The Long, Long Road

There is no getting around it.  It's a long way from Davis to Santa Barbara.  You can drive (8 hrs), fly (too expensive) or take the train (fun, more affordable, but 11 hours).  I hate the trip more and more whenever we take it.

But it's the only way to visit the people we love, so we do it.

We got on the road around 1 p.m., about an hour later than we hoped but we were in no rush.  We got here at 9, and I was too tired to think about writing this, so put it off until this morning. Now Joe has gone off to Oregon for the weekend, and I can't get on his network so I am not sure how I'm going to post entries, but at least I can write them.

Walt and his sister have gotten into the habit of writing terse notes to each other when they are traveling to let the other one know where along the road they are.  The messages I sent to Alice Nan yesterday read:

1:16 - finally leaving
3:36 - Morgan Hill - 95 degrees
5:32 - Passing Burger Queen
6:45 - Peeing in Paso
??    - SLO
??    - Betteravia Rd. Gas Stop
??    - Buelleton
??    - 26 miles to go
9:05 - Alpine (that was sent from outside their house)

She had asked me what time we expected to get here and I told her 8-ish or 9-ish, so I think we made pretty good time!

The Morgan Hill stop was for lunch at 5 Guys and I would include here the photo of our free peanuts, but without internet access. that's not possible.  Just imagine peanuts.  I also took an exciting photo of my cheeseburger.  See what wonderful things you miss by my not having internet access?

The Burger Queen is a family favorite place to eat.  It's a privately owned place across the street from a McDonald's.  I don't know who discovered it first, but Walt's mother always stopped there when she was traveling and we have too.  My deep dark secret is that I don't like it all that much.  They over-salt their beef, for one thing,   I was glad when we discovered 5 Guys.  But it is a well known spot for us so letting Alice Nan know when we passed it was good.

SLO is San Luis Obispo, where Tom went to school.  There is a great restaurant there where I love to eat whenever I'm driving alone.  The Apple Farm.  Just a charming little place, with great pastries (and I always feel virtuous when I pull myself away without buying any) and kitschy things to sell in their store, which I also don't buy but like to look.  But by the time we get to SLO we are only 2 hours from Santa Barbara and who wants to stop to eat?  (I stop there on my way home from SB)

Buellton is another restaurant stop at Split Pea Anderson's, which has great split pea soup.  We sometimes stop there for dinner if we know Alice Nan and Joe aren't going to be home when we get here.  But that was not the case last night.  They also have nice kitschy stuff, but I mostly like to stop there for the post cards, to restock my supply of Yosemite cards.

As usual, we had a book to keep us going.  There is a new (to me anyway) Michael Connelly called "The Late Show" which was only 9 hours long, so I figured we could almost finish the whole book and read another one on the way back. 

I love Michael Connelly, especially his Harry Bosch books (which this is not) and was pleased to see there was a new title to download from Audible, but I also noticed that one of the reviews said that this was not one of his best.

And it's not.  The first seven or so chapters seem to be a textbook on what police procedures are.  It starts with the report of an identity theft and then the discovery of a victim who has been abducted, beaten, and dumped and left for dead.  Sounds like typical Connelly fare, but it goes on and on and on about paperwork to be filled out, chain of command, and I don't know what all.  I thought that if this was going to be the whole book, I was tempted to turn it off.  But fortunately eventually it did get to talking about actual people and then became your typical Connelly novel. (Though neither Walt nor I could recall a scene that introduced the bad guy when he shows up later.  I can be excused for having dozed off, but I'm not sure what Walt was doing -- sleep driving?)

While I'm discussing police procedures, this MUST be true since you see it in just about every cop book and TV series.  Why is it that the emphasis is never on catching the bad guy, but WHO gets to catch the bad guy. Territorial disputes are frequently more important than actually getting the guy.  Which division or which precinct gets the credit (or the permission) for the bad guy capture.  

Well, I think I'm going to call this entry over, save it, and try to find a way to post it, eventually.  The older I get the less frantic I get about it, but I still want to post the darn thing!