So I thought I was leaving last Wednesday, but events conspired to keep me here six more days. Actually it was just one event, a f-up on the part of my dentist. As part of getting ready for this long trip I thought it prudent to get all my various body parts checked out. Most of it went pretty well. All my various doctors pronounced me no more of a mess than I was last time. They renewed my prescriptions and sent me on my way. Ditto with the ophthalmologist – some new astigmatism in my right eye – she wanted to sell me new glasses but I didn’t want to buy and she said no biggie.
Ah, but the dentist… My initial exam showed a cracked filling that will need a crown. So two weeks ago I went in for Part One of that unpleasant and expensive process, where they take impressions and measure and tear the tooth up. Part Two where they pop in the new crown was to be LAST Monday at 3 pm. Monday at 1:15 I get a call that “there was a problem”, so would I mind coming in eight days later? I hit the roof – YES I MIND!! In anticipation of leaving in two day I’d cleaned out the fridge, packed the van, told everyone I was leaving, made plans with my family for the coming week, and boom! it’s all on hold. I was looking forward to escaping shitty Reno August weather, and here I am in six more days of it. My personal belief is that they forgot to send it in to the crown-makers … why else would they wait till two hours before my appointment?
I was in quite a lather for a couple of days, but living angry ain’t my style, so I settled down and pretty much enjoyed the rest of the week. A little shopping trip to get six days worth of food, a walk to the library to return my last books and get one more for this interlude and hit happy hours on the way home. There was a big Holland event on Saturday that was really fun!
So time marched on as it does, and this Monday I got the effing crown I was supposed to get last Monday, and I am the heck out of here on Tuesday!
Tuesday (Aug 14)
This is it! As I drifted off last night I thought: “I won’t be in this bed again for the next 2-3 months!”
I have been preparing and packing for this trip so long that today is pretty simple: Shower and shave, clean the kitchen, move a crapload of stuff to the van (three shopping carts full). I piled it all in rather haphazardly. I’ll have the the rest of the trip to organize it! By 2pm I am on the road.
It’s only an hour’s drive to where I plan to stay tonight, so I take my time, fill up the tank with that relatively cheap Nevada diesel, eat a giant meal at the Hawaiian bbq place and return that last library book (only got half way through … ):
WHUFU page for: Hampshire Rocks Campground
At the Rainbow Road exit off I-80.
On the South Yuba River.
Super nice place, even if the freeway is 200 yards away.
If you're familiar with the Bay Area to Reno run on I-80, there's a place where it crosses some beautiful rapids. This is about ½ mile downstream from that.
tonight:
My site, #11, is 15 yards from a perfect little swimming access spot on the river.The river forms a couple of excellent swimming holes that run most of the length of the campground. Sites 11, 12, 13 all have nice river access, and it looks like the lower numbered sites towards the entrance have even better access.
It turns out the busy transcontinental train tracks are right across the river. You can hear it but you can't see it ... from my site anyway.
Only 4-5 sites taken here at 4 pm on Tuesday. I have my choice of many excellent sites very close to the river.
Although I seem to have remembered almost everything I wanted to bring (and more!), it’s all really poorly organized, so I spend some time moving stuff around. Results not very pleasing so far….
The water is SO inviting that I get off my lazy butt and ease my way in. It was super nice! Swim for a while, then float down to the first (small) run of white water and lay in it for a while. Then came the giant dog from a neighbor’s campground barking at me ‘… Not a huge deal, but loud barking dogs are not my favorite campground neighbors.
A cold front is forecast, and indeed, by the time I got out if the river it was cloudy and 10 degrees colder. So on my very first night out I had to dig deep into the clothes box to excavate a warm turtleneck buried at the very bottom of because I thought I wouldn’t need it for a couple of months! Lovely evening…
Around 7 a nice lady and her granddaughter asked if they could use my path to the river. They were swimming upstream and saw a bear on the other side of the river (!) and my spot looked like the best place to check it out. So we all stood there for something like a half hour watching it chow down on berries.
Wednesday – Tuesday
Today started well. Woke by the river to the sounds of Interstate 80 … Yelp says there is a likely breakfast spot 13 miles down the road. Drive to the Emigrant Gap exit and backtrack a couple of miles.
When the entrance to an intense cross-continent interstate is 800 yards from your mellow campsite, a bit of mental work is required … getting your game face on so to speak, before driving. I tried, but even so, lazed around in the mid 60’s (the speed limit!) for those 13 miles. Regular me would have zoomed right past this version of me in a blur. The spot, The Rustic Table, turned out to be quite nice and reasonably priced by California standards. I think the fact that it requires intentionality to get there is why the prices are good. It was very pleasant to sit outside, but when my food came, suddenly about eight bees materialized and made it really hard to eat. No big, inside was nice also.
When I finished it was about 1:30, time to do some work. I did the drive to Petaluma in one sitting … mostly because I knew the traffic would be incrementally worse if I did. The traffic was actually pretty good until Napa/Sonoma, All in all as good as one could hope for making that unpleasant drive.
Played with the kids, we all had hot dogs for dinner, rassled the kids to bed. I scored the primo parking spot next to the house, so I even had good wifi!
Thursday
Mid-afternoon, drove to Corte Madera to give my van to D&K Automotive for my 90K Service, then waited an hour and a half to get picked up by Martha. Played with the kids, finished my two day old Hawaiian bbq and slept on the sofa, because I ain’t got no van.
Friday
Got up at the crack of 8 am to ride with Martha to Marin to get my van. Kill the first hour of waiting for pick-up time at a swishy little breakfast restaurant in old town Larkspur ($17 for biscuits and gravy and coffee!). Then kill the next two hours at the ever so quaint little Corte Madera Library, then … I get the call that that was supposed to say “come pick up your van now, everything is awesome!”.
