Mad Dogs and Englishmen

I'm not sure at which point while stuck in traffic hell on the 60 (it could have been anywhere from Los Angeles to Riverside - 75 miles, that's a long ass traffic jam) I realised that there was no joy to having the roof down.  Yes, owning a convertible is nice whilst gunning up the PCH to Malibu, but in gridlock, negative. 

Of course, desert pioneers that we are, neither of us brought water on the basis that it would heat up in the car, and after all, America is a country that surely has refrigerated beverages at every turn.  This is fine, unless you have opted to place yourself in the car pool lane, in which case you have a choice between death by dehydration and death by jack-knifing yourself under any of the five lanes of trucks that are between you and the off-ramp.  Desert Queen?  Desert Idiot more like. 

Then there's the issue of taking a two-wheel drive four cylinder Mazda on an off road unpaved trail through the desert to the Trailer Park Palace.  Of which more later, because I really must go and find some air-conditioning...