GALFROMDOWNUNDER UPOVER

Where I first landed: Bike Friday in Eugene, Oregon USA I had just arrived in the USA , and was interning at Bike Friday, Eugene, Oregon. Every morning at 8am was a sales meeting. I was transitioning from being a nite owl in Central America to a morning person in the USA, and judging from the empty chairs around the sales manager's cubeless cube, I wasn't the only one. Nonetheless, I managed to get to the shop by 7.58am, park my bike in the garage at 7.59am and wandered through the small break room where, unusually, the TV was on. One of the new salesguys, Michael Kelly, was standing in front of it, staring. "What are you watching?" I asked. "World Trade Center," he said simply. I saw the smoking towers on the old fuzzy box (even then, this was a clunky old telly with a bubble screen) but it didn't register. I thought it was a special effects movie and Michael was indulging in a bit of pre-work viewing. I mean, everyone in 'merica ...

The monster truck. One of the first things I encountered in America. Apart from cinnamon buns. "Don't leave your head back here. Just go up there and live your dreams." Douglas pushed me forward into the queue. "Go orn, git." A few years ago I would have taken these words, uttered by a lover, as proof that any seeds of a relationship we might have been sewing had now reached their use-by date. But as I stood beside my companion of the past five months, studying his averted eyes, matted hair and stroking his heavy, sun-beaten hands, I took his words as they came. He was, after all, a veteren of more than four years living in survival mode on a remote strip of beach on a Panamanian island, fighting off the indians, living his dream. He pushed me towards the shuffling migration line. I hung onto him like he was a dead man walking toward the electric chair, and all the while his eyes looking behind us self-consciously. "Y' just go do your thin...