I Can't Go Home Again (Literally)

I didn't realize how busy Bank of America was going to be on Saturday morning, and the hotel room was so nice and air-conditioned, and I had the Wimbledon tennis to watch, so I didn't check out of the hotel and go to the bank until about 10 AM, at which time they told me that they could make an appointment for me for 12:30 PM and that I was lucky to have that because they close at 1 PM on Saturday. This couldn't be easily postponed because the purpose was to close the no-longer-needed safe deposit box before it automatically renews next week, so I took the appointment time and lumped it.

I did have one specific errand to run, which I did, but I still had time to kill (and no hotel room left to do it in), so on a whim I went out to Sutter, where I lived for many years with my grandparents and from where I graduated high school. If anyone remembers me from the MythAdventures Fan Club days, you might remember that the club's address was a PO Box in Sutter, on account of where that's where I was living.

I visited my grandparents' grave, then decided to take a spin by the old house at 1853 Second Avenue where I lived with them.

( Except it's not there anymore )

I don't know who owns the lot these days (it passed to cousins of mine when my grandfather's brother died two months after my grandmother; they allowed my grandfather to stay at minimal rent until he died per his brother's request), but my guess is that they've decided the place was a write-off. Besides, the lot is so large that I bet they could built two modern houses on the lot and make a pretty good profit on the transaction. That house had terrible wiring and insufficient electrical service anyway. Before municipal water was brought in, you had the choice of running the pump for the well or running the air conditioning; doing both would blow fuses.

( A picture from the past )

I'm glad I just happened to come by at this point to see the lot in this state. I'll probably visit again someday to find out what ends up happening to the place.

Meet Me by the River Side

Because my business at the bank in Yuba City was delayed so badly, I was quite late getting up to Dobbins to see my mother, and it was not something I could skip. Besides some semi-annual business I have to do in person with her, I finally gave her the Mother's Day gift card I didn't have back in May. After a relatively brief visit, I set off for home, but by then it was clear that I would never be able to get home in time for the 5 PM Worldcon 76 division heads meeting.

Around Kingvale at 4:45 PM, I pulled over and tried to dial in to the meeting on my mobile phone, but while it appeared to connect, I could hear nothing and nobody could hear me, so I gave up and set off again. Coming down the Truckee River canyon approaching the Nevada state line, traffic came to a standstill. There are several places along this stretch of highway where you can pull off the freeway (not at an interchange) and access trails and the river, and I decided I'd make another attempt to get into the meeting, even though it was close to 6 PM.

( Nice Place for a Meeting )

Connectivity is hit-and-miss along this section of highway. If you happen to be close to a tower (like at the Agricultural inspection station), you get full strength. Around here, I got 1x signal, good enough for a voice and text connection, but no data, so I couldn't take full advantage of the features of our Zoom conferencing. I did manage to enter the call, and lindadee (who represented WSFS knowing I probably wouldn't be there) was able to help a couple of times when I wanted to speak. I had to send her a text and she would "raise a hand" in the call on my behalf so that the moderator could unmute my line.

By the time the call ended, whatever was gumming up the works had cleared and I was able to get going again. Even without the conference call to attend, I might have stopped here anyway. If I must sit around for an hour waiting for traffic to clear, I'd rather have done it here than sitting in traffic.

( Sparks Thunderstorm )

None of the rain in Truckee or Reno-Sparks hit Fernley, which is too bad because it might have settled the dust that was whipping around in the wind when I got home and Lisa helped me get my bags out of the car. OTOH, these storms have a tendency to cause more fires from the lightning than they put out from what rain they do drop, and they sometimes cause localized flooding as we can sometimes get 20% of our annual average 13 cm of rainfall in less than an hour, so maybe that was for the best.

Today I did very little. I slept in a bit, had breakfast at the Wigwam, went and bowled a few games, collected the mail, and went home. It was sufficiently hot that I got sleepy again and took a nap for a couple of hours with the swamp cooler pointed at me. Then I tried to catch up on Worldcon and WSFS e-mail that had piled up when I was on the road. It's only a month to go now. Five weeks from today, I'll be getting ready to host the WSFS coverage of the Hugo Awards on CoverItLive. "Days on the calendar are closer than they appear."