So, I arrived at the Sacramento airport to meet Arlene’s flight. I got there about two hours early; my intent was to find a quiet place to work, eat lunch, finish a chapter, and send it to my editors before she got there. Mistake #1: there aren’t anyquiet places at SMF, which appears to be a major Southwest operation. I mean, no one expects airports to be as quiet as libraries, but these folks were noisy. Mistake #2: there’s no food on the terminal side at the airport– all of the restaurants are past the security checkpoint. Mistake #3: there’s no good way to connect to the Internet at the whole airport. No wireless, no LAN ports, few working pay phone data ports– not my favorite.
I did manage to finish the chapter, and when Arlene’s flight arrived (about 1:20, 20min late, thankyouverymuch) we went to get her bags. Unfortunately, only one arrived– it seems the fine folks in Toledo forgot to load it, and it had been routed Toledo-Cincinnati-Salt Lake City-Sacramento. It was slated to arrive at the airport at 4pm, and we were supposed to be at the wedding rehearsal at 4:30– two hours away. We hopped in our rental Fedmobile and set out for Murphys (named after two brothers who struck it rich selling supplies to gold-seekers).
Sure enough, the 99-mile drive took about two hours. The scenery was quite different than what we expected– a lot of it was prairie, which for some reason just doesn’t say “California” to me. We gradually climbed; by the time we got to Murphys, we were about 2000′ above sea level. We found our hotel and were pleasantly surprised: while small, it was clean and neat, and the people were friendly– always a good sign.
We ended up meeting Debbie, Chris’ new bride, for the first time in the motel parking lot. We’d called the senior Larsens to get directions to the rehearsal dinner, and Chris, Erik, Debbie, and her sister Audrey showed up at the hotel to guide us (and the Larsens, I bet) to the reception. We had a great time visiting with Mr. & Mrs. Larsen, Erik, and Chris, but we didn’t know anyone else. We got acquainted with Henriette (the only Larsen we hadn’t yet met), and with several of Chris’ friends and co-workers. Regrettably, the dinner was a little too Californian for us Midwesterners– it was salmon (good) crusted (bad) with some kind of nasty herb (worse). The highlight was when Chris gave out the groomsmen’s gifts: framed photo montages of significant moments in their relationships, including some cool pix of Erik and Chris as little boys and some excellent pictures of the gang climbing Mt Rainier. We left fairly early because Arlene was still stuck on Eastern time.
The next morning, we had a delightful, if greasy, breakfast at a restaurant next to the hotel. Erik was too hung-over to join us, but Chris, his parents, Henriette, and her friend Roderick had a nice visit. Later, we drove up to Arnold to see Chris and Debbie’s second home– very cool (though I didn’t take any pictures!)
The real highlight of the day was probably our visit to Calaveras Big Trees State Park. I’d never seen sequoias before, and these were truly impressive. I’ve got some good pictures that I’ll be posting in a photo gallery as soon as I get the Cube upstairs squared away. After a lengthy hike around the North Grove, we went back to the hotel and got dressed for the Big Event.
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