1 bus to Lubbock TX (delivered)

... spending the night at Weatherford OK

Spent the night in Amarillo at the Comfort Inn.

When I go to check out, the person a the desk asks for my drivers license. I don't think that has ever happened before. BB does the reservations so I don't always remember what the rate is. I know last night when we signed in, it was a $160 charge, but they explained that part of that was for incidentals. That is normal.

When I handed the receipt to BB after we were in the bus, she says it is still $20 too high. It's done, I want to get moving, so we will deal with it later. Also my home address on the bill has been changed ...

I want to call the hotel chain about their last promo so now I have two reasons, I will wait until I see if we get any points for this stay ... with our address wrong, I doubt it.

The computer says that the closer of the two washes is less busy right now so that is where we go. BB had put the info in the GPS but it had it wrong. I only half listen to that thing and pay more attention to the signs.

And then starts the 'almost opps.' (No damage done)

When we get to the bottom of the ramp there is a stop sign. I assume that the cross traffic had been stopped ... because as soon as the first truck from the right went through I started to go ... but the 2nd truck from the right did not stop. Not a big issue as neither of us were going 10 mph ... and that gave me enough time to realize that I wanted to take a right at this sign so I just took a wide right turn and no one was the wiser.

At the wash there are two lines. I pick the one with only a pickup in front of me. And then the truck in the other lane pulls in so now there are two waiting by one door and no one by the other door.

But in the end, both the pickup and I were done when the truck in the other bay was still sitting there.

Opps #2 ... I mis-read the freeway sign and miss the exit. Looking online now I can see how I could, but I still shouldn't have missed it. So on to the next exit and make a u-turn and come back.

Opps #3 ... There is a broken down semi right in the narrow exit ramp bridge. I should have straddled both lanes when getting near the semi. Instead I tried to ride the white line to stay as far away as possible without using both lanes. And so did the car who decided to pass me. They were going a good speed and wanted to stay away from the concrete median so they were on the same white line.

Opps #4 ... Then at the bottom of the ramp, my lane exits onto a city street. I can't get over right away so I come to an almost stop. Finally a few cars move over so there is an opening in the right lane for me ... and for a semi that was in the left lane. When he seen it open up, he came over. By hitting the breaks again, I missed the semi and the median.

That was all within five miles or less.

Two hours to Lubbock. No more issues. We get to the airport and I drop BB off. Then I get back to the freeway and stop at Loves. I stick my fuel tank and I am still good so I park and wait for BB.

I have written down the steps for the drop. I get to my exit but things don't look right. But I can see down the cross street the street I want to be on and in the next block they merge. Not how I remember it ...

I keep going, waiting for the streets to split again and get away from the freeway. They don't. I finally stop where I can as there are no shoulders on their frontage roads in most places. I am miles past my drop.

Grrr ... I know this is an issue. Google maps. No matter how far you zoom in, the print size of the exit number does not change. I had seen exit 3, it was really exit 5. So I was two miles past my drop when I exited the freeway and kept going away.

I find my way back. Someone at the shop sees me come in and stop so they call to let someone else know I am here with a new bus and tell me where to park.

The guy who signs off has a lot of questions for me, about what I do. All because I said it was a good drive because there was no snow here. So how does a driver from MN get to CA (where the buses are built,) and his last comment was do I need a ride and how am I getting out of here ... then he said ... too many questions. So I didn't answer the last question.

Sometimes when I pick up the bus I look at the 'extra's' on the list, sometimes I do not. This time I did not and the list said there was a spare tire. There is not. In the past the shipper has said just go, but I should have at least mentioned it to them at pickup.

My brother had called today while I was driving asking about meeting up. When I had dropped, I replied ... sure, where in Lubbock do you want to meet? :)

He wasn't here, but it is where his wife grew up ...

By now BB had found us a place to eat a few blocks away. A little hole in the wall in a industrial area. We go in and there is a line, and there was a line the whole time we were eating. I doubt we or anyone else waited five minutes in line. Service was fast, food was great. In some cases I think they had the table bussed and the next people sat before the prior ones got to the door.

When we ordered our food, the server said if we want desert we should order it now. We didn't. Then we noticed that some people from in line were carrying their desert to the table, others were getting it before they ordered their main meal. So we ordered desert before we had our food.

Good desert, and by the time we left, they were out of what we had.

For food BB had green chili and I had a chicken sandwich. And onion rings. Not sure what the rings were dipped in but too spicy. Katchup made it worse. They were really good with ranch.

Still no work so we are headed home. I did call the dispatcher who had the one truck going to MN that I wanted. Called to see when more trips would be put on the load board. I didn't want to head away from that area if there was a chance for more work. Turns out that we were not getting far enough tonight to be too far away.

BB did have one option which would have taken us straight north but that was hours of non-freeway. Instead we made our own route of all freeway.

This rental car is only getting 25 mpg and about a 10 gallon tank so we didn't get to far on the first tank.

Loves in Elk City. $2.99 so that helps. On BB's spreadsheet she uses 30 mpg so we are going to be spending more than that.

Final stop is the Comfort Inn in Weatherford. Right at sunset. We have stayed here before but the building next to the hotel has always been out of business. Now it is open. I thought it was good, BB likes more kick. And they required a minimum order so we ordered something we are not going to eat.

The hotel is also right next to a little strip mall. They have put in three more buildings within the parking lot since the last time we were here. I'm guessing since covid that the cities have changed the number of parking spaces required per square foot of store space.

Load board

US - 141

IA - 0

MN - 8

WI - 2

Tomorrow ... drive. More work would have been nice but this 12 day trip will cover us for the month. We do plan on being home for a week from Saturday and then again a week from this coming Thursday/Thanksgiving.

... today ... the rental dispatcher put out a trip from less than an hour from where we dropped the RV's going to less than an hour from where we picked up the bus. Easy money. Wrong timing.