New Beginnings

Hi, everyone! Someone suggested that I start a blog, then Jenni started one and I thought "Hey, why not?" It's not like I'm FORCING anyone to read this, right? We arrived in CA on the 18th. We left Ohio on the 14th. We were very excited to be able to drive together this time. We had the Beetle shipped. It's supposed to arrive about July 10th. As we were leaving Mom & Dad's, Brian said that he expects that he'll do most of the driving. That was perfectly fine with me. However, we were almost to the Ohio/Indiana border when we pulled over at a rest stop. I said that maybe I should start driving because it was flat and there was very little traffic. I ended up driving more than my share!!! The next afternoon, he said "Boy, this is really nice to sit back and let you drive." I didn't mind at all. We weren't getting very good gas mileage through Missouri and Oklahoma. We were 20 miles from TX when Brian "just decided" to check the tire pressure. He put his hand on the tire and was shocked to feel no last row of tread on the inner most part of the tire. All four tires were that way. It was about 8 pm in the middle of nowhere. We went into the gas station and they gave us some names of tire places. We went back 3 miles. I was praying the whole way that they wouldn't rip us off. They refused to put new tires on, because they said that by the time we got to Amarillo we would need new tires again. They told us to go that night because it would be cooler, to drive slow, and to "keep our fingers crossed". It was about 100 during the day. We drove 200 miles to Amarillo that night. The next morning we called several places. The place that did the alignment said to get new tires on, then they could do the alignment on Monday. Brian begged him to do it that day (Friday), because we had to be at work on Tuesday. He called someone in and they got it done. We were on our way by 3 pm! I had been praying that it wouldn't be too hot, either. Harley would have never made it outside in that heat. It was nice and overcast, and the second place let them sit inside. We are so grateful that Brian "just happened" to feel the need to check the tires (which he's never done while we're traveling) and that it got fixed so quickly in the middle of nowhere. We could have had the tires blow out in the middle of the desert somewhere. We got better gas mileage after that, too. We had nothing else eventful happen along the way. On Monday we did some paper work for our job (that we had to complete there before we started). Tuesday, the 20th, we drove to Yosemite to meet Wes, Linda, and kids for the afternoon. I thought that it would take 3 hours to get there--it took 5! Luckily, they were running a little late, too, so they weren't just sitting there waiting on us. We started working on Wednesday, the 21st. It's a very small hospital--about 167 beds. They only do 1 or 2 heart surgeries a week. California has lots of laws about nurse:patient ratios, so we only have 3, or at the very most 4 patients every night. It's pretty nice for us. We worked last weekend. On Wednesday, we went to Hearst Castle. I'll talk more about that later. We did two of four tours this time and hope to do the other two soon. Maybe I'll have pictures by then. Thursday, we went to San Luis Obispo (SLO) for the weekly farmer's market. Every Thursday evening year around, they close down a street and have fresh local produce, BBQ pits, music and lots of other food. Just the kind of thing I love to do! We were going to go on a tour of a local vineyard today (there are over 200 in the area), but our truck brakes have been whining. Yesterday, they really started rubbing, so we got a little concerned. I thought that we had the brakes and rotors changed December 2004, but I guess that was only the front brakes. Firestone couldn't check the back brakes. So today we had to but new brakes and rotors for the back. We hope that we don't need anything else mechanical done anytime soon. We work again this weekend, but have July 4th off. Our campground is right across the road from the park where Paso Robles sets off their fireworks. The RV park is having a cookout, then we'll watch the fireworks. We were going to go to Pismo Beach for the fireworks, but they say it's pretty crowded. Next time I'll write more about the RV park, the weather, and the people we work with (this sentence was mostly written to remind me :) ), since I wrote such a long note this time. Love, Karla & Brian