Life of Wry

Among other things going on this week, there were visitors!

Carol and Bill came through town on Tuesday. Jim and I had a lovely couple of hours with them, including a walk downtown for lunch at Cloud Forest.

By way of introduction: Carol was the “best person” in our backyard wedding nearly 28 years ago (an event and anniversary I misrepresented as having occurred 18 years ago..math that just does not add up! Ooops!!) Bill and Carol were actually celebrating their 41st anniversary on that day. Carol’s a retired planner for the City of Albuquerque and Bill’s professor emeritus in linguistics at U of New Mexico. They were in California for the quarterly follow up to Carol’s cancer diagnosis last year (she’s doing fantastically; in the all-clear zone!). Extra fun for them to wander around Davis as Carol attended school here (my roommate, in fact) and Bill visited a lot (and.. hm.. might also have taken some classes here … there’s that memory hole again).

On Friday, I got to spend some time with Tony — one of my favorite colleagues from the way back. He was out in California to attend an Alliance for Community Media conference in San Jose, but more interestingly to ride to that conference on a bike from LA. He ended up in Davis because of a couple of other mutual former colleagues… and I was pleased to get him for a couple hours. We met at Cloud Forest (I’m giving TH a lot of extra business this week!). Tony lives in NYC and is a bike riding fool!

So… speaking of biking fools….

Sally’s son Jack came to town yesterday (Saturday) because he just got accepted at UC Davis (!) and will start in the fall in the Theater Arts program. He’s here to see Davis for the first time and hopes to go back up to the foothills having secured a place to live and a job. Having spent most of the day with this impressive young man, I think he might accomplish both. (Until then, he’s hanging out with Mrs. Alden.. Sally’s mom, his grandma, in Mountain Ranch.)

So… not having a working bike at the moment (and having failed at finding a bike to borrow), I rented a bike from the Green Bike people over on Olive. Heavy clunker bike, a helmet and a lock: $20 for the day. Such the deal. (Also, super fun!)

We met at 10:45 and headed right out… Coffee at Mishkas, a walking tour around downtown, then biked all over campus and a couple neighborhoods. We also had lunch at Cloud Forest, then he took off (3:00). So much great conversation (politics, AI, psychedelics, theater). As I said, impressive kid.

Here he is in front of Sally’s first house in Davis… over on Miller Drive.