LIKES

American breakfasts; Blue Moon; Widmers Hefeweizen; Sierra Nevada Pale Ale; the food at Middlegate, NV; Rocky Mountain highs; Lawrence, KS; Crested Butte, CO; West Virginia; seeing Elk; Lime Gatorade; the exchange rate; rafting; not being too hot; not being too cold; iPod shuffle when it works; The Daily Show; the Colbert Report; The Office; that trail we took through Needles, UT; the views from the Taylor and Lake Ann passes; Burning Man; GPS; down jackets; running shoes instead of hiking boots; strangers stopping to give us drinks;  strangers buying us drinks; strangers buying us food; clean clothes; aired sleeping bags;  wireless Internet access; shade; sunrises; sunsets; afternoon naps; mozzarella cheese sticks; the sushi at Fruita, CO; musketeers bars; lie-ins; getting to the motel early; dogs; people who walk with us; cold drinking water; burgers; uphill; breezes; gas-powered camp stoves; Liptons/Knorr packet Spanish rice; when people know where Canterbury is; helpful medical staff; Dr. Fernando Bianco; Guestbook signatures; the Katy Trail, MO; The Pelican Inn, Muir Beach, CA; The Gateway Inn, OH; Denny’s Doghouse, Waverly, OH; The White Horse, WV; getting trucks to blow their horns; getting trains to blow their horns; people who pick up hitch-hikers; fishing in the Potomac; WV; Strong City, KS; Milford, OH; dawn in the  Nevada desert; podcasts; lecturing to large groups of cows; Columbia Library, MO; Moab Library, UT; Denver Public Library, CO; New York Public Library, NY; seeing the Rocky Mountains for the first time from the plains; Wild Horse, KS; finishing the Baroque Trilogy again; welcoming houses in the middle of nowhere; getting a copy of Big Star’s #1 Record; religious and political discussions with Dave; religious and political discussions with nearly anyone; having a fire; open minds; giving presentations; getting in the paper; getting free stuff; bocce ball in Toluca, IL; 31 mile days; the new Radiohead album; Neil Gaiman; getting in out of the rain; San Francisco; Redwood trees; having everyone with us at the end of the walk; everyone who took us in or ever did anything for us; Arthur Bryant’s Bar-b-que in Kansas City; Madison, IN; Evansville, IL; seeing the Pacific for the first time; wine country; Lake Tahoe; Green Mountain Falls, CO; getting loads of emails; celebrity magazines in supermarkets; Trader Joe’s; Wholefoods; reaching a destination; Hyattsville, MD; Ellie and Alice; football at Rockville; walking into dodgy bars and winning the crowd over; playing pool; good jukeboxes; My Name is Earl; deserted roads you can walk down the middle of; curly fries; adverts for the Midnight Special DVD box set; Groove Merchant in Lower Haight; not walking.

DISLIKES

punctured thermarests; stinking; identical menus; burgers; bridges with precipitous drops;  downhill; Fox News; Hal Lyndsey; Glen Beck; Geraldo; Bill O’Reilly; CNN; Larry King;  Britney, Paris and Lindsey obsession; not being able to get the football scores;  Pakersburg/Vienna, WV; deserted downtowns; spoiled water stashes; beer cans by the side of  the road; diapers by the side of the road; when good alcohol burning stoves go bad;  Liptons/Knorr pasta meals; a lack of vegetables in the diet; being asked if I’m Australian;  US foreign policy; no Guestbook signatures; the way people look at me when I’m hitch-hiking;  blisters; food in my beard; bagsweat; cooking with whisky; trail bars; ham water; tar water; cr*pping outdoors; men who answer their door with shotguns; creationism versus evolution; dogmatic fundamentalists; hummers; giant SUVs in town centres; Americans feeling they have a God-given right to cheap petrol; calling football ‘soccer’; the new Wilco album; the new Richard Hawley album; mountain oysters; camping near water sprinklers; arguing with Dave; waiting for Dave; lack of quality foreign news in newspapers; having to say ‘toona’ instead of ‘tuna’; only meeting white people; 31 mile days; shin splints; the way the media let Americans down regarding the invasion of Iraq; the way Americans can believe anything they are told; trans fat; 32oz soft drinks; Dairy Queen; motels over $100; whole days of rain; mosquitos; deer flies; putting away tents covered in frost; 21 degree Fareneheit nights in a tent; getting directions wrong; getting facts wrong; no emails; not being able to buy an iPhone in San Francisco; our neighbours in San Francisco; the American health system; having to go east at any point; escaped troubled teens looking to get arrested in Utah; losing emails; the Post Office losing my shoes; the malaise that sets in when I’ve been in a Wal-Mart too long;  jukeboxes with only FM country on them; pool tables with a slope; when we can’t get online; the stench of roadkill; roads with no shoulders; blind bends; losing Dave; stinky cattle trucks; excessive packaging; We Toss ‘Em, They’re Awesome pizzas; not updating my written journal for days; running out of things to read; Americans’ love of Princess Diana; Americans’ respect for Tony Blair; son of a Bush.