2007-08-02 (I planned to do a daily log of this thing, and so far, I’m woefully behind. Here’s seeing if I can catch up at this point)
Well, we ended up taking off a day earlier than we originally had planned to. Randy and Jacquie and Randy and Kristi had already planned to take off on Thursday night anyway and spend the night in Coalinga, and so earlier last week we decided to change our plan of leaving Friday morning and join them, in order to knock off a good chunk of hours from the long drive to Bend and be able to finish it on Friday instead of Saturday (which we’re glad we did). We didn’t end up leaving until later that night, after I wrapped up some last minute stuff for work and then wrapped up the packing of the car at home.
There’s not much to say about Coalinga. At least, not much of anything good, and you know how the saying goes. Luckily we didn’t get there until around midnight, and so the stench from the nearby [place that does something with cows and I can't be bothered to look it up] had died down, apparently due to the cool of the evening. But by the time we got going in the morning, it had warmed up again, and it was only then that I regretted the fact that my attempt to set the alarm for six had failed and we got started a bit later than we had originally hoped to.
The most interesting part of this day (to me at least) was pulling over at a stop well over halfway there and realizing that one of the ropes I had used to secure the luggage to the car was unfortunately (1) made of nylon and (2) positioned behind the exhaust pipe, and had melted through and was hanging free, dragging behind the car. Luckily Due to my proficent ropesmanship, a break in one section did not cause us to loose any of the luggage. I retied everything and adjusted for the heat factor in the rope positioning and everything was fine, as far as that goes, for the rest of the ride.
A bit of background on all the rope tying: we had decided to get a trailer hitch installed, in order to put a hitch-mounted cargo carrier on the back. That, in addition to the top carrier and another plastic bin tied behind it on the top of the car, allowed us to have no luggage inside the actual car for our ten day journey, so that we could utilize the third row seat for much needed kid separation. It worked out very well, and I am chalking it up on my list of evidence (in my ongoing debate with Martha) that we, in fact, do NOT need a bigger car.
Pictures of everything will be forthcoming, and I’ll announce them in a future post. Hopefully I’ll breeze through those other days and catch up to real-time before we get out of hotel wifi / cell phone range for a bit, but I’m not making any promises.
2 Comments
So sorry you had such an unpleasant experience in Coalinga. But that was actually Harris Ranch, where they feed the cows alot of food to fatten them up right before they, uh, well I don’t want to say if there’s a chance kids or vegans will be reading this. The actual town of Coalinga, (I’m told by an authentic “ex-horned-toad”) is 17 miles away and actually quite charming. He says so, but we drove through and ate pizza at some little local place. It was OK and “exactly” the way Randy, uh, I mean, the mighty mighty horned-toad remembered. I guess the charming thing about those little towns is that they never change.
Good job on the knot tying. Congratulations!
Yeah, I guess I shouldn’t have bashed Coalinga unfairly. I don’t know whether I’ll ever check out the actual town for myself, but I’ll take your / his word that it’s a good place. Heck, it’s got to be better than that place we stayed at.