canyonwalker

Spring Family Visit Travelog #5
At the house · Mon 30 Mar 2026. 11pm.

Being at my inlaws' house feels like being in a Family Circus cartoon. But instead of it being a circus before 4 young kids are running around doing who-knows-what, it's 2 adults who can't have even the simplest conversation without it turning into a farcical, hour long discussion with multiple interruptions and pointless dead end tangents.

Take, for example, a simple shopping trip. When we arrived on Sunday morning, I figured we'd need to buy some groceries for breakfast and lunch the next few days. Ordinarily my mother in law (MIL) shops really well for us, but right now she's really ill so it's understandable she didn't.

I proposed we could run out to the grocery store later in the day to grab a few things: bagels, smoked salmon, roast beef cold cuts, sliced cheese, maybe some sandwich bread. I brought this with the intention of (a) getting her buy-in and (b) finding out if anything on my list was unnecessary because there was some in the downstairs chest freezer. I thought it would be a 5-minute conversation. It didn't need to be more than a 5 minute conversation. But it took an hour. And the conversation was re-litigated multiple times in subsequent hours.

First, every single item of grocery involved its own detailed discussion. There was the right amount to by, the right brand to buy, the right condition it should be in, and the second or third choice brand if the first isn't available. Some of these points of discussion involved story-telling from that one time, some number of years ago, someone got the wrong thing. Then there was opening up an app on her phone to find a coupon for it. Heaven forbid we should fail to save sixty cents!

Every few minutes there'd be an interruption. Hawk would come in the room and ask MIL an unrelated question. Or FIL would ask a question. Of course, no question was a single question but instead another ridiculous "Who's on first?" game of Twenty Questions.

At some point after 30 minutes of trying to gain agreement on what to shop for, and again at 45 minutes, and then, too, at 60 minutes, MIL asked, "Are you making a list?"

"We've only agreed on two items," I said at the 30 minute mark. "That's not even a list."

After an hour I had started a list. Partly because it was obvious the discussion was going to circle the drain on "Are you writing a list?" until I said yes. So I made a list. At the end of an hour it was 4 items. 🙄

And then the shopping trip didn't even happen until the next evening. 🤦

And the craziness didn't even end with making, and re-litigating, the list. The four item list. Doing the actual shopping was like going to the store with a bunch of four-year old children running around trying to "help". Except there were no actual kids. Just my 80s FIL.

With 4 items on the list I expected we'd go in, grab 4 things, maybe look at one or two others, and leave. Especially as it was already 7pm, and dinner was waiting on us to shop and get home, I expected we'd be make this quick. But once in the store FIL had a 7-second attention span. "Oh, look, there's an item over there!" "Don't we need some of this, too?" "Hey, there's somebody I know, let's stop and talk." "I'd better call MIL and ask about this [the 5th call so far]" "Wait, let me check if there's a coupon [which will take 15 minutes because he doesn't know how to use the app]."

We finally got out of the store by 8:20pm. We'd been in there for over an hour. With our 4-item shopping list. I think we ended up buying seven items. That still works out to 10 minutes per item.

Spring Family Visit Travelog #4
At the house · Sun 29 Mar 2026. 10pm.

We arrived this morning to visit my inlaws for the next week. One thing we knew we'd confront right away is MIL's health situation. Though she's in her 80s and has contended with a variety of (non-terminal) health conditions for many years she's remained very sharp, maintaining the home and the household finances, and as mobile as pain from the not-willing-to-work-as-a-team parts of her body allow her to be. But that's different now.

She's still mentally sharp, but mobility, even around the house, has taken a nosedive. She sits in her armchair most of the day and all night. (She can't sleep lying down for reasons.) She's in pain, has low energy, has little appetite, and can't swallow and eat most foods. And because she's still mentally sharp everything is actually harder. She is aware every minute of the day how adult things she used to take for granted that she could still do even in her 80s, she now cannot. Every minute she's confronted by a fresh reminder of disability.

FIL is dutiful as her caretaker. He's in his 80s, too, and is in worse shape than she was, pre- this cancer, but's earnestly doing the best he can. The challenge is he's close to worthless at housework. He needs detailed instructions on where to find things, what to do with them, and how to pack them away. MIL is fine with giving instructions. She's a very exacting person, so she's accustomed to it. But unfortunately this creates a dynamic where every mundane household thing, dozens of times a day, devolves into a game of Twenty Questions. MILs is constantly having to answer questions, 'What do you want?", "Where is that?", "How to do it?", etc. And combine that with the fact that FIL is hard of hearing, with a hearing aid that only works about 50% at best, and MIL can't speak very loudly, and "Twenty Questions" turns into more of a Laurel & Hardy "Who's on First?" farce.

