Walkout

“Inconceivable!” I say with a smile. “Thanks again”. The trucks shuffle and a few minutes later John’s 300 pulls away.

WALKOUT

The rolling walkout started Friday at 10 a.m.. The nearest first markers for these cohorts could be as far as Salt Lake City, Utah; Boise Idaho; and Phoenix, Arizona. All of the markers were outside California: this was to guarantee this was a ‘national’ action, and California sheriffs, highway patrol, and district attorneys would have no authority any more. Why and how any branch of the government could impede peaceful migration of thousands of citizens was unclear, but the value of these vampires was in the billions. That is a strong incentive to break moral and legal codes.

The US interstate system has a simple numbering system: interstates running west-to-east are numbered as multiples of 10 starting from the southern border. In the south, the I-10 runs from Los Angeles, California to Jacksonville, Florida. In the north, the I-90 (the longest) runs from Seattle, Washington to Boston, Massachusetts. Interstates running south-to-north are numbered similarly, but shifted by ‘5’ and starting on the Pacific Ocean. The I-5 runs from San Diego, California to Seattle, Washington. The I-95 runs from Miami, Florida up to Bangor, Maine. This grid bounded by Seattle, Bangor, Miami, and San Diego represents the most-easily accessible (in time, by land travel) locations in the US. More remote towns are within relatively short travel times from each of the interstates and their interconnections. The interstate grid enables navigation techniques similar to finding shops in back alleys within the grid of a major city like Manhattan.

All of the first-day markers were very near these interstate grid points, and subsequent-day markers were also ‘on the grid’ if the final destinations were further east. This was to enable short travel times to