I made a scheduled (but un-announced, so as to not cause a pandemonium) stop at M5 Industries (home of Mythbusters) in San Francisco:

I’m back at the Beach House in Half Moon Bay – one of my favorite places to stay. When I walk in, the staff says “Good to see you again, Mr. Kennedy” (which reminds me of “Good to see you again, Mr. Bond”). I have a dinner reservation at the Half Moon Bay Brewing Co. Take a look at this earlier post for some pictures from my previous Atom visit here.

Here’s the view from my penthouse room:

Tomorrow I’m heading to Yosemite, then to Sequoia and then to Death Valley, so I may not have Internet access to update the blog for some time.

Here’s a picture to give you an idea what this was like. I’ll fill in more info later.

Rollbar camera video:

Nose camera video:

(The above videos are the full 480i versions. Click the icon on the top right to go fullscreen.)

You can also watch these videos on YouTube via these links:

Rollbar camera

Nose camera

Today I drove the Atom up to Salinas. I’d arranged to have a new set of tires shipped to a shop there so I’d have fresh tires for the coastal drive, track, and trip back home.

When that was done, I drove over to the track. Believe it or not, with all of the trials and tribulations I had getting here, I was the first one to the track. After a few hours people started arriving.

Tomorrow is our redwood / coastal cruise, up past San Francisco via the inland forests, and back down via the coast.

Well, I made it to Seaside (where I’m staying until the 11th). The weather cooperated as well, with sunshine and not too hot for most of the way. Once I got near the Monterey peninsula it got chilly and damp.

I checked into the hotel. On first appearance, it is very nice. Then you discover that despite the high rates, they nickel-and-dime you to death – this is the first Hilton-affiliated hotel I’ve ever seen that charges for Internet. And the vending machines serve off-brand soda at $2 / bottle, where the other places I’ve stayed (even including the hellhole from last night) have had Pepsi or Coke for $1.25 or $1.50.

Since I wasn’t able to cover as much distance as I wanted yesterday (due to the weather) I went as far as I could today. After 500+ miles, the next lodging was in Lovelock, NV.

This is a very strange place. Being Nevada, just about every store has a casino inside (I even saw a sign for “Arby’s + slots” along the way). But this place is stranger than most. The local industry is a prison, and I get the impression that everyone in the town is either going in, just got out, or is related to one of the above.

There were a bunch of old-style “motor court” motels along what passes for their main street. Many of these looked abandoned and the remaining ones were pretty scary-looking. The “big” casino in town is a combination casino / restaurant / motel. When I asked at the front desk if they had rooms and if they discounted for AAA, the clerk said they did and it was $57 plus taxes. I said “What about all the billboards on the highway that say $37?” and she replied “Well, I can give you that rate since you asked for it”.

After getting unpacked, I wandered over to the restaurant part. After looking at the menu, the waitress came over and we had a conversation like this:

Me: How is the hot turkey sandwich?
Waitress: Yes
Me: Are the mashed potatos homemade?
Waitress: Ok

The turkey arrived, and once I moved some gravy off of it, it was an odd orange-brown color. I’ve seen light meat and dark meat, but never orange meat.

I took out my cell phone to take a picture of it for this blog, but someone came running over and said “You can’t take pictures in here, this is a casino!” so I gave up and ate what I could.

Back in the room, I discovered it had an “extra firm” mattress. Or it was made from a pile of lumber – I’m not sure which.

Here’s a picture of one of the scary motels, taken as I was leaving town:

I’m Evanston, Wyoming (just across the border from Utah) tonight.

I ran into some very bad rain along the way – it was so bad that truckers were pulling off the road. Of course, in an Atom that doesn’t really help, so I kept going, hoping for an exit with a gas station with a canopy over the pumps where I could take shelter. And then I saw the sign “Next Services: 112 Miles”.

Later on the sun came out. And then it rained again. And so on.

By the time I arrived at Evanston (after 360 miles) I decided to call it a day.

I’m in Cheyenne, Wyoming tonight. So I’m less than a day behind my original schedule. If the weather holds, I’ll probaby be caught up in another day or two.

Speaking of weather, it was quite warm today – until I ran into a hailstorm in the west of Nebraska. I had been driving under massive dark clouds with no bad weather, but when I got to much lighter clouds and a lot more sun, the hail started falling. I stopped under an overpass to put on my jacket and decide if I needed to put my luggage into the heavy-duty plastic bags I brought for this purpose. While I was under the overpass, the hail rapidly changed to rain and became much lighter – almost as if there was one defective cloud that sprang a leak. About 50 miles further on, there was a brief period with just a few raindrops.

I’m in Lincoln, NE tonight – still 1 day behind schedule. That’s not bad, though, because I was exhausted last night (mostly from the “Atom not working” emotional roller-coaster) and didn’t actually get on the road until nearly 5 PM today.

Hopefully I’ll get a good night’s sleep and get going relatively early tomorrow. That should be pretty easy – the hotel I’m in has beer in the vending machines!

And Nebraska seems to be a 75MPH state, so I should be able to make up some lost time.

After a day and a half of having the Atom refuse to start (which eventually turned out to be a bad connection up in the nose), I made it to Walcott, IA today. That puts me a little less than a day behind schedule. If I’m not delayed by rain I should arrive in California on the 7th as planned. My schedule has a bunch of 350-mile days except for one 235-mile day where I’d planned to pose the Atom in front of the Bonneville Salt Flats sign. I can skip that if I need to make up time.

I’d like to thank the entire Atom Club community for all of their support and offers to send parts and help troubleshoot things; to the folks at Andy Mohr Chevrolet outside Indianapolis, who took the car right away and worked non-stop on it even though they had no shop manuals or wiring diagrams for it; to Tom Smurzynski, a true friend of the Atom and an all-around great guy for helping with the troubleshooting and supporting the dealer; and especially to my friend HJ who dropped everything he was doing in order to get replacement parts ready for FedEx in the 15 minutes before the cut-off for pickups.

1150 miles so far on this trip.