Part of my lack of blogging this past week was due to a rather insane work/meeting schedule. There was a bit of traveling involved to get everywhere I needed to go. Then, Mike and the kids and I hit the road for some holiday travel. I learned/relearned a couple of things. I learned that my new car does not have the kind of lumbar support that I need if I spend half my working day in the car. And I relearned what a beautiful and amazing place California is. I started my travels on Tuesday, going from Sacramento to Roseville to attend an evening meeting. Sacramento, as the capital of California, is a good-sized city. Not on the scale of San Francisco or Los Angeles, which is what I think most people picture when they think of metropolitan California. But we’ve got a nice little downtown and midtown and miles and miles of suburbs. I haven’t taken a picture of downtown Sacramento in a long time, except to document how insanely smokey it was during last month’s horrendous Paradise fire. So, these are not quite representative photos, but here’s a glimpse of downtown Sacramento.
From my evening meeting, I traveled straight up to South Lake Tahoe, where I had a meeting scheduled on Wednesday. I was scheduled to participate in an interview for a project there. I’m hoping we win, both to have a project up in Tahoe again and to just have a new project to work on in 2019. (Like I really need another one? No. Yes? Maybe. Never know with schedules when you’re the consultant.) I’ve had a project to work on in either the Tahoe Basin or just outside it in Truckee since I started this job eight years ago. It’s nice to go up from time to time, see my co-workers in the Basin and enjoy the beauty of Tahoe when I can. Not that I often stop and see much when I’m up there for work. But hey – an occasional shot out the window and through the car windows is nice.
Then, if you can imagine it, I had to fly down the mountain Wednesday afternoon to try and make the last half of an event I had already scheduled in Roseville that evening for the professional society I belong to. Impossible timing, but I made it!
On Thursday, I was back in the car for a meeting in Yuba City. Luckily for my back, the straight shot up the freeway meant I could put my cruise control to good use. Driving through California agricultural fields is probably the most common drive in my life. Growing up in a small ag town, going to school at an ag school (Go, UCD Aggies!) and even living in Sacramento, which is surrounded on most sides by ag fields, is natural for me. I think no matter where I have lived in California, I could drive less than two miles and be in the middle of open space or agricultural fields. They are, perhaps, some of the most beautiful sights in California. Especially when you consider how many crops they produce and how many people they feed. And how vast the ag land in California is. Definitely NOT what most people imagine when they think of California. But drive through or over the center of the state, and that is all there is. I don’t have a good picture of my own. I was zooming to and from meetings, remember. Here’s a video of a flyover over Sutter County’s rice fields. The fields were all flooded during my drive. Funny to me that Sutter County is next to Yuba County, but Yuba City is the county seat for Sutter County. Always confuses me.
And finally, the family and I hit the road and, today, found ourselves enjoying some tide pools near the ocean because, yes, California is one giant coastline and we ALL live next to the beach, don’t you know. 🙂 I jest, but I am lucky the ocean is less than three hours away from me. And tonight was a spectacular display of beauty.
Welcome to California.
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