Road Trip – Noise Ave.

Left California!

So after a month of some boring and mostly depressing time, it happened Sunday night that things got to a point where I contemplated leaving at that very second. Well, I won’t go into details of what happened. Suffice it to say that I sort of wore out my welcome without wearing it out with the actual host. Weird situation to be in, really!

So decided to leave on Tuesday. This would give my uncle and aunt time to adjust to the thought of me leaving. But I didn’t tell them until Monday. In case, there wasn’t a hotel available or so.

I had two options, 1) Go to Vegas for 4 nights and leave Sat. morning for Dallas, or 2) Take two days off and just drive straight to Dallas.

Option 1 would have given the oppurtunity to work from the Hotel and save days. But would have cost money. Option 2 would use two vacation days and wouldn’t involve Vegas. In the end, I decided to just drive home. I’d be miserable in Vegas. I wouldn’t go out, or watch any shows, or gamble, etc. I wouldn’t wanna do any of those by myself. Yeah yeah, one is such a lonely number and all that blah blah blah.

So left Tuesday morning for Albuquerque, NM. 10 hours and 48 minutse of drive. Took 12 hours including all stops and such. Left at 6:30am and arrived about 6:30pm. used free points to stay at the Marriott, and left in the morning at 7am. Got to Dallas at 6:30pm. Drove a little faster this time. This leg was supposed to be 10 hours and 40 minutes…. Left Tuesday 23rd, Sep. and arrived on 24th, Sep. by God’s grace.

Last few weeks have been some of the weirdest times. It was really depressing. However, as soon as I entered Texas, I started feeling better. Even tho, it was in Amarillo that I made my first stop in Texas, and it’s about 5 hours away from Dallas, it felt almost like home. The Texas highway design and the warm sun and welcoming people just all felt so much like home.

It’s great to be back here. Thank God.

Faust, These be White Sands

Faust, yarrghh!!!! These be white sandzz for you!!!!

(Note: Funny, only two people in the world know what this post is saying).

Is Google maps ever wrong?

So is Google maps always correct? Does it make mistakes…. Well you judge for yourself.

I-820 N is actually I-820 S. If you try to merge on N, you ain’t gonna find it.

I was trying to decide whether to turn and find the correct highway but the exit numbers kept going down to the 3A mentioned in the next step. So just to find out whether this is correct or not, I decided to drive another 20 miles or so to try to find out. And what do you know, it was the correct decision to go 820 S.

It made me a little nervous to have left without taking the average road tripper life-line -Rand McNally. But, Google didn’t have any other errors.

Road Trip Stats

Leg 1
Gas – $13.06
Gas – $26.00
Gas – $10.00

Left Dallas @ 8:30am
Arrived Roswell @ 3:14pm.

Leg 2
Gas – $35.37
Gas – $35.50
Gas – $25.00

Left Roswell @7:04am
Arrived Phoenix @ 4:07pm

Leg 3
Gas – $25.00
Gas – $25.00

Left Phoenix @ 10:52am
Arrived Redlands @ 4:24pm

Gas Total: $194.93. I left with a full tank which costs around $55.00. So final total: $249.93.

Hotels: 2 nights using reward points. So no expense.

Final Set of Pictures From Road Trip

The last leg of the journey on the road trip was on Aug 11th, 2008.

This is the final set of pictures from the Phoenix to Redlands trip. First the pictures are posted in a table and then the comments at the bottom.

1 - Cali	2 - State Prison
3 - Tank	4 - General Patton Museum
5 - Redlands, finally!	6 - Redlands University

1 – That’s just first time there was something green in California. Until that point it was all desert and lifeless palm trees.

2 – Don’t pick up hitchhikers. Well, duh! State Prison is a little far out in the desert. Wonder how long it takes to get people there.

3 – Is that General Patton’s tank? Or does it belong to somebody from the same era. Didn’t get the opportunity to read the signs. The temperature was over 100 degrees.

4 – General Patton Museum. Just so hot that Museum on one end of the rest stop and the food on the other left no doubt as to which side had water and which side would be the saner choice. So long General Patton. Thanks for what you did. Mostly, thanks for the random quotes you enrich people’s email signatures with throughout corporate America.

