As I begin this, it is Tuesday 25 May at 0614. I have a half pot of coffee gurgling to completion behind me and a few hours to kill before I make the last portion of the drive from here in Lake Tahoe to Sacramento. Kitten #1 begins her air journey west shortly, and we’ll meet up this evening at our hotel. My plan (because I know you’re all at the edge of your seats) is to write for a little this morning, then come back to it tonight before I go to bed. I’ll set the nifty little auto-publish time to early tomorrow morning. My flight in the morning of the 26th boards at 0445, connects in Denver, and lands in Baldimore (hun) at 3:30PM Eastern. I’ll sit for a spell while at the airport waiting on the little shuttle that makes its way from BWI to the Eastern Shore, but if all the cosmic tumblers click into place, I’ll be home tomorrow by 7PM. Fingers crossed.
Talking to the Kitten on the phone last night, I was forced to admit to a planning error (Egad!) Had I known what I know now about how this whole trip played out, I would have driven a little farther (further? I never really know) each day and would not have scheduled this two-day stop in Tahoe. Not that it isn’t wunderbar. It’s just that it is only two hours from my eventual destination (as I described a few days ago upon seeing the sign that said “Sacramento 180 miles”), and truth be told, I really didn’t need a day off (yesterday). It was nice, but unnecessary. I’m beginning think about being home, about how summer is really when the Eastern Shore is in its full glory, and about how I’ve got another little weekend trip left in May and considerable travel in June and July (including a rescheduled trip to the ancestral homeland in Clayton NC to see my parents, made necessary by the Colonial Pipeline mess at the start of this trip, thanks for nothing), and quite possibly another trip across country in August. I’m watching my summer begin to get compressed before it even starts, and every day suddenly becomes more important. This is of course, entirely of my own making and that it impacts me this way, is my own fault. But that’s where I am.
I am fortunate in my career, that for the most part, I can work where my brain and my computer are. The rhythm of this trip has been pretty steady. Get up early, work out and work. Shower, breakfast, drive. Work. Dinner. Work. Somewhere in there do some writing. I am — sometimes to the Kitten’s consternation—rarely COMPLETELY on vacation. This allows for us to go more places but often I have to carve out work time. I got this approach from a book by Tim Ferris called “The Four-Hour Work Week”. Ferris is a wickedly talented person who has gone on from this book to turn himself into a cottage industry, and what he lays out in this book is appropriate for about three people in the Western world. But there are little gems that really can make you more productive and save time—time that you can then re-allocate. Work vacations are one of these things, and if you have a job where you can do it, and you have a partner who can give you the space you need to pull it off, it is worthwhile. I think COVID showed us that more of our jobs can be done from wherever our brains are. Not all of all jobs, mind you. Just more of some. Here’s where I did some of this hybrid-ing yesterday:
It was a little nippy yesterday morning when I finally got up from the computer and began to explore. Definitely more of a “pro-mask” vibe here than in other places on the trip. I was walking along a path without a mask on (outdoors, mind you) and I heard a person jogging behind me, so I stepped aside to allow an unmasked jogger to overtake me. This is not a COVID move on my part, it is just trail courtesy. As she passed, I saw that she had a mask in her hand that she was employing and redeploying every time she passed someone. Not fully over the ears, mind you, but pressing up over her nose and mouth. I walked around this lovely town for about two hours, mostly along the main drag but then with little excursions down to the lake to see what a new view looked like.
“Hiring” and “Help Wanted” signs are everywhere. Could this be nothing more than a seasonal surge as the summer high season approaches? It could be. But then again, this was the story of every stop I’ve made. I have heard some respond to the possibility that COVID unemployment benefits are keeping people from returning to work by saying “pay them more, and people will go back to work”, which is a variant of the “raise the minimum wage” argument. There is some not insubstantial base-stealing here when those who make this point then try to wrap it in market economics, as Uncle Sugar is NOT supposed to be competing for labor and driving up wages as a policy choice, at least not in my view of the world. I THINK that is known as market distortion, but what do I know?
I am staying in a Marriott time-share property. I have had several opportunities to bring myself up to speed on how wonderful a program like this is, but have not taken them. In my ignorance, I’ll hold forth, because that is what the internet is for. I am really unsure about the attraction of these programs. First of all, there is the whole “time-share” vibe, which conjures images of desperate sales pitches and entrapped marks. Secondly, there is the economics of the thing, which in all honesty, I do not understand (mostly because I haven’t looked into it). I don’t know anyone who is a member of this Marriott program, or more to the point, anyone who admits to being part of it. If you are in my circle of trust, and you are a member or a member of a program like it, please let me know what you see as the benefits. I have to believe that they exist, because the industry just seems to keep getting bigger.
End of The Line
I write a few minutes before going to bed on the last day of the trip, from a hotel in Sacramento CA. I just said goodnight to Kitten #1 and wished her a Happy Birthday, as she turns 22 tomorrow. Earlier today I stopped into a bakery here that advertised vegan/dairy free cupcakes and picked her up a few, adorning the box with a bow. I staged the box and her card on her bed so that when she landed and caught the shuttle from the airport, there’d be a little special birthday something there for her.
I was not present when she got to the hotel because I was having dinner with my friend/fraternity brother Howard who drove all the way up from San Francisco. We didn’t solve any of the world’s problems, but we sure did identify quite a few. After dinner, he graciously offered to drive me back to my hotel (I had Uber’d over), and I got to ride in his Tesla, which convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that my next car is going to be electric.
Sacramento was a surprise. Having known virtually nothing about it before getting here, I had no idea how attractive a place it is. The “Old Sacramento” part of the city is downright awesome. I could definitely live here.
Well folks, I think that wraps things up. I’ll get a few hours sleep tonight and then catch the 0400 shuttle to the airport (0520 departure). If all goes well, 19 hours or so from now I’ll be back home on the Eastern Shore plotting my next adventure. Thanks for reading along with me. We’ll go back on a once weekly (Wednesday AM) schedule unless something worthy of comment comes up.