Down Memory Lane

I took a lovely drive down memory lane and a less than lovely drive home again.

I was meeting three friends from grammar school -- Sandy, Judy and Lois.  Judy was my best friend in grammar school.  She lives in Marin County, Sandy lives in LA and Lois lives in South San Francisco.  We met at the Spinnaker restaurant in Sausalito.  We met there in 2009 (without Lois) and had such a wonderful reunion. (I like that place because Sausalito is notorious for difficulty parking, but the restaurant has valet parking)

(I had to laugh when I found this photo from 2009 tonight because I almost wore that very same shirt today!)

It was a wonderful lunch.  The view out the window was spectacular, the bay was filled with sailboats, and a lazy seal swam back and forth in front of the window while seagulls zoomed overhead, sometimes looking like they were going to scrape their wings on the roof of the restaurant.

 

The food was great and we didn't stop talking or reminiscing from the time we all sat down.  It's amazing how memories are.  They remembered things I didn't remember at all, and I remembered things they didn't remember.  They have a better memory for the names of our teachers and we all went through "where is so-and-so now?"  A couple more have died since 2006, but since we are all in our 70s, I guess that's not surprising. We also decided that we need to organize another class reunion.  Neither Judy nor I had attended the one that was held in 2006. So we'll see where that goes.

In all, we occupied the table for about 2 hours and finally had to say goodbye.  I got on Highway 101 headed for Sacramento and things were going along all right and I was pleased that I seemed to be ahead of rush hour traffic.  But then I made the turn on to Highway 37, which connects 101 with I-80.  It's normally a 30 minute drive across the Delta area (shockingly dry right now).  Things were ok for a bit but then I started up a hill and encountered this

I realized I was in for a long, slow drive.  When I got to the top of this hill, I was able to look out where I was going.

See the cars at the top of the hill waaay off in the distance?  That's the halfway point.

In all, the 30 minute ride took an hour but the good thing is that I was listening to a good audio book and glad for the extended time to listen to it.  

I was worried that I wouldn't get home in time.  I had a show to review tonight, for the News and Review, at a theater I have never attended before.  By the time I got home after 3 hours I was wiped out and called the theater to make arrangements to review it tomorrow, not tonight.  So then I could finally relax.

But other than the traffic, it was really a wonderful day and so nice to spend time with these women again.

Graduation, 1956
Judy and I are 1st and 3rd from the left in the top row.
Sandy and Lois are 1st and 2nd from the right in the 2nd row from the bottom