Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

San Francisco to Fort Bragg

31 March - Fort Bragg, CA

Given that I'm in a country that's sufficiently squeamish that the word 'toilet' is taboo, and where the euphemism is king ('restroom', indeed), what I just saw on the telly was kind of astonishing. A new 'virtual colonoscopy' using a CT scan has been developed which means that people can be screened for colo-rectal polyps without the need for a colonoscopy, so what do they do? They send an unfortunate reporter along to have one and broadcast a blow-by-blow account on the 5pm news, including some choice shots of the inside of the journo's rectum when the virtual colonoscopy shows up a potential polyp that means they have to get the sigmoidoscope out anyway. And an enormous amount of TV commercials are for various prescription only drugs - lots of "Ask your doctor if Foobinol could be right for you!", which must make doctors' prescribing decisions awkward at times. It's all pretty bizarre. Is this, by any chance, a nation of hypochondriacs?

Anyway, I'm in Fort Bragg, on the coast in Mendocino County. It took about six hours to get here up the winding Pacific Coast Highway, also known as California Highway 1. The average speed was pretty low as this isn't a typical US road at all - the 2-line road reminded me of Europe, winding around the edge of cliffs and hills. While these roads are like the roads I learned to drive on in the UK, a lot of American visitors seem to have problems with roads like this and slow right down. I guess that if you come from one of those states where all the roads look like they were just drawn on the map with a ruler, winding roads must be at least slightly scary.

My hire car is what's embarrassingly described as a 'muscle car' - a Ford Mustang convertible that is, inevitably, red. I have christened it the Early-Midlife-Crisismobile. Unfortunately, Hertz only do one type of convertible at a reasonable rate, and this is it. Having got my head around the bizarre automatic gearbox, managed not to stomp on a nonexistent clutch pedal too many times and discovered the handy cruise control it's not too bad to drive at all (hey, just point in roughly the right direction, accelerate to the speed limit and turn on the autopilot), and the fact that most of the roads are wide and have at least, ooh, 25 lanes seems to help.

Oh, and according to CBS, pink is the new black. I'm sure that last week black was the new black, but what do I know about fashion?

Posted by mpk at April 2, 2004 3:26 AM | TrackBack