North Coast Travelogue: 9/20-9/21

Left for another trip to UCSF Medical Center again on Sunday. I was worried about reports of some sort of heat wave developing over the next few days. Then again, we'd suffered through a pretty bad heat wave a couple years ago while making the same trip so I figured, while we might be uncomfortable, we shouldn't have too much a problem with it. Still, being the worrier, well...you know.

I was surprised at the amount of water in the Eel River. From all the water shortages I'd been hearing about, I figured the river bed would be almost dry. It didn't look too bad to me all the way down, or at least as bad as I would of expected. Same with the Russian River. Didn't look anywhere near as bad as expected.

Driving through the Richardson Grove area I was pleased to hear the guy on KMUD say it was something like 74 degrees, although it was predicted to get into the 90s. Maybe this heat wave will be a flash in the pan?

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I was almost appalled to see all the green grass in Mendocino and Sonoma Counties. Aren't they supposed to be on mandatory water conservation measures? There was all this lush green grass on the commercial properties alongside 101. What's with that?

I wondered if maybe they were painting the turf to make it look green (yes, that sort of thing is done by some green grass fanatics). I finally got a chance to take a close look when we stopped in Cloverdale on the way back.

I checked out the lawn area next to the Starbucks on the south end of Cloverdale. It didn't look painted, but the soil was bone dry and it was very hot there at the time. I couldn't see how that grass could be so green and the soil so dry. Even with underground irrigation, I would think the soil would be a little damp. Maybe not?

Anyway, I've been reading so much about their water problems I can't believe that they still see fit to water at least the commercial lawns. Oh, on our way back home, I noticed the One Log House in Piercy also had a green lawn. Have they no shame?

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The Novato Day's Inn was same as usual and their air conditioning in the rooms gave me fits. I had ours on for hours and it seemed to barely make a dent in the room temperature. Finally I realized I had it adjusted wrong (as always) and set it to hard cool. It still didn't do much. In the morning it was cooler outside than it was in the room. Made me wonder if it would of made more sense to leave the air conditioner off and just open the room's front and back doors?

Oh, and as I mentioned on my Facebook page, Wyndham Rewards burned us out of a free nights stay. I'd read earlier we need 10,000 points for a free night's stay there. We finally accumulated just over that amount. When I contact Wyndham to set up the free night, I find out it now requires 14,000 points! We won't live long enough to acquire that many.

The gal at Day's Inn told us they changed the point requirement when the company was changed from Travel Rewards to Wyndham and a lot of people got burned and were pissed. On the upside, I think they might have changed points awarded, too, I noticed on my hotel receipt we earned over 600 points for Sunday night. I thought it used to be around 100, depending on the cost of the room.

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Left for UCSF from Novato expecting it to be warm in San Francisco as they had issued a special weather statement earlier. I don't recall if they'd dropped that warning, but it turned out to be a non- event. As we approach the Golden Gate Bridge, we could see fog. It turned out to be fairly thick fog and it made me nervous when visibility got to probably less than 200 feet. It stuck around for a while, too, and there was still a little around when we got on the bridge heading home. No heat problem in S.F.

Got to UCSF on Monday about an hour earlier than we normally would have as we had an additional appointment at their Mt. Zion facility. Good thing we got there early because about the time we normally would of gotten there the parking garage was filled and they closed it. As it was we got a prime parking spot.

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Took the UCSF shuttle system to Mt. Zion. That system works pretty good. Fun way to tour at least some parts of the city. We also managed to get everywhere on time, despite spending much more time at Mt. Zion than we'd expected. Surprised how well that worked out.

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The UCSF Oncology Dept. at Parnasus is taking this swine flu thing pretty seriously, as they should. When you go in there a sign is up saying everyone going in there (except staff) has to wear a mask and sanitize their hands. They had some bottles of that hand sanitizer stuff and a bunch of face masks in boxes at the admittance desk.

I hate those masks. Makes it uncomfortable to breath. Still, we weren't there all that long so it wasn't too big a deal and with people with compromised immune systems present, they should take every precaution.

Despite getting back in time- but too late, we thought, to get the blood work done for our appointment- we ended up leaving Oncology at about the same time we usually do. I'm not sure how we managed that.

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Oh, and cheapest gas that I saw was Rotten Robbie's, in Santa Rosa, that Gas Club place in South Petaluma. I honestly can't remember the exact prices, but they were the cheapest. I bought my gas at the Willit's Safeway for $3.05 a gallon, after the 3 cents off for using my Safeway card. That Brown's place at the south end of Willit's also matched the Safeway price (how the hell do they manage that?). Both those places selling gas for 40 cents less than it was in Eureka when we left.