I am posting from the public library at Santa Rosa, California. There are journal entries waiting in my laptop, and when I have wi-fi I will post them, but in the meantime, here's the short version: We missed all the snowy mountain passes (at least I hope we did. We haven't got to Mexico yet!) by driving down the coast highways - 101 and 1. The roads were narrow and twisting and went up and down a lot, and it was raining heavily. All this was made more disturbing than usual by the grinding sound that we heard whenever we braked. After much driving through a blacked-out state (the wind has really done a job on these poor folks), we fetched up last night in Santa Rosa and found a place to stay, by virtue of a call home to friends Franco and Jane, who googled up Villa Trailer Park, and with the further help of our trusty GPS. The manager of the rv park told us to take the rv to Chuck's Brake and something-or-other today because they repair all the big trucks and motor homes. We did that and discovered that our main problem was a pulverized wheel bearing. While the good people at Chuck's work on the problem (at the going rate of $105 per hour), we are Discovering Santa Rosa. With any luck, Chuck et al will be able to finish the job today, and we will proceed to the I-5 for the rest of the journey. If not, we'll spend one more night here. At least the sun has come out. We were beginning to think that would never happen.