Heading to Seattle with a bus.

This is written thee days later.

No early AM today. We are less than an hour to the drop, there will be a line and we don't want to drive in rush hour traffic.

Traffic isn't bad for CA. But the right lane keeps ending so we have to keep merging.

Our final fuel is at the 49er/Pilot. Card reader won't work so I have to wait in line twice, first to pay, second to get a receipt with the gallons on it. Also my Pilot discount card won't work so I don't get the $.03 off. Later I email Pilot and they suggest I get a new card. I think they have a limit on gallons or dollars as it is only an issue for me on long trips with large RV's. My plan is to get a second card, one for under 1,000 miles and a second one for once I am over the thousand miles.

Yes there is a line. I get half way off the street and BB is parked on the street. This is the third location this same company has used in the three years I have been delivering here. I find their office and then the guy that we usually deal with. That is re-assuring. Finally I realize their gate is not electric and I can open it further than it is, so I do and can get myself and BB off the street.

As we are waiting I start talking to a customer we have blocked in. He was here to pickup his RV but there is still an issue so he is waiting. He is a Polaris dealer. He does sell a lot of snowmobiles, from where we are in Sacramento it is only 40 miles to the snow. He has been to the Polaris locations in MN so he knew my area.

We were at the drop for an hour and a half and no one came after us. This is a location where the rental car location is about two blocks down the street from the drop so BB walks down to get the car while I wait with the RV's.

Once we are cleared I call about a city bus, yes ... likely Seattle. He is narrowing it down, yesterday it was just WA.

As we often do after a drop on the west coast, we head to In-and-Out. We take an hour to eat and then it is about an hour and a half to Livermore. We head to our outlet mall to take a walk. Very windy. We have down three laps around the mall but we are down to one. We aren't being very active lately. BB buys a winter coat. We have looked before but hadn't found one she liked, Surprise, buy a winter coat in CA. It looks like this outlet mall is 100% or close. Buildings are being built on two side of the area, one side looks like more outlets, the other one is still starting. Heard on the radio that one mall that was started a few years ago was stopped in process due to lack of companies interest. Now it is being completed and and is 100% filled.

At 4:15 I call back about the bus. Lakewood. The south end of Seattle. Knowing it will be late, we eat early. We order a two entree and split it at an Asian place in the food court.

We arrive at the buses at 5 PM. We aren't the first ones there. Today the dispatcher is trying to show a teenager how to use his portable type writer :)

Find the bus and get ready to leave. Lots of drivers today. I asked one how long she had to work here to get the ATL bus she was driving. 12 years. We talked a short bit.

My paperwork was done. One fuel stop. CNG. Bus wash is a few blocks from the drop. Without looking at a map I am pretty sure that I have dropped there before. After BB looks it up, I know I have been.

I am the first one out today, not sure what is taking the drivers who were there ahead of me. Sounds like I am one of the few drivers that doesn't drive full time buses for this location.

I give BB a few minutes head start. I take a new route, less people crossing. We got to the rental car return before they closed so they had to check the car in before BB was done. She was still done and waiting by the time I got there.

This time we head west on the freeway instead of east. It will be 7 PM local by the time we get to Vacaville so that is where we stop. Quality Inn, we stayed here a week ago. Now the office is down and we no longer check in via a split door. Lots of the room are still being worked on. Someone followed me to my parking spot so I didn't get lined up quite as good as I would have liked with someone watching and waiting. Here we park on the dead end street. We are the only two on the street tonight.

Would have been nice to get another hour down the road but it was already 9 PM central time ... and by the time we do our paperwork and research for the next day it was too late to do the write-ups.