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One thing about the trip through the Cascades is that I lose most radio reception. I am now well stocked with a bunch of old time radio programs (thank you Archive.org!) plus an audio-book that Lisa sent me. The drive goes much faster with these playing. It also helps me pace myself.

I'm almost through packing. I may be able to leave even earlier than I expected, which is good because Bay Area freeways on Memorial Day Getaway Day tend to turn to glue, so the sooner I get to Vacaville where things turn rural and less congested, the better.

Oregon Bound

Well, it won't be earlier than I expected, but it will be roughly on time. Fingers crossed that I escape the Bay Area without incident.

Glass(es) Half Empty

I got started nearly an hour earlier than I expected. As I started the van and went to put on my clip-on sunglasses, I realized that I'd left them in the office last night and hadn't noticed because it was after dark when I left. Until this past week I would have just switched to the backup pair, but that pair broke last week, so I was totally without sunglasses. And I'm sufficiently light-sensitive that I can't drive without them unless I were to only drive at night. So I had to divert to Walgreen's to buy a new pair of clip-ons. To my disgust, the only clip-ons they have are tiny -- they cover only about half the area of my lenses. Now I do wear large glasses, but this is silly. Oh, well, I didn't have much choice, and I was not going to spent all day driving around looking for alternatives, nor waste two hours driving back and forth to San Mateo to collect the glasses on my desk there. (Not to mention that if I did that, I'd certainly be stuck in traffic.)

Anyway, I headed up I-680 and 80 to Vacaville with only minor slowdowns in a couple of places, and had lunch in Vacaville. In a couple of minutes, I'm getting back on the road, having frittered away my entire head start on my schedule. It's not that big a deal, but I like keeping padding in the schedule.

Halfway

I pulled into the parking lot at the Yreka Holiday Inn Express about three minutes before my originally projected schedule said I would. Including the delay to get sunglasses, I got out of Fremont about thirty minutes early. I spent a little longer at my lunch stop and at the evening gas-coffee-grocery break. I've said this before, but Microsoft MapPoint's trip planner is crazy: even with the projected speed cranked down to its slowest value, and even with forcing it to schedule a ten-minute break every hour of driving to slow it down further, and even with me driving at (and possibly slightly above) the speed limit, I still lose time over the road. Next time I use it, I think I'm going to have to increase the delay to 15 minutes/hour instead of ten.

( Travel talk )

I hope everyone at BayCon and the other Memorial Day weekend conventions is having a good time. I'll be there in spirit, you might say.