USA diary day 3 - post-Sequestration Washington

Another early start - more due to my body clock than anything else. I headed into town breakfasting at Pret - one of the few reverse-trade invasions I've seen in the US. While MaccyDees, Gap, and just about every major US brand seem to have made it on to the UK's high streets, it's rare to see the phenomenon happening the other way round. But, at leas in DC and NYC, Pret a Manger seems to definitely be a growing brand.

On the stroke of 9am I was admitted into the National Archives - my first visit to this Pennsylvania Avenue monolith - though I was nearly mown down in the crush as a cottage industry of archive researchers scuttled for prime position in the reading room. The reading room's not all that bit, but was very busy - and on just the second day of post-sequestration DC, that was causing a problem.

I had just one box of materials to interrogate. I had very limited time, and had pinned down my search through pre-contact with the fabulous Ron Ross to the Congressional Records I really needed to see. I thought I was losing time going through the bureaucracy of getting a researcher's card and then having to meet up with a Congressional Records archivist to relay my request. However, by the time I was allowed into the reading room (after a false start when I was ejected for the sin of carrying a small camera case) my box of papers was ready - much to the evident surprise of the desk staff.

I'd somehow bypassed the file pulling system and was able to settle down and work my way through the record of the 85th Congress' Senate sub committee on astronautics and space. To be honest, I found the most useful materials in the first 30 minutes - but ploughed on for a further three hours.

More and more researchers arrived, and the desk spaces were soon full. I'm not sure why they weren't allowed to work in the adjacent rooms, but suspect it came down to supervisory staffing. While sequestration won't kick in at the National Archive for another six weeks, posts had been held unfilled in anticipation of the Capitol Hill stand-off. Coupled with a number of illnesses, there were just too few staff on the floor to cope with the voracious demand for files. Researchers are generally quite sanguine folk, but there were raised voices and exasperated sighs and files remained unpulled, and the queue to return materials stretched to the door.

It was quite a noisy room and I didn't find it conducive to good research - and was quite glad to leave before lunch. By 3pm I was on an Amtrak heading north east. Four and a half hours later, after passing through Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, I was met from my train at Stamford, Connecticut and whisked to my concretely-functional hotel. I spent yesterday earning my keep to pay or this trip by delivering comms training at Diageo - a long day, but also very good fun.

My best memory of the last couple of days is an odd one. The train failed just before arriving at Stamford, leaving us in the dark without power. The driver came on the PA and said: "I don't really know what's wrong, but I'm going to turn everything off and on again and try and reboot the engine." It worked: it nearly always does...IT, trains...who knows what else.      

USA Diary - Day 2 - A great day in 'the bubble'

Today was one of those research days that I wish happened far more often. I knew what I wanted; had some fantastic help in finding it - and picked up a few bonuses along the way too.

Still being largely on UK time, I was wide awake at 5am this morning. In fact, I hadn't really slept well at all last night. The room was really cold, infused with orange light from the street - and there were lights on in the house too, shining through the glass pane above my door. Anyway I was up and out by 6.40am and breakfasting in town by 7am. It all meant I arrived at NASA as soon as the doors opened, and was able to get through three thick public affairs files before lunch. As on my previous visits, Liz Suckow and Colin Fries were fantastic. They just know so much - and what they don't know, they know how to find - and quickly.

I spent lunch in the National Air and Space Museum - my irregular homage to the ballistic engineering and frontier technology that I still find so fascinating.

The afternoon was spent sifting through Bob Sherrod's files on the astronaut's Life magazine contract. Depending on which source you prefer, it was either the best or worst thing NASA did in the early days of the manned space programme. Even after eight hours of reading it up, down and sideways, I'm still not sure. I'll need to re-read and reflect to get my thoughts in order.

I had a final half hour in the library where the team had pulled a really helpful list of secondary source material for me including a couple of theses I'd never even heard of. I wish I had more time, but a bit of frantic photocopying definitely helped - and the new sources are a real bonus.

It has been a beautiful day here. Really cold, but wonderfully clear and blue. As is my wont, I walked everywhere, so even though it's just gone 7pm, I'm totally cream crackered now.

Anyway, National Archives in the morning, before the train journey to Connecticut.

USA diary - day 1

It feels as if it should be really late. But looking at my watch, it's just past 8.20pm I'm writing this while fighting tiredness. I've spent much of the day travelling, and don't really want to fall asleep now and then be wide awake at 4am.

I'm back in Washington DC, with a day at NASA and a few hours at the National Archives researching ahead of me before I head north. I'm staying in a guest house north of Logan Circus; comfortable, quiet and not too expensive.

The flight out from London was blissfully uneventful - a half empty plane meant I managed to get a double seat to myself, and passed the time watching Argo (very good) and The Silver Linings Playbook (which had its moments).

All was plain sailing at Dulles and I was in a van ready to head to the city only 30 minutes after landing. Then it all went a little wrong - with a very surreal couple of hours ensuing. The van driver laboriously loaded all our zip codes into his sat nav and headed out of Dulles - only to stop on the hard shoulder a few minutes later to do it all over again. It was clear he didn't have a whole lot of English (it turned out he was from Cameroon) and became ever clearer that a) he had no idea where he was going and b) didn't know how to use the sat nav.

He came off the freeway very early and seemed to be heading on an aimless tour of the suburbs before pulling up at a bank way out west on Massachusetts Avenue....nowhere near where anyone was heading. My van-mates were an English woman, and guys from France, Spain and Israel respectively. Over the next hour and a half our  driver, who had been in the US for a month and had been given his sat nav (and job?) only the day before, managed to run several red lights, nearly run down at least one pedestrian and incur the ire of just about every other driver in DC. After a while he completely gave up on the sat nav and I directed him through the city (not hard, it's a grid) helped by two van mates whose French was better than mine. I was the last drop-off - and there were a lot of  á droite and á gauche before we finally reached the right(ish) road.

I'm flabbergasted this guy was let out on the road - seemingly untrained and definitely quite panicky as the journey started to go wrong. I don't blame him, but his employer - Supreme - are doing themselves no favours at all while putting travellers at real risk.

So my drive was an experience - but not one I care to repeat.