The USA, Free and Easy

Friday, August 8th.

We leave in the middle of the night from a Monza that is anything but deserted despite the calendar indicating a fine eight eight two thousand eight, to begin the Big One, the trip of trips, the start of the dream so long cherished and finally made concrete with our materialization at the starting line of the mega tour of the stars and stripes. The last details have been analyzed, the last bureaucratic procedures completed, the mammoth organizational machine set in motion by Annie warms up its engines to give the go-ahead to a ride that will see us crossing oceans to meet face to face, vis a vis with the American Dream, at the top of our list of destinations to touch with our hands, eyes and camera lens.

Months of preparations proved equal to expectations and the last stroke of the tour leader, which allows us, thanks to the technological invention of online check-in, to skip outright the restless line at the British counter, is the demonstration of how hard work, planning, self-denial and dedication allow the realization of a trip compared to which the Allied landing in Normandy could be considered a carefree outing of two innocent teenagers.

We pass through London just long enough to change planes and to confirm that the capital of the United Kingdom should be remembered only and exclusively for the horrid climate that even in mid-August welcomes us with an anthracite-gray sky or, better said, London fog; we spend forty minutes of our precious and limited time in the much-trumpeted terminal 5, nothing particularly futuristic, and we immediately board one of the countless jumbo jets lazily resting on the runway at Heathrow, despite the fact that they should have been retired from the routes above our heads decades ago.

Small note from the great scribe: the much-feared security checks were completely nonexistent, the much-dreaded mile-long lines vanished, nothing compared to what we are forced to endure every Sunday before we can approach, with sacred devotion, the sublime grassy rectangle that is the theater of the formidable deeds of our beloved team, undisputed and indisputable champion at the Scala of football.

The most advanced country of the West opens its doors to us with a Third World, backward welcome, with a bottleneck at the document check worthy of the most archaic Byzantine bureaucracy, but the emotion allows us not to dwell on the details; we promptly grab a yellow taxi that could not be more yellow and after a journey at a crawl, worthy of the Rome-Ostia at Ferragosto, we reach the beating heart of Manhattan which welcomes us in a suite of the Murray Hotel worthy of enthusiastic comments that become hymns of joy upon seeing on the other side of the street, towering imposingly, majestically, almost menacingly, the mythological Empire State Building.

We open our jaws wide and take the first substantial bite of the Big Apple, remaining ecstatic, stunned, astonished by everything around us: with our noses perpetually turned upward we wander among avenues driven by a mix of curiosity, amazement, emotion. Final blow, obviously after the first close encounter with the beloved MCD chain, with a vertiginous climb, in the style of a ruthless social climber, of the Empire which allows us with an extraordinary 360° overview of New York, with our gaze lost between Brooklyn and New Jersey, from the Financial District to the Chrysler, from Central Park to Madison Square Garden, all definitively photographed in our minds a few moments before sunset: the heartbeat quickens, breathing pounds a bit in the head, incredibly happy we therefore leave the building, racing against a family of chilly walruses to leave as soon as possible the freezing rooms.

Nicky and Tommy have sunk into the most invigorating sleep to the point that when the blinding sun makes the tops of the skyscrapers that surround us shine, they are as lively as crickets and as springy as springs perfectly turned by the renowned Mollificio Scotti, and so we all go at it big time with breakfast, a mix between European tradition and local specialties, to the point of considering ourselves abundantly full and amply fed.

Saturday, August 9th. With a pantomime somewhere between pathetic and pitiful, we stage a surprise ambush with the Niolas, travel-planning companions since way back in winter, met six minutes ahead of schedule compared to what was planned over the course of the one hundred and seventy-seven phone calls preceding the melodramatic rendezvous at Battery Park. We are packed like sardines and prodded like cattle for slaughter onto a boat that allows us to dock on the island of the Statue of Liberty, certainly fascinating but in any case a small thing for those fortunate enough to possess artistic-architectural jewels like those present in the homeland of Berlusconi; we then make a stop at Ellis Island, sadly known as a temporary detention center for Italian immigrants of the last century forced to spend a tragic quarantine before being able to begin toiling on the American continent.

