North Coast Travelogue 10/22- 10/24

Headed to San Francisco again on Sunday.

I'm thankful to Glenn Franco- Simmons of the Eureka Reporter for that one editorial he wrote where he picked on the environmentalists and their Subarus. Remember that one? Now it gives me something to look for on those long drives.

I was happy to report a while back about the first car to scream past me on the freeway being a Subaru. This time, no such luck. The first car to scream past me- I was going 65- was a Ford Bronco, or some such. The second one, right behind that one, was a Subaru, though.

I never realized, until I started really looking for them, just how many Subarus are out there. They seem to be very popular cars.

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Anyone who goes to the Bay Area rightfully complains about having to deal with the Santa Rosa area. I'm getting to wonder if the Petaluma area isn't worse. Sure, sometimes you get jammed up in Santa Rosa, but it seems we always do going south by Petaluma.

I can't figure out why.

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We couldn't take advantage of a free room at the Cathedral Hill Hotel this time. Oracle was having a convention in San Francisco so all the rooms were booked. We fell back on the Native Daughters of the Golden West Home on the corner of Fulton and Baker in The City.

Though it costs more than free, $50 a night for the two of us, this place isn't bad. I think I actually enjoyed it more than the last time we stayed there.

Knowing the roads a little better by now, our city map was a little easier to read. Driving to the UCSF clinic only took like ten minutes. It seemed like less than that. I measured the distance on the map and it was less than a mile and a half. That's almost walkable. Certainly bikeable.

I get a kick out of the free internet there. As I mentioned before, they don't provide internet, but the place across the street has wireless and it's an open connection. You can pick it up from inside the house.

For some reason I ended up losing the connection around 8:30ish Monday, though. Couldn't figure it out. Computer said the signal was there but I couldn't connect to it. I hope they didn't decide to secure it after all this time. Interesting that place doesn't mention anything about internet on their web site.

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Stayed at the old reliable, Day's Inn in Novato, Monday night. I enjoy staying there but I'll have to say I get a little miffed with some of their staff sometimes. I've stayed there how many times? How many times have I seen the guy at check in? Yet he asks me for a photo id again. That gets on my nerves.

Starvation rations for a couple days this time. For some reason Connie figures just one serving of the microwave meals will be sufficient for me and so all I had for breakfast, lunch and dinner was one serving of lasagna or whatever else she brought along.

Breakfast was really bad. She mentioned she'd bought some ham and egg Hot Pockets. I'd had them before and figured that would be fine. Are they making them smaller now? The ones we had weren't the ones I remembered. I had two the size of mid- sized cookies. That isn't going to work. I can handle one or two meals like that, but not two days.

Finally, on Tuesday night, I mentioned that we were on starvation rations. Connie didn't have a clue at first, then finally realized what I was saying and said she'd bring more in the future. First feeling of a full belly I had since leaving home was Tuesday morning at the breakfast room at Day's Inn.

Oh, one thing about Day's Inn: My laptop kinda went south on me and I was wondering if I'd have access to internet while I was gone. I figured if worse came to worse, I could use the public iMacs at UCSF and the computer in the lobby of the Day's Inn.

I'd assumed the Day's Inn computer was free for guests. I guess I was wrong. Took a closer look at it while I was there and it costs $1.00 for ten minutes. Heck. I couldn't even check my e-mail in ten minutes. Good thing my laptop was still useable.

Need to get that laptop fixed. Apparently the "backlight" is going out. Sometimes the screen goes black on me, although you can still see the desktop icons if you look real close. I didn't even know they had backlights. Still useable at least for now. Weird thing is, I have to use battery power. If I plug in the AC converter, the screen blacks out within seconds. Still works to charge it, though.

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The roads are being repaved down by the Mendocino/ Humboldt County line. Controlled traffic just south of Richardson's Grove held us up maybe fifteen minutes. I suspect they'll have most of it finished by the end of the week, from the looks of it.

The backed up traffic on the north end of the construction zone, where that gas station is at the south end of Richardson Grove, caused us to miss our usual last stop before Eureka. We usually stop there to take a break but we would have had to fight our way through the line of stopped traffic to get in there. We decided we'd stop at Garberville instead.

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This was the first time I'd been in Garberville in probably at least fifteen years, maybe twenty. I was surprised at the amount of traffic and all the activity. I figured that it would be a lot quieter there. I also never noticed how many hotels and motels Garberville has.

I didn't see any indication of the parking problems in Garberville I'd heard of recently. I did see a Sheriff's Deputy writing a ticket for a truck parked in the red zone in front of Ray's Food Place, where we'd stopped to get something to eat.

And I looked all around and saw no sign of Eric Kirk. I figured he'd have the red carpet rolled out knowing I'd be coming to town. Oh. That's right. He didn't know I was coming.

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Am I the only one that gets spooked by the wind when I'm driving? Two or three times between Rio Dell and Eureka I thought the wind was going to blow me off the road. One good gust would be enough to actually move the truck off course, or so it seemed. I was actually more worried about overreacting to the wind than the wind actually running me off the road.

It seemed like the wind was really blowing. Then, when I got home, it didn't seem anywhere near as strong as it did when I was driving. Oh well, don't have to worry about that again until the next time I go back down. And the time after that, and the time after that....