After three relaxing days exploring, imbibing and dreaming at waterfalls in Portland, we parted ways with Rachael, our native guide and superstar driver, to catch the ‘Empire Builder’ train back to Chicago. It’s been emotional. And tiring. Mostly tiring. 50 hours in transit does funny things to your brain.

Our cab to Portland’s train station was driven by someone who looked just too much like Hunter S Thompson: the shaved head, the shades, the almost clinically sober expression borne of one too many bygone drug frenzies. That’s not guesswork either: this guy was, to his chagrin, banned from voting for a drugs felony. Caught with 3.2g of cocaine and $400, he escaped the threat of serious jail time – after one month in the “disgusting” state prison – in exchange for 200 hours community service. But now he’s not even allowed to cross the river into Washington state, and he can’t vote in the Democratic primary, which he seems pissed about. Hunter would’ve been livid.

Thanks to melting snow flooding the tracks east of Portland we’re shoved onto a grotty replacement bus for the first part of our journey. In Britain this would’ve been cause for some pretty hardcore grumbling, but the passengers are all merrily laissez faire about it. The gallows humour is as rich as blue cheese dressing as we wander hopefully off into the dark in search of a train. It’s like if ‘Lost’ was a light-hearted comedy rather than a Serial Confuseathon: people from all walks of life thrown together by circumstance, mucking in and happily teasing one another. A mouthy young punk boy, a middle-aged massage therapist, two good ol’ boys in their 60s with military eyes, a young hispanic family.. modern America in all its glory.

The massage therapist is for Hillary. “Just because she cares” she says to me. Her new friend, a short 30 year old woman with a midwestern waistline, is not shy about confronting her on this: “she does NOT care. My children are both diabetic, and we were at this event for diabetic children which Hillary came to, and she went a long way out of her way to avoid talking to any of them.” “Oh” said the masseuse, before returning to her banter with the punk boy.

Eventually, at some point in a night of fitful naps, sporadic grazing, and weary bag-dragging, we boarded the train that would take us the remaining, ahem, 44 hours to Chicago. We talked politics with a lot of great people during that time.

Gail, a Democrat whose husband is half-Blackfoot Indian, told us how upset she was with Bush, how her husband would argue that his ancestors had been fighting terrorism since the 1500s. Maurice and his wife were both excited about Obama and Clinton, just hopeful that one of them can beat McCain. There was Antonio, the dining car waiter and unofficial train jester – “who do you want to get assassinated first, the woman or the black guy?”. Young New Yorker Josh, who spent 18 months serving in an artillery unit in Iraq (”what was it like?” “it was real“), voted Hillary for no particular reason he can think of: “they make you vote in the army; it’s seen as a duty. I don’t really mind who’s President, as long as they do their job properly.”

And now we’ve come full circle back to Chicago, ready to fly back to London and let the jet-lag turn our insides out. There’s a hell of a lot more to come, from us and this election: so keep checking back.

INT. Early evening on the day of the South Carolina Republican Primary. A virtually empty bar on Greenville’s wealthy Main Street.

Tom, an indie-looking guy with a Rider of Rohan hood and an English accent, gestures to a TV in the corner of the bar.

Tom: “Excuse me. Are you going to be screening the Primary results when they start coming in later?”

Barmaid 1: “The what?”

Tom: “The South Carolina Primaries. The, erm, Republican Presidential Primaries.”

Tom stares hopefully at the barmaid. The barmaid stares blankly at him. Another barmaid calls across in a vain attempt to mediate this cul-de-sac of a dialogue.

Barmaid 2: “Is that that fight thing?”

Tom: “Um. No. The. Erm. Election. The Presidential Primary Election.”

Barmaid 1: “Oh. What’s that?”

The two smartly-dressed barmaids, both in their mid-20s, were not mentally challenged; to the naked eye, anyway. Yet we are supposedly now in the Republican heartlands. The evangelical heartlands. Mike Huckabee’s heartlands. The hot, dusty, conservative south, where your traditional 18th birthday present is a rifle, a Bible, and a Confederate flag for the back of your truck.

But there’s a New South, apparently; cosmopolitan, tolerant, and keen to shake off the caricatured clichés listed above. Because in Greenville, an upstate town of 60,000 people with a very pleasant, pretty Main Street and some luscious cultivated parklands, we have been surprised, surprised, and surprised again. There’s a statue to Robert E Lee across the road from our hotel, but otherwise it’s like a Bizzaro World version of the south. It’s snowing outside, the live band playing the Friday night set are a white reggae band, and the Republicans are nowhere to be seen on their big day.

As we journeyed down the eastern seaboard we kept apologising to ourselves and others for focusing so fixedly on the Democrats on this blog; the problem was that we just kept accidentally meeting Democrats (supporters and candidates alike), staying in largely Democratic towns, and so on. “Oh don’t you worry, South Carolina will see to that!” our friends kept saying, a glint in their eye.