The call did not say that. It said that they are waiting for a fuel pump to arrive from Newark (CA). They did not mention that it would probably get there by 5, but they close at noon. So, I am fucked for the weekend. Not hugely fucked, but a little bit. I was going to stay with the family for the weekend anyway, but now I am sleeping on the living room sofa instead of out of sight and mind in the good ole van. I am more of a strain on Martha, and that is never a good thing. I planned on tightening up my van organization all weekend, and I have no fucking van. Man, I am having some bad luck getting this adventure going. :(
The Weekend
That said, life is easy enough at the Martha household. She took Rylan with her on her Saturday garage sale tour of Mill Valley, so all was quiet and chill till 11-ish. Then the kids (and Martha) napped, now Ry’s off to a birthday party, so it’s chill again. She picked up a sweet jigsaw puzzle for me that Chad wants to do here, so he and I got that going while the kiddies were in nap time. Finished it by noon Sunday!
Martha hustled us all out the door to go to the deli in Bodega for dinner. It was quite fun. The kids and dad got fish and chips, me and Martha got calamari, and I got all the leftovers for lunch Sunday.
Sunday morning there was a yard sale in the neighborhood, so we all (minus the teenager, who associates with us only when there’s no way out) trooped over there. One bicycle+child carrier, one scooter, one stroller, three grown-ups, two toddlers. It turned out to be quite a nice sale, I got do see Martha do her thing. She forked over $95 and came away with a bundle of nice stuff – 6-7 bags of various sorts and two coats. The fellow runs a shop in town, so she chatted him up a bit. She called herself a professional reseller. I had never heard her say that, but that pretty well describes what she does.
They went to a kid birthday party / pool party. I went downtown for a Sunday paper and coffee, and otherwise enjoyed the peace and quiet of an afternoon with the house to myself.
Monday
The day started out a mess, but ended up as a pretty good adventure. Monday turns out to be a really bad day for anybody to drive me to Corte Madera to pick up my van. After a few minutes of anger and denial and bargaining I moved on to acceptance, and started looking at other solutions. The solution turned out to give me two new apps on my phone! The first is for the Smart Train which now runs from Santa Rosa to San Rafael.
The Petaluma station is not far on the other side of downtown, so I walked there and caught the train. It was FUN! The tracks run between 101 and the various lagoons of San Pablo Bay. Make you remember what a beautiful area this is. Senior price: $3.75! Next problem is getting from downtown SR to Corte Madera. For that I downloaded Lyft, which turns out to be a breeze to use! Omar showed up in his red Corolla and spirited me right over there. Cost: $12.61, so the upshot is that from leaving the house to picking up the van took about two hours and cost less that $18, and that includes a 1.2 mile walk. Not bad at all!
If I were going straight back, I should hustle out of there and get on 101 immediately, because the fucking traffic will only get worse. But that’s not me. I decide to go the very long way via Stinson Beach. Over the hill to Mill Valley, stop at Grilly’s for a grande pork burrito (very tasty and quite reasonable by Marin standards), then around the corner through Tam Junction and up Shoreline Highway (Route 1) to Panoramic Highway. The goes right past the road to Muir Woods. All the demanding signs remind me that Muir Woods is basically appointment only nowadays. Weird.
Anyway, onwards, to rejoin Route 1 at Stinson. It’s about 4 pm, and I decide I deserve a beer at the Sand Dollar. $7 for a Lagunitas, but it was fun to sit there and soak up that beach atmosphere. For old times sake I even shot the basketball for a few minutes. This was strategic, because I realized my ball is quite flat and I should inflate it while I have access to a pump. Then walked over to the beach and waded and just sat there. The damage from that weird flash flood last April was still all over the place. Then time to make the hour-ish, but quite scenic drive home. North past Bolinas Lagoon, past the disguised turn-off to the town of Bolinas, through Dogtown and the southern edge of Point Reyes to a right at Olema on Sir Francis Drake for a couple of miles to a left at the Petaluma sign. Down the middle a steep tree-covered canyon for a while the up the hill and around the edge of Lake Nicasio and onward until before you know it you’re on D Street in P-town!
Home just in time for a really nice dinner. I plugged in the van to make happy batteries, with a twinge of regret because it should have been plugged in all weekend.
Tuesday
Well, I was about a half hour into getting ready to head out today, and Martha invited me to stay another night, which I am very happy to do! My biggest frustration about the weekend was that I’d planned to spend it repacking and cleaning and organizing the van, but the van was not there! So having an extra day to do that now is really great. As it happened, Chad’s ShopVac was just sitting in the yard as if it were just waiting for me to notice the opportunity to vacuum the van for the first time on eight years! So it got the most thorough cleaning it’s gotten in nine years (i.e. since I owned it).
Take out all the boxes. Empty all the nooks and crannies – there are a lot of nooks. Vacuum, then wipe each and every one of them. I came up with six pairs of sunglasses in the various nooks of the cab. I like three pair well enough to keep them, the other three pair went to Martha’s donate pile, There was a substantial handful of little rocks and pieces of wood I’ve thought were cool over the years. Keeping those for some reason. I am resolved to label new additions so I know where I picked them up. The obsidian, the super light tuff pieces are very cool, but where the heck did they come from?
Finally, just for fun, hose the darned thing down. Chad’s car washing kit evidently did not make the trip from Eureka, so I didn’t really wash it. But I did hose off a summer’s worth of tree goop and bird droppings. Now it kind of sparkles if you kind of squint just right.
The whole process felt really, really good. I am content with my extra day here.