Ta da! It's Part 4. And I do hope the number of installations required to tell this story does not surpass the current number of Shrek movies. Which means this better be the last because Shrek 4 is in production as we speak.
Ludlow, California, has a Dairy Queen. Actually, I think Ludlow IS a Dairy Queen. It's a good sized Dairy Queen surrounded by parking lot, with additional truck parking across the road, all of which is surrounded by dirt. And every bit of it was packed with cars. People, kids, pets were all going back and forth between the cars and the store. Groups of guys were hanging out near their pickup trucks, probably waiting for their women to come back from the bathroom. There were so many people milling around you could hardly get through the parking lot, which was packed full. I drove through it and parked in a relatively empty area on the dirt next to a truck pulling a boat. Within five minutes the entire dirt area was full too.
I stopped the car but didn't turn it off so I could keep the A/C on for the cat. It was 108. I told Deanna to go ahead and go in, use the bathroom and pick me up a Reese's Blizzard (Dad was paying) and then she could stay with the cat while I went. So she left. After a while Dad came to my window and told me that if I needed to use the bathroom, the line for that was longer than the food line and was almost out the door. But there was a row of port-a-potties right next to our dirt parking area. I needed to go, but not that bad. Never that bad.
Bali Ree came out about ten minutes later, Deanna soon after. Deanna said that after she finally saw the bathroom, she didn't trust the food so we were all skipping the Blizzards and going on to Barstow. And so we were off again. It was late afternoon and it was still a long way to Bakersfield, but once we got back on the highway we knew the worst was over. The traffic was still horrible, people were still racing each other, but I was beginning to understand why. It was a nightmarish place, hot, dry, barren, no exits off the highway (except this one) and seemingly, no end. No one wanted to be there. They were all trying to get the hell out of there as fast as they could.
Barstow was completely uninteresting but we did get gas and changed highways, getting off of I-40--for the first time--and onto 58. It was a weird transition--all of a sudden it was like we were driving past graffiti-covered crack houses. There were yucca plants everywhere and had been since Arizona. I wanted to see a giant cactus but I had already given up on that. I've only seen them once in my life and that was in 1998 just outside of El Paso. We weren't nearly that far south. Once we ran out of crack houses we found ourselves driving through Boron, complete with a 20 Mule Team Road. And then boring dirt again. We passed Edwards AFB, which was impressive, and then made it into the hills where the temperature started to drop. The sun had just gone behind the hills when we noticed the windmills.
LOTS of windmills. More windmills than you can possibly imagine. Windmills to the left, windmills to the right, windmills on every ridge, on every hill, as far as the eye could see. Windmills everywhere! No wonder it was cooling off, there were fans blowing on us from every direction. And with the sun going down it was truly surreal--Deanna got out her camera and started shooting pictures.
"To the left!" I would yell, and she would stick the camera in front of my face to get a shot out my window. "To the right! Behind! No, look in front!" I think she took about 80 pictures before we got away from them.
80 pictures I'm still waiting for her to send me. But I digress.
The sun was almost completely down as we came out of the hills. The temperature started to rise again. It went from the 70s back into the 90s. It felt like home. I wasn't happy about that.
We found our motel in Bakersfield around 9, a Sleep Inn. It took pets. I had called from Gallup to make sure. We were all tired and Dad and Bali Ree were not getting along too well. Dad thought she had driven like a bat out of hell all day and he was sick of it. Then they got to their room, started unloading and then changed rooms because something smelled. So they had to take all the boxes Dad had already unloaded and move them to the other room, which coincidentally adjoined ours. Our room, however, was lovely. We brought in the cat after stuffing pillows in all the holes she could hide in and just like last time, she went straight underneath the bed skirt and stayed put.
We unloaded the cars for what seemed like an eternity. Bali Ree was tired and decided to take a shower and go to bed. Dad had said that he wanted to eat and he wasn't going to bed without eating. So Deanna and I were looking forward to food. We went outside to help Dad with the last of the boxes and Deanna asked him who was going to drive.
"Dinner... is that all you can think about right now?" he asked her.
We looked at each other. "We're just going on the last thing we heard," I said.
He softened. "I know."
We helped him carry in the last of the boxes and then he went to his room and shut the door. Deanna and I sat on our respective beds and wondered aloud if this dinner thing was going to happen. Because we were starving, and we could go by ourselves, but if Dad wanted to go we didn't want to just leave, and the way things were going we didn't want to go knock on his door. So we sat there and looked at a flyer for Rusty's Pizza while the cat found her courage and started exploring the tops of various pieces of furniture.
