The journey from Grand Forks, North Dakota to Minneapolis, Minnesota was probably the worst one I've done. It wasn't the longest, not by a long shot, but it's the only journey I've been on where I have sat on the bus for nine hours with the air conditioning not working. And, just to be clear, it was over 80 degrees outside and very sunny so it was like being in a greenhouse on wheels. We were late leaving because, being so close to the Canadian border in Grand Forks, a pair of Border Patrol agents checked everybody's ID and they found a Chinese couple and suspected the woman of being an illegal. But neither of them spoke English so the agents had to phone a translator. In the end they let her continue because she had a court date to make as she was already undergoing deporation proceedings.

So we got underway and the only break we all got was a meal break about four hours into the trip at a Burger King (always the best locations!) where we had an hour's rest. It was only scheduled to be twenty minutes but another bus had broken down eighteen miles from town so we were all kicked off and our bus went and picked the passengers up and brought them to Burger King to wait for a rescue bus that arrived before we left.

At St. Cloud, Minnesota my bus filled up completely, which just added to the heat problem. I survived by sipping on a cold drink that I'd got from a vending machine inside the station and using the condensation from it to mop my brow. It was a relief to get off at Minneapolis. But then I had the fun of getting a taxi.

A taxi driver was standing waiting for a passenger and said he would take me but first he had to get the two policemen and woman off his car before he could load me and a Malaysian student in. I asked him, once we were underway, what that was all about. He said that she'd got in miles away and, once they were in town, said she couldn't afford the full fare. She only had four dollars on her. So he pulled over, took her four dollars, got the police and left her, drunk, in their charge.

So it was funny (for me) then when he told us he was doing our run off the meter and I would be ten dollars and the Malaysian, who was going to the airport, would be thirty five. That shocked him and he said he couldn't afford that and wanted to go to the nearest station instead. They then haggled, as I intervened to try to avoid either the driver getting too upset or the student getting ripped off by a taxi driver who was more than keen to still take him to the airport. They agreed on fifteen dollars, which was a big climb down for the driver, and I just hope he didn't then ask for more when they got to the station.

There is a hostel in Minneapolis and it is the most beautiful place inside. It's a big old house with high ceilings and chandeliers and a grand staircase to the second floor. I think it could be the nicest hostel I've stayed in. My dorm was a long room with fifteen single beds in it. I was glad it wasn't bunk beds because I was able to sleep less disturbed than usual.

As it was coming up to Fourth of July (Independence Day, of course) I wanted to make sure I'd be somewhere good for it and my original schedule called for me to be in Des Moines, Iowa on that day, but I decided that since I had a cheap place to stay I ought to stick around Minneapolis for the festivities. That allowed me to do almost nothing on my first day apart from hang out in the hostel and play Risk against a German guy and Tennessian teenage girl. The girl quit partway through and then I lost to the Germans - not good for my national pride! He was able to laugh about World War II, which just goes to show that the losers in that war are over it more than the nations that won who won't let it go.

On my second day I was a consumer and got the light rail down to the Mall of America, the largest mall in the US and second in the world only to one in Canada. As malls go I liked it. It is built as a square around a central theme park for kids, and that means it's easy to get around, unlike long, thin malls where you realise you've ended up at the wrong end, one mile from your car. It was also carpeted throughout and generally had a pleasant feel about it. The second part of my consumer experience was to go to the in-house cinema and see The Happening. It was a disappointing, average film, made better by the fact that I only paid five dollars to see it.

On the way to and from the light rail station downtown I walked through a very nice several block area that had plenty of shops, restaurants and, most importantly, people on it. I like to see people in towns and this had crowds of them, aided by the street musicians and dozens of market stalls lining the extended sidewalks.

My third day was the Fourth of July so, after doing my laundry in as patriotic a way as I could manage I went down to the riverfront for the festivities. I found a very pretty cobbled street with some nice looking bars, which were bursting at the seams with people that evening, and a few music stages. I was hoping to get some kind of snack from a street vendor but the only food vendor was selling deep fried cheese curds, so I passed. I managed to get a good spot for the fireworks on the side of the river closest to where I needed to get to after the show, because I could predict the thousands of people all trying to go the same way causing a logjam.

I happened to be standing next to one of the music stages that had been abandoned before the fireworks started and they played music over the speakers as the fireworks went on. Every song was a patriotic song of some kind and as I watched the fireworks and listened to the music I actually started feeling patriotically American, which was weird. Although I have been in the country for three months now so I'm fairly American by now. There were some very good fireworks that exploded with smiley faces or hearts inside them, which drew big applause from the crowds. Aside from that it was very samey for the twenty minute show, except for the spectacular ending. For a free firework show though I shouldn't complain.

I got my share of British pride in though when, watching TV in a bar where I was having dinner one evening, the channel started showing an old episode of International Gladiators, which was filmed at the NIA in Birmingham and had Ulrika Jonsson presenting. I couldn't help cheering and booing inside for our gladiator Wolf and also, because it was muted with subtitles on, doing my own internal impression of Scottish referee John Anderson as he said "contenders ready".

Minneapolis was a nice change of pace from North Dakota and was a good respite before the expected tedium of the Great Plains states, which I am going to try to whisk through in the next few days without staying long in each one. If I can pull through that then I have the deserts and rocky landscapes of the Southwest to look forward to.