13) Travelling And The Rest Of The Nineties

I was finished with college and still had money. It was time for some travelling. I was planning to spend some time in London when, just by chance, a relative from England had decided to drive across the U.S. and dropped by. I agreed to split the cost of the trip and go along.

Starting early the next morning, one day's driving on Interstate Highway 70 got us as far as Indianapolis. The next day to Junction City, Kansas and the next day to Grand Junction, Colorado. One more day brought Las Vegas.

The Kansas prairie landscape is unique. It was not actually flat, but was kind of rolling. On the high plains, east of Denver, there is the ruins of some type of settlement that looked like wooden buildings from the Nineteenth Century, that could be seen from the highway.

The bleak yet colorful landscape of southern Utah has to be seen to be believed. It is quite a bit what I pictured the planet Mars being like. Then, into Nevada it looks more like it does on the moon.

The most impressive sight in Las Vegas itself is the view from the observation tower, The Stratosphere, at night. Boulder (or Hoover) Dam is the single best-known project from the work projects of the 1930s.

I walked along Venice Beach in Los Angeles and drove up to the Mount Wilson Astronomical Observatory, which was for so long the real center of astronomy in the world. The sunny weather, palm trees everywhere and, Spanish-influenced home styles are gorgeous. Anyone who watches television has seen quite a bit of California already, but it is really nice and I wish I could have spent more time there.

I am not writing much about the places that I saw across America. That is because I basically spent three weeks seeing a slice of the country from a car window. It was an awesome time in itself, but it is impossible to drive around America and stop everywhere and see everything. The trip would go on forever.

Tijuana, across the border in Mexico, was about what I imagined Mexico being like. I bought a souvenir sombrero and a leather bag. Mexico has every bit as much potential as the U.S. or Canada. It just has many more people than it can provide a decent living for.

Mexico has serious troubles with gangs involved in the drug trade. At the time of this writing, this is true particularly of Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, both border cities. But any thinking person knows that the driving force behind these destructive gangs is the demand for drugs north of the border.

Countries like Mexico and Colombia are the ones we associate with illegal drugs. But the most important element in any business is the customer and the customer is not in these countries, but in North America and Europe.

From Los Angeles, I drove to Phoenix, Tucson, Las Cruces and, El Paso. There were so many radio stations devoted to the Bible, it was like the voice of God across the desert.

The desert is awesome. I stopped in Lordsburg, New Mexico and just wandered around in the desert for a while.

From El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, I drove across the vast state of Texas to San Antonio and then to Houston. I took a detour to have a look at Galveston. It is a sub-tropical island with a vast number of palm trees.

Then it was on to New Orleans. This was before Hurricane Katrina and one of the most colorful and charming places anywhere is the French Quarter of New Orleans. This was really a unique city which made quite an impression on me.

I wanted to have a look at the real south and turned northward to Jackson, Mississippi and then east into Alabama to Montgomery. I stayed overnight in Dothan, Alabama and then drove across the Florida panhandle from Tallahassee to Jacksonville and then north to Savannah, Atlanta, Chattanooga, Nashville, Knoxville and finally, to Washington D.C.

Washington was really a nice city in the national government area but I was really struck at how it resembled Paris. It was a Frenchman, Charles L'Enfant, who set up the basic design of Washington.

I stopped by the British Embassy in Washington to pick up the British passport that I had ordered. They had mailed it to me, but I had moved back to my parents' house when my apartment lease expired and it had been returned to the embassy.

The British Embassy was on "Embassy Row" on Massachusetts Avenue, near the embassies of many other nations. The only thing distinctive about the British Embassy is that it had one of those traditional red British phone booths outside. The most impressive embassy to see was easily that of Saudi Arabia.

I wanted to have a look at Philadelphia. I got off the highway and stopped at a store. First of all, the store had a lock on the door and the clerk had to press a buzzer to let me in. Then, the clerk watched every move I made from behind bulletproof glass as if I was there to steal something.

I was really put off by it and just got back on the highway. But it is not fair to judge a city by one store. Several years later, I would spend two weeks in Philadelphia and would realize what a really great place it is. I was working while I was there and did not have much time to simply look around, but I became really impressed with Philadelphia. Those row houses give Philadelphia character all it's own.

