So, Thursday morning as I wake up, I start to realize a new reality. Remember that check I was unable to deposit before I left because I was rushing to the plane? Well, I had never mailed it in. I had just plum forgot. As such, I was running out of cash. I had fifteen dollars in my pocket. I had my American Express card to pay for hotels and such and I could of course get some meals that way too. But the ATM told me that I had almost zeroed my regular old checking account that my debit card works off of. Now, I had my freakin paycheck in my pocket, but it was essentially useless. I couldn't deposit it from Nevada to my PNC account. There were no local branches. Not within a thousand miles. I called Amex... the type of account I have wasn't set up to withdraw cash. Ditto on the other credit card I had with me. I was not comfortable with this. Having the plastic with me was fine, but I just don't feel comfortable without cash in my pocket.
I also generally started thinking about the rate at which I was eating cash. It was rather high. I was having fun, but I had already accomplished the major goals of the vacation (the random spot and Yosemite). So I started debating to myself if I should go home early rather than staying the additional couple of days. The only think I had thought about doing which I had not done yet was San Fransisco itself. I'm sure I could also have thought of additional things like driving up and down the coast too, but my plans were completely non-existant. I was just winging it after all. On the other hand I was draining money like crazy and staying wqould mean three more nights of hotels and food. After consulting with Ivan to determine that I could change my flight relatively cheaply and easily. So I'd keep that option open.
But first, since it was just a stones throw away, I went to Reno. I stopped at the Hilton Casino. (No, I did not go to the Mustang Ranch.) I had four quarters in my pocket. I played the first three and lost. I went to another machine and put my last quarter in. Won $62. Cool. That would help my cash situation. I decided at that point since I had my $62 and I never regamble my winnings when I am at places like this, that I'd go ahead and spend the other $15 cash I had on more slots. I started and pretty quickly won another $40 or so. My "winnings" bucket had about $100 in quarters when I ran out of quarters in my "to spend" pile. I had spent $16 and gotten back $100. Not bad.
But then I broke my rule which I had always religiously followed every other time anyone had ever dragged me into a casino in the past. I regambled the $100 I had won. Couldn't pull me away from that slot machine. I stopped and walked out when I was down to about eight dollars.
Woops. Easy come, easy go. I mean, in actuality my net loss was only about ten dollars, which is quitre reasonable, but if I had only played by my own rules, I would have come out way ahead! But no, I violated my own rules. Oh well!
This did put me down to a very low cash situation again though. I went to an ATM and withdrew the last $20 it said I had, and headed off. This was seeming like a trend though, and I was leaning toward just going home. I was not having good luck here!
But I decided to not decide for a few more hours... but to keep my options open to just start hightailing it back to San Fransisco on the interstate. When I got closer to the city I would decide if I would stay another day and do San Fransisco, or to just fly home.
As I was just starting out on the interstate I noticed that once again I was old of gas. Running on fumes. Cursing, I got off at the next exit to look for a gas station. Unfortunately, the next exit was in the middle of the desert. I didn't see any gas station. But I did see one of the coolest things I have seen in ages. Right on a hill a few hundred feet from me was a funnel cloud. Not a full fledged tornado of course, but their wimpy cousin the "Dust Devil". It looked just like a tornado. A whiring funnel cloud of thick dust and flying debris spinning around slowly moving accross the terrain. It was about 300 or 400 feet tall, perhaps ten feet wide at the bottom, maybe 20 or 30 feet wide at the top. It was slowly moving up a hill... I grabbed my camera and snapped a couple pictures from the moving car...
In that one you can see the base as it was widening out. It was at this point less defined than when I first saw it, but giuve me a break, I was trying to grab my camera out of my bag while driving down the road at a pretty rapid pace. I'm lucky I got any shots at all. It kept moving up the hill and eventually got to the top...
