I went for a drive this morning to re-acquaint myself with American roads. It's all fine until you reach the sprawling strips on the outskirts of most medium-sized towns (my example being Tuscaloosa) where you have a 6-lane road with exits left and right and every store is set back miles from the road with a huge carpark so it's really difficult to know which tiny little exit road leads to which store. You end up cruising in the middle lane going too slow while people in the outer lanes whizz by, as you scrutinise the signs on either side and test your powers of 3D deduction to the extreme. And then, if you're like me, you get stuck driving round the loopy suburban residential streets behind the big stores with no way of getting to where you wanted to, which in any case is some miserable mid-American excuse for a shop that sells nothing you want and makes you feel obese and stupid even if you aren't.

Much nicer is getting mildly lost on the county roads, navigating by instinct, enjoying the sunshine and listening to country on the radio. Except that today wasn't my day, as when I got pleasantly lost I was also running out of gas. I made it, luckily, but it rather detracted from my enjoyment of the fantastic weather and landscape.