"Phil Is that a two or a seven?"

Having left San Diego the relatively feeble two hour drive left us positively engaged by what Pheonix, Arizona had to offer. It was most amusing to see the temperature gauge rise from 85 up to 115 and we were noticeably smug that people once invented air conditioning in automobiles. Cacti were equal to my bad jokes in their frequency.

The recently purchased satellite navigation system did not least us astray and so we approached our destination around 5pm.

Jackie and Eric had agreed like those that have gone before them to host us for two days. They're both in their late twenties, from the States (Boston and Phoenix) and were quite frankly ideal. Having travelled Europe couchsurfing/hostelling themselves they were looking to return the favour whilst saving to go again one day.

Not wanting to stay in and impose on their evening of Spaghetti Bolognese we ventured out to check out the local social scene. The seven minute walk to Sonoma Casual Dining left us sweating up like the preverbial fat lasses at the disco. The bar was showing American Racing and had a betting window which while impressive in convenience only had one punter. He was doing his bollocks at Mountaineer Downs and I had nothing but sympathy for him.

We also met lisa the barmaid who was intrigued by our journey, she's from Chicago but has lived in Phoenix for the last ten years. She kindly invited us to a free comedy evening (at another fecking Irish bar) which having attended later on turned out to be every bit as bad as we'd predicted. We also met Irish Shaun that night who would later conclude our friendship by calling someone a nigger and getting punched in the face. We should have doubted him when he told us he was a spurs fan...

Our hosts were heading out to work early the next morning whilst we ventured to Starbucks to take advantage of the free wifi and do a bit of trip planning.

We have made the decision not to go to New Orleans in favour of considerably less driving and seeing two more baseball teams. I sent out a bunch of couchsurfing requests and having planned as far as Chicago in 12 days time we've become a bit more relaxed about what was looking an uncertain future.

It was with a mixture of confusion and surprise when two youngish gentlemen also frequenting the establishment tossed me a piece of paper before making a hurried exit. I opened the note to find a phone number and the name Tyler. It seems as though I had been chosen as a potential partner for the guy in question much to Phil's amusement. Unfortunately for Tyler there were two main reasons he wouldn't be hearing from me again, firstly I'm not gay (no really) and perhaps more crucially I couldn't read his handwriting.

Then came a quick laundry stop, car tyre inflation and another brief visit to the horse racing bar for happy hour before the game. A funny looking chap with awful teeth was telling us about his friendships with US sports stars, other patrons assured us he was full off shit and quite frankly we believed them.

lisa is a big diamond backs fan and was enthusiastic when we invited her to the game with us and so with Jackie and Eric there too we watched the Arizona Diamond Backs beat the Mets 3-2 at Chase Field. It's another great venue with a closed roof and is fully air conditioned, the beers were still bloody expensive though.

We're still rooting for the home team each game and are now four out of four, hopefully it continues although we're starting to wish we'd made a small financial investment in the proceedings.

After the game our hosts again returned home (work commitments) and we headed out to a few more bars. Once more the memory has weakened but we're definitely more of a novelty in places like Phoenix which generally means more craic.

In truth there isn't much to the place, but the people are nice enough and while I'll probably never come back there isn't really much wrong with it.

I write this in the town of Denning, New Mexico en-route to see the Texas Rangers play the Angels. It's a brutal 18 hour drive and we don't know where we're sleeping yet. All good fun though.

Our next host is a guy called Anthony in Arlington, to be continued...