After it got to the top of the hill, the wind at the top dissapated it within a few seconds and it was gone. It had only lasted a couple minutes, but I was only a couple hundred feet away, and it was very cool.
After that, I found gas after wandering around the desert for another half hour, then got on I-80 and started speeding toward San Fransisco... until I hit traffic...
Sigh! Back roads are so much more fun! But traffic there was, all the way back into San Fransisco, even though by this time it was the tail end of rush hour.
The whole drive back to San Fransisco I had been going back and forth on staying or going. But eventually I decided it was best just to go home. It would save me three days worth of hotel, it would give me a chance to decompress a couple days at home instead of arriving home early Monday morning and essentially going right to work, and I had done most of what I wanted to do anyway. The parts I hadn't done... well.. I don't think this will be my last time in San Fransisco. So I called up the airline and had them put me oon the 10:45 PM flight out of San Fransisco which would get me into Newark around 7 or 8 AM.
So I started heading toward the airport. As I was heading to the airport and crossing the bridge into San Fransisco Chad called me. I talked to Chad for awhile. He wanted help putting a picture of his up on the web. I was drving while talking to Chad, and since he was talking to me about how I did too many things while driving, I took a picture of myself talking to him while driving...
I also got a picture of the bridge...
(Yeah, yeah.... turn your head.)
And I got one picture of the city. The closest I got to going to downtown San Fransisco.
Then I headed toward the airport, returned my rental car, and started lugging my hundreds of pounds of luggage back toward the gate. I then found out that the 10:45 PM flight had been delayed at least one hour, with more delays possible. But the nice friendly airline person at the counter,mentiooned that it might be possible to put me on an earlier flight. The 9:45 flight was pretty full. But there was a 5 PM flight that had been delayed and wouldn't be leaving until 9 PM or so (it was about 8 PM). That 5 PM now 9 PM flight was pretty empty. So I took it.
I got on the plane. The row behind me was filled with three teenage girls who giggled the entire way back to Newark.
I finally got to Newark at around 6 AM Eastern time. I got my luggage and dragged it back toward where I had parked my car. Once I saw my car, I actually broke the airport rules and just dropped all my bags and left them right there. (Luckily for me, the airport cops didn't come and blow up my luggage as a suspected bomb.) I got my car and then drove back to my bags to load the car.
Then I had to leave the lot. As I got to the gate I realized a problem. I was still cash poor. I had six dollars in my pocket. The parking for my car was well over $50. I had my AmEx card, but the gate would only take MasterCard and Visa. I did not have plastic that could do it. I felt I was screwed. I went up to the gate to beg them to bill me or something. They asked me about personal checks. They took checks! Now, normally, there is no way I would have a check with me. But because I had been thinking of mailing a deposit and knew if I did that I would need a deposit slip, I had grabbed my checkbook. It was in my bag! Hurray!!! I wrote them a check and got out of there as fast as I could.
I booked my way down the New Jersey turnpike. Then as soon as I got off at Exit 8A I went into Cranbury to the nearest PNC ban to finally deposit that check. I checked my balance first. I was shocked by what I saw. In Nevada the machines had been telling me I had only about $20. Here it was telling me I had much more than that. Not a huge amount, but a decent amount. Enogh so that if I knew that was there and available, I might have stayed at least one more day. But it was probablay best to go home early anyway. Doing the home late Sunday night then straight to work thing wouldn't be fun...
In any case, I deposited my check and then drove the last few miles home, unloaded my stuff and crashed.
And that was the end of my vacation. I spent Friday sleeping and then unpacking and cleaning and doing laundry and putting this narrative up on the web. Saturday and Sunday will be spent paying bills, doing paper work here, catching up on email, and just resting. IOt is good I camne back early. Although maybe I could have stayed one more day. Oh well... maybe next time.
I'll be making a shorter random trip to a spot in Nova Scotia over Labor Day with Ivan. Thatw ill be fun. Then in December or so I will choose the random trip for 2000. Can't wait...