Mark's Random Ramblings

I don't write much, but figured I should chime in with some of the stuff Julie either left out or wasn't interested in.

First of all, a photo capturing the essence of the United States:


Yes, you read it correctly, you get free beef with the purchase of new tires.

Also, we forgot to grab the pictures off our "backup" camera, so Julie missed the photos of the sand dunes in Oregon. The particular ones we stopped at were called the Taylor Dunes. Nearby we could have taken a dune-buggy ride on some other dunes, but we were still on a schedule at that point. We'll probably get another chance sometime, after all we'll be spending lots more time in the desert.


I got a kick out of the street name below. For a long time I've thought "Guitarded" would make an amusing name for an album, with me being the Guittard in question. Right next door to the Jelly Belly factory, they had a street named just for me. Alas, I'm not as original as I thought I was.


We've been taking it easy in Beatty, Nevada for the past couple of days, and yesterday we wandered into the local museum. It was full of all the stuff you'd expect - old-timey radios, railroad equipment, old pictures and maps - but one thing I found a little unusual:


You're not just supposed to leave that stuff lying around, are you? I guess radiation affects your ability to spell too. Oh well, thanks Ken!

Finally, the last weird thing of note is the gas pumps here in Nevada. They want you to pre-pay, which is fine. That's what I'm used to anyways. So, step 1 is to swipe the card. Check. Step 2 is where I got lost... the gas pump demanded to know my Zip code. I tried 90210 (the only zip code I know), but it was too clever for me, and rejected it. I had to hang my head and go inside to explain to the cashier that I don't have a zip code. She was nice though, and let me fill up after taking my credit card for collateral.


That's it for me. Back to your regularly scheduled Julie-updates.