3/15  Albuquerque, NM to Barstow, CA – 675 mi

To see the entire road trip visit www.tanstaaflpress.com/tgrt/

So for those followers of the blog, I apologize for my long delay in this post. I didn’t realize that I still was more ill than I thought (no, not C19, just a good, old-fashioned head cold). I got home and for the next few days my mind was so foggy I couldn’t do much of anything but sleep and watch movies… I even did that without much thought or mentation. As of 3/22 my brain cleared and I’m ready to go again (in a weak, limited fashion).

The last three day speed run home was surreal. I realize now that a good deal of that had to do with my illness, but there was more. The C19 pandemic has people doing different things. It’s not quite apocalyptic out there, but people are on edge like they are waiting for everyone to go crazy on us, or that a real life zombie is going to come around the corner at any time. Let me give a couple of examples.

Normally in a store people will edge their way past you to get to an object on the other side of you in the aisle. I was seeing people going around several rows to come back in to the aisle I was in so they didn’t have to get so close.

Or, how about the young man who questioned me about my trailer art. He seemed excited. When I handed him my business card, he surreptitiously slipped it into the trash while my back was turned EVEN THOUGH HE WAS WEARING GLOVES!

I want to be clear that at that time all of my symptoms were internal. I wasn’t coughing or sneezing. I wasn’t blowing my nose constantly. My nose wasn’t cherry red. I didn’t look feverish. I didn’t wheeze. I didn’t have bloodshot eyes or even blood tracing down from the corner of my mouth.   

Salt shakers, napkin dispensers, jelly, sugar, etc all were removed from tables at restaurants. In fact the number of people in each were maybe 5% of the normal patrons. When you come in on a normally busy morning at a truck stop and you see only ONE other customer, one waitress and a single cook, you wonder. Worse, the waitress treats you like a leper and only comes over when you demand her presence.

Now with all of the updated data, these folks were probably doing exactly the right thing, but it is surreal to experience.

Drivers, on the other hand, became more aggressive and drove significantly faster. I was cut off more on these last three days than in probably the last year. I should qualify this… Non-Commercial drivers. Truckers and their brethren all were just as friendly and courteous as always. To them this is a minor blip. They will continue to haul.

Enough about the pandemic, let me talk about the trip.

My plan was to go from Albuquerque to Needles, CA. Eight hours or so. An easy jaunt, especially as I’d found out that my poor gas mileage was due to two factors I’d never considered:

1. I’ve always found that cruise control is my friend, especially the adaptive CC I have in my RAV4. I put it at the speed I want and it gets me the best gas mileage AND I don’t have to worry about folks that just happen to be going slower than me (unlikely but it happens).

Not now. I found that my CC would bring me up to the edge of my set speed with the engine winding at high RPMs and hold me there, not quite taking me to the set speed. If I would tap the gas with my foot it would get there and then the rpms would drop (and save gas).

As an experiment, I drove without my CC for most of this day. Even going through the mountains I increased my gas mileage by about 2 mpg!

• The RAV4 comes with two settings: Eco and Sport. When you power on it starts in Eco as default. And even though my wife (who has a Mazda CX5) says mine doesn’t have ‘zoom-zoom’, I find that after a Prius, even the Eco is plenty of power. Well, I found that Eco exacerbated the problem above and caused the car not to maintain speed well. In Eco setting I might have a set speed of 65. Even on a slight hill, my speed would start dropping until it hit about 58 before it wound the engine up and struggled to get to 65 again. By popping my car into Sport mode, I’d say that my resting RPM was just a bit higher but I didn’t see the up and down speed thing nearly as much. It also helped keeping things steady when I drove without cruise control. This alone probably saved me another mpg. 

Neither of these sound very large, but when your normally 28+mpg car only gets 15mpg (or less) towing the trailer, 3mpg increase is about an 18% reduction in fuel cost!

The improved gas mileage allowed me to spend that bonus mpg to travel faster. I don’t know if I mentioned this before but I’d planned on taking the entire trip at 65 (to even get that 15MPG). When I learned 1 and 2 above, I jacked it up to 75 and still increased my mpg to close to 16.

Back to A to Needles. Bottom line, I messed up. I planned at staying at a truck stop 20 mi short of Needles (closest I could find) in Arizona. Well, I missed it. Scratch that. I saw it but didn’t think it could possibly be the one I wanted as I wasn’t close enough to Needles. I was in Needles before I realized my mistake.

