Although it was hard not to. I now understood why people had sucked in their breath sharply when I'd informed them of our plan to ride the Greyhound.

When we arrived in Pittsburgh, a city freshly defeated in the Superbowl the night before, we all had to disembark only to re-embark the same bus 30 minutes later, this became somewhat of a pattern over the next 26 hours.

On re-embarking we noticed the loudest of the passengers, a guy called Chris, who I had heard to remark earlier 'this medication of mine is making me see everything, two' and that's verbatim by the way, was still in the concourse with his face pressed forelornly against the glass door as the bus pulled away. What happened to Chris? 'Oh he'd beendranking' the 17 year old couple who'd been taking the brunt of his frankly terrifying chat for the last 8 hours, told me.

Chris ejected, the bus now had a semblance of normality, that is to say we didn't feel in immediate danger, and things remained like that all the way to Columbus Ohio.

I'd been having fitful 7 or 8 minute bursts of sleep for a while, but when the bus pulled into Columbus I rubbed my eyes and sat up because this was worth a watch, roughly 18 Amish people boarded, resplendent in full Amish gear, beards and matching 1950's luggage. They stayed on for a while and although the most serene part of the journey it was undoubtedly also the most surreal.

As we entered the midwest at