Olympia, Here I Came

The plan was to ride my motorcycle up to visit my youngest daughter and her husband, but I chickened out. It took more than the threat of snow, although that was a particularly potent threat in and of itself, it was really the cold temperature that could come along with snow. Since my son has now given me heated gloves and a heated jacket liner, I could have made the ride with most of my body relatively warm. No, the threat of snow, and the cold that snow generally comes with, was really a threat of ice.

As it turned out, the roads were generally dry and what flurries did happen were brief and of no consequence. But, I still was glad that I was in the heatable cab of a Ford Ranger XLT, even with its 1/3 the mpg of my motorcycle. My daughter was also glad because it let me bring substantially more stuff than just myself. There was a lot of snow, visible on the tops of the Coastal Range all the way up California's I-5, after I-505 joined it. (Well, I don't really know how far from the coast the range that I was looking at was but it was to the west of I-5.)

Even though I was not on my motorcycle and took every advantage of that that I could, I also had some of the benefits that my previous motorcycle riding had given me. Since the trucks ventilation didn't have an option for recirculate, I had all the benefits of the outside air, including the odors. Since I traveled the entire distance with my lights on, people felt justified in cutting me off because I was obviously in a highly maneuverable vehicle with tremendous motivation to avoid colliding.

About half way up, I took advantage of a half-way stop. (It would have been truly half way had it not taken the better part of two hours to get from Salem past Portland.)

Here I'm going to take a break from my normal attempts to express myself humorously. Some of that attempt is an effort to recast my life to be a little lighter than it has been for the last three plus years. Some of it is to avoid depressing any readers, and myself further, with any sadness or tale of woe. In this case though, and continuing in my now tradition of not naming names, my youngest daughter's father-in-law passed away after a nine-month battle with an aggressive lung cancer, this after her mother's demise, two years ago, to gynecological cancer after a two-and-a-half year battle.

Now, her mother-in-law and I are in a very similar place and we had much to talk about and share tears over. Anyone who has lost a spouse of decades carries around a hole where that spouse used to be. It is both our fervent hope that, while we do not ever expect that hole to go away, we will learn to focus on other areas of our lives to help us learn to better live with the hole. While we don't want to be intrusive, our children, indeed all of our families, are important foci. If it can be any consolation at all, I do find that while I can accidentally trip over the hole from the most innocuous of triggers, I am doing so less often and the memories that I treasure, while still tinged with bittersweet, are becoming more treasures than triggers.

In addition to our open conversational help for each other this way, our talk ranged through many other subjects. It was truly great to have an adult conversation where I didn't avoid subjects entirely or self-censor.

I woke up early, which is to say my now normal time. As the darkness was replaced with light, there was a misting of snow, which led to a twoem: I chickened out and didn't ride. I'm watching it snow from inside. Glad I have a truck.

Then during and after breakfast we continued our conversation, now talking more about our children, from whom we fielded several phone calls from the ones I'm visiting now. One of them was a request for several more items to be added to my long distance hauling service. While we spent some time rounding them up, they did not delay my departure beyond its planned time. Our conversation delayed it long enough that I saw this tom turkey from her window.

Of course, the delay and the accident that I never saw slowed my travel enough to Portland to allow me to catch Portland's rush hour. (The "rush hour" label must have been invented by some spin doctor trying to attract people to some city by falsely labeling stop and creep as rush. Further, this person had no concept of time.)

The rest of the trip was uneventful and allowed me to catch up on a number of phone calls, including a call to wish my sister a happy birthday. Yes, she was born on April 1st. Some years I call her and say April Fool. Other years I don't call her. I don't know what she is fooled by more. (I'm not sure that being able to use a phone when traveling is really a plus. I really like the peace and noise from riding a motorcycle.)

Living it vs. Writing it

A lot has been happening this summer, much of it without regular Internet access. I'm referring to my road trip to Alaska, some 16,000 miles in all. When I did have Internet access, it was generally for a short time at a relatively low bandwidth and when I needed to sleep. As a result I just made notes in my Day Timer journal. (Eventually I will get back to those notes and generate at least a few blogs about the trip.)

While this entry is primarily just to get me writing a blog again as I have been home from the trip now for three weeks, I will try to start updating with some current news.

Last week I was at a house in Bodega Bay with my daughter-in-law's family. I came home early to job hunt. Yes, I am looking for a job. It doesn't seem like a good idea to have a household of three people with nary a job among us. So far there has been no nibbles so...

I am participating in an Internet business startup. This may not be a money maker for some time but it has good prospects. In some aspects, it is close to my original idea but as a partnership, it will make more progress. I'm motivated.

My daughters are up in the Portland area with, I'm sure, at least one stop at the Powell St. Book Store. That store alone could motivate me to ride up there. I am wanting to take at least one more longish ride this year, just not 2,500 miles long.

I'm also trying to drum up family attendees to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass free concert in the Golden Gate Park on October 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. It makes a good reason to lure visitors.

With my daughter-in-law in school and needing an easy to drive vehicle to get there, the Prius, I'm using my motorcycle more. Today I put just over 40 miles on it riding into and back home from the Financial District in San Francisco. It was a nice and easy ride compared to the limited times I commuted into San Francisco from Fremont. Of course this ride wasn't anything like riding during rush hour but it is nice to have the option and is a lot cheaper and much less time consuming than BART. Parking is only $0.25/hour. It would have been nice to get rid of the Ford Ranger XLT in the Cash for Clunkers program. While my son and daughter-in-law will need a high mileage vehicle, their current state of employment was just the wrong timing. Oh well, when I can get rid of it, Craig's List will have to do. Surely someone will want the top rated truck in its class for it's model year.