The trip continues… I have successfully completed the first and second legs of the triangle. Yes, I know that Wells would technically be the northeast vertex and not Elko, but I think you get the idea.

The most interesting part of the drive is the difference that 400 miles and 4000 feet can make. For example, in Las Vegas, I had to turn on the air conditioner in my truck. It wasn’t extremely warm - maybe 70 degrees or so - but it was still warm enough where I either had to settle for rolling down the window while driving on the freeway or just press the little blue button. Conversely, once I got into Wells, it started snowing severely enough where I had to slow down to 25 MPH due to visibility. Then came the fog… because, if there’s anything better than driving in whiteout conditions on a snow covered freeway, it’s doing it in fog. Oh yes. Where can I sign up to have more of that?

I also got to see the valley that the infamous Coyote Springs development is supposed to be located in. The idea behind it is that, about 60 miles north of Las Vegas, there’s an empty valley with enough water to build 100,000 homes. The problem? Well, there’s a couple of them:

1. There’s absolutely nothing between Coyote Springs and Las Vegas. In fact, there’s absolutely nothing near Coyote Springs. This kind of drives it home:

View Larger Map

2. Until extremely recently, there were some serious legal obstacles to the development due to the near-total lack of water in the valley. The solution, or at least 1/5 of it, is to pipe in water from a neighboring valley. This, of course, seems eerily familiar to many in the region.

What’s truly fascinating to me is how Nevada has managed to create a large city in the one part of the state least suited to one, and is now looking to expand it even further. The southern corner of Nevada is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the driest part of the state. If the Colorado River wasn’t there, Las Vegas wouldn’t have a prayer… and, the way things are looking now, the Colorado River might not be there for too much longer.

It means it. Jesus.

I’m writing to you live from “scenic” Beatty, Nevada, in the nicest Motel 6 in the free world. I’m not kidding about that last part. It really is. In fact, it damn well better be because, after tax, it cost me almost $60 to get a room here.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Who in their right mind would spend $60 to stay in a Motel 6? What would possess someone of sound body and mind to do something so completely ridiculous? Well, I’ll tell you:

1. Beatty isn’t exactly a thriving metropolis. Motel 6 may be the classiest place in town here. I’m not joking. At least somebody remodeled “The Burro”… yes, that was an actual “hotel” I’ve stayed at here. In fact, that stay is worthy of its own blog post… after I get some sleep.

2. Motel 6 advertised high speed Internet, which is why I’m able to post tonight. Why would I need high speed internet? Is it because I’m addicted to blogging? No, the reason is much, much worse than that. You see, after about an hour of driving, I realized that I didn’t have directions for where I needed to be. Because, y’know, it’s always a good idea to drive for over seven hours into a city with over a million people and have no clue where the hell you’re going.

So, here I am, in a $60 Motel 6 room with high speed Internet. It is a clean room, which is nice, and the bedding seems to be surprisingly decent. If I brought my camera with me, I’d pass along a picture here. If you ignore the complete lack of shampoo and the usual Motel 6 “towels”, it’s actually pretty comparable with most rooms in this range. Besides, how often do you get to stay in a Motel 6 that’s mentioned in a Wikipedia page? That’s what I thought.

With that in mind, I’d like to share with you, my readers, some thoughts I had while suffering from caffeine-induced hallucinations along the way:

1. I like numbered lists.

2. To all the owners of full-size trucks and SUVs that are so blind at night that they feel the need to install high-power halogen lamps in their vehicles: DIE. I’m not kidding. If you’re so blind that you need to install halogen lamps that can be seen from space in order to see where you’re going, don’t drive at night. Still confused? Let me spell it out for you. If you’re driving a Honda or other small car and you install those halogen lamps, you’re being a first-class feminine hygiene product. However, when you install said lamps in a full-size truck or SUV, you’re not just being an insensitive jerk, you’re endangering people’s lives. Why? Because your headlights are higher. You see (and, believe me, anyone in front of your sociopathic ass can’t now), since your headlights are higher, they shine directly into the eyes of everyone in front of you… or, at least, directly into the eyes of anyone in front of you that isn’t driving military surplus combat vehicles. Now, chances are you knew this beforehand. In fact, you probably got that wonderful truck of yours because it had higher headlights - you could see more of what’s going on around you that way… which brings me to my point. If you can’t see at night with stock headlights on a truck, it’s because you’re blind and have no business driving at night. Oh, and if you’re one of those wonderful people that not only drive trucks with the Eyes of God installed but also happens to leave your brights on, rest assured, one of these days, I’m going to get one of these and show you precisely what you’re doing to the retinas of everyone in front of you.

