The following travel notes were never intended for public consumption and I will not make any pretences about their literary merit; there is none.  These were hand written notes in a small spiral bound note book, written at the end of each day, which were intended to support the photographs and video footage I took through the three weeks of travel on the North American Continent. This particular trip was planned as our 40th wedding anniversary celebration, which would have been in mid July that year, but was brought forward a month, because of an invitation to the wedding of Nicky, my cousin Evi's elder son. The original plan was a Canadian trip only, but having accepted the wedding invitation we modified the plan twice, also to include a brief stay in LA, visiting some friends there.

The video footage taken through the journey never got edited, the photographs are still in their original folders, as they were returned from processing and these notes were buried and forgotten until very recently, when they surfaced from oblivion, during my search for some more important documents.

As rough notes they have no literary value and would have little or no historical or narrative interest to anyone, yet oddly - in light of my experience in reading numerous Blogs recently, whilst researching a particular subject - I found them at least as revealing as many of the Blogs I've read. Most of my other travel notes are nothing more than "short hand" sketches, hard to decipher even by me, containing "key words" mostly, rather than full sentences.

These notes were exceptional in details and observations and even in "composition", as I used full sentences most of the time, certainly coherent enough to be followed by almost anyone.

I release these notes here with only very minor editing here and there, chiefly to give meaning/explanation to names mentioned in the diary. These additions will occur in brackets within the text with various random numbers of asterisks (*) added, in order not to be confused with other remarks in brackets, which were original comments within the text.

Place names occurring in the diary were not checked for correctness when copied from the original hand written notes. At the time of writing the diary I had maps and leaflets at hand; regrettably I could not find any of them now and therefore I could not verify the accurate spelling of place names. Unfortunately my handwriting is not always easy to read, hence the possibility of "typos". I apologise for any possible inaccuracies.

However, I make no apologies for any potentially "politically incorrect" remarks; these notes were written when political correctness was not yet mandatory and as I stated they were intended for private use. At any rate, I regard political correctness as a "straitjacket", that only serves the purpose of the political establishment, to enforce their view on the rest of us about what is, or is not correct. Hitler and Stalin tried to impose it, as well as other tyrants. It should never be acceptable in a democratic free society! Not that we have a truly democratic and free society any more! Therefore I will not submit to "political censure".

If you wish to shoot me for these last remarks or for my political "incorrectness" I will not jump about… I'll stand straight and firm to improve your aim…

And now to the "Diary"… If you are still expecting a literary piece, stop reading right now!…

To read the full diary, please download the attached Word.Document. 
 

© P. J. Oszmann (1995 - Edited 2006)