We sat, and we sat. And we wondered, and our stomachs growled and we tried not to fall asleep. I discussed the possibility of updating my blog because we finally had an internet connection. Deanna wanted to do something on her laptop as well. Maybe after dinner, we thought. And then Dad knocked on our door.
We were all too tired to be creative about where to eat. Rusty's was open late, so that's where we went. And I have to say that was some damn good pizza, and I even got to play a couple of games of Galaga while we waited for it.
After dinner we came back to the room and opened the door. No cat, no surprise. I looked under the bed skirt. No cat. I looked under another bed skirt. No cat. I felt around all the bed skirts, looked in the closet, under the desk, behind the TV--Deanna looked behind our bedside table, in the bathroom and under the air conditioner. NO CAT. We thought back to when we left the room. No, she couldn't have come out then without our knowing about it. Did someone come in while we were gone and she ran out? Where could she be by now if that happened? AND WHO THE HELL CAME INTO OUR ROOM? I was about to panic when Deanna finally pulled back the curtain and there she sat on the windowsill. That poor cat hadn't looked out a window for over a week. So there she sat, facing the back of a building and a stumpy palm tree, looking over her shoulder at us like we had just interrupted her favorite TV show. We closed the curtain and let her stay put.
I took a shower while Deanna worked on her laptop. Then she was to take a shower after me. When I got out she was face down on her computer, sound asleep. So I got in bed and wrote Part 1. Man that was a long time ago.
The next day was to be easy. It was roughly half a day to the Bay Area so for once, we didn't have to rush. We got out at about 9am and since the apartment office didn't close until 7, we knew we would get there in plenty of time to get the keys. So we took our time through orchard country and a lot of farm land. You ever wonder where they grow stuff? North of Bakersfield on 99. You know what they grow there? Everything. Nuts, flowers, grapes, tomatoes, onions, you name it. It was a rather slow drive through the orchards, slow enough I guess that the cat got brave enough to walk out of her carrier. Deanna was thrilled, she was coming to sit in her lap. Oh wait, no she wasn't. She climbed into her lap, then out of her lap, onto the floor under Deanna's feet and then flattened herself out like a pancake and squeezed in right underneath the seat. I could barely even get my hand under there when I lost a french fry. We were never getting her out now.
We got on the radio and told Dad what had happened. Then we pulled over at a gas station and opened up Deanna's door. Dad got down on the ground and looked under the seat and talked to her for a bit. She didn't budge. He felt around where she was. Actually she was pretty smart--there was a dip in the car floor underneath the seat and she was curled up in it like some kind of cat-shaped nest. Dad decided it was probably a pretty safe place for her to be, so we left her there and went on our way.
We traveled through farmland for what seemed like forever. We saw barren patches next to lush orchards. The barren patches had signs that said "Congress created dust bowl." Not sure what that was about. Deanna took some pictures. We also saw multiple tomato trucks and onion trucks on the highway. They were like rock haulers full of vegetables. By the time we stopped for lunch I was craving something with marinara sauce. What we got were hamburgers, but that worked about as well.
As I was setting up shade in the car for the cat, who probably wasn't going to come out from under the seat anyway, my cell phone rang. It was my driver from the moving company.
"Just wanted to confirm tomorrow at 8am in Foster City."
"I'll be there!"
"Great. Now I need to ask you something. I'm looking at the bill here, and I know this is supposed to be split out somehow between you and DreamWorks, and I don't know exactly how... but what it looks like is that your move went about $3000 over the estimate."
"What??? How could it possibly go over that much? Was it weight?" I was about to throw up.
"No, actually the weight came in under the estimate. It could be packing though."
"How? Certainly not $3000 worth of boxes." Seriously. Don't even.
"Well... yeah, it could be packing. But like I said, I'm not sure what they're doing here, so you may want to call your CSR and double check with them."
"You bet I will! Thanks for the heads up." And I hung up. Then I got really, really pissed. I decided I would go in and get some food, eat really quickly and then go back out to the car and make a phone call or two. But while I was in line and just about to order, they called me. I asked if they could call back in five minutes--their number came in as "Unknown"--she said sure, no problem. So five minutes passes and no call. I decided to wait outside where it's more quiet, especially since we didn't have the food yet. Ten minutes, no call. Fifteen. I went back inside and sat down with the family, who were already eating. I inhaled what I could but it wasn't much since I had lost my appetite. Then I went back outside. I was going to talk to them before I got on the road again. So I dug out my laptop from behind Deanna's seat. This required removing a backpack from the floor, which I did with great difficulty since the seat was folded down for boxes. But once I got the backpack out, what do you think I saw? Cat. Just lying there on her side, her feet straight out in front of her like the car floor was some sort of chaise lounge. She was perfectly within reach from the back of the seat. I filed that little piece of information away for later and dug the computer out of my bag so I could get my CSR's phone number out of my email.
