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.

I’m planning to leave for California from Boca around September 10th. I was hoping that I could avoid a hurricane, as we’re heading into the heart of the season, but Ericka has formed (sorry, not a permalink):

The cloud mass just east of the Windward Islands developed into Tropical Storm Erika late Tuesday afternoon. The storm was able to develop thanks to the overall flow plus warm sea surface temperatures between 83 and 86 degrees in that part of the Atlantic. Erika is moving slowly and will not threaten the Southeast coast of the United States before Labor Day. Before then, the storm will have some impact on the Leeward Islands, Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic before moving east of the Bahamas.

Will it continue through the Bahamas to “west of the Bahamas” (i.e., the Florida Peninsula)? Or head north, as everything else has so far? The models are all over the map, with some of them taking it through the Greater Antilles. Extrapolating the five-day track (again, unfortunately not a permalink), it looks like south Florida would be on the southern edge of the cone.

Will he manage to get away without shuttering? Will he manage to get away at all?

Stay tuned.

I just took a non-stop from LAX to MIA. It looks like I’m getting back just in time for some tropical weather. More anon.