Worse the mistake compounded itself. Because of the desert around there, the next real stopping point was Barstow, over two hours further. I had three choices, none of them appealing. I could go back to the truck stop (half an hour back). I could try and find a place to sleep it off in Needles. I could push on to Barstow. For many, many reasons, I chose the latter. But to do that I needed to top off my gas tank in Needles.

Let me just say that Needles is the largest rip off of all places I’ve ever been. They aren’t even polite about it like a Las Vegas casino is. The last gas station I’d passed in Arizona the gas was circa $2.50 a gallon (a far cry from the cheapest I ever got it at $1.66/gal in OKC I believe). In Needles, every station charged within a nit of $5.00 per gallon. Note that this is in the middle of an oil glut. I mean I’d driven through CA on the way down and it was higher but not THAT bad. Fortunately I only needed about 3 gallons to top off and make sure I’d make Barstow. Worst rip off of the trip. A pox on Needles!

BTW.. Barstow gas price… $2.61

I made Barstow and crashed hard.

Next: The Long Voyage Home Part 2

3/13  Dallas to OKC – 195 miles.

To see the entire road trip visit www.tanstaaflpress.com/tgrt/

I didn’t blog about my trip to Dallas. Only one thing of note came up, I received my first ever “General Delivery” package. I needed some more cat toys and my wife made them and shipped them to me. I expected a great deal of hassle but it was quick and easy.

Thursday was a long day with a 9AM load in and open until 7PM. Thursday was disappointing in sales but it was the first day of a four-day con. I got a lot of “I’ll come back later” lines. Unfortunately for many of those folks, there wasn’t a later. Friday morning I showed up to find a note in my chair stating that a federal judge had ordered all gatherings of 500 or more to cease and desist as of 11AM Friday morning. The show had no recourse but to shut down.

Thursday night I found out that my big Chicago show had cancelled and likely the Gov of Illinois was going to put a similar moratorium on gatherings as Dallas had which would cancel the second Chicago show as well.

Looking at it, I decided not to risk Memphis cancelling on me. I turned tail for home, cancelling the rest of the NOT SO GREAT Road Trip. I figure 5 days of reasonable driving will get me back home.

My decision ended up to be very wise. Memphis cancelled this afternoon, as did Norwescon, one of my staples in the PacNW. At this rate I won’t have any business at all after this year.

Next: Learnings of TGRT

3/9  Evanston, WY to Monument, CO  – 486  miles

To see the entire road trip visit www.tanstaaflpress.com/tgrt/

I’m sure anyone who is really paying attention (maybe two of you), they are asking themselves, what does Amarillo have to do with your next stop in Dallas for AllCon? Not a thing other than it is on my way. Or maybe I should say nothing directly.

Let me ‘splain. My writing career started, innocently enough in Amarillo, TX, a town I’ve never been in. I love making people scratch their head. I specifically said career because I had been writing long before one incident led me down this rock infested route to where I am now, huddled in a box 8x6x4 in the middle of the freezing night in, of all places, Evanston, WY. The incident in question was selling my first piece of fiction, which I never intended to do.

I spent a good number of YEARS of my life devoted to playing a game called Star Fleet Battles. It is a very complex game based around the original Star Trek. You fly ships around and try and blow each other up. The producers of the game, Amarillo Design Bureau (don’t get ahead of the story), produced a fanzine once a year named Captain’s Log. I eagerly bought up each copy the moment it hit the stands and would devour it cover to cover. Invariably the magazine held one or more stories about something happening in the fictional universe we all played within, but, also invariably, the fiction sucked. No, not just bad. I mean it hurt even after I am dead kind of suckage – bad characters, shaky plot, logic holes you could throw a bantha through (oops.. wrong series), and more. Sometime in the eighties, one of those Captain’s Logs pushed me over the edge.

I stoked my computer with coal (it was a long time ago) and when the steam came from the stack, I hammered out about an 18 page short story. Took me about two hours. I then wrote a cover letter saying that I loved CL but that whomever wrote their fiction needed to have their liver repeatedly eaten out by giant eagles, or something like that. I said I’m enclosing a story and you should be writing stuff more like this. There not yet being internet, I placed it in my pony express pouch and held it out for next passing rider.

