Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

Normally I do not cross the Sierra Nevada in the wintertime, save by train, due to the dicey weather conditions. However, we are having a long dry spell, and I arranged to go visit my father and stepmother at their home in the hills above Oroville, California today. It's just within range for me to do it as a day trip, albeit a long one.

I didn't set an alarm, and consequently didn't get on the road until 7:30 AM. The trip is about 170 mi / 275 km, and including a number of rest stops and the relatively slow drive through secondary roads in the Yuba/Butte County foothills, it took me just over four hours, which really isn't bad.

We spent the afternoon catching up on the past two years of my travels and of my father's medical treatments. He has been fighting cancer, which while it's in remission and he's lived much longer than the initial diagnosis had suggested, it has still been hard on him.

We had lunch and had a very good afternoon. Eventually, though, I did need to head for home. I probably should have left sooner. But leaving at twilight as I did not only reduced my sun exposure (I'm under medical instruction to avoid sun as much as possible, but also put me in a position to take a photo of the Sutter Buttes under lighting that I'd never seen before.

( Sutter Buttes at Sundown )

Twilight gave way to fully darkness, and that led to the worst part of the drive: CA-20 through Grass Valley/Nevada City and up to I-80 at night. That stretch of highway is lovely an scenic on a bright sunny day like this morning, but to me is something of a terror at night. I took it pretty carefully because even with improvements that they've made to it, I find it intimidating. Once I was on I-80, the going was easier.

I'm very glad I got to visit my father. To be honest, I don't know how many more times I'm going to have a chance to do so, so I need to make the most of such visits when I can make them. He and I parted on very bad terms back in 1981, but we've long since reconciled to that and we get along pretty well now.

While I was visiting my father, he admired my Jacaru Australian hat (pictured in icon). I explained how, because of marginal shipping costs, I buy several of them at a time. They do wear out, but I'd rather the hats wear out than my head. He said that the next time I made an order that I should get one for him.

Today, I checked, and I did have one remaining hat from the last order, so I packaged it up and sent it to him as a Father's Day present. I guess I need to order three more now, however.

As I mentioned a few days ago, Lisa has been slowly going through boxes that have been through multiple moves and has been finding photographs for me to scan. Sometimes I even know what the photos are and when they were taken, when I've had the presence of mind to write notes on the back of them. This first one is both a happy and a sad memory, that being a photograph of my sister, Kelli, on her high school graduation day.

( Thirty Years Ago )

Kelli later came developed leukemia and a severe lung disease which eventually led to her losing her home and living out her live in a nursing facility in Sacramento. She died in August 2019. I was in Ireland at the time, in between Worldcon and Eurocon, and inasmuch as I had her medical power of attorney — and thank goodness Kelli and I had talked seriously about this when she was in somewhat better health — they had to call me there to tell me that they'd run out of options. (Thank goodness I got a "burner" phone and put the phone number on my US phone number's voicemail message so people could reach me.) I had to tell the doctors there to keep her comfortable, and she died a few days later. I still miss her.

This is one of the best photos I've ever had of my sister, and I'm grateful that Lisa found it for us.

Today, November 25th, was my late maternal grandparents' wedding anniversary. I may be the last of their descendants who remembers this, and even I can't remember what year they were married. I still miss them.

While working this morning, I heard some talk on the scanner between the engineer of an approaching Union Pacific train and the dispatcher that was disturbing. The engineer told the dispatcher, "I can't shut off this engine."

( A bit about how diesel locomotives work )

The engineer explained that no matter where he set the power selector, the lead locomotive (and at least one of the remote-controlled locomotives farther back in the train) was displaying Run 8. Fortunately, he was able to disengage the electric motors from the engine. He then was able to use the air brakes to bring the train to a halt here in Fernley. This is sort of like if you were driving a manual transmission car and the throttle got stuck wide open, but you were able to hold the clutch down and shift into neutral while applying the brakes. It works, but it's unnerving, and also loud.

