/dev/zero

My last update was the night before I left for Texas.
I?ve now been in Texas a week (well, 1 week, 22 hours.) and I haven?t updated my journal. I know so many of you are just hanging on the edge of your seats wondering if I?m OK.

I was intending to set out at about 3:00AM on the morning of the 26th, but by the time I had the car all packed, it was 1:00AM and I needed sleep. I got up in the morning, ran around doing last minute errands and finally hit the road around 11:30AM. My sister was expecting me to arrive around 12:30, so she was slightly annoyed when I called to let her know I was just hitting the road.

First leg of the trip, Santa Cruz, CA, to Las Vegas, NV: 543.8 miles. Estimated time (by Yahoo!): 8 hours 21 mins. Actual drive time: 10 hours.

The trip was more or less uneventful. After passing through Bakersfield and heading up 46 into the Mojave desert, I got an oil warning light. SA I was on the uphill side of a climb into the mountains and there was a lot of traffic around me, I had to wait for a turnout before I could pull over, which I did at the first one. I got out in the 105F heat and popped the hood and checked my oil. Sure enough I was at least a quart low. Luckily I had two quarts in the trunk for just such an emergency (as well as coolant, windshield washer fluid, belt dressing, Fix-A-Flat and water). I put a quart in and while the bottle was draining into the crankcase, I noticed some fumes coming of the engine on the other side. I went around the car to take a look and saw that I had been leaking oil around the #1 fuel injector seal. While I was checking this out, an 18-wheeler pulled off the road into my turnout and the driver got out to see if I was OK. Once he saw what the problem was, and that I had spare oil, he said ?I can?t fix it, but here.? and handed me a nice ice-cold can of Mountain Dew. Before I could even thank him, he was back in his ruck and pulling back onto the road.

I finished putting the oil in, checked my dip-stick and saw that I was back in the safe range, buttoned her up and hit the road. Boy did that Dew taste good after being outside in that sun and heat! To the anonymous trucker who stopped to see if I was OK and gave me that cold Dew, a hearty THANK YOU!

Once I pulled into Wasco, I got off the freeway and headed for a gas station. I saw an Auto Zone (parts store) so I pulled in there. I popped the hood and checked my oil again, which was still OK, then went inside to get some ATF, as I?d forgotten to top it up before setting out, and while stopped on the road I?d checked the rest of my fluids and it reminded me I was very low. While inside the Auto Zone looking for ATF, I found an oil-stop leak product, so I bought that to and added it to my engine. I checked my oil at every stop for the rest of the trip, but it never gave me any trouble after that. That was the only trouble the car gave me for almost the entire trip. (The only other problems were a warning light on my wiper fluid level, easily fixed, and on the final leg from New Mexico to Dallas, my blower stopped working at the last fuel stop. It would only come on if I turned it all the way up to 4. It?s intermittent now.)

I was amused by the chatter between the truckers on the CB heading up 46. There was a convoy going. They really do sound exactly how they?re portrayed in the movies. Southern drawl every one of them, checking out the babes in vehicles showing off, commenting on the lady CHP officer who was helping someone by the side of the road, etc. Very, er, ?colorful? handles two of them were using. ?Bowel Movement? and ?Stool Sample?.

I arrived at my sister?s at about 9:30PM PDT and was greeted by Kim and my youngest niece, Amy. As Amy was giving me a hug, I had to ask her which of my nieces she was, as it had been a couple of years since I?d seen any of them. She?s the youngest at 15.
We let my cats loose in Krissy?s room. Stephanie (the eldest, at 20) came home with her boyfriend Cody, then Krissy came home. I gave her the birthday and Christmas presents I?d bought while I was working at EA but never sent, then called Mom and Dad to let them know I?d arrived at Kim?s safely. Dad asked me to get lots of pictures of the girls, so they all sat together on the couch for me to do so.

Second leg, Las Vegas, NV to Los Alamos, NM: 679.6 miles. Estimated drive time: 10 hours 27 mins. Actual drive time: 14 hours, 30 minutes.

