Wednesday Feb.27th through Friday March 1st (Days 251 – 253)
Harris has been chomping at the bit to get in Howie and take off for the annual rite of spring, Spring Training, with his baseball bud Rick. Fortunately for Rick and unfortunately for Harris, the Belgrade Boys Basketball Team in Montana made it to the Class A state tourney. This means that Harris will once again have to brave the Phoenix weather on his own for a week while Rick participates in the fevered bedlam of H.S. boys basketball for a week before he heads south to Phoenix. Oh well, if one must make sacrifices...
Harris has also been looking at the national snow coverage weather map which has shown snow in Mountain areas of Utah, Idaho, California, and Nevada. He decided to play it safe and head down I-5 once again. He did decide to avert the whole Southern California madhouse driving area by trying a new route that cut east from Bakersfield across the mountains on Route 58 to Barstow, Needles, I-40, Kingman, and then southeast to Phoenix. He will miss a favorite highlight of driving down the Grapevine into the LA basin. He will NOT miss the traffic.
Leaving home
He left 7:30 Wednesday morning traveling at a steady 55-60 for most of the day with few short stops for gas, coffee, and food. The temps over the Siskiyou Pass were in the low 50’s compared to last year’s 30 with chains required. He pulled into a secluded parking lot behind a McDonalds and Day’s Inn around 10:30 PM ( 770 miles) and temps in the low 60’s. He noticed on the map that he was 30 miles north of Fresno and wondered if the morning traffic could be as bad as Seattle’s. That thought woke him up at 3:30 AM. Traffic was not a problem. He could have saved at least an hour going through Seattle if he’d done that on Wed.
After seeing the sunrise, Harris stopped for breakfast in Bakersfield. With the sun streaming and the temperature already hitting 60, he decided to catch the Mariners game on Friday. So the goal was to get within 150 miles of Phoenix by Thursday night. Once again, short breaks and a steady 60-65 found him in Peoria by 9PM eating dinner at a Denny’s checking in with Judy. The Grand Slam was a fitting dinner. By 10PM he was tucked away in his special spot with free electricity and no road noise in downtown Peoria (870 miles).
Friday morning was spent preparing French press coffee and it drinking it slowly while enjoying the sun. A stop for some spray to stop the loud annoying squeak in the driver’s door, Safeway 5 dollar Friday ribs for dinner, some snack foods and it was time for the game. He found his usual parking spot for the Peoria games where there was good wifi and an EZ walk to the game. There was only a little hiccup. Harris was wondering why there weren’t more people in line buying tickets, and a little later why there weren’t more people in the stands, when he discovered that he hadn’t mentally changed over to Central time. He was an hour early for the game. Oh, well, sitting there eating his sandwich and washing it down with the free O’ doul’s beer, life was looking good.
The usual parking spot for the game
Some of the autograph seekers in front of my seat
The Mariners won 8-7 (8-5 at the end of five when most of the starters were pulled). There were THREE HOME RUNS!! That was more than Harris saw during the entire spring training outings either of the last two years. Could this be…
Miles per gallon:
Inside Washington 25.3
Portland to Medford 24.4
Medford to Fresno 21.2
Fresno to PHX Don't know yet.
Harris is responsible for all typos herein due to the fact that the usual blogger is AWOL
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