DonGar

I was having some allergy trouble, and so slept in yesterday to try and get over it. Somewhat to my surprise, I slept for over 12 hours. That meant that I got a late start. I was hoping to cross the rest of New Mexico, Arizona, and just into California. The weather reports were showing scattered showers, but not much more until tonight. However, the further west I got, the heavier the rain was.

I stopped to see what was happening, and found that there are storm warnings in Tucson, and that steady rain should be continuing until noon tomorrow. Based on that, I went ahead and got a room to wait it out in Benson, AZ, which is about 300 miles from the California border.

This might mean that I don’t make it to Will and Janet’s tomorrow, but I’m not sure yet.

Well, I made it to Deming, NM. It took much longer to get out of Texas than I expected, but that’s because this route took me down and over the bottom left spike of the state. Of course, I’m nearly in Arizona since I was most of the way across New Mexico before I even entered the state.

The only real problems are with the GPS. I fixed the problems with electrical power to it, but now it’s having a very, very hard time fixing a location. It seems totally unable to get a fix unless I park and let it sit for about 5 minutes. I guess that makes it a good deal that most of my directions are “Go west on I 10 until california”.

I did see some Border Patrol vehicles, and it was obvious that I was (and am) near Mexico, but I didn’t cross the border. Partly, I was worried about doing anything complicated without a working GPS (it’s funny how much I depend on it now), and partly I just felt like simply pushing on.

On day 12, I left Dallas a bit later than I intended, and a bit less rested than I might have hoped for.

Still things worked out really well. Tuesday during the day I managed to fix the electrical problem with my GPS (I thought), and spend a lot of time poking around visiting old sites (my house, BGB, the old apartments, etc).

Tuesday night, Dion and Leigh had dinner. Dave and Heather (with Duncan) came over to join us. Later on, Dion and Amil played a gig at Rack Daddy’s, and Pat drove down to join us. The late night after the gig is part of why I ended up leaving Dallas so late in the day (12), and meeting Mike for breakfast/lunch is the other half.

Over all, it was a good visit.

I’m now in Big Spring, TX with no real plans other than to be in LA on Saturday. I’ll pass near one of the major border crossings into Mexico today. I may try to cross over and get lunch just for the experience, but I won’t have enough time for a longer trip through Mexico this trip like I had originally hoped.