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Many people (well two) have asked what my inspiration was for this road trip. Was it the song about Route 66, was it a book, a film or a documentary? The answer is a bit of everything and a bit of nothing.

However let me talk about Route 66 first, it doesn't exist. Well as a recognised road across America it doesn't, in fact it was closed in 1985 and replaced with the I40. Bits of the route still exist and are clased as historic route 66, but you would struggle to do the entire journey on that. That said, we have stayed at placed and visited stops on the old route, going in both directions, so I guess you could say that has been an influence.

I guess I'd have to say Dave Gorman's America Unchained was a big influence, a couple of the places we visited were on the list because of him, including the collection of old barbed wire, thanks Dave.

Otherwise it has to be National Lampoon's Vacation and Beavis and Butthead Do America that are the other main points of reference. Let's face Rag and I are in fact Beavis and Butthead head-banging along to heavy metal in the car, visiting places like Bald Knob and about to visit the damn Dam. Let's just hope we don't manage to switch off the entire electricity supply for Nevada whilst we are there (you'll have had to have seen the film to get that reference, and if you've not seen it, I recommend it).

I do sometimes think that I've turned into a film critic making references and recommendations of films, but you need to link things back to popular (or not quite so popular) culture.

I also understand that I am 2 down on the gag count in my blogs compared to Rag, not sure how I'll make that deficit up, but I'll try my hardest, but when he's making rimming gags, how am I meant to come in there?

Not sure how much sinning we'll do in Sin City, we'll leave that up to our now separated travelling companions who were last heard of in Santa Monica. I'm sure I'll see them at some point, I've got to, we are flying back on the same plane.