I called. Heidi was on the phone so they put me on hold. Then they said she would call me back. When she finally did she was just calling to see if everything was a go for tomorrow.
"Well, Rick called and said that the move ended up costing like $8000. What happened?"
"Who's Rick?"
Ok, right, they don't necessarily know who the driver is. "He's the driver. He says he's looking at the bill and the total was over $8000."
"Oh no, that's not right. What he's seeing is the total before the DreamWorks discount. Actually we only underestimated by about $188."
Now THAT was impressive. I thanked her, took a big sigh of relief and got my appetite back. But we had to get on the road again. Oh well.
We continued on 99 until we got to 152 and then cut over to San Jose. We went through a lot of brown hills. It was scary. The road was steep and winding, and there was a guy in a camper pulling a boat on a trailer and he could not keep it steady in the wind. He kept passing us and then slowing down, and passing and slowing down. I kept thinking we were going to get hit by that fishtailing boat and get knocked into the reservoir. Bali Ree was way ahead again on some kind of personal driving challenge while I was hanging on for dear life, trying to keep the car on the road and a boat off my ass. Dad called us on the radio and Deanna had to respond. I wasn't taking one finger off that steering wheel.
"Well, hang in there," he said. "We'll see you at the bottom."
Yeah, hopefully not the fast way. Because you know what? California is weird about guardrails. They don't know where to put them. You'll be looking 200 feet straight down and there won't be a guardrail in sight. Then on the next stretch of road you might roll off into a shallow ditch and they have barriers everywhere. There's no logic to it.
Needless to say, we survived. After that it was a winding road among fresh fruit stands and then San Jose, where we would get on 101 and go to our final destination. Finally, I was about to no longer be homeless.
We arrived at the apartment office around 3pm, got out of the car and stretched. It was sunny and 80 degrees with a cool, refreshing breeze from the west. I faced the sun, closed my eyes and let the wind blow through my hair. My first words? "Bite me, Texas."
Ludlow, California, has a Dairy Queen. Actually, I think Ludlow IS a Dairy Queen. It's a good sized Dairy Queen surrounded by parking lot, with additional truck parking across the road, all of which is surrounded by dirt. And every bit of it was packed with cars. People, kids, pets were all going back and forth between the cars and the store. Groups of guys were hanging out near their pickup trucks, probably waiting for their women to come back from the bathroom. There were so many people milling around you could hardly get through the parking lot, which was packed full. I drove through it and parked in a relatively empty area on the dirt next to a truck pulling a boat. Within five minutes the entire dirt area was full too.
I stopped the car but didn't turn it off so I could keep the A/C on for the cat. It was 108. I told Deanna to go ahead and go in, use the bathroom and pick me up a Reese's Blizzard (Dad was paying) and then she could stay with the cat while I went. So she left. After a while Dad came to my window and told me that if I needed to use the bathroom, the line for that was longer than the food line and was almost out the door. But there was a row of port-a-potties right next to our dirt parking area. I needed to go, but not that bad. Never that bad.
Bali Ree came out about ten minutes later, Deanna soon after. Deanna said that after she finally saw the bathroom, she didn't trust the food so we were all skipping the Blizzards and going on to Barstow. And so we were off again. It was late afternoon and it was still a long way to Bakersfield, but once we got back on the highway we knew the worst was over. The traffic was still horrible, people were still racing each other, but I was beginning to understand why. It was a nightmarish place, hot, dry, barren, no exits off the highway (except this one) and seemingly, no end. No one wanted to be there. They were all trying to get the hell out of there as fast as they could.
Barstow was completely uninteresting but we did get gas and changed highways, getting off of I-40--for the first time--and onto 58. It was a weird transition--all of a sudden it was like we were driving past graffiti-covered crack houses. There were yucca plants everywhere and had been since Arizona. I wanted to see a giant cactus but I had already given up on that. I've only seen them once in my life and that was in 1998 just outside of El Paso. We weren't nearly that far south. Once we ran out of crack houses we found ourselves driving through Boron, complete with a 20 Mule Team Road. And then boring dirt again. We passed Edwards AFB, which was impressive, and then made it into the hills where the temperature started to drop. The sun had just gone behind the hills when we noticed the windmills.