Now I have to interject. I really had no intention of being published. I hadn’t even considered it a possibility. I merely wanted to give them something that they could compare the shoddy crap they had been publishing against. Call it a yardstick. What did happen is history. I received, by carrier pigeon, an envelop with a check and a letter saying in short, make these changes and we’ll publish it in the next CL. I literally stood in my living room looking back and forth between the check and the letter. “Let me get this right, someone will PAY me to do something I love? Where the heck was that part on our high school vocational aptitude tests.” BTW, my story got the cover!

So getting back to ADB, they are the publishers of Star Fleet Battles and Captain’s Log. Steve Cole, Leanna Cole, and Steve Petrick make up the core of ADB. While I’ve had a tempestuous history with ADB, I also recognize the debt I own them. Countless hours of fun, and more importantly the conditions that allowed the seed of my writing talent to first poke its green leaves above the soil.

Which brings us to Amarillo. I figured as I was going to be so close (Dallas), and I’d never met the oft mentioned Leanna nor seen the shop that started the worldwide phenomenon of SFB, that I’d stop by if they’d have me. To my surprise, they agreed.

That is why the next stop is not a convention but rather a small gaming design / manufacturing company in the panhandle of Texas. 

More stuff about road tripping. When you plan, and find just the perfect storage places for all of your items and everything is neatly put away before you leave, realize it won’t stay that way. You don’t have a huge amount of time and facilities to get everything just so on the road as you do before you leave. So, if you have packed to the point where there is zero tolerance, you will find yourself with less than zero space and patience. Let’s take a couple of simple examples: Laundry. Just by living you create dirty clothes. You may even have a space dedicated for that dirty laundry to go, BUT after its has been cleaned, you need to put it back. Where do you fold it? Will it get back into the neat little cubbies that you originally stored it in?

How about things you use every day like your computer, recharging batteries, business cards, et al. You need to be able to access them, move them around. Are you going to live in one of those little numbered puzzle games where you need to move your recharging batteries, to move your laundry, to move your computer, to have a spot to eat dinner? It is infuriating doing this moment by moment in an overstocked, under-spaced location. And remember I dropped off a good deal of stuff before I left. My advice, like writing a story, when you think you have everything perfect, whittle off an additional 10% no matter how much it hurts. I do have a minor luxury in that realm, I’m selling books as I go along, so my stock is shrinking increasing space for other things. Helps but isn’t good enough. Cut deeply my friend. You will thank me in spades for it.

Looks like I lost my first pair of glasses. My computer/reading glasses seem to have vanished. With forethought, I carried a spare of each of my two pair of glasses with me. I still don’t know how the other disappeared I’ll keep looking but it is not corporeal in my current space.

Next: The Best Laid Plans

3/5   Layton, UT 0 miles

To see the entire road trip visit www.tanstaaflpress.com/tgrt/

If I was a poet, I think it would have been entitled from bad to verse. So I bedded down at a truck stop only to find that I couldn’t sleep. I’d wake up every couple of dozen seconds hacking a lung up needing to blow my nose or both.

By my reckoning my sleep consisted of one stretch of 30 minutes and two stretches of about 15 minutes.  At which time the sun peeked out and let me know I needed to start the day. Not only that I had to be bright eyed and bushy tailed for my customers – all when I felt at best like cold SOS on stale bread. I think (eventhough I’ve never experienced one for real) it felt like a hangover after a three day bender.

I got into the con in time to battery my lights and get them shining. I scanned the rest of the booths. Only two of us had books and the other gentleman had books tied to his RPG product. So I sat there. Moving hurt. Coughing hurt. Blowing my nose hurt. Not moving hurt. And this was after 1000 mg of pain-killer.

The doors opened and… well, not much. A mini-rush but as always no one stopped to look at books. Can someone tell me why there is a cloaking field over books until noon?

Besides the point, I managed to hang on for about 20 minutes when I realized there was no way I would make it through the 10AM-6PM day. I put up a sign saying I’d be back and went out to my trailer and slept. Actually slept. I managed to get 30 mins, 45 mins, and 60 minutes worth of sleep, in that order. Now I felt at least moderately like a human being. I went back inside at 2PM. Managed to gut out the rest of the afternoon.

