California dreaming

So the US economy is slowly and secretly decaying (apparently, if you watch cnbc) while the traders on Wall st. add bank to their presumably vast fortunes, or at least fund their nicotine addiction or tip a little more in their latte' worlds, while the rest of us worker drones labor on in order to pay credit cards, mortgages, car payments, taxes, gas and grocery bills. Well, I say screw that. My wife and I will cast off our worker exoskeletons and hit the road...one last time before fuel prices soar. Yes, that's right, I fully expect gas prices to spike like never before in 2010. I'm going to lay my predictive dick out there and call it as I see it. I'm kinda like that if you didn't know, willing to boldly go forth where no man has gone before (too much Star Trek as a kid). Going back into my blog you'll see that I posted something about Cantarell's production falling off a cliff (Mexico's offshore oil fields), and if you didn't know we import 20% from Mexico, so yeah....this event IS A BIG DEAL! Oh sure, we have some reserves and OPEC and others will pump out more to "try" and meet demand, but as I'm looking at the numbers on oildrum.com and comparing trend lines it doesn't seem very likely. So I plan to take some money and buy some gold ($5k worth?) and oil futures/energy equities. The New Year should go off with a BANG!

So what's this "hit the road" talk about? My wife and l love to travel, road trips to be precise since neither of us like to fly, and truth be told, I'm not very eager to entrust my life with airline companies who are struggling to cut the bottom line. Admittedly, at least for me and not so much for the honey, I love the view from high above drifting over the puffy clouds and patch worked landscape. The thrill doesn't over come my nightmares of instant death plunging out of the sky, asphyxiating from a smoking fuselage, or being sucked out at 30,000'. Nope, not even a 1 in a million chance event, is worth dying like that. So I avoid the opportunity whenever possible, but in this day in age, it isn't always possible - like when I helped a family member move to Dallas, Tx and then had to fly back. That was just before 9/11 too. Then all those helicopter flights transiting to various offshore oil rigs in 2008, it's all a bit nerve racking for me now, however great thrill of it. So what does that mean? We drive, that's what, and why not get a good road trip in before $5/dollar gas hits next Summer?

16 days from Pearlington, Ms to San Diego, Ca and everything in between and above and below. First stop is San Antonio, home of the Alamo, a historical site my wife has never seen, and the last I saw it was back in 1989. I was at Fort Sam Houston training to be a Army Combat Medic. Then on to that bordered sister town to Mexico, El Paso where I hear the murders are up to 5 a day as violence spills over the border from Ciudad Mexico. Must be careful passing through. We'll drive through New Mexico and into Arizona stopping in Pheonix or Tucson on our way up to Las Vegas and the Hoover Dam. Maybe toss a few worthless coins into the leeching machines we'll head on over to Death Valley. A good first stop entering California for a blogger named Megadoom, then if luck holds out, we'll slip into Yosemite before the snows cover the main park road. Here's hoping for global warming and all, lol.

After Yosemite, we'll visit Mammoth lakes and the Lake Tahoe area for maybe a day of skiing, one my favorite pass times as it's just too good to pass up, but I'm sure the wifie will hang out in the valley to browse as she loathes zipping down mountains on two pieces of fiber glass. Then off towards Mt. Shasta to visit a well known latocer - Broil and enjoy a fine brunch at a local eatery. After seeing how he's doing I'll take the well worn Colorado pickup through the hills on towards the Pacific. We'll ride the famous hwy 1 right through Big Sur and into San Francisco, cross that famous vermilion bridge that spans the chilly bay, and take a ride on the trolley bus. We'll do all the touristy stuff right down all the way to San Diego visiting Hollywood, Santa Monica, and the Monterey Bay aquarium. Lots of pictures and video. I'll consider it a nostalgic ride through the hay day of cheap oil and gluttonous ruminations of yeast people. We'll meditate at the Northern rim of the Grand Canyon on the way back before meeting back up at the homestead to plan our

next great escape, but this time, it'll be to a piece of land that'll plant the seeds for a new future. A future that first must pass through a great tribulation of sorrow and pain.