Technical difficulties hits the road. Me and jr difficulties are on the road this week to legoland and points unknown in california, leaving the wife and other difficulties in training behind.
Step 1: 500 miles of driving. Down I17, around the worst of Phoenix via the 101 loop bypass, out to the west on I10 into the middle of nowhere.
Big surprise (not): all the fast food places with playlands have the playlands enclosed and aircondtioned. (Its reading 112°F on the vehicle too-hot-o-meter).
Discovery of the day: In the middle of the Mohave desert, at Chiraco Summit (home of the $4 gallon of gas), is the General Patton Museum. This is a different museum then the Patton National Museum of Cavalry & Armor. Get there a little early, as it closes as 4:30pm. Don't get there too early though, cause its hot and you don't really want to spend more than 15 minutes outside poking around old tanks and looking for rattlesnakes under rocks.
After that, the only other interesting sight on our trip was the windmills in San Gorgonio Pass. The first thing you notice is that big windmills seem to be sprouting little baby windmills (though the short ones were probably there first). The second cool thing you notice as you get closer is that there doesn't seem to be anyone hauling off broken propeller parts: blades seem to litter the ground around the windmills, and a number of windmills are out of service, having only one or two blades left. You'd think with energy costs being what they are, somebody would be out there fixing windmills as fast as they could. Well, maybe next year when electricity prices are up to twentyfive cents a kilowatt.
If you've planned ahead enough, you can even take a tour of the windmills. Website doesn't say how much though.
