will Shiers' VOYAGE OF DISCOVERIES
“If you come home with a suntan I’ll be very annoyed,” says my wife, as I kiss her goodbye and head to the airport, leaving her to look after the kids for the week. She’s got it into her head that my annual Discoveries trip to the US involves me searching for old cars for a couple of hours a day, and spending the rest of the time sitting by a hotel pool, being waited on by scantily clad cocktail waitresses!
The reality couldn’t be further from the truth. In the 25 years I’ve been tin-hunting, finding decent abandoned cars has become increasingly difficult. When I first started, almost every town in rural America had a junkyard. These days the few surviving decent yards are hundreds of miles apart, and when I arrive it’s often to find that they’ve just crushed everything old. The trip I’m about to embark on will see me travel almost 3000 miles, on a round trip through California, Nevada, Idaho, Washington and Oregon. Don’t get me wrong though, although it’s a lot of driving, and most of the rundown hotels I stay in don’t even have soda vending machines let alone cocktail waitresses, I still love every minute of it.
Not that I’d ever admit that to her! I flew into San Francisco late last night,
