kevin_standlee | Trip Prelude

For various reasons, we spent last night in a hotel. A useful side effect of this was that we had packed as if we would not be going home, but as we expected, moving into a hotel and spending one night there shook loose a bunch of things that we should have packed or done before leaving. Therefore, we will go back home and fix/pack/do those things and then head to Reno later today to catch the train. None of the things we forgot were mission critical, but all of them are nice-to-have. As an example, I realized that I was still wearing my badly-beat-up "around the house" shoes, whereas I have a nearly-new-but-broken-in pair at home.

I had been wondering why it had been so difficult to book a hotel room for last night, but it finally dawned on me when I went to redeem my free birthday beverage from Starbucks: Burners. People are converging from all directions heading to the first Burning Man in three years, and many of them were staying in hotels all over the Reno-Sparks-Fernley-Fallon area. I should have realized this. After all, two of them,

kshandra and

gridlore, stayed at our place last night so that they could get away early this morning to get to the Burn early. They arrived just as we were leaving yesterday afternoon.

Our train left Emeryville 18 minutes late, making up some of that time by Sacramento, so we'll assume for now that they will be at Reno for an on-time departure at 3:58, meaning we need to be there no later than 3 PM in order to check luggage and give me time to park the car next door. Between now and then we need to pop home, check off all of the things we forgot, repack them, have lunch, and then get back to Reno.