This is my first day back on the road after the rather generous three-week Christmas break I awarded myself.

The last part of it was spent at Pam's home in New Orleans, the pleasure of being together tainted somewhat by the fact that her dog Callie had disappeared on new year's eve. A thoughtless neighbour left the gate open, there were fireworks exploding everywhere, and she just melted away into the night.

We put lots of fliers up, and the effect on the neighbours was really touching. A guy walked past as I sat on the steps, stopped to read it, and then crossed himself in silent prayer. There's a kid who comes and plays with Callie, and I heard him calling for her, so I went outside to break the news and ask him to keep a look out. He just sat there on his bicycle looking stunned, his eyes brimming with tears.

If you sit on the steps for any time, you're also made very much aware of the sheer old-fashioned friendliness and courtesy of people not only in New Orleans, but throughout the South.

You can't walk a hundred yards without a complete stranger saying how ya doin'; taxi rides are an opportunity to exchange life histories with the driver, long pre-Christmas supermarket lines a time to joke with your fellow customers rather than look at your watch and make tutting noises like you would back home.

And yet this is also a violent city, made more so by increased poverty and stretched police resources post-Katrina. It's January 9 today, and there's been one murder for every day so far this year.

Anyway, I'm now halfway between Dallas and its sister city, Fort Worth, on Texas route 180. This is the road that I'll be following for six hundred miles to El Paso.

As is so often the case, the landscape is not at all like I expected. The high-rises ended abruptly at the Trinity river, a disappointing brown trickle scarcely worthy of this great city, and then I found myself marching through what must be the world's biggest concentration of used car lots: hundreds of them lining the road for ten miles or more.

Talking of things with wheels, I've known ever since I first thought of this walk that at some stage I'd have to acquire something to carry several days' food and water. The towns thin out drastically in West Texas, and become even further and fewer between in New Mexico and Arizona.

I was sitting outside a gas station today when I spotted the answer to my prayers: a stroller (that's a pushchair or baby buggy back home) abandoned on the grass down a side street. It was covered in mud, but in good condition, so I helped myself.

I still feel a bit selfconscious pushing it, and it can be a real pain sometimes, but I've got to get used to the idea. What's more, if I use it to carry my backpack, I can walk much faster - I just have to avoid the temptation to hop in and freewheel down every hill between here and Venice Beach.

I've decided that's where I'm aiming for, by the way. I have a print on my wall at home by the British artist Sir Peter Blake called Madonna on Venice Beach, and Jayne and I always used to say we'd go there one day.