2:40 CDT

10 May 1999

Hi all,

Blowing through the high desert today. Never made it out of Victorville on Sunday. Too many toys.

;-)

Actually, come 11:30 on Sunday morning we weren't even close to leaving. Considering we needed to go easy on the bus for the next 150 or so miles to finish the wear-in period on the rebuild, it didn't make much sense to leave. So, we spent most of the day dorking about Victorville with Darryl. Had quite the blast. Readjusted the timing and dwell on the bus, it was substantially off, and while we were at the shop Darryl gave Craig some lessons on the Volkswagen internal combustion engine. Helps when you've got a shop full of engines in various states of repair, much easier to comprehend than the lousy illustrations in shop manuals. Later on that evening we took out Darryl's dirt bike and did some off road riding, quite fun but very different from my old street bike. Much less stable... ;-)

So, this morning we made it out fairly early, gave the bus one last check at the shop, and hit the road. 'Course, since we're going easy on the engine we actually boogied on out of Victorville to Lucerne Valley, then cut back over to Barstow, pretty much the long way around. Stopped off at Newberry Springs for some lunch (Taco Bell Express!! Yippie!), and we're just rollin' along. We're on part of what was Route 66, but frankly it's mostly just an Interstate highway with souvenier stands nowadays. Things should get a lot more interesting when we hit Arizona. We'll be camping at one of the National Forest campgrounds this evening, which should be an enjoyable change of pace. Then it's on to Roswell... ;-)