What was the worst Valentine’s Day you were forced to experience? I’ll go first: THE WORST I was in Fifth Grade and the class project for February was to create a “Valentine’s Day Train” where we each would create our own “coal car” out of colored construction paper so everyone in the class could put valentines in our hopper.
When we moved to New York twenty years ago from Nebraska — after first deferring through Washington, D.C. for a year — we rented a giant, three axle, Ryder truck for the price of a van — they were out of vans when we arrived with our prepaid reservation — and we motored into the muggy urban core of the Big Apple by driving down the wrong way of a one way sliver of Riverside Drive near Columbia University in the repressive heat of a mid-August afternoon.
We have been out of Sacramento for 24 hours now so it’s time to look back and share some impressions while they are fresh and of the mind and not the memory. Flying into Sacramento is like diving into a miles long patchwork of streams and parcels of farmland.
You feel like you’re landing in a pasture when your plane touches down. There is no doubt this part of California thrives on agriculture and living from the land. This Sacramento Reloaded post generally deals with experiences within a 30 minute walking radius of the Sheraton Grand hotel in four directions of the wind.
1. Everything closes at 5pm. Good luck finding an open deli or a Starbucks or a restaurant if you’re thirsty or hungry at 5:01pm. On the East Coast we are used to the 24-Hour Deli and eating and drinking joints that close at 2:00am and open again at 5:00am. Our hotel only served food in their restaurant from 6:30am-2:00pm and from 5:30pm-9:00pm. If you were hungry in the afternoon you were on your own! We are used to hotels having eating places open for 24 hours a day.
2. Janna noticed the children in Sacramento are more fearful than those in New York City and Jersey City. Sacramento children walk in fear of strangers and they make too much eye contact that reveals their terror. On the East Coast, children do not worry if you’re a local or a tourist — is there a difference? — they just go along with their business and don’t bother looking you in the eye unless you cause them trouble and then they stare you down eye-to-eye to send terror into your being! Sacramento children appear more vulnerable and unnerved by the unfamiliar than their East Coast peers.
I have only two vices. Drinking coffee is one. This blog is the other. I never did illicit drugs. I don’t drink much alcohol. I never smoked. I drink at least a pot of coffee a day. I post at least one entry in this blog a day. A pot of coffee on my brewing machine says it equals 10 cups, but those aren’t normal cups. We all know the coffee standard for a “cup” is really a mug and a proper mug holds two “cups” of coffee so I’m really only having five “cups” of coffee a day in Man Math.
I have permission to tell this story.
I am sharing this with you because it was a human moment that shocked the core of me with quiet tremors.
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