Saturday: Some statistics.

• Approximate number of miles driven: 2000.
• Number of times I've almost died on this trip: 2.
• Once when I hydroplaned while it was hailing between Laramie and Cheyenne.
• Once when I couldn't see where the road was after a semi passed me between Goodland, KS, and SomeOtherPlace, KS.
• Number of crashed/broken cars seen: 18.
• Number of crashed/broken cars seen in Colorado: 18.
• Number of crashed/broken cars seen in the Denver metro area: 16.
• City whose urban planning is best fixed with an orbital laser strike: Denver.
• City whose urban planning surprisingly works: Salt Lake City.
• State with least interesting food options: All of them.
• Number of Targets seen: 7.
• Number of cops seen: 5.
• Number of wind turbines in Wyoming: ~120.
• Azimuthal range covered by synchronized warning lights on wind turbines near Wilson, KS: 180°.

Let's just say it was an eventful day.

The start.

It started out as a cold and rainy day.

Wyoming actually isn't awful to drive through.  It looks nice, and the roads aren't terrible.

Back to Laramie for the first time in more than a decade.

 I was somewhat surprised to see three college age kids crossing the street with a rainbow, a bisexual, and a pansexual flags.  Today was apparently the Pride parade in Laramie, which is a nice improvement over twenty years ago, just before I first visited.

But I was there for a calzone.

 Because that's also been awhile.

It was good.

 I had to find a place to park and eat.

There were squirrels.

Then more driving, and after realizing I wasn't going to get to my hotel before restaurants closed, I stopped at the first place I saw.

And had a shake.

And steak.

 It was all good, although I could have used a fork.  Zach.  I'm talking to you, Zach.

While there, I saw this tweet, which was odd, because I was pretty sure I was there.

Then it rained, and it wasn't fun, and it rained some more, and it continued to not be fun for like five and a half hours.

And my car hit 30k miles.

Here are extra squirrel pictures:

Friday: Current definitive ranking of states traveled through

1. California.  The roads are clearly labeled, and are wide enough for everybody.
2. Wyoming.  It just looks better than the others, and has this brilliant invention called "occasional third lane for passing" so trucks don't have to play hop-frog to sort themselves out.
3. Utah.  Did you know those salt flats for cars are in Utah?
4. Nevada.  We should just give the rest of the state back to the federal government, because this state is a huge butt that's not fun to cross.

This number got a lot bigger today.

There is simply no place to eat in this part of the country that isn't generic fast food.  So I got Arby's, because Nevada is crap, and I needed something to eat at 2pm.

It was fine, but why aren't there Fazolis?  Qdobas?

 And then Utah showed up.

Thinking about it now, I had no clue where this was, but probably wouldn't have guessed Utah.

 Utah also has the worst record for having bathrooms at rest stops that are open, such that it justifies having the rest stop.

Vroom!

 Basically all of the ones I stopped at sucked.  Or had no cell service, so I couldn't check anything out.

Cool sign, though.

I didn't plan today out much, because I just wanted to get as far as possible.  This ended up meaning Rock Springs, Wyoming, which doesn't have much going for it.  Even worse, the hotel restaurant was closed, so I had to go with the backup plan.

And now I have leftovers, for breakfast or emergency ration purposes.

I can book a miles-room from the parking lot with my phone, so that's cool.  I've already picked tomorrow's stopping point, which should get me back on schedule.

ANd now my eyes are having trouble staying awake, so I guess this is done.

Thursday: I've seen enough of Reno. Probably Nevada's cities, too.

Today was the last day to wake up in Alameda.  Probably forever-ish.  I think that's a bit sad.

One last brunch with Julie and Ramona.  I ordered the big beignets, which was probably too big.  I guess I can eat them tomorrow for breakfast?

 And then I dropped them off at the airport, which went well, and was fast, but I wish we could have had a more regular visit.  I guess Thanksgiving will probably be largely regular.  Hopefully I won't have to help renovate.

One last visit to Crab Cove.

They've updated the picnic areas.  It was too foggy to see the city across the bay, but that's ok.

I had to stop at Koja.

Even though I was too full from brunch to really enjoy it all the way.  Very good, and I guess this means I need to sit down some day and figure out how to duplicate it.  The coconut miso pork is probably the hardest part of the fries.

And then it began.

So it turns out driving is boring, and puts some extra stress on some muscles, and is just generally not-much-fun.  Still, that's why I made a huge playlist to listen to.

Donner pass.

 Which is the only rest area open on I-80?  Which, um?

I mean?

 Ok?

It was useful but imagine living through all that, and getting "yeah, you're a paragraph in elementary history books, and we built a rest stop, because people want chips and a pee."

Jokes on the guy who wanted jerky.  It got stuck in the "unstickable" vending machine.

And then Nevada.  And Reno.

Which, I guess if I don't have good things to say.

