In January 2022, I left Britain for a solo six week post-lockdown road trip around America: mostly the West Coast, some bits further in, and a flight home from New York. This is because I spent 2021 doing two things: berating myself for not having travelled enough before the world shut down, and enjoying a fairly lucrative job with nothing apart from rent to spend it on. I was always going to catch the first flight I could. My actual journey made little sense. Because I don’