Gettin' To Piru

Being as KeeWee and I live on an island out in Puget Sound in North Western Washington state, going anywhere at all involves a number of connections. To get to the Steel Challenge World championships last week in Piru, California was no exception.

We started out by having our neighbor drive us a short distance to the local shopping center where we boarded the Whidbey SeaTac Shuttle for the trip across Puget Sound by ferry, and then an hour and a half drive to the SeaTac airport.  Once at the airport we checked in at Alaska Airlines and declared the race guns in our luggage. That went fairly straight-forward, which was nice, as it doesn't always work that way! We boarded the flight to Burbank, and it actually left on time. Thanks to a tailwind on our way South we actually arrived in Burbank a few minutes early.

 Mount Rainier

The weather was clear for most of the flight South, and our path took us close to both Mount Rainier and Mount Adams. 

Mount Adams

Once we arrived in Burbank we picked up our rental car for the drive to Valencia, California. Valencia is best known for the Six Flags Magic Mountain theme park. Valencia is roughly thirty minutes due North from Burbank, straight up Interstate 5.

At the rental counter they asked me which model I would like. Since I had rented a PT Cruiser once and liked it, I asked for something similar.  They offered me a little KIA SUV, or a Chevrolet HHR (HHV? HVR? Don't remember) Anyhow, it was, she said, very similar to a PT Cruiser but a little bigger.

The "Batmo-van"?

It was all black and it looked a bit like something Batman would drive, if he drove a mini-van! Actually, it turned out to drive pretty nicely, and wasn't to bad on gas or power.

The drive from Burbank to Valencia was fairly uneventful, except for on car that stopped at the red light just before the freeway on ramp, then decided to drive through the red light to get on to the freeway, rather than waiting for the green light. Fortunately the driver on the cross street was paying attention and managed to avoid T-boning the moron that ran the light. 

Once we were checked in at the hotel in Valencia, we walked next door to the restaurant for a late dinner, as it was coming up on 9pm. After dinner it was back to the hotel for getting the gear ready for the next day's shooting. Once everything was ready to go, we turned in for some sleep. The next day was going to be a long one!