In New York City, I went up to the observation deck of the fabled Empire State Building. It opened just as the stock market was crashing in 1929 and was the tallest building in the world for about forty years. The main elevator does not go all the way up to the observation deck, it is necessary to ride that one as far as it goes and then get on another elevator.

Not far away from the Empire State Building is Wall Street, America's financial center. I had a look around there and along Broadway. If I had known that the World Trade Center's days were numbered, I would have went up there too. I want to spend more time in New York City, but have only ever been there for a day or two.

New England architecture, in cities such as Providence and Boston, is unique. This region of America also has a character all it's own. There is nothing just like it anywhere. I had stopped briefly in Baltimore and that city has it's unique brand of architecture too.

Not long after this trip around the U.S. was complete, I was on my way to London. The plan was to get a job and gain some international work experience. I also wanted to be around lots of people from different countries to gain more knowledge of the world and hopefully get some practice at speaking other languages.

The flight was unremarkable. I stayed at a hotel adjoining Heathrow Airport for a couple of days until I found a bed and breakfast further into the city. During my 1995 trip to Britain, I had passed through the bus terminal of Victoria Station in central London and noticed a service connecting travellers with local bed and breakfast accomodations. This was where I went to.

I began getting used to navigating London's Underground (subway). I had studied the map of London extensively before coming over and I took the Picadilly Line to Victoria Station and got set up with a vacancy at a bed and breakfast.

I went about looking around London and going through want ads for jobs. I was a dual citizen of the U.S. and Britain, but I had a passport from both countries and the British passport would be required as identification to get a job.

The bed and breakfast that I was at was going to be closing for renovations. I moved to a nearby hostel that I had noticed. This was the type of place where I wanted to stay, there was a cafeteria and travellers from all over the world. There were a lot of people in particular from other European countries. One would never guess that there had been a war between Britain and Argentina fifteen years before, because there were quite a few Argentines in London.

I got a look at the original Tussauds Wax Museum, with the adjacent planetarium and the world-famous Camden Market, it is easy to spend the whole day there. The British Telecom Tower (BT Tower), the tallest building in Britain before Canary Wharf, was nearby but was still was not open to visitors, just as when I had stopped there years before.

I went to a service at the massive All-Souls Church, the one next to BBC Headquarters, there were people there from all over the world. That is what Heaven will look like.

But the hostel where I was staying was available only on a daily basis. No matter how long a person had stayed there, there was no guarantee of accomodations the following night. That was because there was a lot of groups that stayed there. There was an Argentine football (soccer) team there for a while. And the hostel had to have room for the entire group.

Finally, I sought other accomodations. For the rest of my time in London, I stayed at a bed and breakfast run by some people from Morocco, Surtees Hotel. It was on Warwick Way, near the intersection of Belgrave Road, a quick walk from Victoria Station, and one block over from the elegant Eccleston Square.

I was not far north of the Thames River and that massive old Battersea Power Station was just across the river. With it's four chimneys, it was known as the "upside-down grand piano". This location was near Westminster Cathedral with Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament within easy walking distance. Big Ben looks really impressive with the clock face lit at night.

I had never really been to Birmingham in England. So, I went up to spend a day looking around there. In the center of the city was the "Bull Ring" and that cylindrical building known as The Rotunda. Birmingham supposedly had the highest concentration of immigrants in Britain. There was a big four-story mall that had just opened and I spent much of a day in there but cannot now remember it's name.

I took a trip to Paris. The Eurostar is the train which runs from Waterloo Station in London, just across the river from the Houses of Parliament, through the Chunnel (English Channel Tunnel) to Gare du Nord in Paris. There was an alternate route which goes to Brussels, instead of Paris.

In the days before the euro currency, there were machines at Gare du Nord to exchange currencies. I walked from there to the obelisk at the eastern end of the Champs-Elysees Boulevard.

I wanted to have lunch in one of the many restaurants on the famous Champs-Elysees. But there were lines of people waiting outside all of them. The only place without a long line was McDonalds. So instead of French cuisine on the Champs-Elysees, I had a quick lunch at McDonalds.

