The Road to LA

Today we hit the road on The Bonneville Run, we were planning on leaving San Jose around 7am and getting to LA around 2pm, however we hit a few snags along the way. Firstly, the Cadillac was still at the workshop until about 9am, and then when we finally did pick it up, we ran out of fuel about a block from the mechanics. After we got that sorted, we went and filled up at Costco, headed back to San Jose to get the car washed and packed and got on the road. Unfortunately, by then it was after 2pm, so our plans of being at the MoonEyes shop in LA by 2pm were out the window. Undeterred, we headed off towards LA via a network of highways and interstates, guided by the trusty Garmin Nuvi GPS, pulling in at the Taco Bell in Firebaugh, on the West Panoche Road exit, for lunch, fairly late in the afternoon.



Almost another hundred miles down the road, we pulled in for the first fuel stop on the road, at the Lost Hills Shell, near the corner of the I-5 and Paso Robles Highway. We were then back on the road and headed for LA, although things did not go quite according to plan. The coolant overheating alarm went off twice while climbing some pretty steep hills at speed (the Cadillac doesn't have a temperature gauge, just a warning buzzer and light), and when we finally stopped to fix that, we found the level was slightly low (not enough to be a problem on the flat, only on the climbs). The main reason we'd pulled over was actually because the rippling in the surface of the interstate happened to be making just the same sound as a flat tyre would, and I was more than a little concerned about that.

Anyway, with that little issue sorted out, and knowing that we weren't the worst off on the roads today, after spotting one car on fire half way up the side of the steeper of the two hills, which peaked at around 4200 feet above sea leavel, and seeing one laying on it's side just outside Lost Hills, with local fire and police departments in attendance, we pushed on to Los Angeles, where we were due to meet up with members of the West Australian and Victorian branches of the Cranksters Hot Rod Club for dinner at the Bob's Big Boy in Downey. After a feed and a few laughs we headed off and checked in to our hotel for the next couple of days, in Culver City.