Dear Family, Friends, and Diary,
Thanksgiving, the real start of THS - The Holiday Season. (Halloween doesn't count.) THS has not been my favorite time of the year, a long story, but I have come to terms over the last twenty or thirty years.
So, how is THS-2024 starting? Good enough. On Turkey Day, I set out a breakfast feast worthy of the day, in preparation for a drive over to family in Monterey. In my reflective seasonal mood, I suppose making a meal of refrigerator debris is a legacy from childhood, but life in Germany taught me that good coffee, bread, cheese, fruit, and leftovers is actually quite traditional.
The plan was for a morning drive across the San Joaquin Valley, over coastal hills, the Salinas Valley, and into Monterey. The TV weather forecasts were filled with dire dense fog warnings in the valleys, thanks to the moisture from recent rains. Highway 99, along the eastern side of the Central Valley, is notorious for dangerous fog and television scenes with scores of smushed cars used to be a seasonal regular. Fortunately, the so-called Tule Fog has become rare, thanks to the draining of tule grass wetlands and movement away from flood irrigation.
This time we chose to take the added precaution of avoiding 99 by heading directly west on smaller highway 180, before picking up Interstate 5 for the jog north. This turned out to be a great decision as the laser-straight road was almost empty. I think this set the tone for the rest of the drive as it was as painless as any trip we have ever made from Fresno to the coast, and we have made many. Maybe this should be our standard route?
In Monterey, we checked in at our accommodation for the night: the Hidas home where Marianne grew up, a few years ago. Several decades ago, actually. Brother Chris greeted us and we settled into the guest cottage. Chris, Leisa, and the boys Adam and Spencer, then headed off to her mom's home for a combined Thanksgiving and birthday feast/party. More tradition!
(For the rest of the day, my cameras seemed to have failed to take any visual memories. My bad. I'll try to do better going forward.)
For our holiday tradition, we drove over to visit with Marianne's step-mom Klare and her partner Jack. Tom and Kate, my other brother-in-law and sister-in-law, were already visiting, so we could have a family gathering after all. As sometimes happens with aging family, conversation centered around questions of continuing care. Drama.
That evening, Tom, Kate, Marianne, and I had a delicious dinner at Zab Zab, reputedly the best Thai restaurant on the Monterey peninsula. From our meal, that could be true, although mealtime was significantly disturbed by noisy kids. Maybe that was a Thanksgiving tradition for those folks.
As for us, we continued the aging-family discussion, mostly, and caught up on our own activities, a little. After dinner Marianne and I returned to the Hidas homestead and continued the elder care discussion with Chris and Leisa. They really have been taking the brunt of the load for Chris' mom and Jack. End-of-the-day drama.
Friday was our Thanksgiving day of over eating. Marianne and I started at The Wild Plum Cafe, our latest favorite for local breakfast. Because we knew we would have plenty of meals, we limited ourselves to oatmeal, but that was generous enough.
It seemed like only ten or twenty minutes later, family was gathering for our next meal: chips, sandwiches, and dessert in the Hidas back yard. Gabby, Mamal, Ava, and Sam had driven down from Los Gatos. Nephews Spencer and Adam joined us from UC Santa Cruz and Adam's girlfriend Hanna added to the mix. Tom and Kate's daughter Clara had flown in from Virginia, where she had celebrated the holiday with her boyfriend's family. Klare, Chris and Tom's mom (and Marianne's second mom), managed to join us as well. It was good to get her out socially. This time, there were pictures:
After the outdoor gathering, we all retired for rest before we ate again. Remember, this is all in the name of Thanksgiving tradition.
Dinner was at Il Vecchio, a standard gathering place for the Hidas family with (mostly) great Italian offerings. Clara showed off bracelets from her boyfriend's latest business venture. Leisa and Marianne were willing to walk away with the samples!
Lots of good chit chat, as all holidays should feature.
Dessert was back at the Hidas living room, for any who still had space. (I'll admit that after just a salad at Il Vecchio, I dipped into cookies and brownies.) I think everyone did an end-of-the-day check on social media screens. That's modern tradition too.
As a finale, there was more discussion of family aging, hopefully enough information shared to make future decisions comfortable. Not a guarantee, but a best effort by all.
On Saturday, we returned home with another uneventful drive, just a distraction when we gave Carla her electricity at Santa Nella. That Supercharger is at the Hotel Mission De Oro, not a real mission, but a roadside refueling stop masquerading as a fancy hotel and restaurant. It was built fifty years ago, long after Padre Serra did his exploitation of natives thing.
Everything about this "Mission" is oversized: there are three dozen Supercharger stalls, at least a hundred large hotel rooms, a restaurant that has far more seats than we have ever seen customers, expansive gardens, and a huge greenhouse for growing vegetables for the kitchen. We have no idea how such an operation can pay for itself, but with plenty of chargers and clean bathrooms, and gardens for wandering, what more could a Tesla owner want. (There are also a handful of Riven chargers for cars of that persuasion.)
The huge greenhouse was particularly interesting. One area held scores of lettuce plants, growing in plastic hydroponic troughs. No dirt. In the other part were tomato plants, twenty feet tall and rooted in bags of what I presume is a fertilizer-soil mix.
The San Joaquin Valley has 27,000 square miles of dirt, much of it farmed, so why all the dirt-free growing? I have no idea.
The rest of the trip followed our new favorite path, down Interstate 5 and east across the valley on flat and straight country roads. Through hundreds of acres of those farms.
We are not sure what else is on our travel agenda, but ...
Stay tuned,
John and Marianne
Post script:
Three events happened after our Thanksgiving trip to the coast. On Sunday, we had a pair of family Zoom gatherings, first with my cousins Maryetta, Tim, Tom and his wife Kathleen. This has become a monthly event that we all look forward to. Lots of laughing, how's-the-family news, and too much political commentary (thankfully, we are all on the correct side).
Later, we had the weekly Zoom with Geoff, Brian, and Jen where we update everyone on family events and then play a round or two of "Codenames", a word game that generates its own flavor of laughs. We are certainly thankful for having at least this way to stay in touch, even if face-to-face family visits are rare.
The third event actually happened on Monday. Marianne went in for a semi-annual CAT scan to see if any bad elephant pieces had set up shop in tissues or bones. Nope. No signs of malignancy. A wonderful closing of the Thanksgiving Weekend.