We left that Enroute Camping beach and headed toward San Francisco, but it was quite a bit further than what I had expected (I hadn't looked at a map, and the GPS didn't account for all of our scenic detours). While I'm on the subject, I'd like to do an Equipment Review of my Garmin Nuvi 255W. My parents sent it to me for Christmas in 2008, while I was in Texas. It was great, except for telling me to occasionally drive off of an elevated highway. We learned that you had to take what it says with a grain of salt, but recently it has been seriously pissing us (me) off. It will list imaginary roads, tell us to drive hundreds of miles out of the way for no reason, get completely lost under clear sky in populated areas, loose which direction the vehicle is traveling, and generally slow way down. It's like the processor is slowing down over time. Since I don't think it’s worn out yet, I must assume that this is a case of planned obsolescence. But why would I pay 150$ to update the software if the hardware is crapping out so badly?
We camped one more night before crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, and heading to China Beach. Some sunbather gave us a whole bunch of hell about bringing the dog into the No-Pets zone. We informed him that he was service animal and eventually cussed him out in front of a park ranger. We tried to get back towards Fisherman's Wharf, but we accidently crossed the bridge again. I had a few beers to make the 6$ toll repeat easier to swallow. We found a spot to park and walked around Pier 39. We saw the sea lions, but the bread bowl scraps that were once so plentiful, were nowhere to be found. We slept in a yacht club across from Alcatraz.
In the morning Lauren had to go to the hospital, but not bad enough to not argue with me for 3 hours first. I drove her to the hospital and waited in the truck so it wouldn't be towed. After several hours of playing Mario's Picross, which I beat and started Mario's Picross 2 (Exclusively in Japanese), we went to a Safeway to fill her prescription. Lauren called me from the lobby where she passed out because she forgot to eat anything for the past 30 hours. We spent the night across from the electric bus depot near a bunch of RV's. After most of a day of arguing, the police told us we couldn’t sleep there anymore, so we hit Lombard St. and went back the yacht club. In the morning we washed the dog, went shopping, washed dog pee off of my sleeping bag, at a homeless center, and headed for San Jose. We stopped for internet at a McDonald’s on the way and drove past Facebook's headquarters before finding a spot to go to sleep. This was mad more difficult by the fact that the GPS led us to 3 hotels that never existed. It also has no grasp on the concept of one way streets, takes and entire city blocks time to process the fact that I turned onto that city block, freezes up sometimes.
The next day, we looked at a sushi buffet, but it was 16$ each. We tried to go to a Safeway, but their sushi wasn't very good. The GPS continued its parade of failure by taking us to 3 shopping centers in search of a Fred Meyer. Nobody in any of the centers had ever heard of a Fred Meyer. We did swing past Google, though. We kept looking and found a Safeway and ate 22$ worth of sushi in the cab of the truck, in the sun of their parking lot, while cussing about how hard we worked for it. We sat there about another 2 hours before heading towards San Jose and going to sleep.
Early the next morning, I went to a laundromat to poop, but the lady said I had to be a customer. I went over to the gumball machines, but she said those were for customers too. I asked her how buying something doesn't make me a customer, but I ended up giving her a few words you don't find in an English-Chinese dictionary. I continued my search through a Walgreens, an Exxon, and a Wendy's. The Wendy's didn't open till 9:30, so I tried the grocery store nearby. It was a cool store, but no bathrooms. I went back to Wendy's and back to the truck to wait for Lauren to wake up. We went back to that grocery store and stocked up for our trip to Yosemite. We swung past the place where I found my tuck topped, but the proprietor was scoping us pretty hard. I went to Chase to cash in my pennies and organize my accounts, but they are the last back in the world to require incoming change to be rolled.
I opened a Chase checking account because they have the most convenient branch location across the country. Their free account required me to make 5 transactions per month, thereby defeating the purpose of an emergency account, so I "upgraded" to the one that made me keep a 1500$ minimum balance. That was fine, just some money tied up, or so I thought. The called me to say that my account would be closed because of inactivity. I begged them not to, but what I eventually had to do was open a savings account, and set up a 25$ automatic transfer from checking to savings on the 1st of every month, and another from savings to checking on the 15th of every month. This made their computer think that I was still alive by completing 2 transactions per month (automatically, through their computer), but my new system was obviously unstable (as well as tying up an additional 100$ for the minimum balance for the savings account.
We're running low on cash, so I needed to combine the accounts and downsized to the 5 transaction/ month plan. I explained this to "my" banker and he seemed to understand. He told me that if I had the funds transferred from savings to checking electronically, it would take a day to process and I couldn't close the account till the next day (which they'd do for me). I said fine, but when they transferred the funds from savings to checking, the savings account said that it was below the minimum balance and charged me 35$. That buffoon tried to take that money out of my checking account. I became livid to the point security began watching me. He undid the electronic transfer and removed the charge (notated as teller error). I had to close the account, remove the funds in cash, then deposit the cash into checking, where it was a second ago. It will still take 24 hours to close the account, and for my funds to become available in checking. Sweet Christ, I had 2 more beers in their parking lot before I was able to see straight enough to drive. I went to AAA of San Jose, and met Judy, from Maryland. I asked her about a class to remove points on my license, be she said I had to do it in WV. She then asked me why I had the points, and we discussed my record. She told me that they even bust people for seatbelt violations here. I laughed and said they're not gonna get me! They can get me for a lot of things, but never that. I gassed up (with the Chase card (Transaction: Nov. 1 of 5)), and we made it into Groveland; the last town on the outside of Yosemite. We watched Escape from Alcatraz and the original Gone in 60 seconds, and went to sleep.
We got up early, ate some ham sandwiches, and drove into the park. We took our time and saw some vistas. It was really neat. There was no overnight parking anywhere, so we blended in at the lodge. We ate and went to sleep, but it started to rain, then it stopped and it got pretty cold. In the morning we noticed that there was about 8" of snow on everything in the valley (more at higher elevations). It was the first snow of the season and Riley's first snow ever. He peed on Lauren's blanked and we started our day. We tried to take Rt. 41 south, but it was closed for snow. We went back out towards 120 and Tuolumne Grove, but the grove road wasn't plowed. We pulled over for lunch, and we decided to take 140 back out of the park. We turned around, but on the way out, we saw that the grove road had been plowed while we were eating, so we walked about 2 miles, round-trip, in foot deep snow, over steep hills to see some rather unimpressive sequoia trees. But Riley had fun. We decided to check Rt. 41 again and sure enough it was open, so we drove on out of the park, after seeing a snowplow that went off the road that day. Pics will be on facebook soon. We tried a few McDonalds, and the 3rd try had electric and Wifi. We are near the northern side of Fresno, CA, power blogging.
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