I walked as far as the Arc de Triomphe (awesome) and walked from there down another street to the Eiffel Tower. The view from the top is as magnificent as any view in the world. In the distance to the west one can see La Defense, these are the modern high rise office buildings of Paris which are not built in the original city.

From there, I walked along the river until I was opposite the island in the Seine River on which the original settlement of Paris was located. I crossed over and took photos of Cathedral Notre Dame, although I did not go in.

It is really amazing, all the famous buildings which I have been outside of but never went in. I have been outside the Canadian Parliament Buildings in Ottawa, The White House, The U.S. Capitol, the Alamo in Texas, The Wall Street Stock Exchange, Buckingham Palace, Britain's Houses of Parliament and, Cathedral Notre Dame of Paris. But I have never been inside any of these buildings.

From there, I walked back to the Gare du Nord. I had missed my train back to London so, I stayed in a hotel nearby and took the train in the morning.

After being back in London for a while, I went on a trip for a few days to Dublin in Ireland. First on a bus to Holyhead Port in Wales and then across the Irish Sea to Dublin.

The first thing one sees upon approach to Dublin by sea is that tall smokestack painted red and white. Obviously, to make the entrance to the River Liffey easier to see.

I got a room at the North Star Hotel in central Dublin. This was the hometown of James Joyce and so many other famous writers and has always been known as a haven for writers. Ireland gets more rain than Britain and it drizzled the whole time I was there. But that only made it seem more like this was really Dublin. It was a charming city, more easygoing than London or Paris.

I walked all around central Dublin, as far west as the Wellington Monument in Phoenix Park and then crossed to the other side of the River Liffey and walked back past Heuston Train Station and the Guiness Brewery. There was the Book of Kells at nearby Trinity College, this is a very old part of the Bible and a page is turned once a day.

The neighborhoods to the north of the River Liffey are something that I wanted to see also. I recognized Croke Park, the stadium where Pope John Paul had preached years before.

As you might expect, there is a lot of green in Dublin. From the carpeting in the North Star Hotel to the phone booths to the double-decker buses, it seems that most everything that can be painted green has been painted green.

A while after getting back to London, I went on another trip. This time, around Britain. From King's Cross Station, I took a train across Britain to Edinburgh in Scotland. I wished I could have stopped at so many of the places on the way, but so much of the country sped by through the window of the train. This was the first time I had been on a train, other than a subway, since I had travelled across Canada as a young child.

We got to Edinburgh's Waverly Station in the evening. I got a nice bed and breakfast in which to stay, but it was late and everything seemed to be closed as far as getting something to eat. I finally found a pizza place that was open.

Edinburgh seemed to be all made of stone. I took so many photographs. Edinburgh Castle loomed on a hill over the city. Princess Street was below the castle. I walked all around the city and in the castle.

I went to the so-called Camera Obscura next to the castle. This is really amazing for anyone interested in optics. The whole room is like the inside of a camera. I took a bus tour around the city, which showed us along the road known as the Royal Mile and to Holyroodhouse Palace.

From Edinburgh I got on a train to Scotland's largest city, Glasgow. This was a really big city and I walked around much of the central area and took photographs. The mall known as the St. Enoch Center was being partially remodeled.

From Glasgow, I made my way to Belfast in northern Ireland. The island of Ireland is much closer to Britain here than it is further south. I boarded a ferry at Stranraer. We went past some land, then over a stretch of water and then past more land. We were already in Northern Ireland.

Industry in Belfast has always centered around ships. It is easy to see why, Belfast has just about the best natural harbour in the world. I stayed a few days and walked around Belfast. It was an attractive city with bright green hills around it. But there were soldiers patrolling with guns everywhere and armoured vehicles on the streets after sunset.

The next stop on the way back to London was the Liverpool-Manchester area. It was also noticably slower in pace and more relaxed than London.

I stayed in the Manchester Picadilly Hotel on about the seventh floor. In the middle of the night the fire alarm went off and everyone had to walk down the stairs, wait for close to an hour while the building was checked, and then walk back up. A Dutch football (soccer) team was staying at the hotel.

After walking around quite a bit of central Manchester, I spent the rest of the time there in the Arndale Centre Mall. This is the largest mall in a city center in all of Europe, not counting areas outside cities.

