I hadn’t spoken to my dad in three weeks. He’d normally phone me up every couple days for an update, to rouse me, or to talk about the upcoming ski season. He lives in Woodland, I live in Santa Monica, and every year I fly up to Sacramento several times, he picks me up, and we ski at Squaw Valley. I wondered if those days had come to an end. He was in the hospital, ICU, not doing well. Then my mom called.
My dad’s diagnosis finally came in…West Nile Virus. What? Yeah, he was the 13th. person in Yolo County. I thought it was rare, even non-existent here. Nope. Don’t people die from that? Yeah. How’s my dad? My mom told me he has his good days, he has his bad days. I wanted to go up North to see him. My mom agreed, but warned me, depending on how he felt, my visit may only be for an hour, it may be for several. No telling what type of day it would be. I was going to do the 1000 mile round trip drive…but not all in one day. That would have been too much for me including the visit with my family. I needed a place to stay. In fact, I hadn’t even thought about how I was getting up there.
I planned the trip for Saturday and Sunday. My friend Sunday (in sunglasses),
and husband Matt were throwing a 30th birthday party for Sunday’s sister Summer in Santa Rosa on Saturday, and I could stay there. The next day I’d drive into Woodland. But how to get up there? That’s when Kelly here at Edmunds said I could take the Pontiac Solstice. It seemed there would be a few rays of sunlight peeking through dark clouds afterall. I was excited about taking the car…it looked good. I thought about giving my dad a spin in the Solstice until reality immediately set in…why I was taking this trip in the first place.
Continued in Part 2/4
Josh Kameyer, Broadband Video Production
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