DESPITE having been travelling, up for 24 hours and not in be ’til 1am, we’re up again at 7am.

Once we’ve had breakfast – which isn’t too bad for a Super 8 – Margaret calls Enterprise and a car comes to collect us so we can do the paperwork for our rental car.

All goes smoothly and soon after 9am we’re on the road. More than 900 miles to do today and we have to carefully plan to be somewhere with a good mobile data signal for my 2.30pm (California time) radio interview.

It’s roasting hot and much of the first drive out of Colorado and into Utah is desert. After much discussion, we aim for Green River, hoping to get there by 3.20pm (Mountain time)…and hoping for a wifi or at least some 4G so i can call using Skype.

We arrive on schedule but the wifi at the Arby’s restaurant is down. Luckily, I have three bars of 4G and manage to use Skype to call in to Abe on his Tuesday Lunch show on KEBF-FM, 97.3 & KZSR-FM 107.9 The Rock. We have a good ol’ chat live on air then he plays Brexit Blues and a track from the live album. Grand. Look forward to seeing him at the show tomorrow (Wednesday) at The Siren in Morro Bay 🙂

After long stints of nothingness in the desert, various stops for snacks, cold drinks and to swap driving duties – and a midnight dinner at Del Tacos – we roll up at our Days Inn in Barstow, California. It’s after 1am. Jeez…and yet another early start and drive in the morning…

UP at 6am and our pals Martyn and Louise pick us up just after 7am to drop us at the airport.

Our flight’s not ’til 1pm, but check-in opens at 10am and the time passes fairly quickly.

We land at JFK in New York and take a good while to get through immigration. Despite having applied for Global Entry – which skips the queues – a couple of months ago, it didn’t become clear until after we’d paid the three hundred-odd quid that ‘there was a backlog in processing’ dating back to the US Government shutdown back in January. So we’re still waiting on clearance.

Our connecting flight to Denver is at 8.20pm (1.20am UK time)...the flight is around four hours and there’s another two hours’ time difference.

We pretty frazzled when we arrive and there’s no food or drink on the domestic flight, but on the plus side, we have all our bags and stuff.

A slightly crazy sixty dollar taxi ride to the hotel and we find we’ve been allocated a smoking room, despite Margaret phoning to ask for a non-smoking room at the time of booking.

Now after midnight, it’s too late to find food within walking distance of the hotel and we’ll be up at 7am to get the rental car and embark on a 900-mile drive…now I’m wishing I ate some of the overpriced food at JFK!!