Monday 15th June 2009 – Rozzie Runs Me Out-of-Town

I stopped at a truck stop in Seattle.  I had intended to stop at the Walmart, but it turned out to be the discount-warehouse variant, 'Sam's Club', which closes in the evening, and I just wasn't happy with it.  So I drove down to the other end of Seattle, well, Tacoma, actually, and found a 'FlyingJ' truck stop.  Truck stops are kind-of overgrown filling stations, where the truckers can park-up for the night (or day, I suppose, if they want to).  This one ran to 'clubroom', laundry, showers, and $5-dollar-a-day WiFi. 

There was a gambling club across the road, with proper card tables, with dealers, mainly 'Texas Hold'em', the current favourite with the card-gambling fraternity.  It also ran to a number of draught beers.  The only other draught-drinker with the courage to drink the wheat beer, which is cloudy, turned out to be a fan of the Tavistock Institute in London.  He didn't sound like he had ever been a patient.  I told him he had to read "The Games People Play", a once-popular book based loosely on the techniques of said Institute.  He said he would, but I bet he doesn't.  He probably thought I was once a patient.

 

In the morning, I tried the truck stop restaurant for breakfast.  I ate as much as I could manage, and was quite satisfied.  The waitress wanted to know what was wrong, since she thought I'd hardly touched it.

Then I got Rozzie a bit better organised to sit in and work.  And settled down to organise my photos and notes, and get my emails up-to-date, using the truck stop WiFi.  I was halfway through this when the computer made urgent requests to close down, because the battery was almost flat.  I had connected it up to Rozzie via a voltage inverter which gave me enough AC voltage to run the computer as though of the mains.  But the power supply light was off.  Perhaps if I ran the engine for a while?  But poor Rozzie's battery was stone-dead.  Silly fool: the GPS was running, and so was the radio, and the fans, and some of the lights.

So I called out my Insurance company roadside assistance.  They said they would be thirty minutes, but they were, in fact, ninety.  They said the Insurance company gave them the wrong address, but I told the Insurance company the truck stop name, and they found the address.  Everyone was very solicitous, and, as is the American way, phoned me constantly with updates.  But they still took ninety minutes.

 

He jump-started me: "Run the engine for a while", he said.  So I did: all the way to Oregon; stopped just south of Portland.  Never saw Seattle at all; no Starbucks' at its home office; no space needle: I can take a hint.