Saturday, December, 13, 2008

Saturday, Dec. 13, 2008

4:45 a.m. — Ed takes Anne to the airport for her 6:00 am flight. The rest of us got up, and walked down College to go to La Farine bakery and get lattes. A beautiful, crisp, sunny day with lots of people out. Afterwards, we went to the Berkeley Farmers market, and then “The Crucible.” The Crucible is hard to describe, but it a huge warehouse dedicated to “fire arts” — glass blowing, blacksmithing, welding, and even “fire performance” (dancing, fire eating). It was their holiday open house. A lot of fun to see. As we were leaving, Jim pronounced it, “the highlight of the trip.” Then realizing we had gotten married yesterday, quickly corrected himself, “a highlight, a highlight”.

All too quickly, it was all over. We dropped them off at the airport about 2 pm (26.5 hours after we got married).

We planned to leave the next day for our road trip up to the Northwest, but a big storm was coming in, with “steady snow” expected on the N. California and S. Oregon passes. (I don’t like driving in snow!) We got the bright idea. Let’s drive up the coast. Okay. “Why don’t we leave tonight!” “What?.... Okay.” So after a frenzied, somewhat stressed couple of hours of packing, we were on the road a little after 5 pm.

We made great time up 101, reaching Willits, an old logging town about 8 pm. We had dinner at a friendly local burger and beer joint, and crashed in our hotel room about 10 pm for some well-needed rest.