LOTS of windmills. More windmills than you can possibly imagine. Windmills to the left, windmills to the right, windmills on every ridge, on every hill, as far as the eye could see. Windmills everywhere! No wonder it was cooling off, there were fans blowing on us from every direction. And with the sun going down it was truly surreal--Deanna got out her camera and started shooting pictures.
"To the left!" I would yell, and she would stick the camera in front of my face to get a shot out my window. "To the right! Behind! No, look in front!" I think she took about 80 pictures before we got away from them.
80 pictures I'm still waiting for her to send me. But I digress.
The sun was almost completely down as we came out of the hills. The temperature started to rise again. It went from the 70s back into the 90s. It felt like home. I wasn't happy about that.
We found our motel in Bakersfield around 9, a Sleep Inn. It took pets. I had called from Gallup to make sure. We were all tired and Dad and Bali Ree were not getting along too well. Dad thought she had driven like a bat out of hell all day and he was sick of it. Then they got to their room, started unloading and then changed rooms because something smelled. So they had to take all the boxes Dad had already unloaded and move them to the other room, which coincidentally adjoined ours. Our room, however, was lovely. We brought in the cat after stuffing pillows in all the holes she could hide in and just like last time, she went straight underneath the bed skirt and stayed put.
We unloaded the cars for what seemed like an eternity. Bali Ree was tired and decided to take a shower and go to bed. Dad had said that he wanted to eat and he wasn't going to bed without eating. So Deanna and I were looking forward to food. We went outside to help Dad with the last of the boxes and Deanna asked him who was going to drive.
"Dinner... is that all you can think about right now?" he asked her.
We looked at each other. "We're just going on the last thing we heard," I said.
He softened. "I know."
We helped him carry in the last of the boxes and then he went to his room and shut the door. Deanna and I sat on our respective beds and wondered aloud if this dinner thing was going to happen. Because we were starving, and we could go by ourselves, but if Dad wanted to go we didn't want to just leave, and the way things were going we didn't want to go knock on his door. So we sat there and looked at a flyer for Rusty's Pizza while the cat found her courage and started exploring the tops of various pieces of furniture.
We sat, and we sat. And we wondered, and our stomachs growled and we tried not to fall asleep. I discussed the possibility of updating my blog because we finally had an internet connection. Deanna wanted to do something on her laptop as well. Maybe after dinner, we thought. And then Dad knocked on our door.
We were all too tired to be creative about where to eat. Rusty's was open late, so that's where we went. And I have to say that was some damn good pizza, and I even got to play a couple of games of Galaga while we waited for it.
After dinner we came back to the room and opened the door. No cat, no surprise. I looked under the bed skirt. No cat. I looked under another bed skirt. No cat. I felt around all the bed skirts, looked in the closet, under the desk, behind the TV--Deanna looked behind our bedside table, in the bathroom and under the air conditioner. NO CAT. We thought back to when we left the room. No, she couldn't have come out then without our knowing about it. Did someone come in while we were gone and she ran out? Where could she be by now if that happened? AND WHO THE HELL CAME INTO OUR ROOM? I was about to panic when Deanna finally pulled back the curtain and there she sat on the windowsill. That poor cat hadn't looked out a window for over a week. So there she sat, facing the back of a building and a stumpy palm tree, looking over her shoulder at us like we had just interrupted her favorite TV show. We closed the curtain and let her stay put.
I took a shower while Deanna worked on her laptop. Then she was to take a shower after me. When I got out she was face down on her computer, sound asleep. So I got in bed and wrote Part 1. Man that was a long time ago.
The next day was to be easy. It was roughly half a day to the Bay Area so for once, we didn't have to rush. We got out at about 9am and since the apartment office didn't close until 7, we knew we would get there in plenty of time to get the keys. So we took our time through orchard country and a lot of farm land. You ever wonder where they grow stuff? North of Bakersfield on 99. You know what they grow there? Everything. Nuts, flowers, grapes, tomatoes, onions, you name it. It was a rather slow drive through the orchards, slow enough I guess that the cat got brave enough to walk out of her carrier. Deanna was thrilled, she was coming to sit in her lap. Oh wait, no she wasn't. She climbed into her lap, then out of her lap, onto the floor under Deanna's feet and then flattened herself out like a pancake and squeezed in right underneath the seat. I could barely even get my hand under there when I lost a french fry. We were never getting her out now.
