Judgment Call

Questionable. It applies to the title. It applies to yesterday.

My stepson's birthday was Monday. It was his 18th. Walmart Silver City inventory was Tuesday. His mother, Ama, wanted to be there. Work intervened. So, she managed to schedule her vacation following inventory. She also had to work out her rotation. However, she got permission to be off Thursday night, making it possible to depart for California. That's where the boy is.

Leading up to all this, she knew this is what she wanted to do. However, thanks to the unstable nature of the management staff (meaning the bodies filling the positions were not solidly in place), it took time to get the appropriate approvals and the detailed knowledge of the schedule. There were basically three choices for transportation from Silver City to Bakersfield. Drive, fly, train.

It's roughly 800 miles from Silver City to Bakersfield. Not likely she would drive that far alone. She wouldn't be able to do it non-stop, as I would. She doesn't like driving. Her car doesn't have air conditioning. Driving is off the list.

There is an airport for Silver City. It's about 10 miles south of Bayard, which is 10 miles east of Silver City. There is ONE commercial airline serving Silver City. They fly to Albuquerque. Only. Twice a day. Twin engine turboprop. She hates small planes. Airlines serving Bakersfield only do so from a handful of airports. None of them between southern New Mexico and Bakersfield. As the saying goes, you have to around your butt to get to your elbow. Optionally, we could go to El Paso or Tucson to connect to a flight going roundabout to Bakersfield. El Paso is two hours away and Tucson is three hours away. The cost of all those hops and the gasoline to drive put the price over $500. Flying is off the list.

She was accustomed to taking the train from Fresno to Bakersfield. A two hour ride for under $50 each way, sometimes under $30. She likes the train. (I, the model railroader, have never ridden Amtrak. Go figure.) So we look at options. There are stations in Deming and Lordsburg. Deming would be the quickest and easiest drive. It's less than an hour south of us. This is where the fun starts.

We start looking at ticket prices in April. Round-trip, Deming to Bakersfield for about $110 each way. Ok, that's a bit steep, but manageable, and really not that bad for the distance. The schedule at the store is still in flux. Two weeks later the total has gone from $220 to $260. As tickets sell, the prices go up. This continued until the price got to $324. At this rate, if we wait much longer it'll be over $400! So I get online to purchase the ticket. All the way through the booking, ready to submit payment and the Amtrak website says the zip code doesn't match their records. Seriously? Bayard only has ONE zip code!!

She gets home from work and decides to try making the reservation on the phone. Same issue arises. It's a problem they know about! So forget web or phone reservations with Amtrak. Now I start looking at more details about the stations. Deming is a platform only station. Lordsburg is a platform only station. Basically, that means you must have ticket in hand and cannot check baggage. Even if we find a way to pay for the tickets and have them mailed, what an inconvenient way to travel! I decide to look at El Paso. Big fare jump! How about Tucson? Massive fare drop! I mean over 50%! Round-trip, Tucson to Bakersfield, for $117!!! Oh, and Tucson is a REAL station! Rather than wait to get to Tucson to purchase the ticket, we drive to El Paso, the closer REAL station, to buy her ticket. Sure enough we get there and the price is still available. Done deal Amtrak!

Ok, so we also got to visit the Saddle Blanket. Cool store, filled with lots of Indian/Mexican stuff. Over two acres of it, in fact. Not a bad drive either. Thanks to my frugal little car, down and back (over 200 miles one way) on less than a tank of gas. We also got to stop at what appears to be the closest Fuddruckers on the way back.

So now we have her tickets for the outbound and return trips. The train leaves Tucson at 7:35. It's a three hour drive. I figure we'll leave between 3:00 and 3:30. We have a couple extra stops to make thanks to Comcast "upgrading" our system. We leave Silver City Walmart right at 3:00. Did I mention this is pm? We're heading right into the afternoon sun. It's forecast to be 95 in Silver City and 101 in Tucson. My car doesn't have air conditioning either. Here comes that questionable judgment. Nearly 3 hours in I-10 heading into the sun crossing a high desert. Ok, she still seem to like running down the highway and is sipping nonchalantly at the gas. This is good. We're cruising along nicely at 75-80. (She really does like to run the highways.) I calculate. This is going to put us in Tucson shortly after 6pm. Ok, a little over an hour early isn't so bad. We can sit in the air conditioned station and cool off. That'll be good for her since the train is air conditioned, too. It'll be good for me so I can recover!