It might be funny if it weren't so infuriating.

I seem to be running an 8 day backlog on blogging about hiking. Friday I shared pictures from Sierra Vista Open Space I'd hiked at Thursday the week before. Today I getting around to posting pictures from a hike at Byxbee Park last week Sunday.

Byxbee is a city park in Palo Alto, California. Often one thinks of city parks as ho-hum. And indeed, Byxbee sometimes is. Especially because it's one of those parks that's built on top of a dump. The artificial hill is studded with methane monitors to alert authorities should an eruption of poisonous, explosive gases be about to occur. But, hey, nobody's going to want to build on top of crazy shit like that, so it's cheap to make into a park!



The grim history of this plot of land aside, it's beautiful in the springtime when wildflowers are blooming. And it's right by the San Francisco Bay— and just out past the sewage treatment plant, so at least that's not in the foreground 💩🤢—with plenty of wide-open views. In this photo (above) you can see the Dumbarton Bridge crossing near the southern end of the bay. The Diablo Mountains are on the far side. The flowers in the foreground are daisies. Mixed in with them are crown daisies. Those are the flowers with white petals and yellow at the center.

At the park we chose an erratic loop, sweeping back and forth over the top of the mound then around the sloughs at the far side. Our goal was two-fold. We wanted to see all the places where we know there are patches of wildflowers, and we wanted to extend our hike to walk at least two miles. By Sunday when we did this hike the previous week's record-setting heat wave had broken, so it was merely a pleasant 75° on the first day of spring instead of a sweltering 90°.



My phone's plant identifier says this one's a Pride of Madeira. That's Madeira as in a plant native to the Island of Madeira, Portugal, off the coast of Morocco. The climate here would be similar so I'm not surprised it thrives. I presume it was imported. I doubt a swallow, African or European, carried seeds all the way here.



This thicket of wildflowers is Perez's Sea Lavender. We have them growing outside our house, too. Those insects pollinating them are butterflies, not moths. At first we thought the white one was a moth. Then I looked up how to tell the difference between butterflies and moths. You can Google it yourself if you want, but I'll tell you the easiest diagnostic: it's in the antennae. Butterflies have thin, mostly straight antennae. Moths having curving, thick, comb-like antenna. Plus moths have chunkier, hairy bodies. These are both butterflies.



Here's an example view from down near the sloughs. The water in the south bay is very shallow, and a maze of levees control flow for salt marshes and things like that. Being 30' up on the hill affords nicer distance views, even as it is atop all the explosive, poisonous gases, but down here you can see a fairly long way, too. Those mountains in the background are easily 15 miles away, straight-line distances. In the foreground, my phone thinks those flowers are wild radish.

As we looped around back toward the trailhead from here we watched a northern harrier swoop over the hills. At least I think it was a northern harrier. It was generally too far away to be sure, and I didn't have my telephoto camera with me. But it seemed to have a white "rump patch" at the base of the tail. That's a cue for it being a harrier. That, and its flight pattern of swooping low over grasses and marsh, often just 1 or 2 meters above the ground.

Spring Family Visit Travelog #3
near Harrisburg, PA · Sun 29 Mar 2026. 9:30am.

I slept not a lick on the red-eye flight we took overnight to Baltimore. I had hoped to get maybe an hour or two of sleep, but it was not to be. I was never tired enough to overcome the discomfort of sitting in an airline seat in coach.

As I looked over the timing for the rest of our trip I figured we'd land at 5:40am, have luggage and the rental car by maybe 6:20am, then drive first to a Wawa (a regional convenience store chain) near BWI airport for breakfast and road-trip snacks before the ride to Harrisburg. That'd have us hitting the road in earnest at 7am— which I could see by checking my weather app was approximately sunrise. "At dawn, we ride," I chuckled to myself. Then I noticed the temperature forecast showing in the app... it'd be 30° at sunrise. That's 30° Fahrenheit, not Celsius. "At dawn we ride... But first we freeze," I corrected myself. 🤣🥶

Well, the schedule unfolded like I expected. Our flight was better than on-time; it was actually a bit early. We got a good pick of cars at the rental depot. We're driving a Nissan Rogue this time. It's got heated seats. We bought food at the Wawa as the morning twilight sky brightened around us and hit the road in earnest at 7am. It was a smooth, 90 minute drive up to Harrisburg.

