We need to get some names. Andy and Dunia-How-Do-You-Spell-That just doesn’t do the job any more. Today I met two people called Mud and Friday. We met a Free Eagle and an Angel – though, actually, I think Angel was her real name and Free Eagle got unstuck when trying to remember if his email address had two or three ‘e’s in the middle. But we’ve had Leafs, Trees and Winds. Their school registers must read like Led Zeppelin lyrics or something.

Dunia has suggested I start calling myself Ropey. In English English, ‘Ropey’ means feeling a bit ill or when a building, structure or vehicle looks unsafe. I’ll have to find out any American connotations. She, of course, has the biggest problem with her name; trying to get the locals to understand it. I think the difficulty is not so much that it’s an unusual name but that they are not sure about her accent and whether Dunia just said maybe an actual word if only she had said it with an American twang. We worked out that Dunia has to ask unknown Americans to say her name on being presented with it on a piece of paper so as to hear how it should be said. Let’s hope they can read.

Interstate 5. Beautiful country south of Oregon where a range of hills divides the green from California’s brown. First the fields go but the lush trees remain. Then 100 miles on, there are fewer trees. By then, the road is dominated by Mount Shasta, another massive, majestic volcano. Interstate 5 is part of the Pan American Highway – we’re seeing signs for Los Angeles and we can imagine the Mexico and Panama Cities coming up… Beyond even that, as the Interstate 5 straightens out across California’s northern plains, the landscape opens and you can imagine being part of a Global Super Highway – the world connected. The Earthcircuit.