Afternoon wandering around Manhattan, kissed by the sun and driven by a practically inexhaustible energy that leads us to wear out the soles of our shoes, to swell our calves and to reduce the available memory on our digital cameras. We use the mythological subway, we trudge along Fifth Avenue crowded with every type of tourist from the old continent, with a very large Italian majority, we snub high-sounding but rather banal boutiques, we lounge at the Rockefeller Center, we admire the glitter of the tacky Trump Tower and we lose two kids at Fao Schwartz, the largest toy store in the world. Only sore point, the great emotion and the harrowing pain that assails us while visiting the rubble of Ground Zero and the little church that recalls the atrocious sacrifice of more than two thousand innocents massacred by the logic-less madness of inhuman assassins.

We hail a taxi, driven for a change and as always by a son of Mohammed, to reach the rest of the gang at Greenwich Village, a neighborhood envisioned as the cradle of the young, of artists, of thinkers, in reality a blend of Calcutta, Macao and Marrakech in a very spicy sauce: the nightlife is indisputable, the entire core target of New Yorkers aged 25-40 is concentrated on these streets characterized by extremely trashy shops, fetish boutiques, tattoo and piercing stalls with a great final uproar in the fight between two dark mahogany triple-door wardrobes to the sound of rap in the background.

Indispensable tradition of the slice of pizza so beloved by the mythological Uncle Teo (5 pieces and two soft drinks, usually more expensive than Dom Perignon, 4 euros and 20 cents) and back to Times Square where millions of lights, shades and sparkling neon leave us open-mouthed in the middle of the night in a city that never sleeps.

Sunday, August 10th. As the best pastry chef in Genoa, a stunning man, would say, come one come all Ladies and Gentlemen come and try the product, we shit out of the potty (the little pot, ed.) exaggerating to the point of living the emotion of the Big Apple from above: Tommy and I, excited beyond belief, take off from Twelfth Avenue, flying by helicopter over everything that is memorable in the place, we pass over Miss Liberty, we see roofs, attics, lofts and dormers beyond eighty floors and admire the skyline of the metropolis from every possible perspective. We come back down to earth and listen to a political disquisition by the racist taxi driver of Jewish origin who rails against gays, the different, illegal immigrants, dropouts and vagrants.

We have ourselves dropped off beyond the Brooklyn Bridge, to have the pleasure and emotion of crossing again the mythical chewing-gum bridge, emblem of countless advertising campaigns: the experience is truly welcome as well as unexpected, to the point that crossing the lower part of the Manhattan peninsula creates no problem for us given the psychological charge accumulated: Tribeca and Chelsea are nothing special even though seeing in person not only skyscrapers and glittering buildings is not bad, while SoHo instead is truly attractive, more glamorous than ever (not the newspaper I sell at Condè Nast) with all its elegant little restaurants, its art galleries, its trendy boutiques.

We end the first part of the afternoon by attending a hard-fought basketball game in the typical street playground, with the added particular of being the only pale faces among hundreds of super-tanned friends of Obama, dressed, outfitted, decked out or rather gotten up as only they have the courage to do.

Before the shadows of evening fall on New York we throw ourselves into the most unbridled shopping, first for the pleasure of doing it, then because the pleasure of saving more than 50% compared to Italy is certainly not to be underestimated, and so here we are ransacking a shoe store "eyed" by the kids spasmodically, then stopping by Macy's to swipe the fantastic plastic in the largest store in the world, to finish at Victoria's Secret, object of the most unconfessable and shameless desires of men all over the world, revealed instead to be an emporium of women's lingerie perhaps suitable for some already-retired housewife from the lower Polesine. A small clarification about the cultural level of the locals: the cathode-ray tube shows nothing but teleshopping, telepromotions, tele-hucksters, tele-predicators; we want Big Brother back at all costs!!.

Monday, August 11. We leave NY with many regrets and with the secret hope of being able to return soon and willingly, but hold on. Stop everything, this was the hope for the moment abandoned due to the morning drizzle that brought one of the most important hubs on the globe to its knees, forcing us to line up behind another 35 roaring jets, accumulating on the runway with seatbelts already fastened a good three hours of agonizing wait. The interior of the Virgin Atlantic plane is futuristic and almost futuristic to the point of being unbelievable, so new that we're almost afraid to sit on seats of faux-human leather; each of us has a screen, obviously touch-sensitive, that allows us to create our favorite playlist from hundreds of music albums as well as the thrill of chatting with any other passenger. I almost have the feeling that they're overdoing it with all this technology.

