Sorry for the Group Email

Watch this in high resolution (Via Blip. Music is Boston by Vampire Weekend.)

The problem with any road trip through America is that America is a big country. And, like anything big, there’s a lot of it that really isn’t that interesting.

For instance, America has New York, San Francisco and Chicago, and for almost anyone’s money these are three of the most interesting places on Earth. But then it also has Iowa and Nebraska.

We had spent the night with Jordan and Kieran, our Chicagoan (that’s really what they call ‘em) friends, who had sent us packing with an entire duvet set, so worried were they that we’d die of exposure before we hit Mexico. We left Chicago amid flurries of snow, and, for a good ten minutes things were pretty interesting. Scenic lakes passed by the window, snow perched picturesquely on top of traffic lights and roadside houses.

Then we reached the highway. American highways are monumentally, invariably and depressingly dull. They have to be: trucking is the number one way goods get to shops and supermarkets in the USA, and so it makes sense that the roads used by truckers are as flat and as straight as possible. Unfortunately, topographically uninteresting states such as Iowa and Nebraska mean road planners really got to go to town. If we’d had a steering wheel lock and cruise control we could have nodded off at the forty-mile mark and set an alarm for six hours later.

Of course, there are things on the side of the road. Mostly this was cows and the such, and occasionally worrying signs that said things like “gunssavelife.com”, which is as good as indicator as any that if you plan on breaking down, it shouldn’t be here.

Most significantly, Iowa has the World’s Biggest Truck Stop. We pulled diligently over to have a look.

The World’s Biggest Truck Stop is certainly big. Contained within it is a cinema, a church and a barber, which I presume offered variations on the mullet, of which there were billions. And, like virtually all rest stops on every highway in the world, there was no good food anywhere.

(The one exception to this is the mini Marks and Spencers at the end of the M4 in the UK.)

We stopped and ate at Wendy’s. I’ve always been curious about Wendy’s. Partly it’s the advertising – it’s Real Meat! they say, and Much Better Than McDonald’s! and so forth. And the burgers always look, y’know, tempting and whatever. I love a good burger. And this was a truck stop, for God’s sake: how could they not offer good burgers to hungry, sleep-deprived truckers? I remembered reading somewhere that the reason truckstops had become popular with non-truckers is the quality of the food: truckers are on the road all day, after all, so they need something a cut above average.

My burger from Wendy’s couldn’t have qualified as food if it tried. It had a kind of grey, mottled texture and was wet, which I’m sure isn’t what Wendy had envisioned when she first built a burger stand (or whatever). It disintegrated when I picked it up, leaving my plastic tray covered with tiny flecks of grey rubber. Even worse, having paid for it and being starving, I had to eat it. The only other option was Taco Bell, a kind of toxic stomach-lining destroying faux Mexican food that I only want when I’m drunk.

It was horrible. It was probably the closest I’ve ever come to having a soul-crushing experience while eating, which is something that I do a lot and love. The most extraordinary thing is that Wendy’s has been going since 1969, so it can’t always have been bad (can it? Are people that tolerant?). It was started by a presumably well-meaning soul called Dave Thomas, who died in 2002. Perhaps he ate one of his own burgers.

Then we drove in a straight line for a lot, lot longer. Highway 80 lasers across Iowa for hundreds of miles, making it possible, if you want, to get fully across the state without really seeing anything at all.

Eventually, we happened across Des Moines, and stopped a little outside it. We found a hotel in De Soto, a town which consists of precisely three hotels and a petrol station. For fifty dollars we found a motel with a chocolate-brown carpet and the distinct whiff of decades-old cigarettes. Outside someone had parked a pickup truck for the night, filled with caged hens.

We completed our micro-tour of America’s fast food establishments with a quick stop at Subway. I’m happy to report that there is nothing to say about it at all.

Dave recommends Gourmet Burger Kitchen in London. The burgers are unwieldy (you have to eat them with a knife and fork, which isn’t quite the point) but good.