9:15 the next morning and I was back on the road again. I passed over the Hoover Dam and into Arizona. As I was driving up to the dam there were signs giving the radio station to tune to for information, so I tuned it in. The only information was about how much it cost to park your car, take the tour, and what kind of vehicles could actually drive over the dam, and that they all had to be in a state that they could be inspected (yeah, I guess having terrorists blowing up a bomb on the dam would be a bad thing). I passed through the security check point and was waved on through, then I saw the winged statutes with the US flag, then I kept thinking ?When am I actually going to go over the damn dam??. Then I looked over my shoulder and realized I?d already been over it. I pulled into the vista point and snapped a bunch of pictures. I couldn?t stay long as it was over 100F degrees outside and in that heat the radiator needs air flowing over it to keep the engine cool. Idleing for long would cause it to overheat. The gauge was maxed when I got back in the car to hit the road again.

US-93 and was the longest, flattest, straightest part of the trip. That road didn?t bend or waver an inch for nearly 80 miles. Eventually I pulled into a little town in Arizona, right where US-93 and I-40 meet, to get gas. I?d been paying US$1.91 or more back in Santa Cruz (it got as low as $1.61 at one point a couple weeks before, then started going back up again). At this little ?Woody? gas station, I filled up for $1.43! The gas just kept getting cheaper after that. I was worried I might not have enough money to make it all the way to Dallas, but between the gas price dropping the further east I got, and the car getting much better mileage on the highway than normal, I made it just fine.

This leg was long, hot and completely uneventful, other than listening to the truckers. And out on I-40, there are LOTS of trucks. The CB really came in handy. I never needed it for the purpose I bought it thankfully (Emergency, if I broke down), but it was more entertaining than the stereo. All the stereotypes you hear or see in movies and so on are true. All the lingo documented on the web pages is real. State Troopers really are called ?full grown bears?, sherrifs are ?county mounties?. A tire tread in the road is a ?gator?. The most surprising one to me was that they really do call cars ?4 wheelers?. The only excitement on this leg was my missing my exit off I-40 in Albuquerque onto I-25 North into Santa Fe / Los Alamos. I drove all the way past Santa Fe before I realized I?d gone too far. I was low on gas so I stopped to fill up only to find the station was closed (it was about 11:30PM MST). I turned around and went to the previous fuel stop I?d seen posted, got gas and went inside to ask if I should go East or West on I-40 to get to Los Alamos. The guy looked at me like I?d asked if reindeer where jet or piston propelled, and explained I wanted to go North. As it happened, the access road I?d taken off the highway to get to the gas stop was exactly the one I wanted to take to go North all the way through Santa Fe to get 502 into Los Alamos. Another 80 or so miles and I was at my brother?s place.

Driving out the next day, I could see why the US Gov. picked Los Alamos as the place for the Manhatten Project. It?s in the middle of nowhere, in the high desert (seeing real mesas for the first time is something) and there?s only ONE way in. This route probably didn?t exist until the gov built it for the project, and it?s easily controlled.

I stopped again at the same gas stop the next day (I?d gone 170+ miles since I?d stopped the night before and wanted a full tank when I got back on I-40) and there was a biker with California plates in the next lane over, waiting fill up on the other side of the same island. We chatted for a few minutes while we waited our turn (it was a busy fuel stop). He was going the other way, coming home from Tennessee.

The third and last leg of the trip, Los Alamos, NM to Richardson, TX: 672.7 miles. Esitmated drive time: 10 hours 20 mins. Actual drive time: 12 hours almost exactly.

The last leg of the trip was even less eventful than the first two. By now I was down to the routine. I could see I was getting more miles per gallon than usual. Normally I?d get about 320 miles to a tank. I was getting almost 400 on this trip. The price of gas just kept dropping.

I-40 would be a real nice drive if both Arizona and New Mexico didn?t decide they had to tear it up and do work on it every 30 miles or so. The road kept narrowing down to 1 lane every time they did that, which meant traffic slowed to a crawl. Finally I exited New Mexico and entered Texas, but not without one more 1 lane slow down for road work, which straddled the state border.

Almost immediately upon entering Texas, the humidity hit me. It had been dry heat all the way until then. Now it was wet heat. It wasn?t as hot as before, but I had to run the AC just as much, to keep the humidity down in the car. Everything felt damp.

Everything went fine until the last couple of miles of the trip. My instructions from Yahoo said to take the Pres. George Bush Turnpike, merge onto TX-190 East, but there was no such exit and for the first time on my life I was driving on a toll road. Eventually I came to a place where EVERYONE had to go through the toll booth, and I found I didn?t have enough change on me to pay the toll. Not only did I not have enough, but when I tossed it at the basket, not all of it went in. The guy behind me told me to just roll on through. I did, got off the turnpike and called my parents who were able to give me directions to get home from where I was.