The arrival in California, despite the accumulated delay, is greeted with great enthusiasm by the four members of the Caprotti gang; the climate is fantastic, the euphoria rampant, the impression is that we're in a Mediterranean country, with the calm and listlessness in handing over the big car confirming it all... My smile tends to spill out from the sides of my face, I crank up the volume of the car radio heavily and go back twenty-two years to the time of the previous great adventure on the roads of California; it takes us a few moments to orient ourselves around the LAX airport, after which the mental navigator Annie Annie gives her best, nailing every kind of ramp and indecipherable exit along the highways, which of course have at least five lanes.

The Best Western in Santa Monica is more than welcoming, spacious, well cared for, and after the ritual soak in the hot tub and the adjacent pool, we decide to enjoy the sunset on the waterfront pier over the Pacific Ocean, with mental and psychological effects of undoubted enjoyment.

Tuesday, August 12. Continental breakfast included in the package and a very quick dash toward the center, if that's what you can call it, of the vastest and most irrational city ever visited: the fact that the streets bear numbers up to 9300 gives a clear idea of the concept of space and distance. Anyway, we don't get discouraged and we visit Beverly Hills, with a mandatory stop at Rodeo Drive, more elegant than ever and in great form; Central Los Angeles with the obvious ascent to the cylindrical panoramic elevators of the Bonaventura Hotel with a view over the few but very distinctive skyscrapers of Downtown; a pass-through and escape from Wilshire and Sunset Boulevard, and then off to enjoy beaches and sun on the coast.

Santa Monica is decidedly beautiful, the streets adjacent to the waterfront elegant, attractive, very pleasant, the stretch of sand enormous, boundless, almost wild, since the words "beach establishment" are totally unknown, while the one relating to the very expensive parking ticket is very much in vogue, which even though it doesn't reach the paranormal gouging of New York, here too doesn't go unnoticed. Venice, on the other hand, is a huge disappointment, a mishmash of junkies and badly-off dropouts camping out on the beach in a vain attempt to attract the attention of tourists who pass by, don't stop, and go on, to the point of practically making us miss our colorful vu cumprà... Marina del Rey, a few kilometers further south, on the other hand seems like a little town to be placed in model train sets.

With houses all identical, each overlooking an arm of the sea that artificially creates the ideal shelter for a whole series of docks where thousands of boats of every type and size wait for someone to deign to go and use them.

Wednesday, August 13. "Discover LA" is the title of our day, which opens with a zigzag among the various road arteries that pump movement and vitality through the beating heart of the metropolis: we return to the Civic Center, we admire the Disney Theatre, an extraordinary steel box with the most improbable shapes created by Frank O'Gery, creator of other masterpieces scattered throughout the world; as good tourists we can't refrain from stopping by Hollywood, where on the Walk of Fame hundreds of marble slabs in the shape of a star reach the Kodak Theatre, where the Oscars are handed out annually—all of which goes to show once again how, lacking traditions, culture, art, and history, Americans must latch onto anything to make themselves noticed and above all to do business.

We storm a shopping center that is even marked on the road map, remaining astonished by the incredible euro-dollar exchange rate that allows us to buy Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein (renamed by the kids Clown, Kleenex, and Klaxon) for pocket change. We reach Malibu beach, a huge disappointment when compared to expectations of muscle-bound surfers, little houses on the ocean, and a "Big Wednesday" atmosphere, since everything is fenced off and delimited by the absolute power of the rich people who have taken possession of almost its entire extent.

We have a mega marble tournament on the sand, having to explain on several occasions to the astonished onlookers the very complicated rule of launching small plastic spheres inside a track created by a child's rear end: Asterix and Obelix used to say "these Romans are crazy," but the intelligence quotient of the locals is practically bordering on zero.

