HoJo's first 2006 "Travels with Charlie" report

HI all:
It’s seven o’clock Monday morning, the second day of the new year. I am sitting in my new office in Deb’s house right across the room from her desk. Charlie is curled up in his little bed right under my right elbow. Deb, Jeffery and David are still sleeping and it is still raining! I got wet rolling Deb’s trash and recycle bins from the garage out to the curb.

Since this is my first personal blog for some time I will go back a few weeks and recap a bit. The heavy snow during the coldest December on record in Indiana really set me back and kept me from doing several things in the yard. I finally managed to get the house ready for the Newtons, the family who are going to live there and take care of the house until I return in April. All the closets are mostly empty and ready to hold their things. He is the new athletic director for Grace College in Winona Lake and along with his wife, nine year old son and 6 month old baby, they should be moving in within the next few days. They plan to take the time while in our home to look for a new home for themselves.

In planning my trip, I provided myself with three spare days in case the weather or other events delayed my travels or caused me to take another route. When reports indicated unusually good travel weather for the time and route of my trip I spent those extra days picking up, putting away, packing, cleaning, and loading Buford through all the cold and snow. Charlie and I finally got underway early Thursday morning with a full load of gas, food, water, propane, clothes etc... etc... By seven o’clock CST we had covered 833 miles and stopped for the night at the Flying J Truck and RV stop in North Platte, NE where I filled both gasoline and propane tanks. Roads were clear and dry and the weather was sunny, bright and unseasonably warm - in the mid fifties. I set the cruise control at 65 and passed very few vehicles while many trucks and all autos whizzed by. I had discovered earlier that at 65 mph Buford got a bit better then six miles per gallon. At seventy-five (the prevailing speed of most trucks and autos) Buford’s mileage dropped to about five per gallon. Just by driving a bit slower than traffic I saved about $200 on the trip and it didn’t seem to cost me much time as I easily made my planned schedule.

Friday morning I left our overnight at about four and headed west on a clear, dry road. Between six-thirty and seven, we stopped for breakfast near Cheyenne, WY. After feeding and walking Charlie, I fixed myself a substantial bowl of oatmeal and downed my morning pills with OJ. When I heard of high wind warnings including gusts of up to sixty miles per hour, I took time to check Buford’s manual and found out we should be able to handle side gusts of up to seventy miles per hour without danger. Thus reassured, I headed west once more. The wind was very gusty, but posed very little handling problems. The skies were bright and the roads continued clear and dry. Charlie kept me on my toes and provided exercise stops by insisting on marking out new territories every few hours. Buford ran like a top without a single misstep, night and day.

By the time we stopped for the night at the Wells, NV Flying J, it was 5:30 pm MST and we had covered another 836 miles of clear, dry roads in clear sky weather. After a nice dinner of tilapia, salad and mixed veggies, I hit the sack early hoping to start out soon enough in the morning to be in Stockton by early afternoon. I awoke at a little after two to a very foggy morning. I would have gone back to sleep for a few more hours, but with the fog slowing my progress, I decided to start out right then. The fog was in large patches. I would drive for miles at forty, peering intently into the fog and then pop into the clear for several miles before once more diving into the fog. Not too long after I started, a semi passed me in one of the clear patches and I decided to use him as a guide through the fog. He drove steadily at about sixty-five while I hung on just close enough to see his massive tail lights through the fog. I was far enough back that should his brake lights come on, I would have plenty of time to stop safely. I followed him for several hundred miles until my distended bladder forced me to pull off at a Flying J in Winnemucca, NV.

After a quick trip to the restroom, I filled the tank with fuel and then fixed another oatmeal breakfast. Once back on the interstate, I latched onto another truck, following him at about the same speed as the first one until the sun came up and began to burn the fog away. The three mountain passes I had gone through were all clear and dry, but there was one remaining, the famous Donner summit over the Sierra Nevadas. It was the highest at nearly nine thousand feet and was frequently snowbound at this time of year. As we climbed to the summit, there was a great deal of snow on the mountains and alongside the road, but the road itself remained clear and dry. Topping the summit we drove on roads made rough by chains on trucks and cars, but now clear and dry. The drive down to Sacramento and then Stockton was as uneventful as the rest of the trip and I arrived to see Deb waving at me from her driveway at precisely noon California time.

Deb and I had a wonderful Christmas - traditional fried oysters for breakfast (family tradition) and everything. We had a few teary hugs over memories of past Christmases and I opened some wonderful presents, especially the photos of my treasured family. Deb fixed a scrumptious dinner of Ahi tuna, broccoli and a California salad.

Monday, we headed for San Francisco and a visit with my niece, Marcia, and her family, Michael, Madeline and Zane. My sister, Bobby, and brother-in-law, Bob, were there as well so we had a real family get together. It was cool and cloudy day and we walked up to the top of a nearby hill - included in the walk were at least four hundred steps - up. The view of San Francisco was spectacular. The walk down gave my poor knees a real workout, but they seemed none the worse for all the effort. After a rousing game of "Boggle" we had a lovely dinner with family stories and shared memories. I slept most of the hour and a half trip back, waking up for about the last twenty minutes and a nice conversation with Deb.

Wednesday, we drove to Sacramento to pick up Deb’s boys, Jeff and David for their Christmas visit. Friday we drove to the coast and then down the coast highway, 1, to Santa Cruz to spend the weekend in a beach house at the invitation of some good friends of Deb’s from Visalia. They are on a cruise and gave Deb the keys for our New Year’s Eve party. We had the whole place to the four of us for a couple of days of fun and relaxation. Friday’s rain and high winds gave way to a beautiful, sunny afternoon Saturday. We went downtown Santa Cruz and walked around town with the hippies, yuppies and other tourists, stopping to browse several shops and finish at a coffee shop.

We headed back to the beach house, actually it’s high on the cliff overlooking the beach, where we watched surfers in wet suits ride the breakers. As the sun dropped in the west, we went for a walk to watch it set over the ocean. Some clouds were moving in so the sunset was not as spectacular as it might have been, but the two-mile walk with Charlie gave us some needed exercise.

After we returned from our walk, Deb drove into town and picked up our dinner at a Thai restaurant. We started our new year’s eve celebration with a lovely Thai meal. Then we watched a DVD movie as the last hours and minutes of 2005 ticked away. As the minute approached, Deb distributed the mandatory hats, horns and noise makers which were put to good use as the new year arrived. At first, Charlie was a bit startled at all the noise, but soon joined in with hearty barks as he must have thought we humans had gone crazy. Champagne and good fellowship was enjoyed by all until we finally dropped off to sleep between two and three.

During the night the winds came up and serious rain began falling so Sunday did not look like a very pleasant day at the beach. After brunch we packed up and headed for Stockton through blowing rain until we got up into the mountains where the rain suddenly stopped and didn’t start again until after we arrived home. At Deb’s treat, we braved the now heavy rains to go downtown to see King Kong. It was a spectacular movie with tremendous computer generated special effects. That’s the third version of King Kong I have seen. I know the first one had Fay Wray as the sacrificial blonde, but we couldn’t remember the actress who played that role in the second.

So much for HoJo’s current chapter of, "Travels with Charlie" until the next chapter is written.

I wish you all a very merry Christmas and the happiest of New Years.

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