Headed to Phoenix

Today was going to be a relatively short 400 mile drive.  We were out of Las Cruces and on the road by 11 am.  We would have left an hour earlier, but there was a sudden call from Verizon which threw the whole morning into a frenzy.  The bill which Marcia paid on April 6th had not arrived.

One thing about being on the road is that you need to still pay your bills.  So you rely on online banking, online bill notification, etc. etc.  But when you have a problem, and you are so far away from your home and your bank...well, that causes problems.

Looking online it looked like our bank was telling us the check cleared on April 6th.  Much later into the hour we found out that "cleared" meant it was sent out.  Why they don't say "sent" is beyond my IQ, but that is what they do.  So a call to Verizon telling them the check cleared gave them the impression that we sent it to the cell phone account, and not to the home account, and that we needed to call the cell phone division and ask them to credit the payment over to the home division where the payment should have been sent.  Of course, after going through a maze of automated messages, a few foreign accents which makes it hard to understand them, and on top of that, sales pitches to try and get us to "up our plan" even though, according to their records, we are "behind on payments" was more than Marcia could take...she was ready to toss the cell phone against the wall, and drop Verizon right away.  Once we finally got to talk to an English speaking American who was not interested in selling us more service, we found out that no payment had been received yet.  At that point, I had to hold her arm back from tossing the phone against the wall....

A call to the bank lead to another call to the bank and that is where we learned that yes, the check had been processed, but no, they had not any record of Verizon doing anything with the check.  I don't understand all of the bank processing stuff, but essentially the check is "in the mail", which does not give us any comfort knowing how many times the USPS lost Library checks that were sent out and never heard of again over the 19 years that I was a Library Director.

So on the road we went....Marcia had a headache and decided to lay on the bed for the first hundred miles or so.  And she did not miss much. As you see from the pictures below, not much there...

Of course, the next battle for the morning is, who is going to take over Marcia's seat while she is back laying on the bed?  A much easier battle than the one we had with Verizon....as you can see below.

Bubba got there first, he almost left when Skruffy got up there too, but decided that it was best to share the seat, then to be on the floor or couch, and definitely better than being back on the bed with Marcia.

Things started looking better outside once we got to Arizona, and by now, Marcia was back in her seat and most of the frustration was gone.  By our second rest stop, time to walk the dogs, and it was looking very enjoyable outside.

Not bad scenery, but the dogs probably wished there was a little grass....

We arrived in Phoenix around 6 p.m.  Arizona is on Mountain Time, but also on Standard Time, not on Day Light Savings Time, so it is essentially the same as Pacific Time.

So far we have driven just over 2,000 miles.  I have to add another 1,800 miles going from Arkansas to Indiana and then down to Florida.  All we can say is, we are "Loving our new life on the road."  (despite Verizon, the Bank, and the USPS)