Thursday, August 14. We leave the capital of economy, entertainment, business, fantasy, and theoretical vice, since we haven't spotted a subject of either sex worthy of an asterisk, in spite of the legendary covers of the various dream magazines, remaining anything but convinced of their creed "The beach is life, life is the beach"... The highways are chaotic but flowing until early morning; we take the 10 East, cross the business district, take the 15 along the San Bernardino Valley, and begin the real tour, which, to get off to a good start, is inaugurated with yet another appropriation of trendy fashion brands, for once in a lifetime in small format compared to the Italian equivalents like Serravalle Outlet.

Very doubtful about what one can do in the middle of nowhere as the inhabitants of the Mojave desert do, we wonder perplexed about the crazies who spend the day waiting for the sun to set in places forgotten even by God like Trona, and we arrive before sunset at the entrance of Death Valley, much more impressive when translated as Valle della Morte, where miles of hair dryers await us, raising the temperature to the current 48°. Idiot of the Month Award to a pair of elderly Italians, present in droves everywhere, who try to pull a fast one by cutting in line ahead of us at the reception, only to be bounced due to lack of reservation and now wandering toward the next resort no less than a hundred miles away.

Friday, August 15. The ranch hosting us is the typical saloon for changing horses on the stagecoach in the Old West; the climate is torrid and the tension for the excursion begins to grow to the point that the night spent at Panamint Springs is certainly not among the sleepiest: we see the dawn and realize we've been joined by the rest of the gang, who made an artistic, scenic, and touristy detour to San Francisco with a flying visit to Yosemite as well while we were lounging around in L.A.

Topping off the radiators, checking the battery and the brakes, and off toward Las Vegas through one of the most barren, bleak, and inhospitable depressions that good God saw fit to create: at six in the morning we're already at 40°, we don't even dare roll down the window for a photo, but we absolutely cannot avoid the hike at Zabriskie Point, a viewpoint that would give any geologist an orgasm in the presence of the most colorful and fascinating layers of terrain that then descend into the plain of the Bad Waters, turned into blindingly white salt flats that we dominate from Dante's View, after the fourth elevation change of more than two thousand meters covered within the span of three hours.

And now, my beloved readers, I must ask you for a little help, because I truly cannot find the words, the nouns, the adjectives, the right synonyms to define Las Vegas: I love to death seeing how far money and human madness can go; everything is artificial, invented, copied even in a sacrilegious and disrespectful way from masterpieces like Venice, Paris, or the Egyptian pyramids, but for obese peanut-butter eaters all this is art, entertainment, amusement until the moment they realize they've completely squandered a lifetime's savings.

After overdoing it in this first American week with junk food, the food garbage that was foisted on us by the various chains of which we have practically become shareholders, without even thinking twice, together with a very likeable and extremely cosmopolitan Roman family, we sit down at the table of a fabulous restaurant in the Paris, surely one of the most atrocious and kitsch logistical inventions of this place of crazies for crazy people.

Saturday, August 16. In the morning we wrap up the tour of the various casinos, so many, strange, crazy, unimaginable for European taste, which at this point is extremely rational; we leave 20 dollars in the pockets of the mobsters who recreated Manhattan at 45° in the Nevada desert and we pack up, ultimately a bit exhausted by all this unreal, irrational, virtual opulence, and we begin the real tour of the natural parks, leaving behind metropolises like New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas to arrive in Utah in the little town of St. George, after a ten-minute storm with sand soon turned into a hail hell, which vastly surpassed the legendary Pahrump in the leadership for most banal, useless, ordinary town in its composition of fast foods, gas stations, laundromats, and mini supermarkets always open.

The Motel 6, our evening den, is really the typical cluster of little wooden rooms along the main street of the town, quite charming, extremely clean and functional, also keeping in mind the exorbitant cost of 46 dollars (27 euros at the pre-departure exchange rate) for four people per night, including at the reception a girl-monster all fat and unfriendliness. Old Max's birthday is celebrated in the most typical establishment in all the West, with an extraordinary big steak and a gigantic baked potato, classic stadium chants for saying goodbye to his fifties, which psychologically he had already forgotten for decades.

