On The Road Again

Another nice thing about Holiday Inn Express is the free breakfast bar; however, I ate so much at it that I figured I'd better take a walk to cause some of the blood sugar to burn. It wasn't much, but, referring to map in the hotel's fitness center, we set off for about a 2 km walk around the area. It helped a little: 147 blood sugar even after a bagel and one of the cinnamon rolls and bowl of rasin bran.

I also had a fair bit of business to do online, as WSFS committees are still thinking about their reports. The upshot is that we're running a bit late this morning; however, there continues to be plenty of slack in my schedule.

Anyway, once I get the computer shut down, the CPAP put away, and the rest of my stuff packed, we're off again. Anyone following this who needs to contact me before late tonight should call my mobile phone.

A Long Day and Lousy Internet

Despite what I wrote earlier today, we actually left Paso Robles 15 minutes earlier than I'd originally scheduled. I guess I didn't expect to get an early start. Because of that, and because of so much slack, we kept off the main road a lot, swinging off to CA-1 a couple of times. We stopped for lunch at Pea Soup Andersen's and took our time about it, as I thought we would.

At Oxnard, we got off the freeway to find a gas station that had somewhat less expensive gas than many of the places we've seen. Then we went ahead and drove down the Pacific Coast Highway past Point Mugu, where we stopped and looked at the missile display.

( Photos added later behind the cut )

After the missile stop, we continued down the coast to Malibu, before swinging east on I-10. We eventually fetched up in Moreno Valley around 8:30 PM.

I can't say as I recommend this place. There are fewer services within walking distance, and they close earlier. Worse, unlike Paso Robles, which had easy-to-use wired internet service (plug it in; it works), this Holiday Inn Express has "free wireless" that doesn't work. My computer will connect to their system with decent signal strength, but when I launch a web browser (either IE or Firefox), it never gets as far as asking for the ID and PW they gave me at the front desk. It simply times out. The front desk people have no idea what's wrong -- the system works for them, so it must be my fault -- and the "tech support" number they have (and gave to me) runs to an office that appears to think that all support calls must happen M-F 9-5 and said, "leave a message and we'll get back to you on Monday." Bah!

I'm using the computer in the hotel's lobby, which means I have the weak web-mail interface at best. I'll try to find time to check mail tomorrow morning, but don't count on it happening. Looks like I'll probably end up having to spring for the expensive connection at the hotel in Anaheim.

The funny thing is that it seems like the hotels in the smaller towns away from the cities are much better than those in the bigger metropolitan areas. Seaside OR, Yuba City CA, Paso Robles CA: good connections. Portland OR, Moreno Valley (LA metro area) CA: bad connections.

Anyway, I need to go get some sleep now. Tomorrow is Train Day. I'll have to use more sunscreen than I did today, I think. For all that I was in the van most of the time and carefully doped up with heavy-duty sunscreen, I feel pretty sunburned already.

Edit, Aug 20 11:59 PM: Once we got to Anaheim and a decent connection, I went and spliced in the photos.