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Friday morning we were made out of time. The Coast Starlight only runs once a day, so that means we were twiddling our fingers until noon. We mostly filled the time with a breakfast at a only slightly overpriced restaurant near the Amtrak station.
The Web of Trust participants disappeared rather quickly, as early as mid-day on Thursday, so Chris & I just had one other person join us for breakfast, but we still had a wide-ranging discussion of identity, Bitcoin, game design, teaching math, and more.
Heading back north, I took special care to enjoy the landscape between San Luis Obispo and Paso Robles. I'd decided that was the most attractive terrain from our trip south (other than possibly the sun setting over the ocean), and I affirmed that on the way back. So for that hour or so, I really made a point of enjoying the viewing. And, it was great. That's the area where you're constantly running along rolling hills, with canyons (or valleys, or "hollers") running to your sides. Gorgeous. Almost makes up for not being able to hike at the moment.
The rest of the train trip wasn't as great as the trip south. The sun set around Salinas, costing us the landscape. The wifi was pretty much unusable the whole time. Cell phones weren't much better until we got up to the Bay Area.
And the whole stupidity of the way that most American trains are single-tracked was more frustrating than usual. We were actually running 10 minutes early coming out of the San Jose station, but then we stopped near the airport and had to wait 25 minutes for a train to pass us coming the other direction. 25 minutes!!! They must have had no other side track up to Fremont or Hayward or something. Crazy! So we ended up coming in 15 minutes late instead.
Still, the time really flew by in a way that it doesn't on a plane. I was astounded by how quickly the nine hours passed. I mean, I thought I'd really learned how to fill my time on a plane, but I think there's something about the innate uncomfortableness of a plane that makes the time telescope anyway.
We had lunch with a young woman and her older aunt. They were from Talahassee, Florida (though the younger woman had recently moved to ... Oklahoma, I think).
I was pretty careful not to touch upon politics, and the monstrous sociopath currently crouching in the oval office.
They were nice people though. I was nonetheless a bit astounded by their vacation. They'd flown out to LA, were taking the train up to Seattle, and then were flying home the morning after they arrived. I mean, they're going to get to see lots of beautiful terrain on the west coast, but I just can't imagine wanting to do that rather than getting out and enjoying the wilderness (or city) for two or three days, if a micro-vacation was all you could manage.
A lesson learned on Amtrak: go to Emeryville (or Berkeley) if going north and Jack London Square if going south. Because they have long delays between those two stations, for catching up time or whatever other reason.
I hopped off at Jack London Square rather than Emeryville, the Lyft ride was only $2 more, and I got home 7 minutes before the train made it to the Emeryville station (which means 15-20 minutes earlier, total).
Hopefully they didn't notice the Mystery of the Disappearing Passenger.
I didn't get to see as much of Santa Barbara as I would have liked. I usually take a day or two extra for my business trips, but this time it was in the evening before the workshop began and out the morning after.
I'd actually originally scheduled my Amtrak tickets to give me the Friday, but from the point my kidney stone started moving, I'd been thinking about cutting that back a day. Then, when I looked for B&Bs at a very late date (after I had my CT scan last week, and decided I was safe enough to travel), I wasn't entirely happy with the very few choices I was seeing, which tended to be too expensive, too far away, or too messed up (like the one that had one bathroom, only accessible through one of the bedrooms; or the one that claimed it was a standalone home, but explicitly had no private entrance). Then, when I moved my dates from Monday-Saturday to Monday-Friday I doubled my number of options, and found the one we used, which ended up being cheaper and far superior to the hotel option.
So, I took that as kismet. And it's probably for the best, as I would have been very unhappy if I'd had an active Friday, hiking around, got my kidney stone moving again, and was in pain on the whole train trip.
Funny story: airlines suck, and if you try to change your travel arrangements, they'll gouge for around 80% of the price of the ticket, as Hawaiian did to me a couple of years ago; but most of Amtrak's tickets are exchangeable, so not only was I able to make the change on my tickets, but they gave me back $30, because traveling on Friday was cheaper than Saturday.
I did still get to see a little bit of Santa Barbara. I walked in and out to the workshop every day, always by a different route, and I made a point of walking the beach and the wharf. So, I have some impressions of the city, even if they're more limited than normal.
1. It's a lot like a lot of other coastal California towns. It wasn't that vastly different from Carmel or Monterey or San Luis Obispo. It's probably even more similar to a lot of southern Californian towns. One of the things that particular struck me as making it a carbon copy of so much else was the Spanish Colonial Revival architecture of the town. This is apparently largely due to a quake in the 1920s and a concerted effort to cookie-cutter the whole town in that style afterward.
2. It's beautiful. I suspect a lot of people would find the beach in Santa Barbara beautiful. And it was OK, especially when the sun dipped red-orange toward the waves and when you looked out across the waving palm trees at the ocean. But it was the mountains that struck me. They're right behind the town, even tighter than Berkeley's hills are to the bay. (I basically walked from the ocean to the base of the foothills and back every day, and it was just 1-1.5 miles, depending on what angle you walked.) And they're just majestic. I really wish I could have hiked them (though everything behind them got burned out by a horrific wildfire just 2-3 months ago, which was the biggest in Californian history).
