Had a note from John Norton, aka johnboy, this morning saying that he was having some difficulty logging on to CHR from his laptop, and asking that I post at least the first installments of his "ramblings" documenting their trip to date. To that end, installment 1, as sent to me:

Saturday 22nd August.

Our elder boy Rick had come up the other day, so the three of us piled our bags and ourselves into the Calais, to Peter and Trish Rawcliffe’s, picked up Pete, out to Bell Block Airport, where we caught a plane at 10:30 am to head for Auckland, while Pete took our car back to his place,
Thanks Pete!

After an hour’s flight, landed Auckland and boarded another flight to take us to Los Angeles International Airport,

After a 12 hour flight we landed in LA, then took another flight which took us to Oklahoma Int. Airport landing at 6:00 pm and absolutely shattered...we’d taken Premium economy all the way, and Air NZ was the best value; whereas United’s was not worth the extra money, even though we did have more room than cattle class.

Couldn’t find the shuttle to Howard Johnson Express Inn, (feeling too knackered to look too hard to be honest,) so got a taxi to the place.
Into bed, and well asleep before 9:00…only to find that some gormless bastard had set the alarm (that’s the hotel’s alarm,) for 12:00.
Shut that damned thing off only to have it go off again five minutes later.
Sheesh!
This time,
it
will
stay
off.
It’s dead…I killed it.
But it was too late for my jet-lagged out-of-whack sleep patterns…I was still awake at 4:30 am, finally going back to sleep sometime then.

Sunday 23rd August.

Out of bed 7:30, brekky, and hit the road for Perry, booked in to the Super 8, (yep the fella there still remembers us,) then spent the next three hours or so organising all the various things that because of the weight factor you didn’t want to bring from NZ, but aren’t usually supplied by motels in the States; decent sized coffee cups, not paper cups, cutlery, a beer glass that holds more than two sips, ashtrays with a lid, milk for a cuppa, a decent bar of soap, a bottle (not a teensy sachet) of shampoo and so on.
Pizza Hut for lunch back at the motel, and Dick and Susie Smelser turned up with their two, Sarah and baby Kassidy.
Dick drove us over Route 66 a few years back with Susie riding shotgun, and we’ve been good mates ever since, a fine couple who epitomise all that is good about the American heart-land people.
So t was good to play catchup over the next few hours.
They joined us for a hamburger tea at Braums, right next door to the motel, Rosie, Rick, and I thought we’d have an ice-cream in a cone as an aperitif.
Yeah right!
After eating our bloody huge ice-creams none of us could face the thought of a burger.
I can’t get over the fixation Americans have with the size of their food portions; everything, even ice-creams, where what we would regard as JUMBO is their standard entry-level item, can be up-scaled to what we would regard as OBESITY, or CORONARY.