Andy Richardson: Viva America – land of the free

The car was full of marijuana smoke. Like, really, really, really full. It was like driving in a fog-mobile. It was like being part of a firefighter training exercise where they're forced to crawl through really smoky buildings to make sure they can use breathing apparatus in extreme conditions. Except it was a funny fog-mobile, one that made its occupants think they were orange spiders playing space tennis.

Jay interrupted our space tennis. "Woah dude, we're all gonna get busted." He'd looked further down the Pacific Coast Highway and seen a flotilla of police cars, all screeching their sirens and waving their bright, blue lights. "Woah. Wooaahhhh. Woooooaaaaahhhhhhh."

Jay started to freak out, like Neil, on The Young Ones. "We're going down, dude. Goin' down." I did what any self-respecting Brit abroad does. I kept calm and carried on. Windows were wound down, the air-conditioning was turned to full-pelt-Boeing-747-blast and Fox's extra strong mints were consumed. I reassured Jay and his fratboy friends that we'd get out of things alive.

"But like, duuude. Duuuuuude."

"Oh shut up, Jay. You whiney American," I said.

I'd met Jay and a bunch of his friends by the side of the road. I was 22 and enjoying my first road trip in the USA. I'd bought a flight to San Francisco on the spur of the moment, while passing a British Airways shop in Birmingham. As you do. I'd booked a hire car, packed a bag and read a copy of Jack Kerouac's On The Road. And that was pretty much it.

A week later, having been viciously drunk the night before my flight on cheap brandy from ASDA, I touched down in San Fran. I began a 2,500-mile journey that took me to LA, The Joshua Tree, The Grand Canyon, Las Vegas and along the Pacific Coast Highway. I slept in motels – or the back of the car – and met people like Jay. It was around the time of the Los Angeles riots of 1992.

Jay was hanging out on a beach somewhere off Route One. We started talking and he showed me a pipe, carved from soapstone. He also had plenty of stuff to fill it with and we got on like a house on fire, our conversation stopping only to satisfy an inexplicable dose of 'the munchies'.

Jay and his friends lived in Santa Cruz, or maybe it was San Luis Obispo: my memories are a little hazy. I stayed over, sleeping on a couch, before continuing my journey south with Jay and co as my unexpected companions.

On a sweeping curve along Route One, we ran into the rozzers. We assumed, not unreasonably, that there'd been an accident, or a drugs bust. And we peered at the rear view mirror desperately, realising there was no way out. The police were up ahead. To our one side was a 400-metre cliff, to the other side, a 200-metre drop into the ocean. Cars were piling up behind us and the road was too narrow for a U-turn.

As we inched closer to the blue lights, perspiration drenched our seats. The gun-totin' cops were likely to want an explanation for our space tennis, our red eyes and our obsession with orange spiders.

And then we had a stroke of luck.

The traffic ground to a complete halt and in the unused lane, beside us, a super-fast Mazda car whizzed past us. It raced past the road block that had been set up by the police on to a stretch of traffic-free road. It was followed by camera van while above, a helicopter hovered, with camera crews leaning out of the doors, filming it's dizzying progress.

The penny didn't drop for Jay. He was too busy saying his prayers. But the rest of us soon realised our fortune. The police weren't, in fact, looking for frat boy stoners called Jay who'd been smoking himself into oblivion while cruising along Route One. They were actually managing traffic so that Mazda could film a commercial for one of their cars. Half an hour later, we found ourselves driving past the stationary cops who were congratulating themselves on a job well done. The car, by now, smelled of jasmine and honeysuckle, of salty sea air and Jay's perspiration. We waved a nervous wave: 'Hiya, cops, we've all been behaving ourselves today'. And they smiled back: 'There go the freaks'.

My road trip lasted for another couple of weeks and I got snowed in at the Grand Canyon, talked to a blackbird in Death Valley – we got on really well – and did all the things that young men who've read too much Jack Kerouac do.

I don't know what became of Jay. Though I'd like to think he's somewhere in orbit, playing space tennis with orange spiders.

Viva America. The land of the free.