At this time in space, 1225 pm, we are nearing Sacramento, home to one of the lovely California Kathies, one our way to join fellow divers on I-5 North. It’s a beautiful day, currently 73 out there. When we got up this morning it was 20 degrees in Fallon but it quickly warmed all the way to 45 before we embarked on this next to last leg of this current voyage. When Kathie reads this she might be a little miffed that we didn’t stop to talk, but we have a mission to accomplish that can’t be influenced by stops visit for any length of time. It’s not that we don’t love her lots, it’s just that she recently returned from Hawaii and I’m sure she’d be talking non-stop about that trip. She used to live there, too. Now, don’t get me wrong. We LOVE Hawaii. We just need to make it to Medford before the sun goes down. Not knowing what the traffic might be like going North so just don’t want to take a chance. So, Kathie, please forgive us for zooming on by. Truth of the matter is, I’m not driving, as you may have suspected, and have absolutely no control over the driver. It’s my job to point out the pretty things along our route that I think she may want to briefly look at, keep my mouth shut, and hand her whatever she wants. So, that’s exactly what I do because I do not want her to have to stop the car to punish me.

Today I thought I’d try something a little different and utilize one of the nifty features of Diane’s new car. It’s got wi-fi and works as a hot spot, like Starbucks, for up to seven devices. I’m using six of them right now – two phones, two iPads, and the laptop. I’m doing that just so a bunch of people traveling along with us can’t hijack our signal and use it for nefarious “things”. It’s kinda neat because it’s connected to AT&T, which is our cell provider, so I can simply add it to our data plan once the free three months have expired. Interesting to have a car on the cell phone data plan. Should make the monthly bill interesting, too.

In the past 25 minutes Diane skillfully maneuvered us through the incredibly complex array of freeway ons and offs where I-80 and I-5 meet. Most of the time interactions like that are frightening beyond belief, but not this time because I just wasn’t paying any attention. My Navigating responsibilities have been reduced to the task of ensuring our destination has been entered into the car’s brain before we head to a specific destination. You might find it interesting to know I can do this more than one way. The easiest way is to open the RemoteLink app on my iPhone, enter our destination and upload it to the car. Then, when we start car up in the morning, the destination downloads and gets us on the way. If I don’t do that, then I must enter in manually in the car. I can do this by pushing the appropriate buttons. I can also talk to the navigation system and tell it where we want to go. That method is tedious because she, Bessie, tends to mess stuff up and we wind up arguing. It has never ended well, yet, so I try to get the destination downloaded.

Other neat things on the car that I’ve fiddled with is the Driver’s Information Console (DIC – I didn’t make that up) which can be set to provide a lot of distracting information to the driver. One of them is the speed alert. I set it for 80 yesterday but we didn’t make it ten miles before I was severely directed to turn it off. That’s because every time the designated speed is obtained the car beeps a few times and my driver got tired of hearing it. I should have set it to 100 instead. She would have still heard it, but not as often.

The DIC, I really didn’t make that up, will also, if the driver is interested, display an accurate rendition of a speed limit sign for the current location. Diane never looks at that, though. She checks the tire pressure frequently, and the overall mpg which, for the first 1317 miles, is 27. Not bad. On this current stretch of the trip we’re averaging  31.2 mpg. That’s while running along at an average speed of 65+ (mostly 80).

Boring stuff for most of you, I’m sure, but I’ve got nothing else to do. I did pause to check all the devices and see that all their batteries are charged so I should unplug them for a while. Maybe I’ll read some of my book. See you later.

Oh, before I go I have to share something I heard on the news last night … Don’t know what station it was, but the reporter told us that a certain lake had “… six drownings this year, 3 of them fatal.” Had to stop and think about that. I guess the three fortunate ones were dragged back from the dead by a handy people who knew CPR.