Weds 23rd August 2000

We got breakfast at a diner then went off in search of a games shop we'd seen advertised in the cinema last night. We found it eventually - it had moved, and it had an apallingly low level of stock. Then we went to Wal-Mart because Debbie wanted some T-Shirts, because they're cheap and it'll save us a trip to the laundrette. When we realised that jeans were $13 a pair (for Wranglers: no name jeans were cheaper still), our shopping list grew a little. After that, we set off towards Los Angeles.

These were our last couple of hours on country back roads, so we made the most of them. We drove down a dead-end piece of old road surface, because it'll probably be the last bit of old road we'll see.

In San Bernardino we saw another Wigwam Motel, with a slightly different slant on marketing.

We passed through San Dimas, but failed to find a Circle-K, let alone one at which strange things were afoot...

Today's fast-food investigation was Los Pollo Loco - excellent Mexican chicken dishes.

We stayed on Route 66 all the way to Sunset Boulevard, where we found a motel we could afford (Economy Inn again). We can't go anywhere or do anything because it's Survivor Climax Night on CBS. Survivor has taken America by storm -- it's Big Brother on a desert island (American Big Brother, by contrast, was not a hit). I'm sure there will be a British version of Survivor before we know it.

Survivor took up 4 hours of TV, then the Letterman show was mostly taken up by Survivor talk too, as was all the TV news.

Tomorrow, we're going to Universal Studios.

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