DAY ONE - Leaving Sacramento for points south

SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - We left Sacramento one day later than anticipated, but at least partially rested for the seven days ahead.

Our amigos Pat and Sanders Lamont convinced us to spend one more night in town and so we did just that, having dinner at Vallejo's, our favorite Mexican restaurant in Sacramento. (Dinner at a Mexican restaurant on the night before beginning a 2,000 mile trip to Mexico? Si.)

We said our farewells and were on the road by 8 a.m., zooming out of the neighborhood we called home for the last few years, getting on Interstate 5 with a heavily loaded trailer and Isuzu Trooper, bouncing our way along for about two hours (I mean seriously bouncing) until we pulled into a truck stop in Westly where I had the air in the tires checked and we weighed the trailer.

I knew we were still pretty far from Mexico when the 'attendants' at the truck stop charged me $15 U.S. to check all eight tires and put some air in.

Fifteen dollars. Madre mia.

But the biggest surprise came when we weighed the trailer and found it was about 200 pounds over the maximum weigh for the two axles. Ouch!

Visions of bending axles in the middle of the Mojave Desert filled my head, so we pulled into the first RV park we could find and dumped all of the tanks - fresh water, grey water and the best of all, the black water. Being new to the RV sport, I didn't have any of the proper hoses aboard and had to rely on an RV angel to help out. He also pointed out that we were carrying way too much weight in the front of the trailer.

All of that threw us way behind my intended schedule but because the Admiral took over the helm, we ended up well past Los Angeles by 10 p.m. that night, overnighting in a truck stop with diesels running on both sides of us.

I didn't hear a thing that night, nor have a single dream I remember.

The nightmare came the next day when we were on the outskirts of Phoenix and we weighed both the Trooper and the trailer together.

We found out we needed a serious Atkins-Pritikin-Jenny Craig-South Beach-Weight Watchers program for the Trooper and the trailer.

More in the next blog on how we shed 500 pounds in two hours at the Jim & Pam Carr Resort in south Phoenix.