3 - 5 July Back to Illinois

Three days and two locations in one blog. Despite it being 4 July weekend, it was wet and mostly uninteresting. I arrived in Rock Island (Illinois) on Friday, which is less than 200 miles from Chicago O'Hare airport. Friday was probably the dullest drive I have had to complete - nearly 300 miles on interstate, no scenery, nothing to report.

Rock City is on one side of the Mississippi and Davenport (Iowa) is the other. With East Moline and Bettendorf they make a rectangular area known as Quad Cities. There was a weekend Blues Festival in a park in Davenport which I planned to attend on Saturday. I went to check it out, and they allow you to take in your cooler, but no beer, so I was planning a liquid breakfast to use up the remaining Bud which I'd been saving for this event.

I turned on the TV for the first time in a few days, and CNN were showing non-stop Jackson. Quite why they are so astonished that he might have had some odd medicinal habits is beyond me. I turned off when they had a phone-in on the custody of the kids. They were speculating that Macca might show up and perform at the memorial, and the people of LA, where the memorial is being hosted, are b****ing about the public cost, as their budgets are already stretched. They are likening the public grief to Princess Di. I suspect the media here had a distinctly different attitude to him when the kiddy fiddling allegations were doing the rounds. Jan tells me it's saturation coverage in the UK too, but I guess Murray's near-miss at Wimbledon was also Big News.

During the drive I found a proper news station. They were saying that the state of Ohio has a one week temporary budget while they consider whether to allow casinos to raise more money. I've been surprised at how many States have casinos - the original rise of Vegas was because nowhere else in the States allowed them. I later found that the Davenport one used to be on a boat, which got round the laws, and is still surrounded by water even though it no longer has to move.

There were some serious fireworks on Friday at 9:30. When 4 July falls on a weekend (it was Saturday) many people get the Friday off too, so this was the Davenport/Rock Island show and East Moline and Bettendorf had the Saturday gig. On Friday I spoke at length this evening with a local chappie called Chris who works "in the Obama camp". He was also a musician and we talked blues, rock and roll and jazz and drank very reasonably priced Jack Daniels. Until he fell off his stool, literally: England 1, USA 0 In fact the JD Single Barrel was only 25c a shot more, and is a lot smoother, even once you've drowned it in Coke.

On Saturday I was looking forward wasting my last full non-driving in my fold up chair soaking up the sun at the Blues Festival, but when I awoke it was cold and raining, with thunderstorms forecast. I have no wet weather gear, so I ended up doing virtually nothing all day. It cleared around 6 pm but I couldn't be bothered to fork out the money for the festival at that time.

During Saturday evening I spoke to an older guy - I thought (and so did he) that he was five years or so older then me, but he turned out to be 6 years younger! Anyway, he was firmly anti-firearms and kept getting back to the topic - which was coincidental as later that evening there was a "shots fired" incident in the next street and we weren't allowed to leave the bar for some time (too bad eh??). The barman said it was probably just someone letting of a few rounds because it's 4 July... I also spoke to some younger guys who were very anti-Obama. It seems you love him or hate him. Saturday's curious question about the UK (apart from being asked if I knew someone!) was "what's it like being filmed everywhere you go".

Finally a couple of observations from the last few days:

The US celebrates it's people very well. Most towns will have a Martin Luther King Boulevard or something. The Interstates have signs alongside reminding you that it is the Eisenhower Interstate System. 4 July means a lot to many Americans as a day to be Proud to be American. UK national pride seems to end with football.

Why are there so many people with prosthetic limbs - e.g. metal legs from the knee downwards seems quite common. Maybe they are just more obvious than at home because people mostly wear shorts here. I tend to think it's related to the high incidence of bikers.