 My hotel is a huge casino, and the best thing about it is that one of the cable channels is NHK World.  There are also "12 restaurants."  One of them is Johnny Rocket's.  One of them is "Italian":

For extraordinarily liberal definitions of "Italian."

I saw that the "Cafe (pretend I made a great cafe/casino pun, but I couldn't come up with one)" had a patty melt.  Also milkshakes.

And French Onion Soup.

 The menu lists the patty melt as having swiss and grilled onions on rye.

Technically correct.

How do you dry out a 1/2 pound patty cooked to medium?  How do you make grilled onions flavorless?  What kind of monster doesn't salt the fries when they come out of the oil?

So, yeah.  It wasn't great.  The milkshake was good, and that counted as a dessert.

And then time to gamble my $20 reserved for gambling.  During dinner, I realized I had no idea how to do a gamble.  Do you have to change money into fake stuff first?  How do the tables work?  Why in this day and age do they allow people to smoke inside?  Why did that guy in the oversized heavy flannel jacket try to sell me a screwdriver for $2?  Was that the absolute work sting operation ever?

Anyway, I figured out the machines take your money, and can spit out coupons that can be turned back into real money, so that avoids all the human interaction components of the gamble.  The machines are designed to take all your money quickly, but not so quickly that you get bothered by it.  One had a nice "skip all these stupid animations" button, and another let you choose your poker cards to hold, and then spawn them across up to 100 hands that were then filled, letting you lose money two orders of magnitude faster.

One machine had puppies, which doesn't quite counteract all the "look at this cartoon lady you can 'rescue' by playing" or "this is Egypt theme (with cartoon lady)"/"this is China theme (with cartoon lady)"/"this is Viking theme (with cartoon lady)"/"this is Tiger theme (with horse for some reason?)" machines.  I guess when 70% of your customers are white women aged 70+, then...you...market for...  Yeah.  No idea.  Most of the men were playing the tables, which, whatever.  I also saw more mobility carts and walkers than I have in years.  At what point is this elder abuse?

I successfully lost $19.93, cashing out when I was trying to figure out how it was going to give me 3.5 cents.  Jokes on me, credits are 2 cents each?  Who the fuck cares, this is all stupid nonsense.

This is basically me at this whole place.

Wednesday: The last night in the Bay Area

For an unknown period of time, that is.  I'll probably be back someday, for some reason, but I definitely won't be coming here as regularly as I have been.  It's a bit sad, to leave the place where you probably should have been on the lease, and maybe should have paid some rent.  Oh well.

I have a hotel room scheduled in Reno for tomorrow night.  It's a bit of a lazy start to the trip, but that's how it goes.  I might push extra hard the next day, but we'll see when that happens.

Another thing that happened today was the release of Utada Hikaru's new album.  I found a site of questionable legality yesterday, as neither Amazon nor Google had it listed.  It popped up on Amazon late last night, so I grabbed it there.  None of the songs jumped out at me, but I had it on quietly, and not in the proper "loud blasting" method I usually use.  We'll see tomorrow.

I saw the moon set this morning.

 And one last time:

KBBQ.

 Is delicious.

Extra fatty brisket is the best.

• Ugh.
• Breaking seems a bit strong.

Tuesday: Suddenly so little time.

At least 99% of everything is packed or gone, and the rest will be pretty easy to get done tomorrow.

Colby taunting with BBQ.

I evolved this jerk.

It's not a bad sandwich.  The mushrooms help.

So all this stuff was taken out of the dumpster.  Sure, whatever.  It stopped being my problem when I tipped it into the dumpster.

Probably the last visit to Cookiebar.

Pasta.

Actual pasta.

• Yeah.  Wonderful.

Monday: One last week.

Friends are finally here in Pokemon Go.

Colby is taunting me by sending a gift from Rudy's.

I had Five Guys with my favorite kid.

I also nearly have the tumblr side of my auto-queue script written that will scan my starred RSS items and add them to my tumblr queue to keep it up-to-date.  It will probably need a decent bit more work, but I have the basic API interface up and running. 

Sunday: At least it wasn't so hot.

Which made cleaning things up and clearing things out much easier.  It feels a lot like we're on the home stretch, as most of the rooms are cleared out, one totally so.  Tomorrow has a few things planned, and I want to try and get the majority of the big things out, finish some "this is all trash" things, and get that trash and the recycling out.  I would have done part of this this evening, but after yesterday, and the rest of the complex, the trash zone is a mess.  I don't think we can put much more in there, so I'm going to let it get emptied before adding more.

And there are still three full days left before the flight, and before I start my cross-country trek.  Again, moving is a lot easier when it's not your stuff, and when the weather doesn't make every movement a sweltering mess.

Brunch had to happen at the third option, due to every place being busy.  It was good.

They added friends, so I'm back in this game for a bit.  We'll see how well that works.