3. It doesn't feel like a functional town. Obviously, there's lots of tourism out at water's edge, particularly focused on over-priced restaurants. But the whole town felt kind of non-functional to me. Oh, there was a Trader Joe's and a CVS, but overall the businesses of the town were bizarrely non-utilitarian. I saw a couple of different metal smiths and any huge number of garden-care and home renovation places. I dunno if maybe the commercial districts necessary for a town to actually exist were further west or east, as we never actually came close to the college part of town, let alone the less touristy towns nearby.
4. It had a bigger latino population than I would have guessed. About 38%. It looks to me like the area we stayed in was even more heavily Latino. Whenever I walked in to the workshop, everyone I met on the street was Latino (and oddly, everyone I saw in a car was Caucasian).
Overall, it was a nice little town, but even more obviously tourist-driven than Kauai.
Sadly, I have stressors on my return.
1. Callisto cat seems to have hurt her foot. I thought she might be limping before I left, but decided I was imagining it. Kimberly had the same experience for a few days. Then she came to the conclusion Thursday night that she really was, which of course became really obvious true because I'd seen it too. We both feel a little bad for not reacting quicker, but she's walking fine sometimes and limping sometimes, so it's understandable why we were slow on the uptake. We have an appointment scheduled for Sunday.
2. I was happy to get that appointment on Sunday, because next week is crazy. I have to catch up, talk with all the RWOT authors about status, meet with Blockstream about content, go get some medical tests to OK my kidney stone procedure, and have the actual procedure. Ay.
3. About that kidney stone procedure: my primary care doctor noted on Wednesday or so that I had an x-ray coming up, which I don't, and didn't mention the EWSL. I shrugged my shoulders. Then after I got home last night my urologist asked why I hadn't scheduled my EWSL yet. I have. I got mail telling me the appointment time! But, it's not actually listed as an appointment in my Kaiser records ... I am now stressed that the EWSL scheduler, who doesn't know how to return voice mail, also doesn't know how to make appointments. So I looked into it this morning and they're only open M-F, and they don't accept responses to their emails. So I have to wait until Monday to see if all my hard work to get that scheduled for Friday and to ensure that I had a car ride is for nought and if I have to wait even longer to get rid of this kidney stone.
@#)@#)$. As I told K., if that's the case, I will not just be frustrated but actively angry. So hopefully not.
The Web of Trust participants disappeared rather quickly, as early as mid-day on Thursday, so Chris & I just had one other person join us for breakfast, but we still had a wide-ranging discussion of identity, Bitcoin, game design, teaching math, and more.
Heading back north, I took special care to enjoy the landscape between San Luis Obispo and Paso Robles. I'd decided that was the most attractive terrain from our trip south (other than possibly the sun setting over the ocean), and I affirmed that on the way back. So for that hour or so, I really made a point of enjoying the viewing. And, it was great. That's the area where you're constantly running along rolling hills, with canyons (or valleys, or "hollers") running to your sides. Gorgeous. Almost makes up for not being able to hike at the moment.
The rest of the train trip wasn't as great as the trip south. The sun set around Salinas, costing us the landscape. The wifi was pretty much unusable the whole time. Cell phones weren't much better until we got up to the Bay Area.
And the whole stupidity of the way that most American trains are single-tracked was more frustrating than usual. We were actually running 10 minutes early coming out of the San Jose station, but then we stopped near the airport and had to wait 25 minutes for a train to pass us coming the other direction. 25 minutes!!! They must have had no other side track up to Fremont or Hayward or something. Crazy! So we ended up coming in 15 minutes late instead.
Still, the time really flew by in a way that it doesn't on a plane. I was astounded by how quickly the nine hours passed. I mean, I thought I'd really learned how to fill my time on a plane, but I think there's something about the innate uncomfortableness of a plane that makes the time telescope anyway.
We had lunch with a young woman and her older aunt. They were from Talahassee, Florida (though the younger woman had recently moved to ... Oklahoma, I think).
I was pretty careful not to touch upon politics, and the monstrous sociopath currently crouching in the oval office.
They were nice people though. I was nonetheless a bit astounded by their vacation. They'd flown out to LA, were taking the train up to Seattle, and then were flying home the morning after they arrived. I mean, they're going to get to see lots of beautiful terrain on the west coast, but I just can't imagine wanting to do that rather than getting out and enjoying the wilderness (or city) for two or three days, if a micro-vacation was all you could manage.
A lesson learned on Amtrak: go to Emeryville (or Berkeley) if going north and Jack London Square if going south. Because they have long delays between those two stations, for catching up time or whatever other reason.
I hopped off at Jack London Square rather than Emeryville, the Lyft ride was only $2 more, and I got home 7 minutes before the train made it to the Emeryville station (which means 15-20 minutes earlier, total).