Somewhere after crossing the Arizona border I remember Arizona doesn't observe Daylight Savings Time. So Tucson is an hour behind us. We're going to arrive shortly after 5pm. In fact, we pulled into the station at 4:45pm. Damn. Oh, and she's catching up on her sleep. Potential sunburn and all. As we're entering Tucson, she wakes and I tell her of my error. We arrive at the station amidst the road construction in the area. That part wasn't so bad as I had looked at maps in Streets & Trips and on Google Earth. We pull into the parking lot and there's a two hour limit. Great. I can't stay the whole time. There's a restaurant, sort of, inside the station. We're both pretty much starving because we didn't bother eating yesterday. So we go in and it's air conditioned. I'm in heaven. She wants to sit outside. At least it's in the shade.

We get our sandwiches, chips and tea. Hers is a light peach that she said had almost no flavor. Mine is a mint that was VERY refreshing. We eat. I sweat. We go into the station. She asks about checking her bag. They tell her all the way to Bakersfield. That's a relief for me. (Turns out she is grateful because making the transition from train to bus at Union Station LA would have been difficult.) She's set now. There doesn't seem to be much point in me staying until half an hour before departure. If I have to leave before she gets on the train, I might as well do it now. Besides, with the time change it may only take two hours to get there, but it will take four hours to get home.

I remember seeing a Shell and a Love's in Benson. It's actually pretty close to Tucson. That's my destination to refuel. (I had left home with about 90 miles already on the tank.) I fill the car, wash the windows, and just as I'm getting ready to pull out, she calls. I know it's her because of the ringtone. I answer and she's not there. I call her back. No answer. Panic starts creeping up my back. I'm still less than an hour from the train station. Watch me fly through rush hour traffic if I have to. I call again and she answers. She didn't realize she had managed to butt-dial me. Ok, heart rate returning to normal. I get back on I-10. I had bought an extra two bottles of the tea for the road. Glad I did because I needed the fluid and caffeine. What I didn't need was the headache that accompanied them. Too much heat plus too much caffeine equals headache for me. Apparently.

There isn't much along I-10 between Tucson and El Paso. Ok, there's Benson. And there's Lordsburg, Deming and Las Cruces. Benson to Lordsburg is a long time to drive with a headache. And it's still warm. Even after the sun finally goes down. I stop at the Chevron in Lordsburg, where we stopped to fuel the truck when we moved. I buy a bottle of water. I have Ibuprofen in the car. I'm a happy driver. Especially after I make the turn from US70 to NM90. It climbs pretty steadily and immediately out of Lordsburg. And the temperature starts to drop right away. It's also a two lane road with no lights, and next to no traffic. That makes for a pretty long drive.

I had sent a text a couple of hours earlier, in fact at departure time, if she was on the train. Just about the time I reach Walmart she replies. Ok, so she's at least on the train and had fallen asleep. I stop to pick up the mail and head home. The house has been closed up since 2:30. It's an oven. I turn on the air and the fans to get comfortable. Once comfortable I open all the windows, as I usually do at night. This is a high desert after all. It cools off nicely at night!

I had been up since 5:30am. You'd think I would fall asleep right away. I guess three bottles of mint tea negated that. That's why this morning when I woke up at 6:45am (the train pulled into Union Station LA), I debated coffee or a nap. The nap won. Yep, questionable judgment. But it will still be cheaper to make the two trips to Tucson than it would have been to depart from Deming. That's my justification. See, questionable judgment.

Transition

Blogger says it's been since October that I've been here. Wow. A lot has happened since then.

