June 22nd, 2001

Escape from San Diego...

Driving down to San Diego proved to be largely painless. California 41 to 99 to Interstate 5. Thanks do Dan, I have instructions on how to bypass the smoggy mass that is Los Angeles. We break off of Interstate 5 and follow I-210 and skirt the fringes of Los Angeles, meeting up with I-15 and taking that the rest of the way to San Diego.

We found the place to pick up our car without too much hassle either. The company is called AutoDriveAway, and they have offices all over the United States that they move people's vehicles to and from. Apparently, it's for people who move and need to move their vehicle to their new home and don't want to drive it themselves. So they farm it out to people wanting to get from one place to another and visit places in between. Not a bad deal.

However, we found out that there are a few catches. First of all, you are restricted to a certain mileage that you can take on the trip. So like... if you need to move a car from San Diego to Chicago you can't drive it clear up into Canada or or down to Florida on the way. You also have to complete the trip in a certain amount of time... and you are given an "approved path" they'd like you to follow.

Right.

So... we decided to talk the guy into giving us a couple more days to do our trip. He was pretty nice about it. However, we've been given a mileage cap of 2400 miles. This rather sucks. However, according to the contract, you aren't beholden to follow the prescribed path AND if you do go over the allowed mileage you have to pay some extra per mile.

So... this has caused us to alter plans somewhat. I'll get into that tommorrow.

For now, what happened today.

We picked up our car, which turned out to be a 2000 Honda Accord. Very nice. Now, the part that sucks... the bastard who is having this car(his name is "Herb") transported decided to load his trunk up with... something(we're guessing a corpse or drugs) and then lock the thing so we can't put anything into it.

Well, we are getting the car for free and only having to pay for gas... so... you get what you pay for.

The ride out of San Diego wasn't too bad... it was rush hour and traffic was snarled up a few times but moved briskly for the most part. We did, however, run into a Border Crossing patrol checkpoint on the way out. They weren't checking cars then, it appears, but we debated pulling over anyways and asking them to search our trunk... mainly because it's driving us nuts wondering what in the hell could be in there! Our first stop, Las Vegas...

In the desert...

Most of the drive through the desert was done at night... we followed I-15 North through the outskirts of Los Angeles and to Barstow. The desert is hot coming out of San Diego... and it's almost what you'd expect... lots of sagebrush, tumbleweeds, no cacti though. The Interstate winds through several small moutain ranges, and in the dimming sunlight you can see the mountains off in the distance. Once night falls I can feel us gaining elevation as the car moves along, my ears are popping and the outside temperature drops noticeably. We drop down at one point and it gets uncomfortably hot again, until again we begin ascending. Barstow is pretty much the only thing between it and Las Vegas... and they know it. Stopping off the interstate there we found gas running $2.10 a gallon. Utterly ridiculous. We wandered around some and discovered a Flying J (yes, they have them here too!) and the gas was about 40 cents cheaper. We gassed up and began our crossing of the Mojave Desert, a very long and boring drive in the dark. For something to do, I bought two books on tape... The Vampire Armand by Anne Rice and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. The Vampire Armand might as well be called Armand's Homoerotic Adventures. Every 10 minutes he's splacking with something or another.

Viva Las Vegas!

We arrive in Vegas around 12:30am... and the city is so alive it crackles in the air... a never ending barrage of lights and huge video screens flashing into the night. People and cars everywhere. Enormous hotels. An epileptic's nightmare. Alie had the priviledge of driving into Las Vegas. I think it blew her mind. She was okay driving through the desert... I was so exhausted I slept part of the way from Barstow to Las Vegas. A few minutes of driving around in the insane traffic and she'd had enough. We pulled into a restaraunt and switched places. We have a deal that whoever isn't driving has to take pictures of stuff along the way. We drive up and down the strip, mile upon mile of ostentatious excess... it's awesome to behold. Traffic is thick, bumper to bumper. It's almost 2am and there's still people everywhere. We take pictures of everything... as you can tell.

Tommorrow the goal is to get to outskirts of the Grand Canyon...