Administrative, General

An End Of A Personal Era

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There may not be a lot of posting over the next couple weeks. There are a lot of changes coming up in our lives, some good, some bad, but mostly (I think) good.

For the first time in over a decade, we’ll both be living, at home, in LA, and with a semi-normal schedule — getting up early, going off to work, and coming home at night. Patricia has a real job (something that I should have) that will require that. No more seeing each other only on weekends, no more wondering where each of us will be over the next month, no more having a cat who doesn’t understand why mom or dad are absent for days or weeks.

For the first time in over a decade, we won’t be watching tropical waves coming off of Africa with personal concern.

Way back in 1998, she moved to San Juan, and we started to have to worry about hurricanes. We got a break from that in 2002, when she came back and worked in Reno, then Milbrae, then (very briefly) in LA, then got transferred to south Florida, where we once again had to not only worry about, but deal with hurricanes, when I actually drove a car out here, knowing I was driving out to help get ready for Frances, back in 2004.

In another week or so, almost exactly five years later, I’ll be driving the same car back to California, again in the heart of hurricane season.

When I drove out, once I left El Paso, or a few hundred miles east, I left the mountains behind. I left the west behind (even though I know that many consider central Texas the west, despite its lack of scenery, mountains or cactus). I left it with regret.

Driving back west again in the same car, will be very cathartic.

I’ve always loved the west. I read about it voraciously as a kid, from Dennis the Menace to Mark Twain, and once I visited as a kid, over forty years ago, I was hooked. I can’t wait to get back, despite the dysfunctionality of the California government. The geography, the history, the people of California, I hope will overcome the current disastrous state. The state of California has always bounced back. I hope that it will do so again.

But if it doesn’t, I have property there, so I have to delude myself anyway…

In any event, I am going to enjoy the trip, in exactly the converse of the way that I disenjoyed the trip east, despite the fact that I was (bittersweet) driving to my darling Patricia. This time, I’m driving home, with all its flaws. And I won’t miss Florida. There is nothing that I will miss about Florida, except the new friends that I met here, and the thunderstorms. Those, are golden, all, and I will miss them much. But all we can do is say our goodbyes this weekend, and enjoy our new life, back home.

23 thoughts on “An End Of A Personal Era”

  3. While the thought of returning to California gives me the shudders, your eagerness to get back to the west should help you overlook a good many of the little flaws you allude to.

    Wishing you a safe and pleasant trip, and much happiness for the three of you as you settle into the new routine.

  4. Welcome back to this side of the Mississippi. If you and your partner have a good gold claim somewhere out here, make sure you don’t both go out of town and let it expire as did a certain famous author…

  5. Florida has hurricanes and California has earthquakes. Neither place is 100% safe but then again, what is.

    Godspeed.

  6. Can’t wait to have you out here! If for no other reason, I’m looking forward to your analysis/outlook on our “government”.

    PH

  7. I hear you about the call of the West. With me, it was March of ’86 when I took a leap in the dark and accepted that job with L5 Society in Tucson. On I-40 west a few miles from the New Mexico border, there’s a sudden transition from Texas cattle plains to cactus and mesa country. I’ve watched for it on drives since, and it really is fast – you drive down a cut at the edge of the plains and within a few hundred yards, you’re in a different world. At the time, punchy as hell getting there from Boston with two sleep breaks, it was like unexpectedly falling into a new universe. I spent the rest of that day driving through New Mexico and Arizona, and I was hooked – moved back east for a few years when L5 merged with NSI, but missed it, came back west when I had the chance in ’91, and have been here ever since.

    In Arizona, where there’s still a slim voting majority of the fiscally sane, mind. The two-year (Spectrum Holobyte) then three-year (XCOR) jobs in California were strictly road trips – I was careful to never be a legal resident of the place. You have my sympathy, owning property there – California looks like a hopeless case from where I stand. I don’t think there are enough sensible voters left to form a working majority anymore, even with 100% turnout. The rape-the-taxpayers-to-pay-our-followers coalition shows no signs of letting go before the place is a drained corpse – they’re in deep denial about the party ever ending at all, let alone soon. Good luck!

    Henry

  9. Rand,

    Best wishes for an easy move. Yes, it will be interesting times in California for the next few years.

    A couple of years ago I used to drive from Houston to San Diego a couple of times per year. For me the Wests just west of Ozona Texas, in the 100 mile long emptiness between there and Fort Stockton.

    Tom

  11. Have a great trip. If Californians were as pragmatic as Texans, and had a balanced budget amendment, then it would be an awesome place to live. Two more rationale voters living there will help.

  12. Sorry we couldn’t get y’all to Virginia, but I’m glad you’re happy about the move and getting back to a place you love.

    Safe journey! May the wind (but not the whirlwind) be at your backs. 😀

  13. Good luck with the new jobs and homelands, and hope to still se you online.

    I’ve been doing the interstate marrage thing for years, and do not recommend it.

  17. While it may be unwanted from the likes of me, a safe trip to you and welcome back to the Golden State. I can sympathize with missing California — I moved away for a job in Vancouver (BC) a couple years ago, but ultimately I missed the natural beauty of my home. And the Mexican food. The politics are totally dysfunctional, as you say, and the natural disasters frequent, but for me at least I’ve decided it’s well worth any price.

  18. Rand:

    Although I lived in San Bernardino and San Rafael as a child, my fondest memories of California are from the nine months I spent at Edwards AFB many many years ago, supporting the flight test of the F-16XL. My brother-in-law remarked that if I wanted to find the patch of California most like Texas, the Antelope Valley was it. I enjoyed the nine months in part because I knew I wasn’t staying…. I could never shake the feeling — the same feeling I got living in Massachusetts — that you’re not really free in California, that people there expect to have the right to tell you how to live. Everything from gun control to how people assume you have to tolerate junkies passed out on the streets, to little things like the weird practice of watering the grass beside the highway even when the government is telling you to flush the toilet only once a day… just bizarre. So, good luck with all that. I must assume that you’ve got a plan and good friends to make it all great.

    BBB

  23. Safe travels, Rand, and best wishes for the new work arrangements.

    I never understood that I was a westerner (lived and worked in Colo. Utah, Arizona, and California) until I moved to Alabama. Although I love it here, California has a pull that is undeniable. If one understands, no explanation is necessary, if one doesn’t understand, no explanation is possible.

    I think about going back, but the incursions on freedom are just too great. The only place left to go is up (gravity-gradient relative).

    Keep up the great postings, any may you find rejuvenation.

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