The highlights of the trip were the Petrified Forest, the Joshua Tree park, Oatman, Santa Fe, making new friends, and pulling into Santa Monica at the end. We finished our trip off to take a detour on the way home for a few days in Vancouver to see our daughter Kate - we had a lovely few days together. At least I have a new wardrobe to see me through the next few years.

But these will all remind me of a great trip. Yes - there were a lot of souvenir shops, I bought loads of t shirts and fridge magnets. Anyone even thinking of doing Route 66 - you could not get a better partner than EagleRider to organize the trip. While it was work for them, they made our holiday a great experience, sometimes hoping above and beyond the call of duty. EagleRider did an excellent job in selecting the best places to stop - our guides Jan and Jennifer were the best we could hope for. We could not stop everywhere along the route - otherwise we’d be there forever. Sometimes this was parallel to perfectly good highway, but was brilliant nonetheless.

I also learned a lot about the route itself - it is part of American history - it is sad that some of it is no more, or some of it is derelict - we did ride many authentic parts of the old route. Anyone from our group reading this - thank you for being such fantastic companions on our trip. We all had a passion for bikes, and a real interest in everything American. We were lucky with our group - great people from the USA, UK, New Zealand, Germany, Australia, and Belgium. First - you can put 15 total strangers together for two weeks and ride across most of America, and become great friends. The Pixel is the simplest to use phone that I have ever had, and I have not experienced any major difficulties so far. Goodbye iPhone, Hello Pixel! I never thought I'd switch from Apple to Google - apart from a brief experiment with the Microsoft Lumia phone, I have been loyal to Apple since 2008. Already the Pixel provides me with a lot more features that can be accessed very easily with voice control. The fingerprint access is cool, and the squeeze option to bring up Google Assistant is something I'm sure to use a lot.Ĭhanging from an iPhone 6 to a Pixel 3a is skipping a few generations of phones, and the difference is huge. The Pixel feels great and the screen quality is very impressive. The change in interface and how things work takes a bit of getting used too - but I am learning fast. After 11 years of iOS, this was the first time that I had ever owned an Android device. Once I logged into Google, everything Google related (Gmail, Calendar, YouTube, etc) was automatically installed. Not everything ported across, but I am impressed with the installation process. Google have a very straight-forward way to connect your old iPhone and transfer data and apps to the new phone. My new phone arrived today and I have been having fun setting it up.

U2 the joshua tree cover lake mead