Well, I've really gone and done it now... YEARS have gone by between blog posts. So why did I re-start this ancient old blog? Just got a domain name tonight, www.scottblake.org , and it automatically picked up on my old blogspot account, since I grabbed Blogger as my HTML creation app. We'll see where this goes, I've missed the old webpage that Cox Communications hosted, but dropped support for. Seems I was one of a very small number of subscribers to actually avail myself of that offer. Just as well, we'll be moved within a year, to another state and Cox isn't available there. 

Wow, it has been a while! I'm currently in Oakhurst, CA (again), had a mega-day yesterday, 15.0 hours on duty (the limit) of which 10 were driving (the limit). I usually route up CA-41, but it was closed yesterday due to a bad accident. Fortunately, I found out in time and went "Plan B", up to Plainsburg Road to CA-140. It follows the Merced River up its canyon. Wow, was it ever ripping! Incredible whitewater. Anyhow, I was pumping the caffeine big-time yesterday, so was wound up and shaking by the time I arrived in Oakhurst after dropping my campers in Yosemite. It was midnight before I got to bed! That was after getting up at 0400 yesterday morning. Still, after 7 hours of sleep, noise outside my room awakened me, and after trying and failing to get back to sleep, the coffee pot got put into action and I'm trying to shake out the cobwebs as I'm typing this. A nap is on order for this afternoon!
      The campers will next see my smiling face on Sunday morning, still a couple days away. Woo-hoo, the bus is serviced, head's been dumped and it's fueled, so now I can kick back and relax. Oakhurst is a really pleasant small town in the Sierra foothills.

Summer slowdown

Ah, I always love this time of year! All our winter & springtime work is finished, and it gets SLOW at the bus company. Lots of the drivers, like society in general, live paycheck-to-paycheck, and they fret and worry. But not me, haven't been in that trap in decades. We still have certain bursts of work (ComicCon) ahead, but it's generally slow through August, maybe September. Fine with me!

Hello from Marina del Rey

Hello again! As I said in January, posts were to be few and far between. Currently, I'm on Day 4 of a 4-day trip meaning, yes, I'm headed back home this afternoon. We've been on an LA tour, hitting many of the area's attractions. Today, the ROTC kids (high school ROTC) are off doing a Hollywood tour, in vans chartered from someone here in LA. Makes me happy! Hollywood is NOT "bus friendly". They return here to Marina del Rey, and the cheesy motel we've been staying at, and we head out around 1500 or so. Hit Medieval Times, a dinner theater with audience participation, in Buena Park, near Knott's Berry Farm. Leave there around 2000 for home. I should be actually in my bed by maybe midnight.
The asshole motel on-duty manager wouldn't give me more than 1 extra hour for a late checkout, so I have about 3 hours to burn before the kids return. Guess I'll stroll around Marina del Rey and see if I can find George Strait's girlfriend *grin*.

End of the line?

Wow, it REALLY has been a long time! In fact, I'm thinking this may be my last post. In this world of instant texts, a personal blog seems kind of anachronistic. If this were a forum for political rants or something, it would be different. But no such soapbox here *GRIN*. So, this is probably adios, or at least my updates will only be very infrequent.

Damn, back to work....

Highly-traveled Scotty here again; this time from Lone Pine, CA. Vacation's over (well, at least the 1st half), and I'm in the midst of a 5-day trip to the Eastern Sierra, an area I know well. So well, I married a woman from this area! Mammoth Lakes is about 100 miles north of me, but that's a "ballpark figure" for this big country. So, what's Lone Pine known for? Anybody over 45 or so would appreciate this: Like most kids who grew up in the '50's, I had a steady diet of Westerns on our old Zenith B&W TV. You know, the "bad guy" lurking behind the boulder, waiting for the posse to come along, so he can shoot as many of them as possible? And the Lone Ranger, or Roy Rogers, or somebody coming along and saving the day? Well, guess what.... most of those Western action scenes were filmed right here in the area; Lone Pine has the Alabama Hills, a natural movie set. There's miles of rugged terrain, just begging for a film crew. So, why aren't Westerns still done here? Unions. The Actor's Guild raised a fuss about compensation for coming to such a remote area, and it killed the industry here. The local's biggest hotel, the Dow Villa, boasts a "John Wayne" room, the one Duke liked best. He spent LOTS of time here in Owens Valley, there's a ton of pictures of him here in town. So, "Hey, Pilgrim".... this is where I'm spending Labor Day weekend! I hope your holiday is going well too. Grover Cleveland was the President who signed the bill creating Labor Day, in case you didn't know....

Follow-up to laptop fix, and more

Hello, this time from Holbrook, AZ. I'm on vacation, woo-hoo! Tomorrow, by this time (1700), I'll be in Taos, NM, for a week of cruising the mountains of north-central NM and south-central CO. Really looking forward to that! My brother's back gave him fits at the last minute, so he opted to drive his new Hyundai instead of riding his motorcycle. Accordingly, I dropped plans of hauling my bike into the back of my pickup truck, and took off this morning in my '07 Tacoma for Taos. Holbrook just happens to be slightly more than halfway. Anyhow, this new arrangement offers some options not available if we'd done the trip on bikes; like, I brought my DV cam, and intend to shoot video each day we travel. Should make for a great documentary of our trip!
I mentioned a follow-up to the laptop fix in the message header; the Athlon 64 4000+ (San Diego core) finally arrived from Hong Kong, I dropped it in, and it's working great. I'm typing this on it now.