( Slow Runaway )

Once the train was stopped, the crew discussed options. (I only could hear this because they'd stopped in Fernley, where it is relatively flat and straight, and that was a good thing when trying to stop a potential runaway. Because of this, I could hear the train crew as well as the dispatcher.) The dispatcher put them in touch with the UP Help Desk. The Help Desk essentially told them to reboot the locomotive, or at least the parts of it running the train-optimization software that is supposed to run the train at the optimal speed and save fuel. In addition, the crew got in contact with the PTC Help Desk. PTC is "Positive Train Control," the system that stops trains if they overrun signals or go too fast. The engineer reported that the PTC on this locomotive was not behaving properly, and he was worried that even if they got the initial software issue resolved that the PTC would override things again. There was no guarantee that the next "runaway" would be on a nice easy stretch of railroad like Fernley.

After more than an hour of back-and-forthing (including Sparks Yard sending someone out to have a look at the locomotive), they got it sufficiently reset to work again, the PTC desk said it was okay to disable the PTC if the dispatcher agreed, and the dispatcher said it was okay if the PTC desk said so. With PTC disabled and the fuel-optimization program also disabled, the engineer felt safe enough to re-engage the engine and slowly pull away, heading east. The dispatcher was relieved, not just because there was no catastrophe, but because there were multiple trains converging on Fernley and the worried dispatcher had nowhere to put them. Everyone breathed a sign of relief, but not a very deep one because of the growing smoke.

( Return of the Smoke, With Interest )

Now this isn't anywhere near as bad as the smoke in the Bay Area and the Willamette Valley, where I understand the AQI was over 500 (unsafe for everyone). But it was certainly noticeable. My eyes started watering again and my throat burned with the smoke. I'm very glad that I can stay inside and run the swamp cooler, which does pull some of the smoke out of the air. Those people who have to be out in this, particularly the fire fighters trying to put out these fires, have my gratitude.

I only hope that the wind shift means that the fires are being pushed back over already burned-out areas, which might make it easier to put it out.

My father's home is in the evacuation area, and the fire maps this morning that purport to show areas actually burning (not the "heat maps" that cover a larger area) do not yet cover his house, but they're awfully close, as the fire is now on the south side of Lake Oroville. My only contact for my father is his home landline phone, and I don't even know if he has a mobile phone, so I have not been in contact with him.

I don't remember if I've written about this before, but after we did a bunch of cleaning in the bedroom and changed the linen on the bed, I got to thinking about how every night I sleep in my own bed, I have a connection to my family.

( Memories in a Bedspread )

Using these blankets on my bed gives me good memories of my family.

I realized that while I'd written about this in friends-locked posts, I never did do a public post on the bad news: my sister, Kelli Standlee, died August 24, 2019. As I've written before, she has been in and out of hospitals for years and had been living in a nursing home due to a serious lung issue, and had been living with leukemia for years as well.

While Lisa and I were driving to San Francisco to get our flight to Ireland, we stopped and talked with Kelli for a few minutes. She seemed in as good a condition as she's been in the past few years. I tell her that it would be difficult for me to rush back home during our trip unless my physical presence was going to be the difference between life and death, and she told me then that she understood that. I'd taken her out to lunch the previous weekend for her 51st birthday. She told me to save up all of the postcards I typically get her on my travels and to bring them back to her all at once. (Because of this, while I have postcards I got for her along the way, I never mailed them.)

While I was in Ireland, I got calls from her close friend, and from the nursing home, and eventually from Mercy San Juan hospital, advising me that Kelli had gotten much worse and was in intensive care (again). The doctors worked on her as they have done before, but eventually they got to the point where they told me that they did not think there was anything else they could do. As the holder of Kelli's medical power of attorney, they asked me for the hard decision that I figured I would eventually have to make. Fortunately, Kelli and I, while we were drawing up these forms and having the notary in to witness her signature, had a serious heart-to-heart discussion over this, so I think I did what she wanted me to do. As long as there was a reasonable hope of recovery, keep trying. But when the experts ran out of treatments and she showed no sign of ever improving or of waking up again, don't let her suffer. I told the doctors to begin "comfort care." Kelli's friend Roxanne was there and later told me that she was with Kelli when she passed, after never regaining conciseness again.

Now as it happens, nobody actually called me to tell me that Kelli had died while I was in Europe. I did not actually learn her exact date of death until later. Her friend dealt with getting the papers to have Kelli's remains cremated, and collected her personal effects from the nursing home, and informed Medicare/Medi-Cal that she had died. We had no plans for a funeral.