And speaking of those freezing temperatures, along the way we saw temps as low as 28° F as measured by the car's air intake thermometer. When we arrived at 8:30 it was still only 33°. Compare this to just two weeks ago in California where it was 30~32° Celsius. Welp, we left summer behind in early March, had two weeks of spring, and now it's winter.

Spring Family Visit Travelog #1
SJC Airport · Sat 28 Mar 2026. 7pm.

Tonight we're headed out to visit my inlaws near Harrisburg, PA. We're taking a red-eye flight from San Jose to Baltimore (BWI), where we'll rent a car a drive ~90 minutes up to Harrisburg. Why not fly to Harrisburg? It's because despite being the state capital of Pennsylvania it's got a podunk airport. There's only connecting service there through a few hubs. It makes more sense, logistically, to fly non-stop to Baltimore (or Washington-Dulles, or Washington National, or Philadelphia) and drive. It's a lot cheaper, too.

And why take a red-eye? Especially because it was kind of a rough trip when we did it in November, leaving us so drained I slept in our car a parking lot like a borderline homeless person later that day. Well, aside from the fact that this red-eye is the cheapest and most direct flight available, I figure this time it'll work out a bit better because we specifically did not plan a busy schedule tomorrow. We've just got to drive to Harrisburg in the morning, then we're at my inlaws' house the rest of the day, where we can crash with a nap as necessary.

All that is hours away, though. And even boarding our flight is hours away. We chose to arrive at the airport plenty early this evening. Partly that's because we figured we'd get dinner here, rather than eat dinner and home and start to worry about timing. And partly it's because we didn't have much else to do today. We're both retired now, so we have free time! We didn't worry about losing a precious vacation day with this being a Saturday night red-eye vs. Friday night. We go when we want to go, come home when we want to come home.

Lately we've been dining out at California Pizza Kitchen as part of our regular rotation. It's kind of a blast from the past for us as I don't think we ate at a CPK together for 20 years. It used to be a thing we did on the regular, especially when we lived in Los Angeles (the chain's home) 20+ years ago. But then through a combination of moving back to Silicon Valley, where there wasn't a CPK close to us, and the chain itself seeming to shrink the number of restaurants, and... oh, yeah... the fact that Hawk seldom wants to eat pizza, we didn't set foot inside a CPK for years.

A few years ago a new CPK opened up just off Lawrence Expressway, a few miles away from our home. For a while we never went because, again, pizza wasn't an "us" thing. But then I got Hawk to humor me once or twice when I had a jones for it. She grinned and bore it through eating pizza a few times. By the third time or so she decided, "Screw their pizza, I'm getting a salad"... and a wonderful thing happened. She found their salads are really good!

That put CPK back into the mix. Now it's a sit-down restaurant not too far from home that we can both agree upon because there are things on the menu we both definitely like. But what really got it into part of our regular rotation was the Costco connection.

The Costco connection? Is that like The French Connection? Yes, it is! And it's even better because it's pizza (and salad), not heroin, and you don't have to survive an epic car chase through the streets of Manhattan to get it.

The connection is that Costco sells CPK gift cards, 2 x $50, for $80. That knocks up to 20% off the cost of dining at CPK. Together with the menu having dishes we both genuinely enjoy, the 20% discount has made CPK one of our regular haunts again.

Oh, and why did I mention the CPK is just off Lawrence Expwy? It's because the Costco is on Lawrence, too. In fact it's just 1/2 mile from the restaurant. One evening a few weeks ago we drove to Costco, bought 4 of these gift cards (two packs of two), and promptly drove straight over to CPK to use one for our dinner. 🤣

So now not only is dining at CPK part of our regular rotation, but so is buying their gift cards when we shop at Costco.

I've said it so many times and I'll keep on saying it. One of the things we like so much about living in the San Francisco Bay Area is the proximity to outdoors beauty. And by that I don't just mean that Yosemite is 4.5 hours away. Significant natural beauty is all around us. And a lot of it is protected as parks.

A week ago Thursday we made an impromptu trip to the Sierra Vista Open Space preserve above San Jose. Rather than head there via the shortest route we opted to drive around the back of the hills, driving up Calaveras Rd. from Milpitas, past Ed Levin County Park, to Felter Rd., to Sierra Rd.



There were views all the way on this mountainous drive. And it was wonderful to do it on a warm, sunny late morning in our convertible with the top down. The best views, not too surprisingly, were as we approached Sierra Vista. The photo above is from the road maybe a mile east of the park entrance. The next photo is from the edge of the parking lot.



