Hello there everyone, this is my first post on Steemit and the first of hopefully many to come.

As you can quite easily tell from the title, I have recently finished travelling across America (From San Diego to New York) by myself with the use of all of my savings and a few backpacking essentials to accompany me. I thought that posting my adventures and giving you some general tips on what kind of things you'll WANT to bring with you on this journey along with websites that I used (not many but just in case you've never done this before I'll try to cover all the things that I did) , the places I stayed, the 24 hour stay in an airport, some French guy's passport I used to get in to a nightclub when I was underage, The homeless guy that tried to give me more than I expected when I was in a public toilet in San Diego and an overall honest opinion on what travelling by yourself can be like.

I won't be sugar coating any of my experiences and I won't glorify anything that I did to seem better than what they actually were. Travelling can be the eye-opening adventure that baits everyone on to the hook of 'fulfilment' or 'enlightenment' in their lives but sometimes that hook can reel you out of the ocean and into the frying pan. What happens when your money runs out? how do you find places to stay with a $20 budget and how do you survive on a limited food budget in the middle of nowhere when you're.......VEGAN.

All of these questions I will answer through my own experiences and I urge you to ask me any questions on anything that I have written or any curiosities that spark into your mind regarding travelling by yourself and as I said, I will give you my own perspective to your questions.

I will also include a few pictures that I took with my 'phone' (which at this point looks like it's been curb stomped by a pissed of Bruce Banner) just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about in a visual sense or just what I happened to take a photo of when I got bored, however the first chapter I will leave up to your imagination...

I will be releasing my adventures into chapters (as I haven't finished writing the whole thing) so you can follow me for the next edition of my backpacking series if you would like, if not, then I hope you enjoy reading chapter 1 at least.

There are a few swear words and uncouth descriptions regarding some events as well...just to let you know.

I hope you join me in my time of travel as I recount all of the memories, hardships, enjoyable moments and long...long Greyhound bus rides as I reached my destination in New York.

Ok... maybe just a few pictures:

Chapter 1:

My name is Matthew and I am currently sitting in front of my computer writing up my slightly obscure and strangely detailed endeavours from the past two months of backpacking through my very first solo travelling adventure and all of the well organised and planned out travel routes that came with it… hopefully you’re expecting a well versed take on ‘the right way’ to dip in to the world of adventuring by yourself and helpful tips on how to budget your money wisely, space your routes out to reduce on expenses and travel time by using price comparison websites and trawling through the best articles to further optimise a near perfect plan of what you want to see and what you could only dream of seeing. And if you’re expecting any of that then you’re going to be as disappointed as ordering a product from a triple x website…sponsored by the England men’s national football team… so enjoy the following compilation of poor decisions and personal experiences coupled with a genuine take on what was my first ever time travelling by myself.

The Dawn of a new personal era was on the horizon and I could barely contain myself as the morning of the day of which I would take my first steps in to what 99% of every white male like me had previously embarked upon was now in an arms breadth of being a reality, the excitement was uncontrollable. There was something about travelling by myself that had intoxicated me in delusions of grandeur and seemingly unobtainable expectations of which I could not escape, whether that was down to my lack of academical prevalence and the fact that nobody wanted to come with me, or the burning desire to see the world and explore pastures new on my own initiative remains a mystery to me until this very day. I had arrived at the airport six hours early, as was customary in my household whenever we would go to another country, due to the very real threat of the pilot deciding that schedules were a thing of the past and had taken it upon himself to shave multiple hours off of his flight time by harnessing the powers of time and space and bending reality to his will in order to personally fuck me over, and with my mother’s intent on avoiding this… we arrived just in time.

Hours turned in to minutes and my flight to downtown San Diego was looming. Having to sort out boarding passes and going through security for the first time by myself wasn’t nearly the conquering of Mount Everest that I had built it up to be moments before and luckily I had left my ounce of cocaine at home this time, with all of the mandatory procedures out of the way it was time to board my flight. The final security check had come and gone and with my seemingly useless ESTA (a legal document required for one to stay in the United States of America for up to 3 months) completely bypassed in the Navy Seals-esque line of questioning and forgetting to turn on my roaming data plan rendering my phone to be about as useful as a tourettes sufferer in a bomb defusal squad, I had accomplished step one of my journey.

I strolled on to the plane with a new found confidence and optimism for the memories I was undoubtedly going to have and all the friends and personal relationships I was going to make while deep diving in to the unknown. The beginning of the unknown however approached me in the form of an ‘outspoken’ Chinese lady with a wonderfully reckless nature and elegant grasp of the English language.

Having been sat at the window seat of the aisle for ten minutes and the flight about to take off, I was pleasantly reminded that my fourteen hour long haul flight with no meal scheduled; due to the expertise of my budget-ting skills and my twenty-twenty foresight vision, was going to be heightened even further by the arrival of why borders exist. Standing at five feet tall, armed with a neck pillow and a blissful carelessness for the people around her entered the first contestant in to the,unfortunately, fictional WWE ring that was the three seats of my aisle.

The first blow came in the form of the spoken word, which cannot be said for the following near knockout punches she dealt afterwards. She introduced herself and immediately made me a stern proposal, she said “can you move to one of the seats in the middle aisle so that I can lie down on all three seats?”, intrigued as to why she felt she deserved my prized window seat I retorted “No, I’m sorry, I paid to reserve this seat”. Unsatisfied with my response she said “I’ll pay you ten pounds to give me your seat” confused and mildly curious as to why she was still carrying on with this negotiation I asked her exactly why she needed my seat so badly, I met her reasoning with a smile and an unwavering upbeat attitude as she responded “I have severe stomach cramps and it would really help me if I could lay down on all three seats because I get gassy if I can’t lie down for a long time”. Now, I obviously had one of two options in this situation, I could either stand firm and resolute on my position and withstand this woman’s attempts of mass gaseous homicide or I could give up my seat and sit comfortably in the middle aisle with only silence and mild turbulence to contend with. As I was about to snatch the ten pounds she had presented to me out of her hand and scurry to the the next available seats, three more late arrivals promptly foiled my plans and means of escape and I was left stranded to deal with the thoughts of whatever probable Chinese cuisine she had loaded up on before her stomach’s antechamber would release the odour of a thousand years of buried corpses which still carried the fighting spirit of the Terracotta army.

I could probably leave the following events up to your imagination, but I don’t think that does any justice to the onslaught that I would have crash-landed the plane to avoid. However, it wasn’t until she had started tucking in to her two hard boiled eggs did her will and stomach muscles seem to both give in at the same time. They were silent but violent’s, each one tearing through my nose hairs like a plough on day of harvest, all within the proximity of,now, about three nanometres as it was now that she had decided to use the two remaining seats to lie down with her head near enough placed firmly on my lap… Welcome to America.

After a further eleven hours of uneventful transport, I had finally reached my first destination of the trip; Downtown San Diego.