Road Chronicles 000320 - STUCK IN LODI AGAIN

Bakersfield Lake

March 20, 2000

David,

Well, here we are in the middle of Bakersfield Lake.

It sounded better in the brochure. Palm Trees and Resort Style Living materialized as Monsoons and Sunken RV Sites.

When I was sorting through things to keep and throw away, I am glad I saved my galoshes. And when deciding how to best outfit the Motorhome, I'm glad I spent $3,000 for hydraulic jacks. Otherwise I would have had to lay down on my back in 6 inches of water to place scissor jacks and been electricuted plugging into 110v while standing in 6" of water. Well, maybe it's 3 inches.

These Hills are alive with the swish of fresh white snow. Needing to mail some bill payments last night, I asked a cowpoke or drill rig worker where the mail boxes were and he said, "We don't have any f___ing mail boxes around here."

Negatives:

Leaving San Jose, I drove out of the slot with my 110 connected. Rita's on the warpath. We spent most of last business week sleeping on the rack at the RV dealer--while they mounted jacks.

The cruise control and signal lights went out on South-Bound 99.

This place sucks.

Von's Grocery Store doesn't realize that someone with a Schwab One Check book is probably good for the bill.

Positives:

All Financial Metrics continue to be positive. We made several times more money while sleeping on the rack at the RV place than we paid for the new equipment.

Rita has been sober for a month.

I've started working on taxes.

I fixed the damage to the 110v service with a phillips, some toothe picks, and Elmer's Glue. I fixed the signal lights, and next time I will be able to pull over on the side of the freeway, fix them, and be on my way in 5 minutes. The fix for the signal lights may have also fixed cruise control, I won't know till I am back on the road.

Concerns:

Vanguard still reports that my 401(k) is in place and making a little money--so I don't know how long it will take for the lump sum pay out--I could use it to pay taxes on all of the money I made.

Plans:

To stay swimming in this lake until taxes are at least almost done or for about 3 weeks, depending on how I feel, then to head out over the Tehachapis through the, then snow melted pass, on the way to Nevada.

Pains in the Ass:

I had trouble with FLASHNET and had to open an AOL account in order to get online and spent most of the weekend working on the computer, trying to update to AOL 5.0/MSIE 5.0, till I realized that all I needed was AOL 4.0 with my trusty old Netscape and encryption.

Rita just took a walk out through the 'lake,' so I will have to get dressed and see what she's up to.

I like not working, even though it's scary.

Charlie Raven