Yes, this is a parking lot photo. I mean, I'm pointing my camera away from the parked cars. It's just that it's extra exciting to go to a park that offers fun hiking— plus fun even without hiking. When we texted a few pics to my mother-in-law, she lamented that she's in no condition to walk even 150' right now. (She's undergoing treatment for a serious illness.) At Sierra Vista one can enjoy this view just sitting on the bench 10 steps away from the parked cars.



There are even better views farther afield, of course. We did one of our usual routes partway down the ridge, out past a saddle, and to the next peak. I enjoy this route especially because of the way views over the whole of Silicon Valley reveal themselves as you round the bends. Out here I always think of the song 🎵 Do You Know the Way to San Jose 🎵.



Part of what motivated us to visit this particular park is wildflower blooms. Speaking of songs, 🎵 It's the Time of the Season 🎵 for them. We'd just traveled hundreds of miles the week before to see wildflowers in Antelope Valley and at Carrizo Plain. We figured we check out places much closer to home on Thursday.

Although it's the right time of the season, this year's bloom isn't huge. We saw several small patches of California poppies (the showy orange/yellow flower above) and other wildflowers. But the hills were not carpeted with them like they are once every few years in a super-bloom.



Soon enough it was time to head back. Although this photo (above) shows a long, gentle uphill climb it was tougher than it looks. It was tough because a week ago we were having record-setting heat. I drank all the water I carried with me on this trail and then sucked down another 500ml bottle as soon as we got to the car. It's good we keep several spares in the car!

I've been thinking for a while about writing on the topic of "Why I haven't bought an electric vehicle (EV)." Recently that topic came up on a Discord my partner is active in. Except it wasn't people sharing a thoughtful self-examination of why they have or haven't bought an EV, it was smug self congratulation, "I bought an EV and I am so pleased with my choice that I cannot imagine why any other person has not bought an EV unless they're morally defective or plain stupid."

That kind of high-functioning idiocy, being smart enough to figure things out except when they involve questioning your own assumptions or grasping the consequences of your own actions— including, "Huh, I'm being really insulting right now, could that be the reason people are responding harshly to me? Nah, it's gotta be because they're mean, toxic, stupid people and so I should block them."— is sadly prevalent in that community and why I dropped out of it a few years ago. But anyway, the question worthy of thoughtful self-examination remains: Why haven't I bought an EV yet?

Let me first clarify things that are not the reasons why I haven't bought an EV:

1. I am not unaware of EVs, how they work, or where/how they present possible economic savings for their owners.


2. I do not dismiss EVs as "clunky", "quirky", "slow", "unreliable", or "woke".


3. I am not a climate change denier.


4. I'm not poor. Inability to buy one is not the reason.

So what is/are the reasons I haven't bought an EV?

Let's start with this one:

1. I'm not in the market to buy a car.

I haven't bought a car in 5 years. I don't expect to buy one for at least another few. That's the main reason I haven't bought an EV— I haven't bought any car recently.

Related to that is....

2. I don't see the advantages of an EV as so compelling I'd replace an existing car prematurely.

One of the big wins people cite in switching to an EV is the savings in gas. Well, the price of gas is not killing us. We drive our vehicles very little on a regular basis. Hawk hasn't had a daily commute for two years. I haven't had one since 2018. If one or both of us were commuting us was commuting 50-60 miles a day, 4-5 days a week? Sure, the gas savings would add up fast. But right now our regular driving works out to less than 10 miles/day. Add in occasional road trips and our cars have been logging only 5,000 miles/year recently.

I'll note, also, in the "costs to refuel" ledger, the people who are most excited about pocketbook savings are people who can charge their EVs for free at their place or work or school.

The other dimension of savings people talk about is savings to the environment. That one's hard to quantify. But qualitatively one thing we consider is the impact to the environment of having a whole new vehicle manufactured for us.

Also related to #1, above:

3. EVs that matched my desires/needs haven't existed.

The last car I bought, 5 years ago, was a sporty convertible. I really wanted a convertible. We really wanted a convertible. There are no EV convertibles. If there were we'd have seriously considered one.

Our other car, now going on 15 years old, is a 4x4 SUV. We use it for real off-road stuff. EV SUVs capable of real off-road stuff haven't existed until the past few years. The few that have come out— Tesla Cybertruck and Rivian R1— are bigger than what we want. They wouldn't even fit in our garage. Plus, it's unclear how capable they really are in off-road situations that aren't staged for cameras. I'm really curious to see how the new Rivian R2 pans out, as it's more the size of vehicle we'd want. I'll watch how it tests in real-world situations.

