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.
Previous hirer adept at the game of how little you can put in the tank and still have the gauge show full to car return minion.
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