Halloween came and went. No big deal there. Except for yet another pair of birthdays in my family. I used to enjoy those.

Another Thanksgiving came and went, only this time it was far from pleasant. Nor was it a family gathering. I was reminded that Thanksgiving, as it is "celebrated" today, is a far cry from what the original was. Much of what the "first" Thanksgiving was about has been forgotten by the history books.

Christmas also came and went, but this time it bore news of impending change. I was engaged in what seemed endless hours of preparation. You see, at that time, we knew we were relocating. Again. Yes, it was another move prompted by Walmart. We actually had to make a choice, but even that was made for us. Other choices had to made, too.

The choice was between two stores in New Mexico: Taos, at almost the extreme northern end of the state and closer to "civilization" and Silver City, near the extreme southwestern end of the state and a LONG way from "civilization". That choice was made for us when the Silver City store came up with a "signing bonus" for her that paid for the move. They allowed her to take an advance on the bonus so we could pay for boxes and packing materials and a moving truck and gas.

We chose, however painfully for some, to keep the new location concealed until we arrived. We had our reasons. Nobody bothered to ask. That's ok, too. It is what it is. (Our new philosophy of life.) We left another choice in the hands of the one whom it would affect. He chose not to accompany us on this new journey. It would seem he made the right choice for himself. So be it.

I managed to pack 90% of our belongings. The last couple of days before the move, she was able to help. That actually made it a little tougher to keep track of what went where and we lost a frying pan in the process. There have probably been a few other things, too. We decided, for cost purposes, to go with a twenty foot truck and an auto carrier. My car went on the carrier because she has an agreement with my car: She won't drive it and it won't stall on her. (Manual transmission and she don't get along well.) Whenever I've moved myself, I've always had a twenty-four foot truck. I figured this time would be no different but deferred because of the cost difference. I'm no sure the extra four feet would have made that big a difference after all. We ended up leaving several items in Fresno, luckily most went to good homes.

On the Saturday before our departure, we got invaluable help from my daughter and her husband, and a few people from Walmart. I had laid out the garage and the second bedroom for loading into the truck. That plan worked really well, with all the helpers knowing what went where when. As the truck became more and more full, we began to realize it was not all going to fit. "Do you want that?" "Do you want this?" Like I said, good homes were found. I also threw out a BUNCH of crap as I was packing. Made several trips to Goodwill. Ok, more than several. But it was worth it to not haul all that STUFF halfway across the country.

Planning a trip like this, three states and just over a thousand miles, you rely on information provided by others. Like the company from whom you rent the truck. They tell you on their website that the truck gets almost 20mpg! What they don't tell you is that is with an empty truck. On level roads. With a tailwind. If you drive from Fresno to Bayard, NM, you WILL encounter uphill roads. You WILL encounter headwinds. You WILL have a serious load in the back, not to mention a two thousand pound car. All of that conspires to bring that 20mpg down to about 9mpg. That can seriously affect your calculations for where to stop for gas!

The Sunday of our departure, I had planned to hit the road around 11am. You know what they say about plans. Well, we hadn't "quite" finished packing. More like we still had about 4 hours of work to do. However, we were still going to make progress. Between my car, the cab of the truck, her back seat and trunk, we finished up with only a few items left homeless. I don't even recall what any of them were, just know that something (besides the frying pan) got left behind.

I've towed several cars behind my moving truck in the past. I don't ever remember hooking it up to the truck! That showed when I wanted to attach my car. Oh,sure it only took a couple of approaches to get the two vehicles lined up, and the hitch secured. But it was a bit frustrating. Our first stop was the gas station before getting on the road. The truck needed serious volume and her car needed topping off. The adventure begins! I plan my approach to the gas station to minimize the angle of the turns. I pull in the driveway and the auto carrier pops off the hitch, I don't know it and pull up the pump none the wiser. She comes up and points out that I'm now DRAGGING the auto carrier. Great. Now I have to finish filling the tank, then figure out how to get the two bits lined up and reattached. There goes another half hour of the "plan".

