el rinconcito

My work vehicle, affectionately called "the unit", broke down on the way to the job this morning. I was rolling along OK when the motor shut off. I was amazed at how hard it is to steer and brake that thing without the engine. I had little time to get a feel for that as it ran over a curb and nearly across the median into oncoming traffic.

Anyway, I got it off into a shopping center parking lot, and two hours later I got it towed away. The bonus is that I now have relaxing free time to read my ass off and have fun with the hotel's blazingly fast wifi. The repairs will probably take two days. I get paid anyway.

If I asked nice, the company would probably get a rental car for me to dick around in, but there's nowhere I really need to go, and it's a nice time to get some exercise walking everywhere. The hotel is in a ramshackle area where almost everything is out of business. People just mill around waiting on the bus or hang out to give plasma for some cash. In the nearly abandoned shopping center parking lots, cars creep in quietly at night and leave in the morning. I assume people are living in them. It's amazing the feel one can get for an area from walking around in it rather than just whizzing by in a car. I've had several conversations with people who are hanging around. They have all been quite nice and seem to enjoy the chance to chat, as did I.

Here I sit playing with, ummmm, the hotel wifi.

Continuing east on the journey home from burningman, we are overnighting (boondocking in RV lingo) at another Pilot travel center in Missouri. Just 980 more miles to go. Sometimes we use the trucker
showers at these places. They are nicer then you would think with locking doors and a tiny private room. More about life on the road later.

As I crisscross the Carolinas this week for work, one of my stops was Hardeeville, South Carolina. They have good food and Internet there. Hardeeville has a local net provider and my hotel was connected to it. The upload/download speeds were mind blowing. My cable net connection at home is from a national carrier, and while the download is great, the upload sucks.

I ate both the soul food and the Mexican seen advertised in the following pictures. The soul food wins in this town.

I like the mix of English/Spanish in the images.