Hi everyone,
As I write this, we're in Los Banos, CA and watching the Weather Channel report on a really bad storm that is hitting Southern California and parts of Northern California today and tomorrow. Damaging winds, historic rainfall in some areas, mudslides and one of the lowest atmospheric pressure readings in California history. Oh well...at this point in the trip, we've gotten pretty damn tough. We're channeling the words of Lt. Dan in the movie Forest Gump as they rode out a storm..."is this all you've got?!". Bring it on!
We left the beautiful Coachella Valley yesterday morning (Indio, CA....we want to come back here sometime) and headed out for our last long ride of the trip. We figured it would be an easy 400 mile drive. Boy...were we wrong. We knew we had to avoid the LA traffic, so we picked a route that used secondary roads that the RV crowd uses...and also a lot of long-distance truckers. That's the good news. The bad news is that the roads were horrible. I'm pretty sure some of these roads haven't been paved since they filmed Rawhide. We bounced along at 55 MPH for most of the day. I have to explain something about driving The Beast. If the rear wheels on either side go into a rut, a bump, or a section of uneven pavement, the entire truck lurches to that side. When it does that, the top of the truck leans about 2' to that direction and if you don't correct it "right now", the truck will head off the road. Quickly. I'm not sure who it scares most...me or the drivers behind and beside me. Sorry guys...no harm intended.
So there we were, really behind schedule and heading to Bakersfield. We knew a storm was brewing from the weather reports earlier that morning in Indio. Then, off to our left, the sky turned gray, then brown, then black. The wind gusts started knocking me around (a 26' long metal slab is a great sail) and we pulled off to top off the fuel and rechecked the weather. That's when we realized that within a couple hours, a severe storm was going to hit the very area we were driving into and specifically the Bakersfield area. 50 MPH gusts, biblical rains and warnings to get off the road. All we could do was hold on and hope we could outrun it to the North. It started to rain. I turned on the wipers and.....they didn't work. Yup....the guy who had installed our new windshield had installed the wipers incorrectly. Heading into a historic storm, this was really shitty news. I called my navigator (Claudia) and to my amazement, she said "I think we just passed a Penske depot on the road below the freeway." What? I looked over, since she was ahead of me and sure enough, there it was. We pulled off the freeway and drove into their lot, with the sky getting darker and darker. Once again, the Penske folks were amazing. They pulled a mechanic off his current job and within about 30 minutes, the wipers were fixed and we were on our way. As we left Bakersfield, it was black behind us. We made it out of town with about an hour to spare. Really.
We headed out on the last leg to Los Banos, our stop for the night. We entered the San Joaquin Valley, "Breadbasket of the US", and passed miles and miles of flowering fruit and almond trees. So beautiful. We were hoping the road would improve, as were tired and the storm was coming. The road (I-5) had other ideas. In spots, it was fairly smooth and we could drive 55. In others, there were potholes 6" or more deep. Quite possibly, one of the worst sections of road we had driven on the entire trip. I was only able to drive about 45 mph. I've changed my mind about the money from the sale of legalized pot going to repair the Oroville Dam. I think at least half should go to repaving I-5. It's that bad and the sheer number of trucks that use this road guarantee that it will only get worse. But....we made it in to our final La Quinta around 7:30. Yeehaa! The trip odometer turned over 3,000 miles. We feel pretty good and we should. Not many people would attempt such a crazy trip. Perhaps naivete is a good thing.
Dinner last night was amazing. The producers of "Chopped" should let us compete. We were so tired that we decided "no more fast food". We had a burrito and a Stouffer's mac and cheese from the La Quinta pantry and one of our last bottles of really good wine....a 2003 Plump Jack cabernet. The irony of that is not lost on us. It's probably one of the best wines you can buy under $100 and we were drinking it with food we would have turned down in our high school cafeteria. Tuck loved the remains of the mac and cheese. What a great dog. But...we were happy, safe and sound and Tuck fell asleep on his bed. All was right with our world.
We're now in Los Banos and watching the storm. It's not good. We've decided it's too dicey to attempt to unload the truck today in Grass Valley. We've come all this way and protected our belongings. Why let it all get soaked? So, we're going to head to our final stop of Grass Valley and check in at our rental chalet at the Northern Queen Inn.. Rest up overnight and unload everything tomorrow. Light rain and almost no wind is predicted for Saturday. The plan is hatched. We've hired two guys to help us unload at our (2) storage units...one for the Volvo, the Isetta and the BMW and the other for all the stuff in the truck. Stay tuned.
Cheers!