I have a couple of alternate routes to get through LA on a Sunday evening. I decide we'll take the slightly more direct route, over the Grapevine, and then the 210 out toward San Dimas. Hopefully, that will be our first gas stop. It worked! We pulled in, fueled the vehicles and ourselves, and pulled out. Pretty efficient stop. As part of the "plan", I had decided to keep walkie talkies in the vehicles. In part for emergency situations, in part for on-the-road communication. We decide that we should go ahead and stop in Blythe, CA for the night. There is gas and several hotels from which to choose. We picked a pretty neat little motel and rested well.

We got up early the next morning and stopped for gas to start the day. I think we went to breakfast somewhere in town, too. Part of our goal was to get into Silver City before the real estate office closed, so we could pick up the keys and not have to spend the night in another motel. I knew that her car would outlast the truck, even though she carried half as much gas. So the truck would be the deciding factor for stops. From Blythe, we barreled on through Arizona until we reached Casa Grande, between Phoenix and Tucson. Made a great place for a lunch and fuel stop since there was an In-N-Out. Probably the last time we'd see an In-N-Out for who knows how long.

Back on the road as quickly as possible, we motored on to Lordsburg. I was a little iffy about the ability of the truck to make it to Silver City so I stopped for gas. Glad I did, too. The road from Lordsburg to Silver City is a torturous mountain road. Torturous for a moving truck, that is. I pressed hard to make it before 5pm. We had left Lordsburg at about 4pm. We pulled into the real estate office at 4:45. Yards of dead tree later, we had keys in hand. I had studied both Streets and Trips, and Google Earth to know the route from the office to the house. We took our time, checking out the local scenery and businesses along the way. Oh, and Hwy 180 is also a bit of a mountain road. The truck was none too happy to be at 6000 feet with hills in the final stretch.

I knew which side of the street I wanted to be on and how to get there. I pulled up across the street, unloaded my car and the auto carrier, then went up the block and turned the truck around. I put the back door right at the edge of the driveway. We opened the door to the truck and the front door to the house. We carried the mattress and box in from the truck, the bedding from her car and we spent the first night in New Mexico IN our new home. I have to say, that was just about the best rest I'd had in a month!

Inside the truck was a placard that claimed we could get unloading help. Yeah, that didn't work out so well. So she called the place where we planned to drop off the truck and they said they new nothing about that but could send a guy over. Hmmm, ok. Well, he showed up. Yes, he. One man. But let me just say now that he was amazing! I stayed inside to direct and redirect. They would bring things from the truck and I would shuffle them into one of three rooms: kitchen, office, bedroom. The truck was empty before 1pm! She had planned to pay for up to four guys to help, so she gave the whole wad to him. He earned it. We were able to clean out the truck and get it back two days early.

That afternoon, we snuck into the Walmart to see what she would encounter as the new Assistant Manager. It's a super center, so it's big. There seem to be a lot of empty shelves. She'll have her work cut out for her. And so it has been. They started her on overnights, presumably to help clean up their stocking difficulties. Six months in and it's time to shuffle the Assistants, but she's not getting shuffled. She'll be staying on overnights for another year. So, it's still up to me to maintain the household and pay the bills. She works four on four off. It's a bit like living alone. During her "on" rotation, we see each other for a couple of hours in the morning and maybe an hour and a half in the evening. On her "Saturday", she still needs to sleep most of the day, having just spent all night at work. On her "Sunday", she'll nap most of the day so she can stay up all night getting back into "overnight" mode. In reality then, she works four nights, is off two nights and the other two nights are, well, a bit in limbo.

So here we are in Southwestern New Mexico. Walmart is the biggest thing in town. It's the only thing open 24 hours. NONE of the other big box stores, except a KMart, are within 100 miles. It's quiet. It's high desert pretty. We're within half an hour of a National Forest. All in all, we're happy here. And really, that's all that matters.