Sunday, August 17. In the morning we leave the base camp for every kind of excursion in the state of the scarecrow Mormons with a breakfast that cries out for vengeance at Denny's, monstrous doses of fats, lipids, calories, and wagonloads of cholesterol among toast, pancakes, maple syrup, cream, eggs, bacon, and sausages, in the face of which little big Tommy wants to order a bag to throw up in. We reach Zion, buy the legendary pass to be able to tour all the parks, and we transform into well-behaved schoolchildren who line up to take the shuttle, obviously free, to approach the foot of the vertical walls that surround us, giving everything a splendid feeling of wild nature.

We do real trekking, backpack on our shoulders and a curse word barely held back by the recalcitrant kids, the youngest of whom, the undersigned, also decides to splash around in the crystal-clear waters of Virgin Creek, a mountain stream where hawks fly. Another fifty-plus miles and entrance to Bryce Canyon in a setting of Bernese Alps, all firs and greenest meadows, before opening up into a spectacular amphitheater of rocks, pinnacles, towers, rock spurs that take on tones that are nothing short of breathtaking. We go all around it, passing through Rainbow, Black Birch, Ponderosa, Agua, Natural Bridge, Swamp Canyon for the grand finale at Inspiration Point, where we enjoy a postcard sunset captured from every possible perspective.

Before darkness falls we cross the finish line of today's stage, arriving at Escalante, in the absolute middle of nowhere, to the point that the book dedicated to the town is titled "The Best Kind of Nothing," that even the chickens are collecting signatures to get themselves slaughtered elsewhere, that a drug addict would rather shoot himself with a revolver than stay here another day. The Dodge Grand Caravan is the most popular big car around here, seven seats, a three-seat bed, 3600 cc, and lots of reliability on these limitless roads, exactly as we imagined them, endless straights where, since the 55 mph limit no longer applies, we're forced to keep ourselves awake by driving for long stretches in the oncoming lane, just to liven up a journey on which for 28 kilometers we don't encounter another mechanically propelled vehicle.

Monday, August 18. Having left the tomb of Escalante, through a truly enchanting scenic route, though a bit perilous in the absolute absence of guardrails separating us from monstrous cliffs, we reach Capitol Reef, much underrated but in reality very photogenic for a succession of chromatic variations, geological changes, and landscape surprises of great merit. The sun beats down like a blacksmith, we don't dare stop for any reason, and with three minutes ahead of the schedule drawn up some months ago 12,000 kilometers away we crest the hill into Moab, the rendezvous for the next nature trails.

The Apache Motel, despite a previous visit by none other than John Wayne, is borderline adequate; a very quick dip in the pool not mentioned in the booking, and immediate start for the trip to Arches: the park of natural arches is beautiful, fascinating, unexpectedly moving; we of course go all around it, passing through Delicate, Double, Sable, Tunnel, Landscape, Sable, Broken, and Skyline to admire these constructions of nature worthy of the most daring engineer designing ceilings. Our biological clock is perpetually tuned to sunrise, and so, like little robots programmed in advance, we begin our wandering always at crazy paces so as not to miss any opportunity that this extraordinary country is offering us.

Tuesday, August 19. Maybe it's the quantity of things seen of superlative quality, maybe it's the tiredness that begins to creep in maliciously, maybe it's the first muscle aches due to the enormous temperature swings, but the visit to Canyonlands park disappoints us a little, or rather it's always a matter of practically indescribable levels, but apart from Dead Horse Point, where we dominate a bend of the Colorado below that has eroded hundreds of meters of elevation of multicolored stone, Island in the Sky and Green River Point are too far from the riverbed and the canyon too vast to be able to convey the exact idea of what was imagined.

A little tip for spending an hour above and beyond: exit Moab on the 191 N, turn onto the 269 for Pulash, roll down the windows, blast country music, sip an ice-cold can of Coke, munch on some baby carrots, travel with the sun at your back, cover 60 kilometers with the Colorado on your left and the canyon rocks on your right, blend it all together, and you'll get a memorable experience to tell your grandchildren about.

Wednesday, August 20. We leave Moab with more than one regret for this town that is much more than neat and pleasant; we toss a biscuit as a tip to the deer that takes care of our car when we come out of the room, and we floor it all the way to Mesa Verde, a national park inside Colorado, another notch on the world map, fascinating for the presence of a village carved into the rock before the arrival of Christopher Columbus—in short, for these Anasazi Indians, the only testimony of a past that for Americans doesn't exist.

