ROADTRIP! ROADTRIP!

WEIRDEST THING I SAW TODAY: there is much competition for this spot, but it has to go to the man playing classical guitar from sheet music in the middle of Ikea, seemingly to no-one.

I'm very excited about this weekend. We're off to Pennsylvania, where Max is covering Tuesday's primary. He was meant to be doing a couple of days in Harrisburg, getting material for a 'colour' piece, then heading to Philadelphia to report on the primary itself from Obama's rally. However, Obama will no longer be there, as Clinton announced yesterday that she's moving her rally from Pittsburgh to Philly, so Obama is likely to skip town, maybe for Indiana. But we won't know until closer to the time. Anyway, it'll be very exciting for Max to be at the heart of the Democratic race and I get to drive cross country in my capacity as his chauffeur - woo! 

We picked up our righteous hire car (a sky blue old estate car, with huge leather seats - 3 in the front! - a combination lock on the driver's door and a gear stick on the steering wheel, just like in the movies) in the weirdest hotel in all the world (we entered on the ground floor, took a lift to the 8th and found ourselves on the ground floor on the other side of the building), where there was some motivational speaking event going on and many odd people milling around. Then we hit the road.

Well first we hit Ikea, because I wanted some driving practice (all is fine now, but it was weird getting used to the humungous width of the car and that whole driving-on-the-right thing) and erm, some stuff from Ikea. I realise this looks like I'm a massive shopaholic for tat, and in many ways I am, but the apartment still needs a few little things both practical (a coffee table) and home-ifying (bedding that hasn't been slept on by 900 people and looks gross).

I couldn't work out if I was comforted by how familiar Ikea was, or depressed. We could very easily have been in Wembley (but for the man playing the guitar). Hey, but look what we scored in the car park:

You don't see those in Wembley - woo! Actually, I need to stop being so obsessed with our numberplate collection, as there were some hairy moments on the interstate, when I found myself paying more attention to numberplates whizzing past than the road...

The drive was great, due to a combination of Max's excellent navigation skills, the sunshine, good music and the route basically being along one road. We saw a craaaazy man in shorts and t-shirt doing a wheelie on his motorbike at about 90mph for about 100 metres and - in keeping with everything being larger here in the US - roadkill that was a wolf! 

Harrisburg seems like quite a small city and not particularly pretty, but as the Hilton we're staying in is only just inside the town, I may be missing a lot. Having said that the place where we picked up our car was weird, it's safe to say that the Harrisburg Hilton is up there in the weird hotel stakes. 

There are heaps of events going on here, including some random conventions, a big Jewish family meal, a prom and - according to the mass of squealing girls we shared a lift with - a national beauty school competition. Spotting the chance for a free pedicure and haircut, I offered myself as a model, but the competitors just squealed off out of the lift. I was able to bond with the receptionist though, over an item about prom dresses under $200 that I'd seen on Regis and Kelly yesterday. I told you, I'm going native!

After dumping our stuff, we headed off in the car to an out-of-town mall, to see 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall'. Max and I were extremely proud of ourselves, that we can come to this random city in the States, then drive off to a mall miles away to watch a movie. The pride ebbed away pretty quickly though when I remembered how, at the age of 17, my friends Tom and Sarah bought a car, drove across the States and then sold it. That kind of trumps our measly mall expedition.

Anyway, after a depressing supper in Applebees (so many regulars! So strangely few very fat people, considering the food!), we watched the movie and it was ace. As was the trailer for 'Pineapple Express', which we saw beforehand. Turns out Rodney Rothman was an executive producer on 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall' - the idea of the Apatow and Rothman venn diagrams overlapping is a most exciting one (if you haven't read Early Bird, please do - it's the funniest book I've ever read). We laughed a lot and Max now has a man crush on Paul Rudd, who was the funniest thing in the film. Russell Brand was good, too - I felt a curious flush of pride, for no good reason, other than I interviewed him when he'd just got back from shooting in Hawaii. But that's not a good reason.

After stopping Max getting into the wrong car in the car park (look for the combination lock on the driver's door, dude!), we headed back into Harrisburg, only to discover that there'd been an enormous Obama rally on the steps of the capitol tonight! Aaaarrrgghhhh! This doesn't bode well for Maxy's weekend of journalism and I'm really sad to've missed the chance to see Barack.

We kept passing lots of people brandishing Obama signs, and I kept suggesting that Max start his voxpopping now, but he insisted he wasn't working today and that he'd start tomorrow. But when I passed a lady wearing an Obama pin in the corridor of our hotel, I forcibly made Max pop her vox and it turned out that - although she's not from Harrisburg and therefore of no use to his piece - she's a Republican who's voting for Obama! Yeay!