Work and Travel and Family

I follow weather patterns much more now that we live the Rural Life, close to the mountains where weather has a real effect on day-to-day activities. It’s something I never optioned much as a resident BayAryan flatlander with my nose embedded in my own singularity and just a small circle of sky overhead. But now there was an impending “atmospheric river” about to hit in just days, the so-called “Pineapple Express” from Hawaii was aimed right at us, and with that there was an urgency and a brief dry window of work to-do before another deluge.
Between the events taking place at the Ancestral Homestead there were some things falling between the cracks. Glaziers had come and gone, refreshing the bathroom. The old roof was coming off and a new one going on – but in a hurry because rain was coming.
Furniture is weird and can be difficult, being so specific to “taste” and style. Some furniture had found a new home, but not all. We were trying to find homes for our parents’ stuff, but some of it was teetering on the precipice. Dad’s rather large sideboard had found a home in a modern neighbor’s house across the street, but the table and chairs were now adrift. We had to rescue the dining table and chairs from the junk-wagon.
So we loaded the truck with extra tarps and shipping blankets and a fat roll of duct-tape and grabbed clothes and a cooler with some food and made ready to travel.
The trip down was marked with a few choke-points where commuter traffic slowed to a crawl. Being two-up we could use the HOV lanes, but there were still spots where the freeway split off and recombined and things just came to a sea of stopped red taillights. Once outside the city and free of the traveling-masses, I was able to spool-up the truck and bomb along through the countryside.
We made it to the woodworker’s shop where the table was before lunch. The legs would be a problem so we removed them, and underneath #4 leg was a penciled notation my dad had left: “New York leading Brooklyn, 2 games to 1 in the Series. 1953.” Wow. We got it into the back of the truck and headed for The House and loaded the chairs. My brother was there on another mission of mercy to grab a bookcase, so we visited. Done and done we went to the hotel, and with a bit of help had the table-top wrapped in a big blue tarp and duct-taped over to keep it dry. We dragged it inside out of the dark clouds and stacked the chairs too. It rained that night and all the next day, while we stayed dry and had lunch with some old friends who we might never see again…
Yesterday we awoke early and the rain had stopped, so we got the wet truck loaded with tarps and layers of shipping blankets, and hit the road again. Up to speed outside the sprawl I managed to avoid a ticket while making quite good time. Getting home safely with our cargo dry and intact, we deposited the old Dinner Table at the Low Granite Outcropping. Mid-Century Modern goes together.