Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary: 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.