800 Mile Drive, final act

The trip home is mostly just like the trip down but with an earlier start and in reverse. This time we stop in Bakersfield for lunch. While we're there I drop Matt at the mall to see if he can spend his American Eagle gift card and I grab a bowl of Yoshinoya Beef Bowl down the street. There's no Yoshinoya close to home so it's a treat. Then I get Long John Silver's chicken planks meals for Glenn.

Long John Silver expedition of July 2004

I shall digress here and say a few words about the Long John Silver expedition of July 2004. There are no convenient Long John Silver locations in our area so if I'm going to pass through Bakersfield I stop there. One trip I didn't stop in Bakersfield and after chatting with Glenn on the phone up near the 152 turn off I try to find one in a near by town. Turns out there isn't one anywhere in Santa Nella (home of Pea Soup Andersen's) or in Los Banos. I call information. There's one in Watsonville. I see a sign near Gilroy that says 12 miles to Watsonville. So when I get to the sign that says 'this way to Watsonville' (well, that's a paraphrase) I turn off the freeway and go for it. Turns out Watsonville is over the hills between Gilroy and the ocean. It takes about an hour to get through the winding two lane road. Finding the exact street address isn't easy either. I finally got Glenn's food and headed up Highway 1 to 17 which takes me through the pass from Santa Cruz to San Jose. It was a Sunday in the early evening. There was a lot of traffic trying to get back to San Jose from Santa Cruz. I probably added 3 hours all told to my trip to pick up a chicken plank meal, add a piece of chicken. Hushpuppies and slaw included. That's why this time we stopped in Bakersfield.

Miles and miles of miles and miles

For the rest of the trip north Matt mostly naps. I leave the radio off and start telling myself a story. I've gotten into the habit of just creating a story in my head to stave off the boredom. When I'm alone in the car I can set up my laptop with a microphone headset and speak the story out loud which is then captured by my Via Voice program and transcribed into a Word Document. Sometimes the story needs a lot of editing when dictated thru Via Voice. I haven't gotten it well 'trained' to recognize all the words I use yet. Add to that the ambient noise in the car and sometimes the final result is just plain funny.

The last leg of the journey

Anyway my storytelling keeps me pretty well occupied up to the Petro:3 stop where I race in to pee. I see two girls in long flowing gowns...oh yeah, the RenFaire! I jump in the car and get back on the freeway. I'm pretty sure that because I'm fatigued from all the driving and anxious to get home that it takes me about 3 miles into the pass to realize I should have gotten gas at Petro; the gauge is showing about 1/8 tank remaining and there's just the Casa de Gas between here and Gilroy. I can make it to the Casa but I know I won't make it to Gilroy on an eighth of a tank. Casa de Gas can be a real pain in the Casa on any Sunday afternoon (I've nearly been killed by crazy people driving through the gas islands like it's the last lap at Laguna Seca. With the RenFaire I gloomily forsee a long line, backed up roads, people who've had too much mead and are anxious to get home to their MMORPGs...ick. I luck out. We get there around 5 and the RenFaire lets out at 6...the Casa de Gas is busy but sanity seems to be holding out with the patrons for the nonce. I get a pump pretty quickly and fill up the tank with $2.49 per gallon gas. It was about ten cents a gallon cheaper at Petro but I'm grateful enough that there's a gas station here that I don't begrudge the extra $1.20 per tank.

The rest of the trip home is uneventful. We make good time and arrive home around 7. I really don't want to do it again, though. It's a week later and I'm still aching.

Posted by Dawno at October 15, 2004 10:00 PM