5 – Redlands. Well the destination seemed old and unpolished all of a sudden. Having been here on vacay before the memory made it much more polished and in general a place in California!!!!!. Now it just seemed like any other small town. Maybe a little older and less modernized. A feeling that would be re-inforced throughout the next few weeks.

6 – The University. The town is big enough to have a University. So lay off, Bobby! Quit saying it’s a small place….

Leaving Phoenix Towards Redlands

The last leg of the Trip was on Aug. 11th. It was also the one with least amount of hassle. I guess it was because a conclusion was in sight. However, by the end of the day there was a big headache…. All that driving and sunlight. Plus on that day I was wearing contacts thinking that wearing glasses on the previous two trips possibly contributed to the headache on the previous day. That was an incorrect assumption.

Oh well, from Phoenix to the California border there were few pictures worth posting.

The pictures are in the grid, then notes at the bottom.

1 - Goodyear? Tires?	2 - To Yuma
3 - Nuciler Power!	4 - Little Fun
5 - Open Road	6 - US Inspection Station
7 - Inspection Station

1 – Do they make the tires in this place or they’re just using the name?

2 – Only importance was the movie 3:10 to Yuma.

3 – They misspelled Nuciler. Where’s Homer!

4 – Little fun on the way. Couldn’t max it out ‘coz the road had a bend and the I-10W was just too bumpy to try to go faster.

5 – The open road.

6 – Inspection Station.

7 – So the inspection station is actually the California border. California welcomes you believing you’re a criminal. Arizona welcomes people on a highway, open road, come one come all, but California thinks people should be first inspected.

University of Phoenix

Redlands, CA – For you University of Phoenix student folk.

I was driving by and and didn’t start the camera on time. This was aiming out the window while driving on I-10W 65mph and without looking.

Univerisyt of Phoenix — University of Phoenix

What is in Arizona?

Redlands, CA – So more pictures of Arizona. After reaching Arizona it was hard to take pictures…. It was because of the headache that was the result of driving.

Arizona Mountains	Highways	Arizona Mills Mall
Arizona Mills Mall	Street Signs	Cactus

The road signs are so nice to read. They’re big and well lit at nights.

The Cactus, well you can’t go to Arizona and not shoot a Cactus

Arizona

Arizona, finally! After hours and hours of driving this was a nice sight. However, at this point I knew fully well that countless more hours lay ahead. Just driving. Just staring at the road. I had thought that music would be very enjoyable companion on a road trip. It really wasn’t. I found it more comforting to reflect and to just be with my thoughts… every now and then getting annoyed at drivers who’s cruise control was a mile less than mine. That really is annoying. You either have to disengage and pass quickly or just intiate the 5 minute long passing process. But I digress. The point of seeing Arizona sign was to know that Phoenix was getting closer and that soon the third leg of the journey would begin and the long drive would conclude soon. Also wanted to snap a picture of entering Arizona and saying farewell to New Mexico post.

Well those New Mexicans! They also didn’t put a sign saying you’re not leaving the state of enchanted people. Whatever! At least Arizona was nice enough to put the sign there welcoming you. Truly people in Arizona felt more welcoming that the people in New Mexico. New Mexico is beautiful. The beautiful pictures you see from west of Roswell, are mostly from Ruidoso, Alamagordo, Deming, and other small towns in between such as Tinny, etc…. I didn’t really stop anywhere in Deming other than to fill gas. Deming was nice. Correction: The person manning the gas station by I-10W, on the outskirts of the town of Deming, was nice.

So moving onto to Arizona. By the time, I was in Arizona, I had a throbbing headache and didn’t feel like taking any pictures. Only pictures I took were in Phoenix just to have a few pictures.

Border Patrol Inside the Border?

Driving from New Mexico to New Mexico on I-10W, right before Deming, one comes upon a …. border patrol manned US Inspection station. There isn’t supposed to be a border inside the country. By definition the border would mark the outer boundary. However, the border patrol is happy to put an inspection station and “inspect”. Didn’t matter. They waved me right thru. But I was slightly curious as to the fate of the fortunate ones that get pulled over. Still curious actually.