Dear Reader
It takes me about twenty-two hours to get from Los Angeles to Seattle driving about sixty miles per hour, that may sound slow, but when your vehicle gets about seven and a half miles per gallon at 70 miles per hour. At sixty miles per hour I can up to nine to ten miles per hour. At this speed the CHP pays little attention to me, I can enjoy the ride, listen to my XM radio, drink some coffee, call some friends, access the internet, take a long nap, text some friends, make a cake, the usual things a California driver does while driving.
On this trip I had a night and a day to drive to Seattle, normally I like to take two days at twelve hours a day to get to Seattle. I drove until I was tired, I stopped at a rest stop, and in fifteen minutes I was sound asleep. I was on the road at four in the morning, the sun was slowly rising, it was time to find a truck stop to fuel up, I had driven about two hundred miles I was on ¾ of a tank. I pull in to a TA, the truck stop is filled with every imaginable tractor-trailer, the smell of burning diesel fuel fills the air, and the sound of diesel engines idling produced a constant roar.
By noon I was passing through Sacramento, the traffic was light. I was starting to get tired; I pulled into the next rest stop and took a power nap. By twelve-thirty I was on the road again. At five in the afternoon, I was eating diner at a Pilot Truck Stop in Roseburg, Oregon. I had burn through a hundred gallons of diesel fuel by the time I reached Jubitz Truck Stop in Portland. It was eleven thirty, I had driven about eight hundred miles, I was tired, and my eyes would not stay open anymore. I top off my tank, parked my RV in one of the stalls and breathe diesels fumes from all those idling trucks all night long; I did not need to take hit from my can of “LA Smog”. I set my alarm clock to wake me up at three in the morning. By four I was on the road again, at six-forty-five I was at a rest stop in Tacoma, I met Roger there, he would be driving RV number two, I was driving RV number one and Dave would meet us at the location in his Class C production motor home.
We were finished by four in the afternoon, we drove back to Tacoma, there’s a Casino just north of the city, great food and plenty of parking for our large motor homes. I stayed in the North West for the rest of the week, getting caught up with my paper work and getting information on my next job.
Part two, my ride back home on a train.