In nearby Liverpool, I had a look at it's two cathedrals. The original Catholic Cathedral was bombed in the Second World War and a new one was built in modern style after the war. The massive old Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool is one of the single most impressive structures that I have ever seen anywhere.

I walked to Penny Lane, made famous by the Beatles song of that name. It is a typical Liverpool street except that it does not have the usual metal street signs. Since those signs were always stolen by Beatles fans, the street signs for Penny Lane are painted onto walls instead.

In the song, "the shelter in the middle of the roundabout" is now a restaurant called Sergeant Pepper's. I had dinner there and as you might expect, Beatles songs were always playing. A roundabout, by the way, is a traffic circle.

I walked around and took photos of Liverpool's waterfront. I noticed the air intakes of the Mersey Tunnel and I remembered that this was the tunnel we had driven through while we were leaving England so many years before.

Back in London, I had discovered the Science Museum. It is the one by the Natural History Museum and Royal Albert Hall. This is where I extended my science education. The museum was so extensive that I bought a pass to it, instead of buying a ticket every day. I took a notebook to the museum and wrote down every fact in every exhibit that I didn't already know. I already had such an extensive note system, as I have described.

I had also thought about being an inventor and spent time at London's Patent Office doing patent searching to see if something has already been invented. It can now be done online.

One day was spent at the Tower of London. I walked across nearby Tower Bridge and toured the decomissioned naval ship H.M.S. Belfast. Another day was spent in the Imperial War Museum. Yet another day was spent looking around the Barbican and still another at Canary Wharf, the massive office complex associated with Toronto's Olympia And York.

I read some books while in London. One that stands out in my memory is a biography of Pakistan's late president Zia.

The comet Hale-Bopp was easily visible in the evenings, even with all of the light from London. I can only imagine how bright it must have been if seen from far out in the countryside.

I had set the date of May 7, 1997, that if I do not have a job in London by then, I will return to Niagara Falls.

Back home, I often went for a walk around my old neighborhood of Niagara Falls. This was ideal for doing a lot of thinking. I really got further into computers and at the same time saw how this ever-growing internet was a part of the one-world system foretold in the Bible for the last days.

I realized how knowledge and technology were being held back from what they potentially could be by the simple fact that we can often change the world faster than we, as a whole, can really adapt to those changes. We are, in many ways, like a bunch of commoners who find ourselves thrown into the future.

This would lead to me writing the book The Commoner Syndrome.

While trying to digest all of the science information that I had written down, I began to notice something which I had not thought of previously. There are certain underlying patterns in all that there is and everything that exists or happens is a manifestation of these patterns. It took me quite a while to really nail it down but the eventual result was the book The Theory Of Primes.

I worked for just over a year in computer technical support by phone and when I lost that job, it was six months before I got another and spent the portion of that time in which I was not looking for a job really reading and thinking. This is when I really nailed down The Theory Of Primes.

Grasping the underlying patterns in everything did not just result in a book. It really affected my way of thinking. After becoming closely acquainted with these patterns, my thinking felt much more nimble and fluid than before. Because I recognized the same fundamental patterns in everything, I could quickly and easily jump from one field of knowledge to another. It seemed as if this unlocked mental abilities that I would not have had otherwise.

In the news, there was a massacre of foreign tourists in Luxor, Egypt in 1997.

In 1998 came the really surprising scientific news that the expansion of the universe is not slowing down after all, as had been believed. The expansion of the universe was actually speeding up. Two completely separate teams had come to the same conclusion.

I first heard of Al Qaeda in 1998, for the two simultaneous bombings in east Africa.

I read several biographies around this time. Pierre Trudeau really had quite a time wandering around the world in his youth. It was actually Charles DeGaulle who predicted before the Second World War that a future war would revolve around tanks, rather than the trenches of World War One. William Westmoreland, the U.S. general who was in charge of the Vietnam War from 1965-1968 might have made a good president. Two other generals; "Black Jack" Pershing and Curtis LeMay also made interesting biographies and, of course, Ayatollah Khomeini.

Major News in 1999 was the bombing of Serbia, to finally end the war in the former Yugoslavia, and the massacre at Columbine.