Thanks to a shortcut that isn't even shown by the infallible Atlas Road Map, we gain about fifty miles, arriving at Bluff even earlier than hoped, all for the heart attack caused by the sight of Monument Valley at sunset: every rosiest expectation is made even more concrete by personally living the emotions savored as children in so many black-and-white western films, back when Grande Inter also won in Europe and didn't, alas, dominate only in Italy as it does today. The spectacle is nothing short of unique, unrepeatable; the rock formations tinged with fire-red are postcard-perfect.

Thursday, August 21. The next day we repeat the same loop, this time taking the first rip-off of the tour as we let ourselves be convinced by two redskins with very fraudulent ways to cough up a cool 240 bucks, credit card no accepted, to get on a pickup truck by the grace of God so we could tour every trail of the fascinating plain beneath the monoliths sacred to the Navajo people. The succession of heart palpitations and photo snaps, which meanwhile have reached 1200 units, makes us forget having been swindled; we finish the trip, send a few curses to the ancestors of these four losers, and tear our thigh ligaments pressing on the gas pedal of the trusty Dodge in order to arrive in time for a light show inside Antelope Canyon near Page.

We don't succeed, we postpone this heavily underlined tip taken from the travel diaries of other users of Giramondo.net, and we enjoy two hours of sun at the edge of the much-appreciated pool of the very welcome and highly recommended Travel Lodge, not before, of course, having settled our accounts with fortune thanks to an unsurpassable and unforgettable excursion to Horseshoe Bend with a dizzying perspective over the river several hundred meters below, with a camera framing worth on its own the entire trip made so far. A small road note for the precision maniacs: having departed from Los Angeles we took the 15 to the Barstow Outlet, then the 58 West, and then we reached Death Valley on the 178, passing through the scorching Ridgecrest.

To get out of hell we followed the 190, which brought us to the Sodom and Gomorrah of Las Vegas, which we left via the 15 North toward Utah with a first stop at St. George. Once past Zion, the 89 took us into Bryce before arriving at the morgue of Escalante, which the next morning we abandon via the 12, which then becomes the 24 East with the crossing of Capitol Reef. We then follow the signs for INTERSTATE 70 E with an exit right after Green River, where in the little town of Bendel we pick up the 191, which takes us straight to Moab, where we enjoy Arches and Canyonlands. From Utah, to go to Mesa Verde it's all 191 before entering Monticello (not Brianza) onto the 491, which we leave in the town of Cortez, while to cut across Monument Valley it's necessary to follow the 160, then 162, then 163 to arrive in Arizona, where we now are.

Friday, August 22. Stop, one moment, errata corrige: we have lived the most memorable of experiences right in the surroundings of the town of Page, created from nothing in the far-off 1956 following the construction of the dam that, to the horror and curse of all our domestic environmentalists, formed Lake Powell, flooding a basin as vast as three of our regions, covering entire valleys and burying under millions of cubic meters of water extraordinary gorges like Glen Canyon, but giving the possibility of lighting the light bulbs of LA and Las Vegas and letting the rich people of four neighboring states, who zip around in powerful speedboats and very fast jet skis, dip their little feet.

Amid all this, the multicolored rift of Antelope Canyon with its cleft no more than two meters wide, illuminated by beams of sunlight that emphasize its already flaming colors, is something magnificent, astounding, unmissable even though absolutely not signposted; all ten of us remain fascinated, excessively consuming the memories of our digital cameras (never in my life have I taken so many photos in a single hour, without flash, with manual exposure times of at least a second and a half). At two in the afternoon we are all filling out the forms to request reimbursement for the absurd 15 kilometers thrown away to see the dinosaur footprints near Tuba City; only these foolish Americans could be struck by four poorly preserved footprints of hypothetical prehistoric animals that instead appear to us as the mark of any old barnyard fowl.

As planned and established months ago, here we are at the Grand Canyon, which we manage to admire and of course photograph in all its vastness: starting from the east entrance with Desert View, we make stops at the Overlook points of Navajo, Miron, Grand Point, and Mather, and we fully understand the greatness and immensity of the amphitheater that surrounds us, especially at sunset at Yavapai.

