And the rain's now turned to snowy slush and temperature's dropping fast.

Someone from town rode up on a horse. Climbed up on the gate, saw me, I waved and they went off on one of the gate guys. Sounded angry, couldn't really hear too well , I was a bit of a distance from the gate following a rabbit.

After a while he came out to greet me. Turns out he was one of my classmates when I went through high school and he apologized and explained the situation.

As soon as they knew it was actually happening and saw the flashpoints on the horizon, some of the ranchers started herding all the cattle from Harris Ranch across the highway overpass and into the valley, and a public meeting was held, and it was decided that they wouldn't let any outsiders in until some form of larger government had been re-established.

He's going to go back and bring my appearance up at the town council meeting tomorrow night. There's a lot of people like me, away at work or at college with Coalinga as their home, that were outside when they made that decision, and I'm probably not the only one that made it through.

Spent the rest of the morning messing with the radio on the jeep to see if I could get it working again. No dice so far.