Costume-Con 39: The Journey Home
This morning, I couldn't get breakfast because of needing to fast for a blood test, so I slept an extra hour. Packing out of the room was not difficult, and I was on my way by around 8 AM.
My first stop was the Sutter Health/PAMF facility in Fremont, where there was not much of a wait until they could draw blood for the test requested by my doctor. I could then get some breakfast.
Since I was already in Fremont, it was not far out of my way to go by the place across the street from where I lived for some years and get coffee, including a pound of their Columbian. I used to buy this regularly even after I moved out of the Bay Area, but when the pandemic hit, I no longer made regular trips to the area.
From Fremont I took CA-84 through Niles Canyon and then over to Livermore, where I stopped at a Starbucks that's on my "regular" route though this area. Rather than immediately charging onward, I sat for a bit outside in the nice spring weather and admired the view.
I continued on through Altamont Pass and Tracy to Lodi Junction and refueled at the Flying J truck stop as I usually do on these trips. I was pretty fatigued and found myself needing to stop far more often than I did going the other way, just to have places where I could sit still and close my eyes for a few minutes. I did this in Rocklin and at Monte Vista, the latter because the Gold Run rest area is still closed
Among the multiple stops I made was one at Cisco Grove, a truck stop notable to me for having signs for it hundreds of miles to the east on I-80.
As you can see, there's still snow here, although with the warm spring sunshine, it's starting to melt. I hope it doesn't melt so fast that it causes flooding and makes it hard to save for when we need it later this year.
After Cisco Grove, I did not stop again until Gold Ranch (not Gold Run), the first exit in Nevada, where I "paid" for the restroom use at the casino by putting $1 in a slot machine and playing for a short time. After losing and then winning some money, I found that I still had $1, and decided that the casino had had its chance, so I cashed out and left.
I got some take-out in Reno, then drove home to Fernley, stopping there to buy a gallon of milk from Family Dollar and collect accumulated mail from the post office across the street. Then I went home.
Today's total travel time was about 10 1/2 hours, which was pretty good in light of all of those stops. According to my mileage log, the total trip from Fernley to San Jose and back, along with the side trips and errands, was 701 miles.
I'm starting to feel that while I can make the outbound trip from Fernley to the Bay Area in one day, if I have a convention or other intense activity involved, I'm going to have to plan to split the return, as it's increasingly difficult for me to make the return in a single day. It's slightly different when I use the RV, such as did when I would spend a week working at my company office in the Bay Area, because in that case I'm driving a vehicle with a built-in toilet and bed, making it slightly easier to stop and even to take a nap. (However, until Caltrans sorts out Gold Run, there aren't that many places where I can stop overnight to sleep in the RV, as I've done a couple of times in the past.) So even though the RV is harder to drive than the minivan, it does have advantages in that one particular case.
Now I need to finish unpacking and get some sleep, as it's back to work tomorrow morning, meaning the alarm is once again set for 4:30 AM.
My first stop was the Sutter Health/PAMF facility in Fremont, where there was not much of a wait until they could draw blood for the test requested by my doctor. I could then get some breakfast.
Since I was already in Fremont, it was not far out of my way to go by the place across the street from where I lived for some years and get coffee, including a pound of their Columbian. I used to buy this regularly even after I moved out of the Bay Area, but when the pandemic hit, I no longer made regular trips to the area.
From Fremont I took CA-84 through Niles Canyon and then over to Livermore, where I stopped at a Starbucks that's on my "regular" route though this area. Rather than immediately charging onward, I sat for a bit outside in the nice spring weather and admired the view.
I continued on through Altamont Pass and Tracy to Lodi Junction and refueled at the Flying J truck stop as I usually do on these trips. I was pretty fatigued and found myself needing to stop far more often than I did going the other way, just to have places where I could sit still and close my eyes for a few minutes. I did this in Rocklin and at Monte Vista, the latter because the Gold Run rest area is still closed
Among the multiple stops I made was one at Cisco Grove, a truck stop notable to me for having signs for it hundreds of miles to the east on I-80.
As you can see, there's still snow here, although with the warm spring sunshine, it's starting to melt. I hope it doesn't melt so fast that it causes flooding and makes it hard to save for when we need it later this year.
After Cisco Grove, I did not stop again until Gold Ranch (not Gold Run), the first exit in Nevada, where I "paid" for the restroom use at the casino by putting $1 in a slot machine and playing for a short time. After losing and then winning some money, I found that I still had $1, and decided that the casino had had its chance, so I cashed out and left.
I got some take-out in Reno, then drove home to Fernley, stopping there to buy a gallon of milk from Family Dollar and collect accumulated mail from the post office across the street. Then I went home.
Today's total travel time was about 10 1/2 hours, which was pretty good in light of all of those stops. According to my mileage log, the total trip from Fernley to San Jose and back, along with the side trips and errands, was 701 miles.
I'm starting to feel that while I can make the outbound trip from Fernley to the Bay Area in one day, if I have a convention or other intense activity involved, I'm going to have to plan to split the return, as it's increasingly difficult for me to make the return in a single day. It's slightly different when I use the RV, such as did when I would spend a week working at my company office in the Bay Area, because in that case I'm driving a vehicle with a built-in toilet and bed, making it slightly easier to stop and even to take a nap. (However, until Caltrans sorts out Gold Run, there aren't that many places where I can stop overnight to sleep in the RV, as I've done a couple of times in the past.) So even though the RV is harder to drive than the minivan, it does have advantages in that one particular case.
Now I need to finish unpacking and get some sleep, as it's back to work tomorrow morning, meaning the alarm is once again set for 4:30 AM.