California Trip - Day 2

June 21, 2011 - Tuesday (First Day of Summer) "The White Whale Debacle"

Stayed awake after 5:00 am; went to breakfast at 6:15. Miranda and Tim had left for the lounge car ab out 1-3 am and played games there (Megan left before that, being miffed by all the commotion and not being comfortable in her seat).


Stop in Oakland. Bob and his 2 nieces got off. Stop in San Jose. Tim looked like Snee and crashed. Megan read the chapter in "Thief' on Germany. THIS IS THE POINT AT WHICH WE RE-ARRANGED THE WHOLE TRIP TO AVOID TONS OF DRIVING. Cancelled plans to see Tim in Santa Rosa. Stop Paso Robles, San Louis Obispo.

We were now by the ocean in the fog. Tim liked the waves. At 4:00 pm we had the same lunch as yesterday - cheeseburgers without buns (they were pretty large as well as tasty). Went thru Santa Barbara. Saw pelicans and hawks. Oxnard stop. Simi Valley. Farms and tile roof houses. A long tunnel. Van Nuys stop. Nice houses. Lots of graffiti on walls. Doppler effect. Burbank - next to last. I finished (mostly) "Thief".

It was balmy at the Amtrak terminal in L.A. It was more like SeaTac than Amtrak - it seemed we had to lug our carry-ons a mile (and I was carrying 5 of the 9 - about 120 lbs.). We caught a cab out front after getting our 4 suitcases. Megan was exhausted from walking and just watched stuff. The cab ride from L.A. to Inglewood and the car rental took about 30 minutes and cost $60.00.

At Thrifty Car, we got a big white bus so as to hold all the luggage and Vicki. Megan got mad at me for pressuring her to get $200 worth of extra insurance, but the whale was $60,000 and I was afraid of deductibles. In driving it to the hotel, it was just too big to make turns (not knowing where the edges were), and it was too big to get into any of the stalls (like the Group Health Parking structure).

After installing the kids, Megan and I went back to exchange the bus. Things actually went pretty smoothly, tho I was freaking out that we were going to graze something. We got a smaller dark red (maroon) car (still big, but one that Megan was much happier with). We stopped at a 7-11 to get food for the kids.

Back at the hotel (we had a traffic light that skipped a cycle), everybody ate. Tim had somehow used all the washrags and face cloths in taking a shower. We had no paper towels or paper plates for the kids to eat their food on (room had microwave), but Batman's bag had sporks. Tim and Miranda were having horrid problems with their allergies, and both of them felt dizzy (so did I a bit; I think it's an EM field in the room.)

My comments:

When I went up to the lounge car in the middle of the night, I found an empty table and played solitaire. There was a group of youngish adults pontificating on the most ridiculous subjects and I was really glad I had my back to them as it allowed me to smile at some of the pompous statements they were making.

Tim joined me and we played Buckum for a while, and then Miranda joined us too and we played Fan Tan. She was pretty miffed that she didn't win any of the games. At 6:15 we went down to the dining car, as we figured a good breakfast would help.

The waiter managed to get our orders partially wrong, despite the care we took in explaining things to him. Most of the trip Bill asked for his potatoes, rice, bread (ie. carbs) to be replaced with cottage cheese or fresh fruit. Didn't work here. However, the food was adequate, and we returned to another long day of being jolted around on the train.

It was a real wrench to me to change our plans around to NOT go to Santa Rosa to join Tim and Maleen's family. To be quite honest, I did it more for Miranda than to spare myself the driving. I could tell that she wasn't going to be very happy cooped up in a car with Tim and Dad, and keeping her from having a melt-down was one of my major objectives for this trip. I have to admit that it took some pressure off of me, as well, to get us places that were long distances away from each other. It was nice to actually use my cell phone to call both Maleen and Tim to explain the change in plans to them. One of these days I'm going to have to learn how to use this thing.

I wish I could remember what brand and model the white whale was, but it was so big I had to be practically boosted up to get into the seat. It was very scary to drive (for me), and I just couldn't imagine steering that thing through all the places we were going. I was MUCH happier with the Ford Edge that we traded it for. It was only slightly bigger than the Hyundai that I drive at home, and held all our luggage (barely). Naturally we didn't get any kind of a price break for 'down-sizing', but I had already accepted that.
Our hotel didn't have any rooms on the ground floor - that was reserved for parking, a small jacuzzi, and tables to eat breakfast at. There weren't many parking places left by the time we got back with the new car, but I managed to inch into one of them. The pillars made it impossible for me to walk out the usual way and I had to go around the front of the car to the other side. However, I wasn't complaining. I can't count the number of times on our trip that Bill and I would look at each other and say "If we still had the whale, we wouldn't have been able to (park here, drive here, get through here, etc.)"

Since the train hadn't gotten in until after 9:00 pm, it was well after midnight by the time we finally went to bed. I knew we were going to sleep in the next morning!