Sunday, August 5, 2012

Ft Lauderdale cannon ball run Day 1


5:34 am… Its dark outside…time for sleep but Steph and I are up, showering.

 It is time to leave… check email one last time… stuff a couple of things into the packed bags…
It is time to let the road do its magic. 

Gina is here, we are off at 6:20, a few minutes later than planned, but still early…  We point south on Hwy 101, through San Jose, then eastbound over 152, Pacheco Pass, into the San Joaquin Valley…  We stopped at Starbucks for coffee, having agreed that they were not subject rule 2, “No Corporate Fast Food” rule… Again, headed south, the traffic on I-5 was clumpy, dominated by large trucks, frequently trying to pass one another, blocking the fast lane, then having passed moving over, releasing the cars to surge past.   When you add a the Winnebago tribe (aka, large recreational vehicles), some U-hauls who have no idea how slow they are going (or where) and the occasional fast lane bandit (driving slow in the fast lane because they think we are all driving too fast…) and we not making the progress we expected.  

We spend much time exploring each other’s music… we multiple Ipods and an Ipad loaded with play lists as well as a handful of CD’s…  Gina’s is late 60’s and 70’s rock, interspersed with children’s songs (there was one about a beluga whale) while Steph’s has current rock and stuff a high school student would have listened to 10 years ago, while mine is heavily into Americana, and is organize as albums…  We seem to have sufficient music for any situation.

We leave I-5 to cut across the valley to Hwy 99 at Wasco, where we saw our first train…  down to Bakersfield and the junction with Hwy 58 over the Tehachapi, again, trucks  passing trucks dominating the climb over the top.  We saw a few more trains… across the southern San Joaquin the field hands were harvesting table grapes… white shade umbrellas and structures over white packing tables, grapes being carefully laid into cardboard boxed, placed on pallets protected by white shrink wrap… even the porta-potties were white.  It was a bit weird, a cross between old school hand farm labor and a society party….  Elsewhere, Alfalfa was being mowed, baled and moved…  Tomato trucks were everywhere…

Climbing the Tehachapi, we saw another train, got off the Highway for a bit to look at the Tehachapi loop, an railroad engineering marvel where the tracks in their hard climb loop over themselves.  Sadly no trains passed during our inspection, and we did not have time to wait…   

Downhill now, eastbound again, into the desert.  The road bypasses Mojave, but off to the west we could see the field of stored commercial aircraft , in storage, waiting for an upturn in business, or a new owner.  Most seemed to be in United Airlines paint…

Across the desert, Edwards Air Force bas e to the west, the right, into Boron, a center of Borax mining.  Steph keeps chanting “Borax, the magical element” in an Indian accent, mimicking a (non-Indian) organic chemistry professor…  (Borax being very reactive, facilitating reactions in other elements in marvelous ways, at least if you are interested in organic chemistry, who knew today’s blog would have included a reference to organic chemistry?)  We leave the highway seeking the 20-Mule Team Museum (and chamber of commerce office and visitor’s center)  We discover the desert lawn mower, and a fighter plane next door… We were not overwhelmed, but photos were taken…

Back to the vehicle, back to the highway, soon turning south again, now on Hwy 395, better known as the road along the east side of the Sierra, but here, just a 2 lane black top in the desert.  Down to I-15, through Cajon pass, and into San Bernardino, at the eastern edge of the Los Angeles basin.
Here we stop for lunch, at Mitla Cafe  on North Mount Vernon Avenue… we found it on roadfood.com… It was an old school Mexican place in a Mexican neighborhood near the Santa Fe Station…  

We arrived in San Bernardino about an hour behind our planned schedule… we left about 45 minutes behind… Now on I-10, we are finally headed truly headed east… it has taken us 7 hours to reach the road that will define our cross country adventure.

Climbing up out of the LA basin, towards Beaumont pass the trucks again become an issue… based on trucks and trains seen so far there is an active economy, and based on the number of trains and trucks, possibly a healthy one…

Over Beaumont hill, then down into Palm Desert and Palm Springs, the landscape dominated by wind mills… again in the desert, but to our surprise it rains…not a lot of rain, just enough to turn on the wipers, and open the windows to smell the wet asphalt.  We picked up fuel in Indio, and changed drivers… there were no obvious date milkshakes to be found… then headed up the hill, past Joshua Tree… Past Indio we started to make up time… down into the strip of green which is the Colorado at Blithe… across the border into Arizona… Then we put the hammer down.

We change drivers again an hour into Arizona, by now we have a chance to arrive on time… on to Buckeye, then south away from I-10 towards Gila Bend, for gas, then eastward on I-8 to Casa Grande and I-10 to Tucson and family…

We were greeted by Tina’s brother, his wife, Tina’s sister, and husband, two nieces, one with husband, and 5 great nieces and nephews… a house full… I suspect Gina was overwhelmed… dinner, talk, then to bed… 

Up early to blog with coffee, say goodbye, then on the road again


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