( Last Photo I Have of Kelli )

We planed no funeral; however, there probably will be a event like the one held for my mother, and possibly in the same place, once the parties involved can coordinate everything necessary. I will announce when that happens. It is my hope that we will eventually have my sister's remains interned at Sutter Cemetery, near where our grandparents are buried.

Regrettably, Kelli's never got to see her grandson, as Keith Leon Standlee, child of Shane Standlee and Amber Hughes, was born on September 19th. (I also realize now that I did not write about that here in my journal, only reposting the news in a Facebook post passed on from baby Keith's mother.

I'm pretty sure I did all that I could for my sister. It's now my job as executor (not that she actually had much, and no real property) to do my part of cleaning up what estate she does have. I've ordered a copy of the death certificate from the Sacramento County Clerk. As I've also never closed out my late mother's bank account either, I have a feeling I'm going to need to schedule a day in Yuba City/Marysville to do talk to banks and credit unions.

On Sunday, I slept in an hour or two, which I probably needed, but I also ended up "paying" for it later. After breakfast at the Wigwam, Lisa helped me finish packing the Rolling Stone for a week in the Bay Area. This is generally much easier than a convention trip because, for example, I can just take my shirts out to the RV and hang them in the closet.

Lisa did have me confirm that the "hotel" power works, after the repairs she made on the previous trip. Everything is good, which is a big relief.

As planned, I stopped in Sacramento to visit my sister and checked her out of the nursing home to do some routine shopping. With my mother's passage, I'm one of the few people on whom she can reply to ever get out of that place, and while they do provide meals and 24-hour care, there are sundry items that she either has to go buy or get someone to bring her.

The RV is much higher than my minivan, so I brought a footstool that Kelli could use to climb into the passenger seat. She can walk very short distances, but otherwise is confined to a wheelchair.

We made trips to Target and Walgreen's. Neither place is far from the nursing home, but it's a fairly time consuming process. We don't have a handicapped-parking placard (she's working on requesting one that would stay with her for the use of family and friends helping her out), and it would have been difficult for me to park the RV in one anyway, but we managed. Still, it took roughly two hours to get the chores done.

Traffic coming out of the Sierra on Sunday morning was heavy, and I hit clots of slow traffic heading south on I-5 to Lodi Junction as well, probably adding at least an hour to my total trip time. OTOH, by the time I got to Altamont Pass, most of the go-home-from-the-Sierras traffic had already crested the hill, and aside from one more clog at the I-580/238 interchange to I-880 south, it was mostly smooth sailing. Nevertheless, with all of the accumulated delays, it was nearly 11 PM before I could get settled in to my usual parking space and get to sleep, which isn't a good thing when your alarm is set for 4 AM the next morning.

I have work, medical, and personal commitments this week extending through Saturday this week.

Thanks to some fortunate timing of sporting events, I was able to watch the Formula 1 race live last night from the hotel room before going to sleep, and when I woke up the final round of the Masters golf tournament (shifted earlier and compressed due to weather conditions in Augusta) was already going, so with a slightly extended check-out, I got to see that as well. This gave me a leisurely morning at the hotel before I left for home a bit after Noon.

( See the Snow )

I got home around 4:30 PM, tired but happy to have had a good weekend with my sister. We'll do that more often now that we know the process.

For the first time since January, I've finally managed to make it across the Sierra and down to Sacramento. I was able to leave Fernley around 1 PM after tidying up Day Jobbe stuff for the week, and made good time by my standards. The weather was fine and clear, and the roads were dry and fast, even with three or four meters of snow looming over the road near the summit. I had time to stop in Roseville to finally buy more of my shave ointment from Lush (no Lush stores in Northern Nevada) before heading down to the hotel. The Crowne Plaza gave me a room upgrade and a room just down the hall from the hot tub. I got moved in, set up the computer, confirmed that there was no work chasing me over the mountains, and walked to get some dinner and bring it back to the room. After dinner, I soaked in the hot tub (ah, luxury), something I rarely get a chance to do while traveling.

I checked with my sister for when she wants me to be at the nursing home tomorrow morning to start training me on how to make her equipment work, and then we'll decide what to do for her day out with me.

Alas, the hotel TV doesn't include the Giants broadcast, but I can get the game over my phone, and with the wi-fi it doesn't even use up any of my bandwidth.