Hopefully they didn't notice the Mystery of the Disappearing Passenger.
I didn't get to see as much of Santa Barbara as I would have liked. I usually take a day or two extra for my business trips, but this time it was in the evening before the workshop began and out the morning after.
I'd actually originally scheduled my Amtrak tickets to give me the Friday, but from the point my kidney stone started moving, I'd been thinking about cutting that back a day. Then, when I looked for B&Bs at a very late date (after I had my CT scan last week, and decided I was safe enough to travel), I wasn't entirely happy with the very few choices I was seeing, which tended to be too expensive, too far away, or too messed up (like the one that had one bathroom, only accessible through one of the bedrooms; or the one that claimed it was a standalone home, but explicitly had no private entrance). Then, when I moved my dates from Monday-Saturday to Monday-Friday I doubled my number of options, and found the one we used, which ended up being cheaper and far superior to the hotel option.
So, I took that as kismet. And it's probably for the best, as I would have been very unhappy if I'd had an active Friday, hiking around, got my kidney stone moving again, and was in pain on the whole train trip.
Funny story: airlines suck, and if you try to change your travel arrangements, they'll gouge for around 80% of the price of the ticket, as Hawaiian did to me a couple of years ago; but most of Amtrak's tickets are exchangeable, so not only was I able to make the change on my tickets, but they gave me back $30, because traveling on Friday was cheaper than Saturday.
I did still get to see a little bit of Santa Barbara. I walked in and out to the workshop every day, always by a different route, and I made a point of walking the beach and the wharf. So, I have some impressions of the city, even if they're more limited than normal.
1. It's a lot like a lot of other coastal California towns. It wasn't that vastly different from Carmel or Monterey or San Luis Obispo. It's probably even more similar to a lot of southern Californian towns. One of the things that particular struck me as making it a carbon copy of so much else was the Spanish Colonial Revival architecture of the town. This is apparently largely due to a quake in the 1920s and a concerted effort to cookie-cutter the whole town in that style afterward.
2. It's beautiful. I suspect a lot of people would find the beach in Santa Barbara beautiful. And it was OK, especially when the sun dipped red-orange toward the waves and when you looked out across the waving palm trees at the ocean. But it was the mountains that struck me. They're right behind the town, even tighter than Berkeley's hills are to the bay. (I basically walked from the ocean to the base of the foothills and back every day, and it was just 1-1.5 miles, depending on what angle you walked.) And they're just majestic. I really wish I could have hiked them (though everything behind them got burned out by a horrific wildfire just 2-3 months ago, which was the biggest in Californian history).
3. It doesn't feel like a functional town. Obviously, there's lots of tourism out at water's edge, particularly focused on over-priced restaurants. But the whole town felt kind of non-functional to me. Oh, there was a Trader Joe's and a CVS, but overall the businesses of the town were bizarrely non-utilitarian. I saw a couple of different metal smiths and any huge number of garden-care and home renovation places. I dunno if maybe the commercial districts necessary for a town to actually exist were further west or east, as we never actually came close to the college part of town, let alone the less touristy towns nearby.
4. It had a bigger latino population than I would have guessed. About 38%. It looks to me like the area we stayed in was even more heavily Latino. Whenever I walked in to the workshop, everyone I met on the street was Latino (and oddly, everyone I saw in a car was Caucasian).
Overall, it was a nice little town, but even more obviously tourist-driven than Kauai.
Sadly, I have stressors on my return.
1. Callisto cat seems to have hurt her foot. I thought she might be limping before I left, but decided I was imagining it. Kimberly had the same experience for a few days. Then she came to the conclusion Thursday night that she really was, which of course became really obvious true because I'd seen it too. We both feel a little bad for not reacting quicker, but she's walking fine sometimes and limping sometimes, so it's understandable why we were slow on the uptake. We have an appointment scheduled for Sunday.
2. I was happy to get that appointment on Sunday, because next week is crazy. I have to catch up, talk with all the RWOT authors about status, meet with Blockstream about content, go get some medical tests to OK my kidney stone procedure, and have the actual procedure. Ay.
3. About that kidney stone procedure: my primary care doctor noted on Wednesday or so that I had an x-ray coming up, which I don't, and didn't mention the EWSL. I shrugged my shoulders. Then after I got home last night my urologist asked why I hadn't scheduled my EWSL yet. I have. I got mail telling me the appointment time! But, it's not actually listed as an appointment in my Kaiser records ... I am now stressed that the EWSL scheduler, who doesn't know how to return voice mail, also doesn't know how to make appointments. So I looked into it this morning and they're only open M-F, and they don't accept responses to their emails. So I have to wait until Monday to see if all my hard work to get that scheduled for Friday and to ensure that I had a car ride is for nought and if I have to wait even longer to get rid of this kidney stone.
@#)@#)$. As I told K., if that's the case, I will not just be frustrated but actively angry. So hopefully not.