So, at 3 a.m. on September 7th, the four of us set off from Myrtle Beach, SC, heading towards Los Angeles, CA. We decided to make our first major stop in Houston, Texas. We had to cover 1,150 miles (one mile is 1.6 km) in 20 hours of driving. It wasn't an easy task. But since we were short on time for the whole trip, we had to hurry; we couldn't afford to spend a month driving around America, and physically we wouldn't have lasted that long.

GPS. I forgot to mention. Of course, without a GPS navigator, we wouldn't have made it past Manteo. It's simply impossible to drive in America without a GPS. Even with it, it was tough for us on the 10-lane highways and 5-level interchanges. We decided to buy a GPS at K-mart (one of the big supermarkets we had on the island) with the intention of using it and returning it to the store once we got home. It's easy in America. And we decided to take advantage of that. No one even asks you why you're returning the equipment. It's just your right. At K-mart, they even gave us 90 days for returns.

And another thing, we decided to decorate our car with a yellow marker. It just looked brighter, and everyone paid attention to us. On the hood, we wrote "Lapata - drug saldata" (don't think there's a typo here!) and drew eyelashes on the headlights :). And where the front license plates should have been, we put up a sign that said "VASAMENT". On the left side, we wrote down all the abbreviations of the states we passed through, with arrows. And people really did pay attention to us. At almost every gas station, we talked to random people who kept asking us the same questions: what's written on the front? To which we replied that it was military terminology, because it was difficult to translate the deep meaning of the phrase "Lapata – drug saldata" into English and explain it to an average American.

We decided to drive for two hours each – two hours behind the wheel for me, two hours for my brother. The girls just slept in the back seat the whole way and didn't really see any of America, unless they dreamed about it. It was very good that our old Mazda had comfortable leather seats and cruise control, a feature that allows you to drive at a set speed without pressing the gas pedal, and adjust the car's speed with buttons on the steering wheel. Another plus of this car is that it was quite fuel-efficient – for 10 bucks we covered about 100 miles.

Yesterday evening, I called the guy we were supposed to stay with in Houston, and he said everything was "OK" and he was waiting for us. I said we would arrive somewhere closer to 11 p.m. (that was in an ideal scenario, and, honestly, I wasn't really counting on it). It worked in our favor that we had to cross one time zone that day, so we had an hour to spare.

By 8 a.m., we had reached Atlanta, Georgia, as planned. We only stopped to refuel and drink coffee. We ate on the go in the car – whoever wasn't driving, ate. Driving further became a bit more interesting as it got light outside. But we didn't feel much excitement – the landscapes outside the window were practically the same. So we just talked and kept driving. By 4 p.m., we had completely crossed the state of Alabama and decided to stop for food. We chose Chinese food – the most budget-friendly food in America. And sometimes tasty. It depends on your luck. We were lucky that time. We stopped in a small town called Biloxi, Mississippi, found a Chinese restaurant there, ate, washed our feet in the Gulf of Mexico, and moved on. There were still about 400 miles to go. To get to Houston, we still had to cross the entire state of Louisiana.

All states look similar, especially in the eastern part of the USA, so we didn't always notice when we were in a different state. By evening, a heavy rain started. And we drove through almost the entire Texas stretch of the journey in the rain. It was difficult because we had been driving for almost 18 hours non-stop before that. And when we finally saw the lights of Houston, my brother started having slight hallucinations, apparently from fatigue. On the road, he saw a large red "Niva" combine harvester driving towards him. And then a pack of dogs crossing the road.

But those were trifles compared to the fact that we actually did it – we drove the first day strictly according to plan and were in downtown Houston by 11 p.m. The address of the guy we were supposed to stay with was not far from downtown. We found the address via GPS, but not the house (. So I called this guy, his name was Rick. He turned out to be a very cool hippie. He came out to the street and met us. It turned out he lived in a garage, which was divided by a very conditional partition into a garage and an apartment. In principle, it was even somewhat cozy there. We didn't really complain, and thanks for that, as they say. We took a shower, had a beer, and went to sleep. We were very tired.

So, the first day of our grand journey was completed. By the way, Rick was very surprised that we actually made it, and on schedule too. He said we were great for doing all this. On that note, we fell asleep.