Is forcing someone about to vomit up a hill something Myo would do?

Fortunately for my sanity, the Hobbling Holiday did not end there. Coming back to the Real World was made easier by knowing that there would be a reprise just one week later with the visit of Em and Q.

Day 16

At 10am I started cleaning. I did the bathroom and the kitchen but I ran out of time to do the living area (in fact, I ran out of time to throw away the dirty water from mopping the kitchen floor). I threw everything that was in the trunk* of the Dream onto the living area floor just to complete the Dresden motif and raced off to the airport regretting the fact that I hadn’t hoovered and I knew Q to be a vacuum cleaning fanatic.

My timing getting to the airport was perfect as I found them at the baggage carousel. They looked awful, particularly Q. I learnt that they had been out drinking in Spokane until the very early hours of the morning and since they had a flight in the early hours, this was foolish indeed. Maybe I should apologise for my utter lack in sympathy and the events of the day (characterised by bright sun, wine and physical exertion). It wasn’t due to cruelty on my part just ignorance of what it felt like.

Back to the airport, I, as usual, got lost on the exit and just defaulted to the quicker and yet uglier route home. I have never remembered to cross those lanes to the nice route. However, maybe it was for the best I took the faster option as Em was rather squashed in the back of the Dream and blown to bits by the wind.

I gave them the grand tour of chezbob (if you would care to step inside… er, that’s it). Q seemed to die on the floor which she deemed slightly cooler that the sofa while we waited for Mary-Rose to arrive. The four of us then went to a local winery and this time I took the pretty road. The pretty road isn’t terribly pretty this time of year thanks to many months of sun and no rain but hopefully they got an idea of the rolling hills. In fact, the winery was part of the way up a hill and had some nice views.

This was my third time to the winery. On my second trip, I persuaded Mary-Rose to become a club member so we were able to get our wine tasting for free this time. We gathered at the bar and got a guy (who Q and Em debated the sexuality of, but not to his face) to pour us a selection of wines. The whites were surprisingly good actually but we were really sold on the $50 bottle of Zinfandel. By this point in the tasting though, Q was not even looking at the wine preferring to guzzle her Coke and Em was finding it difficult too. And Mary-Rose was possibly too freaked out by the Halloween decoration (“he’s real!” she claimed of the ghoul with the mechanically roving eyes) to savour the delights. There was some distraction when Q’s bag elicited comments from one Californian lass who seemed convinced that it was something designer. Finally, Mary-Rose and I bought some wine and we were merrily on our way past the peacocks, into the Dream and out onto the road.

When I first came to live here, Mary-Rose bugged me all the time to go with her to “the dish” where all the health conscious Californians (actually “health-conscious” is kind of redundant there) went for their daily run. It is a radio telescope operated by Stanford University on the hills just west of campus and east of SLAC. The paths around there are quite steep and provide about eight miles for those that want to run it. Only once did I relent and let Mary-Rose take me. She was Road-runner on those paths, no matter how steep. I was short of breath just walking it and I didn’t even make it to the telescope.

There was no running this day of course but it still seemed hard for our hung-over friends. We started closer to the dish to where I had started before. We passed eucalyptus on our route and Em seemed to feel at home with the smells of it all. We walked up a hill past little squirrel-like creatures running in the long grass. Q seemed to have her delight for them under a little more control this time but there was still a little photo shoot. In fact, one of them seemed willing to pose for us. At the top of the hill was the telescope. It looked amazing. I fell very much in love with it in a way Q described as geeky joy. After I got over this, we squinted into the distance and saw the tall buildings of San Francisco and the Bay Bridge spanning into the hazy distance. Before us was the entire Silicon Valley in its oddly leafy splendour. We were there just as the sun was setting and it was gorgeous.

We returned to chezbob and I left my precious ‘puter in the hands of Em and Q (who fortunately and incorrectly assumed I used Firefox and so didn’t have access to all of my online user accounts) while I shopped. We had a barbeque that was disturbed by the arrival of Mary-Rose’s brother Ed. I do not know where his behaviour sat on the spectrum of normal to off-his-medication but it was bizarre enough to spook Q.

The barbeque was tasty even if I do say so myself. I shared one of my bottles with Mary-Rose (and we tried to persuade the Australians to share but strangely enough they turned it down again). I think Em and Q were a bit surprised at how much I had told Mary-Rose about board people particularly Rian. We managed a nice conversation in the cooling Californian evening but eventually it had to end. As I wasn’t keen to drive into San Francisco with the bad traffic and suicidal intersections (and because I wanted to have wine with my meal), I sent Em and Q back on the train. But I did feel a little guilty for this and gave them a ring at eleven to check that they were safe. They didn’t answer the phone. I was a little concerned but mainly tired. So I shrugged it off and went to bed.

* It is an American car and therefore called a trunk.