Whew! The drive to and from Bakersfield is long tiring hard on my back! My wife had to fill-in for the doctor in the Bakersfield office for the last three weeks. So, I accompanied her down there. We drove down (last two weeks on Friday night and this week on Thursday afternoon) and then back up (on Sundays). While down there we stayed at the Doubletree Hotel right off of the Rosedale Highway (next to Highway 99). That place gets a little scary on Friday nights as the local radio station holds some sort of party in the nightclub (!!) in the hotel. Yeesh. Other than that though, the hotel was reasonable and nice to stay in. Bakersfield is a nice place, quiet, kind of a smaller town. A lot of it reminds me of Bentonville, AR -- except the people in Bakersfield are a lot nicer and there is no Wal-Mart headquarters there!
Eileen and I had dinner with my cousin Simon and his girlfriend Sarah on Saturday. It was good to see Simon again and to meet his girlfriend (although, I met them the week before when they graciously came out to help me when my car battery died). Simon: The waiter messed up the picture that he took in the restaurant, it is all blurry! I'll send you a copy anyways, but it's pretty bad.
While my wife worked, I worked and hung out. I worked remotely on Saturdays from the hotel (on a super fast 256kbit/s connection). The other days I either watched movies on my portable DVD player; played PSP; or when around town shopping and hanging around the bookstores. I even got to hang around my wife's store down there and see her in action! Hehe. I'll tell you, my PSP has gotten a lot of action during these last three weeks. Lots of Burnout Legends and SSX On Tour. My Solara also got quite a workout driving up and down Highway 5. Yikes! Fun trips, but my back will fail if I have to do it again anytime soon! Now I will go convince the wife to give me a backrub!