Then there's the problem of refilling. I know that charging stations are way more prevalent now than, say, 10 years ago. I know people are doing coast-to-coast drives in EVs. But I also know from thinking about it myself, and having this verified by friends who are actual EV owners, that it takes a lot more planning to do a long distance road trip with an EV. You can't just pack a bag, hop in the car, and go, trusting that there'll be a filling station pretty much wherever you need it, that you can get in and out of in 5 minutes.

"Filling station wherever you need it" is especially an issue with trips offroad or just to remote areas. The gasoline infrastructure is built out well enough that even small towns that don't have a stop light have at least one gas station. I know, because in the past year I've stopped in several of them to buy just a few gallons of gas. EV charging was nowhere nearby.

Inflation's a bitch. I'm reminded of that every time I go shopping for... well, anything. Anything except a computer or big-screen TV, that is. Those have come way down in price even as their capabilities grow. But pretty much everything else in life? Yeah, way more expensive. I was especially reminded of that today when I was shopping for groceries.

Yes, groceries. One of the basic necessities. Not luxury goods like brand-name hand-bags, not discretionary items like Starbucks Caramel Machiatto Frappuccino, but actual grocery purchases down to basic meat and potatoes (and vegetables, thankyouverymuch).



Compared to right around the start of Covid, so roughly 6 years ago day, prices on items up and down the aisles at the supermarket today are 50%, 100%, or more higher than before.

For example, one of the items I bought today was a 12-pack of soda. Its regular shelf price is now $13. I clearly remember it being $5 six years ago. That's a 160% increase. Yeah, soda isn't a staple at the same level that fresh produce, or meat, or bread is. But all those have gone up, too. And not just by a little bit— because I know inflation is real and is an unavoidable part living in a capitalist world— but by leaps and bounds. And, more saliently, by leaps and bounds more than the government's official rates of inflation.

What's the official rate of inflation? It's varied over the past 6 years from a low near zero to the high single digits. Overall, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) inflation calculator, the consumer price index (CPI) today is 26% higher than in March, 2020.

The overall CPI is up 26%. Yet basic groceries are up 50%, 100%, or more. And it's not just groceries that have shot up way faster than government official numbers. Anyone who pays for their own insurance has seen that increase an average of 10% a year over the last several years. With insurance it's not always a level !0% a year; sometimes it's a whopping 25% or 50% increase all at once, followed by a flat rate the next year. The point is, the difference between reality and government numbers is stark.

Groceries and insurance are just two major household expense items I could name. There are plenty of others that are also going up in cost, way faster than the government CPI. It makes me wonder what the hell else are they measuring? The cost of a Cray 2 (1985) supercomputer? Because computing has come waaaay down in price. You can buy a value-pak of 5,000 Cray 2s today for $800... and don't worry about where you'd put it; it all fits in your pocket! (Hint: it's your smartphone.)

The final note I'll close with is an introspection about whether complaining about inflation/"prices these days" is an old-person thing. I do often feel like I'm become a cranky old codget every time I hesitate to buy something because I remember when it was so much cheaper. But it's actually not just an old-person thing because the rise in prices has been so abrupt. The other day my sister told me that my niece, my 19-year-old niece, complains about "prices these days". She's just 19 and she remembers when everything was noticeably less expensive. ...Because it's only six years ago!

I got hit with a new type of phone scam last week. At least, I'm pretty sure it's a scam.

A man speaking solid English with a Texas accent identified himself as "Deputy [Some common name]" with the Santa Clara County Sheriffs Department. He explained that he was contacting me over my failure to appear for a jury duty summons. He conveyed that this was a serious matter. He stated my legal name, phone number, and full address to demonstrate the info he had.

Right away my Spidey sense was tingling, "Scam!" But mostly because I have a pending jury duty summons— with a date in December.

I chose to play along, as I allowed it's possible this wasn't a scam but was merely an actual sheriff's deputy making a routine call based on a mixup of names and dates in a spreadsheet somewhere.

"I didn't receive a summons," I explained.

The so-called deputy explained that that didn't matter and repeated that this was serious.

"Who's the sheriff?" I asked. I figured a simple quiz would separate the real McCoy from scammers.

The "deputy" repeated his name.

"No, who's the sheriff of Santa Clara County?"

The man on the phone balked and re-directed. I could've gone another round with him on this impromptu quiz, but at this point I was getting tired of wasting his time— and mine.

"Get lost, you fucking scammer," I said as a hung up.

Follow me to see if I'm arrested this week! 🤣