Four years ago I went on a road-trip from Vancouver down to the Big Sur, south of San Francisco. I would like to say I was drunk the whole way and ate a bucket full of drugs in the style of one Hunter S. Thompson, but IN THE REAL WORLD I drove an RV with my wife and then four-year-old son.

It was a magical trip, we had six road traffic incidents in three weeks, I didn’t see a single speeding camera, I ripped off the roof of a pizzeria in Eugene doing a ‘short-cut’ (which was also the first time my son met a Policeman), we went to the house of the wonderful Henry Miller and we met hippies and listened constantly to Ventura Highway by the band America.

I also read Christopher Hitchens for the first time. His book God Is Not Great was being serialised in the Vancouver Sun newspaper and it completely knocked my head backwards, a bit like that girl in The Exorcist. Continue reading →