apparently classic, retro or even vaguely cool cars are not that easy to come by in the 'burbs of Vancouver. So after a few days of trawling car lots in the rain, getting perved at by slimey salesmen (again that's just Ant I'm talking about), putting a down payment on a VW that we then learnt would probably need a new engine before long and a lot of test drives... we ended up with a very unattractive but highly functional Hyundai Sonata. Ash named it 'Frank' as in Frank Sonata (or Sinatra - geddit?). And with his beastly V6 engine, Frank's actually a little trooper and before we know it we'll be speeding our way towards 'New York New York'...