My previous judgment, dating back exactly twenty years, must be updated and modified; the Canyon is truly astounding, but not seeing the river below that created it all over millions of years of erosion, and the human mass that crowds it to the point of making it appear in some stretches like the summer crush of Viale Ceccarini in Riccione, somewhat mar the overall picture, which nevertheless gains a thousand points thanks to a crazy starry sky in which it feels as though you could touch the Milky Way, closer than ever.

Saturday 23 August. The Grand Canyon is done too, we leave the region of the great parks of the West with ten notches on the butt of our Winchester, we don't stop for any reason and head straight south, destination Phoenix which we reach in the very early afternoon, after having crossed Flagstaff, an attractive mountain village similar to our South Tyrol, the pine and fir forest called Coconino, seen Oak Creek, the only canyon entirely covered in woods, and the town of Sedona, which although surrounded by a truly remarkable scenic backdrop, is an unworthy jumble of little shops selling the lowest-grade pseudo-Indian junk in the more than vain attempt to revive the great gold rush.

Phoenix is absolutely nothing but seven skyscrapers surrounded by industrial districts and immense warehouses, all wrapped in a blanket of heat well over 100° Celsius, which is why the entire pool at our complete disposal in Scottsdale, an elegant and alluring suburb outside the metropolitan ring, takes on the features of a true mirage in the desert.

The evening stroll also turns out to be a hit and besides a mall compared to which our hyper super extra shopping centres look like poorly stocked little shops, we wander around the neighbourhood characterised by beautiful residences with perfectly kept gardens, by a series of central streets visible also from a cable car in the San Francisco style with interesting reconstructions of pioneer-style buildings, with a most pleasant alternation of art galleries, attractive shops, little restaurants for every taste, invariably with humidity misters for an audience that is finally elegant

Sunday 24 August. Tired of the usual minimarkets on street corners, generally run by almond-eyed people who charge loan-shark prices for two bottles of water, we go to see one of the cult places of American society, Wal Mart: take two regular-size football fields, fill them with every kind of sellable product, weapons included, in every strangest and most unpredictable variant and you'll be able to understand the epitome of consumerism, all the same affordable as the slogan says "Pay less, live better" which has made the owners the richest family in America.

In the category of characters worth underlining and sketching I think it's necessary to include the ever-present Harley riders who roam every kind of road, hair in the wind obviously all branded freedom, five loudmouths who turned out to be alas from Monza who were extolling their prodigious excursions only because of the prohibitive costs, in reality achievable even for free, the photo-crazy ones, compared to whom I consider myself the last of the ignoramuses on the subject, who even in the middle of the desert haul around film-set materials, the hotel neighbour in Phoenix who at five o'clock in the morning started howling, kicking off a concert of vocal cords in G major that ended with a choral moan.

We leave Phoenix behind too, after the breakfast ritual at Starbucks, certainly good products but an exaggerated financial mugging first thing in the morning, we still have in our ears the whispers and moans of the neighbour porn star while we take the one-o-one, then the two-o-two, at least the ten to get us back on route towards California, always with a full round sun, never seen a cloud in ten days of parks well over two thousand metres, with stop and go in the legendary Yuma just long enough to gulp something down at Uncle Mac while waiting for that train to pass, to exchange a few words with a Yankee who finally knows where Italy is, maybe because he works in advertising and, cresting over a desert covered with cacti and barbed wire to prevent the clandestine entry of the Mexican chicos, we enter San Diego in grand style.

The Days Inn over by the well-known Sea World is acceptable, we throw down our bags still incredulous at being able to breathe for three days in the same place and begin the beach tour with Ocean Beach before watching the sunset in the artificial commercial creation of Seaport Village and fleeing at full speed from a downtown full of colour and joy by day but packed with homeless people as darkness falls.

Monday 25 August. Just to add the classic cherry on top of this American cake that we're enjoying like crazy, we don't disdain an impromptu detour and so here we are at the Mexican border to cross it, heading for the very sad Tijuana which is traversed lengthwise in the space of half an hour, just enough time to understand the bad luck that befell whoever was born two miles past the wrong side of the barricade. We head back with some difficulty towards civilisation, during the wait at passport control we're offered everything by the street vendors who move between the rows of cars, including finely decorated kneelers, enormous turtles carved from a very dark wood and, not plus ultra, ceramic bas-reliefs depicting the Last Supper, absolutely indispensable under the midday Mexican sun.

