California 2007 Trip End

November 10:

On Saturday I had breakfast (of sorts) with R**** and talked with her until a little too late. I intended to leave at 10 AM, but didn’t get packed and on my way until about 10:45 AM.

I said my goodbyes and headed down to Santa Barbara after getting gas (at mile 1479.8; $10 worth giving 2.916 gallons at $3.42/gal; only 133.1 miles since last fill-up). Due to starting late, under-estimating the time a bit and running into a backup because of an accident (it looked like a truck had dumped it’s load of pipes on the highway), I got to my friends’ house an hour and a half late at 3:30 PM. We chatted for a few hours.

I left about 5:30 PM. I should have gotten gas before I got back on the 101, but I forgot. At about 6:30 PM, south of Oxnard, I got a low gas light and started looking for gas again. This time I got $30 (didn’t fill it up) giving 8.985 gallons at $3.339/gal. This was at mile 1816.3 having gotten gas (in the morning) 336.4 miles previous.
I arrived at home and moved everything back to my apartment at about 8 PM. Final mileage was 1860.6, 44 miles after getting gas.

No pictures for today. Sorry.

Wrap-up:
Well, I made the trip and hit most of my goals. I visited 35 City Halls and obtained 29 maps, plus two more purchased to be mailed and one call-back (an average of 7 City Halls and 6 maps per day). The total cost of all of the maps I purchased was $430.45 meaning an average of $13.89 per map. Total mileage was 1860.6 miles, averaging 310 miles per day. Only 4 of the 5 days were full days. Friday I only visited 3 City Halls and then drove back to San Jose to visit R****.

In retrospect, I would not do this again. I basically spent each day driving from City Hall to City Hall getting maps (or finding out they didn’t have them) and didn’t have much time to see each city other than quick observations between the freeway and each City Hall. I would cut the number of visits at least in half, giving at least an hour to visit a city outside of City Hall. Probably I would cut down to 2 or 3 cities per day to actually absorb the city a little better. Perhaps I will do some return visits.

I now have lots of zoning information and some information on how to keep this information up-to-date using the web. However, I still don’t really know what to do with these yet other than collect them. For a future trip I might collect maps for cities in the Los Angeles and adjoining counties – anything I can get to on a day trip during the week (since I will have Fridays available).