Road Trip 2015 Day 1

 Home to Needles, CA

 Mr. B's high school is a small one and, since 2000, they have had an all-school reunion over the Labor Day weekend.  We flew back in 2009 but other things got in the way the next few years, one of which was my Oldsmobile losing its driver's side AC and the GM dealer wanting $1000 just to look at it.  Not gonna happen with a twelve year old car.

 http://www.putnamcountyr1.net/

 We flew back in 2014, first time we had flown since just after 9/11.  Not a good experience.  Anyway, Mr. B finally bought me a new car in January so we decided it was high time we took a road trip.

I had my final post-cataract surgery appointment on Aug 24 so we decided to start our trip the next day, Tuesday Aug 25.  But you know what they say about the best laid plans...
Sunday evening my eye started to hurt, and got worse as the night wore on.  At this point I was thinking we might have to delay the trip.
The next morning it was diagnosed as inflamed, probably due to stopping the steroid drops too soon.  The doctor gave me an anti-inflammatory eye drop prescription and told me to start the steroids again.  The good news is that the pain went away very quickly, the bad news is that he wanted to look at it again the next afternoon.  Well, we could still rearrange our schedule to start a day later.  But when I saw the doctor Tuesday afternoon he said he needed to look at again Wednesday morning.

We took a chance that he would release me then and we would just get a later start, so we took Smokey Joe to the boarding facility in Salinas and told them that if things didn't go well with the eye doctor, we might have to pick him up after one night.  Smokey needs thyroid meds twice a day so didn't want to trust him to a pet sitter. 

Big Red has an automatic food dispenser and a water jug, so we figured he would be okay with our daughter checking on him twice a week.  Plus he has been known to do his own shopping.

Wednesday morning the eye doctor released me and we were on the road by 10am.  We stopped a few times to stretch our legs and added fuel in Newberry Springs on I-40.
 About 20 miles west of Needles, CA we ran into some road debris.  Missed the large piece of tire but couldn't avoid a smaller piece and blew a tire. 

While I was on the phone with AAA I noticed that another tire had a nail in it, so they sent out a flatbed truck to haul us in to Needles.  Of course the tire shop didn't have the right size tires, so they ordered them and drove us to a motel for the night.
Not a great start to the trip but at least we are on our way.