Where on earth, then, are Greenville’s Republicans? It’s Primary day, and Tom and I walked a five mile tetrahedron around the town centre, through empty parking lots, rain-sodden parks and shopping streets, stopping off in a number of thronging cafes and restaurants along the way. Nowhere did we see a single Republican badge, bumper-sticker, or window-sign.

Approaching desperation, I called the Greenville County Republican Party, and was surprised to find my call answered by Samuel Harms, the local party Chairman. Even he was leaving Greenville, on his way to Columbia to see Mike Huckabee, the man for whom Greenville County is ‘the evangelical heartlands’, his natural home (Huckabee just came second to McCain, by the way).

According to the man on CNN 50% of South Carolina’s Republicans are evangelicals – how he knows this I have no idea. Is ‘evangelical’ a binary belief system? Furthermore, is it one that you must register ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to at the Town Hall? Either way, I know what the word ‘evangelical’ means when removed from its Christian context, and not once in 24 hours did I see anyone try and convince anyone else of anything political in Greenville. Actually, I tell a lie. There was one small group of young people wearing candidate stickers, debating with a middle aged man wearing a pin-badge in an office on Main Street. The stickers said ‘Edwards 08′. The pin-badge said ‘Obama’.

‘Nation to hear state voters’ voice today’ said the Saturday edition of The Greenville News. Well, the state’s Republican voters were speaking loud and clear in Greenville. They declaimed with one, resounding voice when they said “it’s cold out, so we’re staying home and watching a Steve Martin movie”.

“Only a numbskull thinks he knows things about things he knows nothing about” (Amy Archer, The Hudsucker Proxy)

Here’s the latest polling for Iowa.

But polling schmolling. Marlene the clinical scientist from the Hillary Clinton rally last night seemed to be for Clinton – she clapped along in all the right places, wore the Clinton For President stickers, but admitted afterwards that she was still undecided.

“I’m going to check out Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Mitt Romney when they’re in town tomorrow (i.e. today). I’ve still got 48 hours to decide and I want to be absolutely sure.”

Another thing that will heavily compromise the polling in this part of Iowa is that we’re in a university town. Obama’s surge has been attributed to his ability to galvanise the youth vote. But the youth vote ain’t here – the campus is a frozen wasteland. Iowa City’s students are at home – mostly in Illinois – for the holidays, and any promises they may have made to come back to ’school’ (university) three weeks early in order to caucus for Obama is going to be severely tempered by the ludicrously cold temperatures. It’s only 4 degrees. Farenheit. Last night the bogeys were freezing in my nose.

Here, by the way, is the story of how we got from Chicago to Iowa, with our new best friends Jess and Mark – written up for the UK’s leading political weekly, the New Statesman. More on Hillary coming soon. Right now we have an appointment with Mr Obama.

Preparation for take-off mostly seems to involve lists. So many lists. Lists of things to buy, list of things to borrow, lists of things to pack, read, watch, listen to, harangue, and for some reason, things to eat. My desk is adorned with so many lists that I’m starting to see bullet points when I close my eyes. I also see bullet points when I open my eyes – because they’re on the lists. The lists that adorn my desk. There are a lot of lists, do you see what I’m saying?

In the process of ticking off items on the ‘things to buy stuffed with goose down that will stop me freezing to death in a cornfield’ list, I found myself in a hiking equipment shop in central London, greedily eyeing the completely non-essential travel paraphernalia. Fortunately common sense prevailed and I kept my wallet in my pocket – travelling light is important even when it’s seven degrees below. And I suppose if I’m honest, in the cold light of day, we don’t actually need walkie-talkies. Even if they are in professional-looking orange and black. And work up to 5km away. And look pretty damn cool, in fact. NO. We don’t need them. I guess.

I’m trying to keep in mind that, as William Boot found to his cost in ‘Scoop’, it’s all too easy to start at the cleft sticks (to send your despatches home to the editor, of course), and get a little carried away…

“William, hesitating between polo sticks and hockey sticks, chose six of each; they were removed to the workshop. Then Miss Barton led him through the departments of the enormous store. By the time she had finished with him, William had acquired a well-, perhaps rather over-, furnished tent, three months’ rations, a collapsible canoe, a jointed flagstaff and Union Jack, a hand-pump and sterilizing plant, an astrolabe, six suits of tropical linen and a sou’wester, a camp operating table and set of surgical instruments, a portable humidor, guaranteed to preserve cigars in condition in the Red Sea, and a Christmas hamper with Santa Claus costume and a tripod mistletoe stand, and a cane for whacking snakes.”

No, I didn’t know what an astrolabe was either. It’s one of these. I shan’t be taking one. Although now I think about it, it would be kinda useful to be able to triangulate at will while on the road…