Okay, that’s it for now… the caffeine buzz is finally beginning to wear off, which means I can get some much needed sleep. Until next time…

I’m heading out of town tonight, so, if I post at all, it’s going to be extremely erratically. I’ll be back on Monday with full force and full of piss and vinegar, however. You’ve been warned.

I finally get to drive the Triangle… meaning I’ll be driving from Reno to Las Vegas tonight, then Las Vegas to Elko tomorrow, then Elko to Reno on Sunday. I’m doing all of this in a 15 year old Dodge Dakota. That, coincidentally, would be the definition of “stupid”, or possibly the definition of “insane”… probably both. Either way, if you don’t hear from this blog by the end of Monday, assume the tarantulas got me.

The past few days have been rather busy.

Friday: Flew to Salt Lake City to retake my dCAP exam, which work wants me to get so we can start selling Asterisk phone systems. Unfortunately, I failed the test the first time around - I elected to take it midway through an Asterisk boot camp that I attended, figuring that I was doing well in the class. The good news is that I got a free retake, and since the original plan was for me to attend the class and take the test a month or two later, my work isn’t out anything and I got some early exposure to the test. Flew back later that night; thanks to a rather long break between the test and my flight home, I decided to purchase the new Stephen Colbert book. I haven’t finished reading it yet, but it’s quite amusing. I especially enjoyed his rantings on religion.

Saturday & Sunday: Visited my son with my grandma. It was actually a good trip - he was well behaved and I learned that the road to Metropolis is open. That’ll give me something to play with next time I’m down there. Can’t wait to check it out.

I’m back now, and will hopefully begin posting somewhat regularly this week.

By “campaign stop”, I, of course, mean “sit in a class in San Jose for ten hours a day, five days a week, learning how to program an open-source phone system,” but the important thing is that it’s over. Besides, I actually learned a fair amount at the training, which will lead to me communicating quite a bit of information to my coworkers. They’re going to love me for that, believe me.

During the trip, I managed to meet an owner of a business that I’ve communicated with in Redding, someone who worked at Yahoo, and a host of other interesting people. All in all, it was a good, albeit exhausting, trip, and I’m very glad I took it.

Shocking, no?

Just a quick explanation to the half dozen of you that seem to visit on rare occasion here… when I’m not posting, it’s probably a sign that I’m working way too hard to come up with anything coherent. But… that temporarily ends this week! I’m currently in San Jose enjoying a week of Asterisk training, so I have plenty of time after work to say all kinds of clever things. Or something.

Over the weekend, I visited Pahrump, a desert town about an hour outside of Las Vegas, NV. I went to high school out there and an old friend of mine from school was visiting some family out there; since I hadn’t seen the friend in close to 10 years, I decided to trek down there myself to catch up.

Some random thoughts from the trip:

1. I didn’t know you could make jerky from salmon, but I have a package of salmon jerky now.
2. There are some interesting ghost towns out there that I wish I spent more time visiting when I lived down there. I finally visited Rhyolite, which is definitely one of the better preserved ghost towns in the country.
3. It’s really fascinating to see where some of the people I went to school with ended up. For example, quite a few of my friends never graduated high school, though most of them eventually received their GED. However, most of them aren’t doing too badly. One of them is now a cameraman for a TV station in Las Vegas, for example. The friend that I was trying to catch up with now manages a Staples in Indiana. Education is important, don’t get me wrong, but it’s rather impressive how far you can get without a formal education in this country with a little bit of effort.

That’s all for now. I’ll post something a little more substantial tomorrow.