We take the very high bridge that joins the two strips of the San Diego peninsula and we immediately find ourselves as protagonists of the typical series about the perfect life of the rich American: Coronado is a postcard with perfect outlines, everything is studied and cared for down to the smallest detail with a final explosion of pomp and luxury with the hotel of the same name facing the ocean beach. If you have an afternoon to spare, the desire to go back to the time of sailor trousers, a heap of cash to throw down the drain, go to Sea World, a water park of notable importance where the two kids finally enjoy a stretch of time entirely at their disposal.

Nothing extraordinary but the final show of the three orcas, cruel queens of the seas trained like harmless lap dogs, is definitely worth mentioning, all in a country-fair atmosphere, under the fireworks, for monstrous fatties from the plains of Minnesota who take pride in being a few pounds thinner than the sea lions and elephant seals. An atrocious, sudden and extremely painful attack of sciatica practically cripples me completely, I look like an octogenarian dragging himself through the corridors of the geriatric ward, the effort for every movement is dramatic, I can barely hold on to the residual energy for a few lens openings and for the last two pre-sleep notes (you were hoping, Simi, to put an end to your torture.....)

Tuesday 26 August. Time passes for everyone, places included, and so here is the more than twenty-year-old dreamlike memory of San Diego clashing with a present reality perhaps not as amazing as the one cherished for whole decades, in any case La Jolla, the most famous and celebrated beach, is not bad at all, the kilometre of jogging along the water's edge gives fantastic lung and brain breathing, and if we add that we didn't meet any bathing attendants or lifeguards up to Baywatch standards (Silvestri where are you???) but that a dolphin swam between our legs, well then the morning was well spent. Afternoon with a short move to the nearby Mission Beach, a typical Californian image with big waves tamed by dozens of surfers and fairy-tale coloured little houses facing the Pacific, all as usual without the shadow of a cloud.

To satisfy the last whim of the budding photographer Tommy who is hitting every car park in search of the licence plates of the various confederate states, at the moment of seeing a car from Mississippi, one of the eight out of fifty still missing, we begin a chase along the American motorways worthy of the most breathtaking and adrenaline-filled police series or real tv in the style of the O.J. Simpson chase.

Wednesday 27 August. Reinforcing the opinion that nothing is like it used to be, we leave behind puzzled and a little disappointed San Diego Maradona, as it was nicknamed in the last century by the legendary Ciardiello, here still idolised by virgin teenagers at the memory of what he didn't do with their mothers during two months of summer campus, and we drown life's sorrows in the most total shopping in yet another architecturally perfect mall where finally, after having redone the kids' wardrobes, we two also buy the fashion, trendy and cool made in USA product, that is something from Abercrombie & Fitch, absolutely nothing transcendental but one couldn't avoid flying over the Atlantic without having made the fantastic plastic weep, by now at the end of its strength.

The 5 is a motorway straight as a baseball bat, here you don't see any sport but this, so we soon leave it to go back up towards L.A. through some more picturesque scenic drive and so after the very flat coast around Del Mar, Escondido, Encinitas, Solana etc. here's a nice glimpse of the marina of Dana Point, nestled between rock and lawns better kept than Wimbledon's centre court, to then arrive and enjoy with the four senses at our disposal in Laguna Beach. Sight, hearing, smell and touch are put to the test by the emotion of being on the beach of a very elegant town all verandas set directly on the sand, super-luxurious hotels in Great Gatsby style, memorable glimpses of the booming and tumultuous ocean that guarantees right in front of us the printing of a sunset worth a double red circle.

Thursday 28 August. A heavy blanket of condensed heat forms a halo around us on the boulevard of the sunset of our journey, we proceed mournfully along the Pacific number 1 crossing Newport, Oceanside, Huntington and Long Beach, all immense beaches that we don't even turn to look at since the appointment is set for two in the afternoon on the legendary sands of Santa Monica, without doubt our favourite, where we have more than one problem spending the last dollar in cash we have left in order to pay, like good naturalised Americans absolutely law-abiding, for the parking in front of the pier jutting out like the last western outpost of California.