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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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Trip 00 Extra - Used Geo Prizm ... to Phoenix, AZ This run was an extra ... delivering a car for a family member, no log book required. 3/20/04 - Been this run before, a couple of weeks ago to Kingman AZ. That trip took three days, this one will take just over two. I knew this car hadn't been driven hard so I am going to try to take it easy ... keeping it at or under 65 mph. The first few states won't be hard, but by the time I get to NM and AZ where the limit is 75 ??? My first stop is when the car runs low on fuel ... 330 miles / about 5 hours ... on this trip I'm also logging exit numbers for my version http://www.mylynx.com/Exit101/i80.htm ... does help the miles pass. I had hoped to make it to OKC, but it wasn't as many miles as I had guessed so I kept going to Weatherford ... not seeing any cheep motels at the exits I keep going to the last exit. Here I find something I didn't know existed ... this motel doubles as layover location for one of the major LTL carriers. They've got their own little office with a time-clock ... and a parking lot full of tractor-trailers, but at $35 ... not the cheapest motel in the state. 3/21/04 - If you get the impression the first day wasn't very exciting, you're right ... but the time did pass quickly. About two exits down the highway in the morning there was a motel for under $30 ... next time I'll know because I will get all that on data updated on my web pages ... Across TX they have torn out the railroad that used to run along the highway ... over a 100 miles of bridges going over non-existant railroads ... abandon grain elevators ... the Interstate is mostly straight, except when it goes around an abandon grain elevator which stands next to a now non-existant railroad. In most area's they have cleaned up the rails pretty good ... some places they have left the grade, some area's they even left the railroad ties ... and one section they had just pushed the grade, ties and all in huge piles but I guess they never got around to hauling them away. This is the west ... the NM rest area has a horse corral. At NM exit 369, it looks like you could buy a resturant, gas station and motel fairly cheap ... just needs windows ... and a few other improvements. OK, TX, NM ... AZ ... by the time I get to AZ the 'welcome center' is closed ... it has a sign on the door saying you can get road maps at the National Park office at exit 311 ... so an hour later I stop ... and they too are closed ... similar hours ... so why the sign? At the AZ welcome center I was needing a stretch so I did spend more than a few seconds here ... long enough to notice that, here 1,500 miles from home ... the only other car in the lot was from my home state ... and two stacks of chais in transit, running on plates from my home state. Somewhere along here I has seen an sign for a Sizzler ... sounded good, haven't eaten at one of those for maybe a dozen years ... since they pulled at of our state ... but I don't seem to be able to get of "driver mode" ... I keep driving like I'm keeping a log book ... ... ( I'm thinking that traveling with me would just be a whole lot of fun on family trip ... stopping every 5 hours for for the 3-1/2 minutes that it take to fuel ...) sometime I'm going to make a list of all the companies that have left our state... now I see where they've gone. It must be spring time ... there has been as many motor homes and travel trailers on the highway the couple of days as 18 wheelers ... snowbirds going home. Flagstaff was tonight goal and it turns out to be about the 14 hour day I had guessed ... plan was to get past town so I don't have to fight the Monday morning rush hour. One mile south of I-40 on I-17 and I realize that I might want to NOT go past Flagstaff ... no southern suburbs to find a motel in ... so I turn around and head back to the last Motel 6 I had seen Great news ... there is a sign for a Sizzler at this same exit ... but when I get there it looks closed and my cell hasn't been working so I didn't know what time it is. As I'm resetting my cell clock, someone else pulls in so I head in ... 10 minutes to close but they allow me in ... their mistake, 'cuz I eat s-l-o-w. Sure enough, they were asking me if they can close down the salad bar ... Great food ... I ate until I was stuffed ... and would pay for it that night ... could not sleep. 3/22/04 - Rough night ... not sure if it was eating too much ... or a touch of the cold that was going around. Finally it was early / late enough to hit the road ... I had planned on being in Phoenix around 9 AM and I was about 2-1/2 hours away. I made the right decision about staying in Flagstaff ... not much choice of hotels in the next couple of hours ... one exit showed a couple of national chain motels ... but when I could read the sign on the ramp ... 17 MILES west ... ... few exits have any 'visible' services ... some are even posted "No Services" ... not sure why they post some ? At the top of one hill there was a sign truck "Run away ramp 10 miles" ... and I thought that would be one long ten miles if you needed to use it ... and then I saw the ramp, most go uphill to help slow the truck, this one was flat ... and a drop off at the end of the ramp ... ... picture a driver who has just gone 10 nerve racking miles downhill without breaks and you finally get to the ramp ... and realize that at the end of the ramp is a cliff ... OH ...!!!! And somewhere a long this same stretch of highway there is a DHE trailer sitting on it's rims ... the tires have been burnt off and the trailer walls over the tires is burnt, melted or blown off. Looks like I would have been sitting in traffic had I not stopped in Flagstaff last night. The good news is it doesn't look like anyone was hurt. I find my drop with no problem but didn't leave myself much time here ... am able to contact a shuttle who will get me to the airport for $20+ ... but it cuts my time a little too close. I know that purchasing a ticket within an hour of departure is a no-no, but I go for it ... when I get dropped at the door, I have 55 minutes before a Northwest flight leaves ...and there are <> 100 people ahead of me ... that's a guess, the line winds around the pillars and signs ... regardless, I'm not going to make it ... now I have 70 minutes before a America West flight leaves, from a different wing of the airport ... as I'm rushing to the door, I see my van going past ... now I have to catch a shuttle. The America West line isn't as long ... I ask the 'line' person when they stopped selling tickets ... she didn't have an answer, other than to say I was cutting it close. A few minutes later she finds me in line and pulls me to another counter that no longer has a line ... new problem ... their flights are over booked ... ... Plan 'C' ... Frontier ... this flight is cheaper, but I hadn't wanted to wait the extra couple of hours ... time to catch the shuttle back to ... I never did figure out which wing I was in ... I just told the driver "If I'm in D ... take me to C. If I'm in C ... take me to D." ... and at Frontier ... almost no line ....Yeah ... and no seats ... Ouch. The next counter is ATA ... sold out ... but ... the guy says he'll check out something. A few minutes later he comes back and says he can get me a ticket (for $70 more than shown on the Internet) ... I had to decide ... go back to Northwest and AmericaWest to see if they had seats on later flights ... but doing so would cause me to miss my 1 hour window on this flight ... and this ticket would most likely be gone ... I took the ticket When the ticket agent was checking on the flight he noticed there was an earlier connecting flight ... and if I don't check my bag, I might make it. So I was 'wishing' we'd get in early ... we didn't ... and the connecting flight is on a different wing, a good half mile away ... I all but ran. I get to when the gate should be and they have combined two gates into ... via a quarter mile catwalk. When I finally get to the end, I sort of cut in line to ask about not having an 'assigned' seat ... "Sorry, you have to go back to the main counter ... at the end of the catwalk." They were already seating people by the time I got here ... now back to wait in the other line. Not sure if I would have made it on the fight if I had known which line to be in or not ... by the time I got in line there were no seats left and there were a dozen of us hoping there were ... back to the original plan. I had thought I'd be home by 5 PM ... Midnight instead ... a change that goes over real well with 'my ride' ... Security at Phoenix leaves a little ... a lot to be desired ... I may be sending an email on this ... they spend how many millions ... for this ??? |