Travelled!

Well, that was a fairly low-key trip, all things considered. I drove us to the edge of Memphis, then turned driving over to Cat - on the theory that she's more experienced at American city driving, and I'm better at reading maps - which I guess worked out, as we got to the places we aimed for with a minimum of confusion and no real delay.

The actual USCIS thing was short & very easy: fill out a form, wait a couple of minutes, get digitally fingerprinted (no ink, no mess! god bless technology), have your signature & picture taken, that's it. Not sure what comes next, I think it will be back to Memphis for an actual interview face to face... but as we did this twice with our L-visas (once in London plus again in DC on entering the States), then maybe that step gets skipped?

We stopped at a Bennigans (at last, somewhere where they haven't been shut down!), and had Monte Cristo sandwiches, I think the high point of the week for Cat - she had been really longing to try one again. Having had a bite of hers (cold) last time, I was quite keen to try one myself, but I have to say they are much nicer once lukewarm or cold - when new-cooked and hot, they are not so great.

Cat had been feeling pretty low and out of sorts all day, so we cancelled the tourist stuff for the day: after all, it's only a 2 hour drive, if we fancy a daytrip any weekend, it's an easy reach, so we drove back slow & easy.

The traffic was moderate going both ways (well, by UK motorway standards - very heavy by NZ standards!), and man, were there a lot of 18wheelers & lorries on the road. I must say, tho, that the US truckers seem a lot more professional and courteous than the ones you encounter in the UK (most of course being EU-based): they stick to the speed limits much more, give you space to pass & are quite happy to pull over a bit to help, and (most of all) dont play Block The Traffic by occupying all the lanes & travelling at the same speed, the way so many truckers in the UK always delight in doing. Given that the Interstate we were on is only 2lanes each way, that would have been quite easy to do, but while the truckers would overtake their slower brethren & caravans, (and the occasional slow car), they were fairly careful to pull over immediately after, and to not let a buildup of delayed cars occur at all.

Two other differences I noticed in the open-road driving: one was the recurrence, indeed almost prevalence, of enormous peels of rubber - blownout 18wheeler tires, I assume. This despite passing at least 3 workcrews at different points, tidying them up & collecting them. Compared to the UK/EU motorways, there seemed to be a huge number of them: I guess the profit margin thing here (or the less stringent inspection regime?) drives the truckers to try and eke out every
last mile from their tires.

The other big difference was the absence of the usual stream of broken-down or burnt-out cars dotting the side of the motorways. I think in the whole journey, we saw 2 breakdowns, and in both cases they were obviously being attended to (if not necessarily fixed). I would guess, driving a similar distance in the UK (say up to Birmingham and back, we would expect to see at least 20 breakdowns of various ages, plus another 6 or 8 burnt-out cars ... each way.

I think that this is caused by the American love for (and dependence on) their cars, in a way that has never even penetrated in the UK, where car maintenance seems to be considered optional - to the point that simple things like oil & filter changes are considered an unneeded expense, or an occasional opportunity to be robbed blind by the mechanics.

Of course the UK mechanics truly are a band of ruthless cowboys, and as a class are quite piratical and utterly untrustworthy (with quite a few honorable exceptions, I'll freely admit).

Even so, it was always an occasion for mirth on our parts over the sheer volume of breakdowns we would see on the English motorways, and we would speculate on the underlying thought processes, or lack thereof. It's not as tho cars are cheaper in the UK, after all - quite the reverse. Still, it was very pleasant to not see the same littering the sides of I40 yesterday.

Cat disagreed with my guess of the cause, pointing out the number of cars we see in Little Rock with astonishing dings and dents, and quite commonly missing windowscreens - replaced with clear plastic & duct tape: but I dredged up the analysis I'd read a few months ago, about the effects of poverty on car ownership in the US as the cause of this.

Briefly, the bottom slice (12%? 15? 18? I forget) has such poor creditworthiness that they cannot get car loans at anything like reasonable terms, so - as they still need cars, public transport being a bit of a joke in almost all of America - they are reduced to purchasing wrecks: played out cars at the end of their useful lives, costing $500-$1000 typically, i.e. the sort of amount they can buy for cash (or buy on horrible credit terms & afford the monthly payments) ... and expected to last only months, perhaps a year if you're lucky.

Of course, in straitened circumstances like that, it is essential to get every last possible mile out of their investments, to delay the next purchase as long as possible: hence driving them in quite unsafe conditions, provided they still actually can move, and don't get stopped/ticketed too often to make them financially viable (fortunately there are very few police assigned to traffic duties so that is a low risk).

The irony of it is that, between the repeated purchases, and the price of those repairs that seem worth the cost, they could in many cases afford the payments on a much better quality of used car, but having been judged and found wanting by the Creditworthiness Judges (ha), they aren't given that access. Makes you think it might be something the government could address .. like so many things involving the Credit Rating gestapo.

Enough rambling for the moment :)