ROAD TRIP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love road trips for many reasons: I hate to fly, I am alone with Marty (no TV,we have to talk, and we laugh) , great music, and adventures.

We left Thursday morning to visit friends in San Diego. AND for all you cat burglars monitoring my actions, we have nosey neighbors, a house sitter, a killer dog, and a burglar alarm. Our road trips have rules and tradition. One major rule, the driver controls the radio, temperature, and speed. Tradition: whatever side I sit on the sun will hit; I will yell Marty Dammit! about 10 times every 2 hours , now that could be because he has grabbed a body part, or it could be what I consider bad driving ; and Mother Nature freaks out and other bad things will happen when I drive. I drive and we have miles of construction. Or major squalls and we have to sit under overpasses for protection, Tulle fog, snow, sleet, and hail love me to drive also. Yesterday a new adventure.

We are making great time and then it is my time to drive. We switch after lunch and I start out, Marty gets his pillow just right and is asleep. I keep looking at the sky, all yellow and weird. I have cranked it up to about 85 and sailing along., And then I have awful winds and no visibility. We are in The Valley on I 5, Sand Storm. I had just passed a sign that said sand storm area the next 40 miles. No lie. Imagine the worst fog you have ever seen, double it with gale force winds. I dropped to a crawl, then worried some fool would keep their speed up and run over me. And then it would clear and I would speed up and then boom, again no visibility. Forty miles of that.

I am looking at the gas gauge, 1/4 of a tank, below my comfort level in a part of the world that stations are 30 miles apart. We get into Bakersfield and I wake Marty up. He had said he would tell me which station to stop at there. He looks at the sand storm and say we are not stopping, keep driving. Lots of 18 wheelers are pulled over with hoods up, I guess sand in the air filter. At this point my hands are blood red from gripping the wheel and my shoulders were aching. We finally stop and get gas, just high winds no sand. And then Marty gets to drive, clear blue skies.

His drive was not nice either. When we drop down off the Grapevine, we have the beginning of LA area traffic. Not rush hour, but rush hour traffic . It is stop and go for miles and miles. And then the HAZ MAT truck passes us on the emergency lane, sirens blaring and flashing lights. We figure we will never get out of LA. Luckily HAZ MAT turned off. But traffic did not clear up, now we are in San Diego rush hour. Traffic did clear up when we pulled onto Richard's and Luis' street.

Still I love Road Trips. How many people do you know who have experienced dust storms and HAZ MAT all on the same afternoon?