When I got out I made the horrible mistake of going to Texas Roadhouse BBQ. Thought it would be a good place to stoke my needy body. Instead I nearly lost everything. Noisiest restaurant… Ever. I don’t deal well with noise in the best of times. This made it worse. Poor service, messed up my order didn’t help. The prime rib was excellent, however.

Escaping that hell, I beat feet to a different truck stop (the one before didn’t really have a place for me to park and I felt uncomfortable where I ended up). This time got a prime spot, and slept for… 4 hours followed by 3 hours. When I can get big blocks of sleep nearing normal, I know I’m close to well or at least well into mending.

This morning I did laundry and took my first truck stop shower… pretty nice here at the Flying J… and other maintenance chores. 

My energy lasted today from 10-3 before I really started to run out of steam. But I gutted it out. Made it and am back for some more lovely sleeping.

Next: SaltCon Overview

3/3   Las Vegas, NV – Beaver, UT 439 miles

To see the entire road trip visit www.tanstaaflpress.com/tgrt/

After one final day of success at the poker tables (split top place at a small tournament to the tune of $837) I was finally on my way from SLC.

However, I brought along a passenger. Not a human one, or even a pet. One of my hosts was sick during my visit and it seems I’m perpetuating the verminous germs. It started out as just a scratchy throat and have continued along a mild cold – coughing, runny nose… you know the drill. Unfortunately, I have no time to be sick. I MUST be well by Friday morning for the show. I have no substitute to man the booth. If it hasn’t cleared, I’ll have to sit there with a mask on and scare everyone away.

So on Tues morning… in fact until about 4pm, I didn’t even really notice it. I drive through Nevada, catch a tiny corner of Arizona, and into Utah where I lose an hour to time change. As SLC is really only one day’s drive, and I have two, I pulled up my list of things I wanted to potentially see.

Low and behold… the NOT aptly named Snow Canyon State Park (eg no snow to be found here). Snow canyon is one of the more scenic rock gardens I’ve visited. Three different colors dominate… burnt orange, chalk white and basalt black. The white and the orange are actually quartzite sand that has been fused into rock by time and pressure. The black is basalt lava that came from nearby cinder cones. Water and wind over time have eroded all three to a miss mash of hills and canyons. While a short visit, this is a great place if you want to hike, literally littered with trails. My visit probably wasn’t worth the $10 I paid to enter but a wonderful place to visit and enjoy the desert scenery and what time can do to even stone.

Next I find Zion National Park on my list. I know nothing about it so I decide a visit is in order. This is about an hour off the freeway but, what the heck. I got plenty of time to get to SLC. Let me say that the rock formations and canyons in ZNP blow my previous visit into almost tiny little rubble. I took pictures of forming arches, massive canyon walls, weeping walls, and the bock canyon that ends in the Temple of Sinawava (I think I pronounced it wrong on my video). Wow! Doesn’t cover it all.

So on my drive up to Zion, I learn that Bryce Canyon (a bucket list item) is just a bit farther. I will say here that “just a bit” is a loose statement that I had in my addled head. By the time I’d seen Sinawava (on a rush tour, I admit), it was approaching 3pm (4pm local). I take the twisty windy way up to the 1.1 mile tunnel. The tunnel is VERY narrow and low overhead but my RAV4 and trailer threaded it like a needle. I wouldn’t have wanted to be much longer or wider, though. The tunnel leads me out of Zion Canyon toward my next goal. The road is narrow and windy. The scenery is stunning. The layers upon layers of rock amaze me.

Now I’m sure all of you folks have dragged out your atlas (or google maps) and are saying, “But Tom, Bryce Canyon National park is another 2+ hours away from Zion. That doesn’t get you there until dark. Can’t see much of anything in the dark.” This is too true.

However, after I realize my error, a thought comes to mind… Let’s find a place to park and sleep nearish to the park and then go in the morning. /fail. I look. I scour. I can’t find a free place to camp near enough to justify the backtrack. So, I press on, covering 439 miles today instead of 222 if I’d have just driven up I15.

By the time I’d found a truck stop, I was waning fast in the darkness. Flying J came to my rescue with a place to overnight, gas, and a Dennys (as I was in no fit shape to cook for myself).

Tomorrow: Road to SLC