30 June << 2001 >> 2 July


1 July, 2001


Mothball Fleet

After packing up the car, cleaning the house, leaving copies of my house keys on the desks of various coworkers, and all the other arrangements one makes before leaving town for a good long while, I trucked over to Fremont where Yiling fed me dinner and gave me a lunch bag for the next morning. Then I was off.

At some point, getting near I-80 East, I saw these collections of ships sitting in the water, five or six abreast. I pulled off and found myself in this car warehouse adjacent to some railroad tracks and guarded by a nice old man. He explained that the ships were mostly WWII-era and many of them were coal-powered, and that they constituted one of the Navy's mothball fleets. It was doubtful that they would ever run again, ever, but there they were.

For his part, he was overlooking a five-mile expanse of new cars that were warehoused at that point along the railroads. The cars needed to be watched as they were all sitting there ready to go with the keys in the ignition. He commented that apparently nobody wanted Kias, as so many of them were spending long months under his watchful eye.

The plan was to make Nevada that evening before calling it quits. I got to a rest stop in that armpit of a state and set my sleeping bag atop a sheet atop a picnic table beneath a shelter, and got my sleep.


30 June << 2001 >> 2 July
/journal
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