Excerpts from postcards sent in July 1988, Dean's World Tour I:
 

Los Angeles, CA, USA, 10 July 1988 -- Howdy!  America seems like just another foreign country, just another stop on a seeminly endless itinerary; but I can see an end now.  After a circuit of the U.S.A., checking in on a number of people I met while traveling overseas, and hopefully participating in a workcamp in New Hampshire, I exbect to be back home in Minnesota sometime in September.

It's funny how disoriented I've been feeling in my own country, in what would otherwise be a comfortably familiar environment.  I still expect cars to be driven on the left instead of the right;  I rush to stores thinking that they're going to be closed by 6:00 PM on weekdays, 12 noon Saturdays and all day Sunday, when actually I can get almost anything I want at almost anytime of the day.  As Captain Hawkeye on M.A.S.H. would say, it's great to be back "in the land of the all-night generator".  I'm also still thinking I need to find banks to convert my American dollars into some other foreign currency, when actually the greenback works just fine here.  Most of all, I still find myself speaking borken English to people and expecting that they won't understand me the first time I say it.  I find it difficult to speak in full sentences now.  For example, instead of asking someone "may I sit here?" in the seat next to them on a bus, I point to the seat and ask "Okay?"  "Okay, what?" they respond.

America is one of the scarier places I've travelled.  I wouldn't want to be a foreigner arriving at Los Angeles airport.  It felt to me like I was back in the confusion and chaos of Calcutta.  Then, upon leaving the airport, you quickly realize how getting around America without the almighty automobile is a bigger pain than probably anywhere else.  The state of public transport in this country, especially in Southern California, is bordering on hopelessness, although I must say that the Greyhound bus depot derelicts are as colorful as I rembered them to be.

In spite of this country's faults and of flaws in the collective American character, there's something special about this place and its people that I really like.  Perhaps, it's the feeling and the belief by the people, more than anywhere else I've been, that anything is possible.

I visited Hatem and Kathy and also my former girlfriend Yoly, now married with a child, in San Diego.  In L.A., I'm staying with Eliana, whom I met in Luxembourg, and will also visit J.W. (that's really his name!), with whom I travelled in Italy and Greece.

Phoenix, Arizona, 19 July 1988 -- Howdy!

In so many parts of the world, I was missing hot showers.  In Arizona in July, hot water comes out of bother the hot and cold taps.

Mike Morales, with whom I travelled in Ireland and Britain, and I visited the area of your property (my mother and stepfather) in Apache Junction, Arizona.  Superstition Mountain looked magnificent and the desert was, ay you said it would be, much greener than it appears in your photographs.  I can see why you like the area.

The heat is pretty oppressive, but just as the cold of Minnesota winters, I suppose it's possible to get used to it, especially if one stays indoors.  It's cabin fever in revers here.

Well, the bus is loading, so I'll be roading ... El Paso, Texas by morning.
 

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