Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

While walking after breakfast yesterday, I learned something about Fernley at what is currently the All Points Grill, a roadside diner that previously was a taqueria and has been under different names during its history, which apparently goes back for a while.

( Fernley History )

One never knows where places you know will pop up in a movie. Apparently quite a few movies have had scenese shot in the Marysville-Yuba City area where I grew up, although the only one I thought I knew about was Citizens Band, which I think had a scene shot at what was then the Motel 6 on CA-99 at Bridge Street. (A motel that is now a Days Inn, which shows what that brand has become.)

I have had some pending business with Bank of America that needed to be done at the branch where I actually have the account, which is Yuba City, so this morning after breakfast and after the fog had lifted sufficiently for me to feel safe doing so, I drove to Yuba City. I misread the local map and ended up spending 30 minutes wandering around Sacramento before I finally found my way back to I-80/I-5, but I had lots of time and all went well. Visibility was at least 1 km most of the way, which was fine.

After dealing with the bank in Yuba City and getting lunch at Starbucks in Marysville, I returned to Sacramento via CA-70, having come up by CA-99 (and thus driving within a stone's throw of the house in which I lived from about 1971-78 with my grandparents in the town of Tudor). Having a fair bit of time on my hands, on a whim I detoured through East Nicholas and looked at where I once played Little League Baseball, including a stop at the school where my team once practiced under the tutelage of Wally Herger, who later went on to be the member of Congress from this district years later. As I was returning to the freeway, I saw a headlight approaching at a railroad grade crossing and elected to stop for a video.

( Train Coming Through Trowbridge )

I then headed back to Sacramento to go see my sister. The good news is that she did not actually have the flu, although her lung problems had flared up badly. She was soundly asleep while I was there and I didn't want to disturb her, but I should be able to see her sometime tomorrow.

I grabbed a small amount of food to take back to the hotel and returned there, where I sat back to take it relatively easy. Tomorrow I have a lot more driving to do. I will be passing through Marysville again tomorrow as I need to go see my mother in the Yuba County foothills, but I couldn't group errands because the bank isn't open on Sunday.

Because we got in to Yuba City last night and our rental truck reservation was not until the afternoon, we didn't hurry to wake up this morning. After a relatively slow morning, we went and had a late breakfast, then drove to U-Haul and collected the rental pickup truck. They told us that if we can return it by 1 PM Sunday, we'll only have to pay for one day's rental. Then we drove to my sister's house and collected my nephew and said hello to my mother, who had come down for the weekend. (That's all four of us in the icon: Mom, Me, my sister, and my nephew Shane.)

Shane and I rode in the pickup with Lisa following in the Astro out to the storage locker, where we pulled out enough stuff like the old battleship of a desk to make room to get the sofa out of the locker. For something that had sat on end in the back of a dusty old locker since 1993, it was in surprisingly good condition. Dusty, yes, but in physically good shape. Back when we moved in, I laid down a heavy paper mat under it, and it seems to have kept the end insulated sufficiently from the concrete so that even twenty years later it was in decent shape. We banged on the sofa and its cushions with brooms, and Shane and I lifted it into the pickup truck and we all drove back in to Yuba City. We moved it into my sister's living room, and they're very happy to get it. They also have a steam-cleaner, so they'll be able to get the dust out that the brooms and vacuum cleaners miss.

Lisa and I then returned to the locker and, after loading the steel desk into the back of my van (it's destined to become a work bench in Lisa's workshop in the garage), we moved the two twin bed box springs and mattresses (both write-offs; they were worn out by the last time they were used, let alone twenty years later) into the pickup, along with some old bedding that was beyond salvaging, and old boxes from me, Lisa, and Cheryl that I'd bunged into the locker when empty but that we agreed have been reused for the last time. Similarly, an old coffee table with one leg missing, the broken bed frame for one of the old beds (Lisa salvaged the three casters that were still left), and sundry other junk went into the truck, and Lisa tied it down with rope she'd brought down from Fernley for this purpose.

Having withdrawn the discards from the locker, we returned to the hotel and I re-checked the hours of the local landfill. It's a good thing I did so, because it turns out that they close at 4:30 daily, not 6:00 as I'd thought. It was already 4:30, so we weren't going to get anything else done today. But if we get started at anything approaching a sensible hour tomorrow, we should be over to go over to the facility in Marysville, pay to dump this junk, and return the pickup by 1 PM Sunday, saving a day's rental. At that point, the only things left in the storage locker will be boxes that will fit in the minivan. There's too much to haul on this trip (especially with the old desk in the back), but we're getting a lot closer to being able to close out the locker for good. We might have to put stuff into storage in Fernley (the garage is getting really full and we still want to park one vehicle in it), but we won't need as much space and it won't cost as much.

Or so it seems, particularly when my apartment in San Jose is effectively a hotel converted into apartments, or else purpose-built on that plan. Anyway, this morning I packed up and drove to Fremont to attend the SFSFC board of directors meeting in the Centerville Depot Cafe, a location I originally touted because I lived within walking distance of it. I still actually like the location, but the space in which we've been meeting has become a small gaming store run by the landlord's nephew. As part of the conditions of letting him use it, they had to let us hold our booked meetings today and in November. After that we'll revisit the matter.

Personally, I prefer holding our meetings in meeting space rather than in personal residences. The latter may be more comfortable, but the former IMO make it easier to remember that at least in theory we're meeting to get some work done, not just socialize.

After the meeting I planned to head to Yuba City, but I needed first to refuel my van and I thought I could finally cash in a large number of recyclables that had accumulated in my van over time. As seems way too common most of the times I do this, the person in front of me was utterly clueless about the process and held up matters for nearly 20 minutes arguing with the person running the redemption kiosk over twenty cents' worth of containers. (The woman was trying to redeem non-redemption containers and didn't seem to understand that not every plastic container has a bounty on it in Calfornia.) I finally managed to get away from Fremont about 90 minutes after the SFSFC meeting ended.

The drive to Yuba City was uneventful but warm. It's very hot here. I'm certainly glad that the air conditioning in the Econolodge is powerful. I do wish, however, that I had remembered to bring my swimming trunks, as this would have been a good evening, I think, to use the small pool in relative comfort, especially as it doesn't appear to full of Screaming Kid Soup.

Since the internet connectivity in this hotel isn't very good, I'm going to post this now and not expect a whole lot more for tonight. It might just be a good night for turning in early.