Day 2: Oakley CA -> Battle Mountain NV

 My body clock decided that 02:15 was the perfect time to wake up this morning.  I eventually persuaded it to pause for another forty-five minutes but that was it.  Three hours before they started serving breakfast.  This is a holiday, not a friggin' audax.  There's only so much packing you can do before everything is, well, packed and thus was out the door by 07:45.

Just down the road from the hotel is the San Joaquin River-Stockton Deepwater Shipping Channel, and over it is a bridge.  This one, in fact:

BRIDGE!!1!

It's got a little park next to it, which has at least one sqrl in it.

Sqrl, Oakley, yesterday

After than it was across the San Joaquin/Sacramento Delta, a region of Fenlandic flatness and, just like the Fens, traversed by long stretches of ruler-straight roads punctuated with sudden corners, that the unwary might fall into an irrigation ditch.  This went on most of the way to Sacramento, for I had abandoned any notions of taking a scenic route across the lofty Sierras and just stuck the thing on I-80 for the duration.  Mostly amusing myself with the fuel consumption game.

I picked the car up with a full tank yesterday, y'see, and the "miles to empty" display said 293.  It was down to 253 by the time I'd done the sixty miles to Oakley, but Battle Mountain is a further 413.  "Drat", exclaimed Mr Larrington.  "I shall probably have to stop for petril in Reno or Sparks!"

Make that Fernley.  Er, Lovelock.  Mill City.  The difference between "miles to empty" and "distance to Battle Mountain" got as low as 22 miles at one point but then the road started going upwards and I had to admit defeat at Winnemucca, with 22 miles to empty.  After brimming the tank the range was 487 miles, which begs the question "WTF was the previous hirer doing to the poor thing?"

Rocked up to Battle Mountain just after 15:00 to find not much going on, at least until dinner time.  We - me, Arnold & Marieke, Adam Hari, Niklas Bostelmann and Lem siblings Larry and Joyce went to the Overtime Sports Bar & Grill and now I am not hungry.  Just tired.  Heavy lifting to be done tomorrow with putting up the boards that prevent crashing machinery from going under the Armco barriers on the bridge in the slowing-down zone, though we are hoping to press-gang some, or more, of the IUT Annecy team's Penniless Student Oaves into helping out.  Time for tea and bed.

Day 1: Larrington Towers -> Oakley CA

O hai, as my imaginary friend Bethany (15) might say, and welcome to the 2025 Automatic Diary.  If it mentions Oakley CA up there ^^^^ then I have been admitted to USAnia without let or hindrance; if it says “Larrington Towers”, “Sing Sing” or “ADX Florence” then I haven’t. Anyway, The Man let my grate frends Arnold & Marieke Ligtvoet in, at Dulles airport to boot.  Which is a lot nearer the White House than San Francisco is.  They are currently roadtripping along US-50, thereby stealing one of my options for next year.  So perhaps US-6 or Highway 61 Revisited instead.

For a change this year I crossed the Stormy North Atlantic with Virgin (Stormy North) Atlantic.  There were two good reasons for this, viz. 1: they were cheaper than BA, and iii) BA's website was up the spout at the time of booking anyway.  In spite of the aircraft being a Boeing 787 the wings didn't fall off nor did the windows fly out and land in someone's front garden.  Though I was a little concerned by the choice of music being played over the PA just before they started doing the safety briefing:  Tom Petty's "Free Fallin’".  Srsly.

At least one kudo¹ to my grate frend Arnold for his recommendation of the Mobile Passport Control app which is supposed to allow you to bypass the queueueueue at airport immigration controls that are of a length sufficient to allow the long-suffering traveller time to master a FOREIGN language.  Which it does.  No, and I do mean "NO" queue. At all.  Cheery Immigration Lady interested enough in the WHPSC to look it up on those Internets, that they have now, before wishing me a pleasant sojourn in USAnia.  If word of this gets out she'll be posted to North Dakota or Alaska.

The combination of this and Beardy Branson's æroplane driver keeping his clog firmly embedded in the cockpit carpet meant that all the time saved could then be spent hanging around the Rental Car Center (sic) waiting for Hertz to wake up and send me the pickup details for my wheels.

Unfortunately some wires got crossed so two or more kudos to Anne at Hertz for sorting things out.  "Pick a car from the Gold Row" quoth she.  I grabbed the only car-like one I could see, being a Nissan Sentra, a sort of Fnord Focus sized thing with the personality of a fridge.  It goes, stops and steers, has working aircon, adaptive cruise control and lane-assist nonsense which I managed to turn off within 15 seconds of getting onto US-101.  Yay!  Go me!

There are two ways you can go out of San Francisco airport: north or south.  And if departing at hours 16:00 of the clock there is only one way to avoid the traffic on US-101 in either direction, viz. fly into a completely different airport.  I went north for the first time in about fifteen years and over the Bay Bridge and crawled inland to Oakley, wot is where I am now.  On top of the traffic³ Emily the SatNav started squawking about reports of some spud driving west on the eastbound cabbageway of CA-4 but this appeared to be a false alarm.

This appears to be the first time since Calgary 2018 that I've arrived in Leftpondia with the ambient temperature below 40 Celsius; San Francisco being a balmy 20 this arvo.  Popped up to about 30 once I'd got thirty-odd miles inland but a lot more pleasant that Phoenix, Chicago or the previous two landings here.

So, achievement unlocked.  I am in USAnia and not under arrest.  Hopefully this state of affairs will continue and equally hopefully I will not be subjected to Fiery Burny DETH when trying to cross the Mighty Sierras Nevada tomorrow, though it very much appears that the route I had intended to take is impassable because lightning-induced Fiery Burny DETH near Chinese Camp.  It may well be more sensible just to get on I-80 asap rather than take the scenic route along US-50.  For sure we will see as there is still a long way to go and anything can happen.

1. Not to be confused with a kudu:
2. 
3. Not literally, obv.