1. While Texas might be anti-gay and Arizona might be slightly anti-tourist, Louisiana apparently is anti-postcard.

2. When the fire alarm goes off at the Port Authority in New York City, nobody cares including the management.

3. At the Holiday Inn in Flagstaff, Arizona, they had many coin-operated machines including arcade games, vending, and a washer and dryer. However, they had no dollar changer. As this is part of a chain of hotels, I can only assume this is not a unique occurrence.

4. Humphrey's Peak, the highest point in Arizona, was once believed by Native Americans (according to our tour guide) to be one of the pillars holding up heaven.

5. Apparently DMX has won the most video arcade games in bus stations and hotels across the country.

6. Martin and I both agree that we have been the minority population without fail on each of the buses' we took. To qualify that statement, it was not because we are gay but because we are White Anglo-Saxon.

7. Speaking of minorities, in the Southeast the customer service jobs are taken predominantly by African-Americans. In the Southwest they are predominantly Hispanic. Surprisingly to me, in the Northwest they are predominantly Asian. As far as us in the Northeast, we get a pretty even mix of hicks and college students.

8. Also on the subject of minorities, the collective guilt of America appears to have spawned one roadway or public building that includes "Martin Luther King Jr." in its name.

9. Through Washington State and most of Montana, each rest stop was accompanied by a Conoco station. Quite a few of them in Washington were also adjacent to a Perkins restaurant.

10. On the subject of gas stations, they still have the station that bears my last name. The only other state I've still seen them was Utah.

11. Blondes do have more fun. They also get more handicap-requirement seats in the front of the bus.

12. We managed to skip any kind of weather but sun from Jacksonville to Phoenix and Flagstaff, to California and all the way up to Portland, Oregon. We also found out we had just missed some nasty weather patterns. However, coming out of Washington we followed one pretty closely and heard the next day that it hit other areas very hard.