We got on the radio and told Dad what had happened. Then we pulled over at a gas station and opened up Deanna's door. Dad got down on the ground and looked under the seat and talked to her for a bit. She didn't budge. He felt around where she was. Actually she was pretty smart--there was a dip in the car floor underneath the seat and she was curled up in it like some kind of cat-shaped nest. Dad decided it was probably a pretty safe place for her to be, so we left her there and went on our way.
We traveled through farmland for what seemed like forever. We saw barren patches next to lush orchards. The barren patches had signs that said "Congress created dust bowl." Not sure what that was about. Deanna took some pictures. We also saw multiple tomato trucks and onion trucks on the highway. They were like rock haulers full of vegetables. By the time we stopped for lunch I was craving something with marinara sauce. What we got were hamburgers, but that worked about as well.
As I was setting up shade in the car for the cat, who probably wasn't going to come out from under the seat anyway, my cell phone rang. It was my driver from the moving company.
"Just wanted to confirm tomorrow at 8am in Foster City."
"I'll be there!"
"Great. Now I need to ask you something. I'm looking at the bill here, and I know this is supposed to be split out somehow between you and DreamWorks, and I don't know exactly how... but what it looks like is that your move went about $3000 over the estimate."
"What??? How could it possibly go over that much? Was it weight?" I was about to throw up.
"No, actually the weight came in under the estimate. It could be packing though."
"How? Certainly not $3000 worth of boxes." Seriously. Don't even.
"Well... yeah, it could be packing. But like I said, I'm not sure what they're doing here, so you may want to call your CSR and double check with them."
"You bet I will! Thanks for the heads up." And I hung up. Then I got really, really pissed. I decided I would go in and get some food, eat really quickly and then go back out to the car and make a phone call or two. But while I was in line and just about to order, they called me. I asked if they could call back in five minutes--their number came in as "Unknown"--she said sure, no problem. So five minutes passes and no call. I decided to wait outside where it's more quiet, especially since we didn't have the food yet. Ten minutes, no call. Fifteen. I went back inside and sat down with the family, who were already eating. I inhaled what I could but it wasn't much since I had lost my appetite. Then I went back outside. I was going to talk to them before I got on the road again. So I dug out my laptop from behind Deanna's seat. This required removing a backpack from the floor, which I did with great difficulty since the seat was folded down for boxes. But once I got the backpack out, what do you think I saw? Cat. Just lying there on her side, her feet straight out in front of her like the car floor was some sort of chaise lounge. She was perfectly within reach from the back of the seat. I filed that little piece of information away for later and dug the computer out of my bag so I could get my CSR's phone number out of my email.
I called. Heidi was on the phone so they put me on hold. Then they said she would call me back. When she finally did she was just calling to see if everything was a go for tomorrow.
"Well, Rick called and said that the move ended up costing like $8000. What happened?"
"Who's Rick?"
Ok, right, they don't necessarily know who the driver is. "He's the driver. He says he's looking at the bill and the total was over $8000."
"Oh no, that's not right. What he's seeing is the total before the DreamWorks discount. Actually we only underestimated by about $188."
Now THAT was impressive. I thanked her, took a big sigh of relief and got my appetite back. But we had to get on the road again. Oh well.
We continued on 99 until we got to 152 and then cut over to San Jose. We went through a lot of brown hills. It was scary. The road was steep and winding, and there was a guy in a camper pulling a boat on a trailer and he could not keep it steady in the wind. He kept passing us and then slowing down, and passing and slowing down. I kept thinking we were going to get hit by that fishtailing boat and get knocked into the reservoir. Bali Ree was way ahead again on some kind of personal driving challenge while I was hanging on for dear life, trying to keep the car on the road and a boat off my ass. Dad called us on the radio and Deanna had to respond. I wasn't taking one finger off that steering wheel.
"Well, hang in there," he said. "We'll see you at the bottom."
Yeah, hopefully not the fast way. Because you know what? California is weird about guardrails. They don't know where to put them. You'll be looking 200 feet straight down and there won't be a guardrail in sight. Then on the next stretch of road you might roll off into a shallow ditch and they have barriers everywhere. There's no logic to it.
Needless to say, we survived. After that it was a winding road among fresh fruit stands and then San Jose, where we would get on 101 and go to our final destination. Finally, I was about to no longer be homeless.
We arrived at the apartment office around 3pm, got out of the car and stretched. It was sunny and 80 degrees with a cool, refreshing breeze from the west. I faced the sun, closed my eyes and let the wind blow through my hair. My first words? "Bite me, Texas."
