Home Again by Greg

I made it home from Corvallis to Mesa. I drove almost straight through driving 1300 miles in 23 hours. I slept about three hours and stopped 6 times. I bought my son’s 2000 Volkswagon Jetta TDI (diesel) from him and got 46 mpg for the trip. I kept the cruise control on 80 or 82 the whole way except for contending with traffic. When I got here I ate and slept for 12 hours straight. But I am home again.

The drive was uneventful. Except for the California Highway Patrolman I started to pass in the right lane. I got up to his door and saw the CHP emblems and slowed down immediately. He slowed down to about 65 and stayed in the left lane. I, of course, came upon a couple of trucks driving at 55 mph but the cop stayed where he was, which was about 200 yards back. I have a theory that they do that to observe your driving for signs of impairment. So I put on the left turn signal, changed lanes and passed the first truck at exactly 70 mph. Then turned on the right turn signal and dove in between the two trucks. The cop stayed where he was so I again did the left turn signal thing and passed the second truck, then right signal back into the right hand lane. The cop stayed there for another 10 minutes or so and took the next exit. Phew, no tickee.

The car ran great the whole way and used only 27 gallons of gas. That I can live with.
So expect to see more site seeing photos now that we have transportation other than the motorhome to get around in. We’re pretty excited about that.

It was good to see Jim and Kim and the whole family for Lizzy’s wedding. Now we just wait to see how it goes for Jim.

Sunday I watched football with Jenny (well she didn’t really watch) and Andrew. The NFC championship game was fine football. Too bad about Favre but at least we won’t have to listen/watch all the hype about his age. I did pull for the old guy but it was hard. He knocked the Forty Niners out of three straight playoffs back in the good old days and I hated him for years. I wonder if he will come back next year. After the bad, actually terrible, fourth quarter I hope he will retire. Go out on top.

We had some luck getting possession of the Jetta. Aaron did not have the entry code where it was stored indoors so I had to wait until the office was open on Monday. Aaron called them on his satelite phone and told them I was coming. He talked to the man who said it would be fine but when I got there his wife was running the office and she pointed out I was not on the list of names allowed access. I sweet talked her and got sympathy for the fact Aaron is in Iraq and she let us in. The car needed to be jump started and had a thimble full of fuel but I got it filled up and had the fluids and filters changed out and took off. I hadn’t planned to drive straight through like I did but I was a motivated driver. If you know what I mean.

Bentley was happy to see me but he didn’t go nuts like I expected. In fact he was pretty subdued and very affectionate, wanting to just sit in my lap and lick my hands.

Home is where Von is. The motorhome is a small place but seems cozy when just the three of us are in it. I think this is going to work out for a while.

I’ve decided we will be traveling in the west until this summer. Kim and Jim’s son Bryan is getting married at Fall Creek over the Fourth and I really want to be there for that. That means we may be able to attend the SEIU 503 General Council in August. That should be quite a show and I wish there were some way I could get credentialed for it to be able to speak. Oh well.

So we will be heading for a quick trip to El Paso to establish our domicile in Texas. While I do not have any burning desire to be a Texan they don’t have a state income tax and that will increase our net pension checks by a couple of hundred dollars a month so we need to do that ASAP. One issue I don’t know much about is what that means for our PERS health insurance. If anyone reading this knows anything about this drop me a note at my email, greg@gregledbetter.com

Then we will explore New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Nevada then back to Oregon for the wedding. Or so I say now. With me you can’t be sure until it happens.

Sorry for the lack of postings the last couple of days, we will try to keep on top of it. We get about 30 visits a day which is encouraging to us that someone is paying attention!

No new photos the past few days. I didn’t take the camera with me due to the hassles of flying these days. Speaking of which, damn that is a major pain in the backside. With my hip I set off the alarms so I always get pulled aside to be wanded and patted down. This time I forgot to take my electric razor out of my travel bag (I always travel with only carry on if at all possible). So they opened my bag and shaving kit and found a large bottle of body wash which they wouldn’t let me take on board. Absurd. The story as I recall is that the govenment claimed to have caught a couple of swarthy complexioned gentlemen with fluids that could be combined to make an explosive device. I believe the allegations were found to be unsubstantiated and that if someone were to attempt such a thing the stench of the liquids would alert everyone on the plane and the chemical process is so difficult it would be almost impossible to accomplish. However, they kept my bottle. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Later,
Greg