NATURAL PERSPECTIVES:Seattle to Sacramento and back home the hard way

Vic and I flew to Seattle last Tuesday for our granddaughter Brianna Murray’s high school graduation. We left on Alaska Airlines from Long Beach Airport, which is a friendly terminal to fly from. But we still had to take off our shoes, jackets and jewelry. We can remember when we dressed up for air travel instead of undressing.

From Sea-Tac Airport, we rented a Jeep Liberty and headed south to visit Vic’s sister, Marg, and her husband, Jeff Blackman, in Vancouver, Wash. Their hobbies are wine-making and vegetable gardening, and we enjoyed the fruits of both of those pastimes. Their house sits on a beautifully landscaped, one-acre lot that backs onto sixty acres of meadow and fresh-water wetlands, with a gorgeous view of Mt. St. Helens. As if to highlight the incredible birding from their back deck, a bald eagle flew by while we were having breakfast.

We drove back to Seattle and spent the next two days visiting with our granddaughters, Brianna and Shannon Murray, and their mother, Kirsten. Our son Scott, his wife Nicole, and the grandbabies arrived just in time for Friday’s graduation.

We were quite pleased, but not surprised, to find Brianna’s name listed under all of the special award and recognition categories, including the Washington State Honors Award, which is reserved for the top 10% of the graduates. And, she earned an International Baccalaureate Diploma. We are so proud of our granddaughter. She’s had a lot to contend with over the past year and a half with the loss of her father, our son Bob. The whole family has done remarkably well.

But Seattle wasn’t our end destination. It was only the start of a busy week. The day after graduation, we hopped an Alaska flight to Sacramento and rented a Toyota Highlander from Alamo. We drove to Grass Valley, where Vic’s parents were celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary. Sixty years of marriage is quite an achievement, not just for living that long, but for loving that long.

As the oldest of George and Marguerite Leipzig’s offspring, Vic led off a round of toasts at a sumptuous dinner of beef Wellington at the Lake Wildwood Country Club. All nine of the adult children, six of the seven spouses, and five of the six grandchildren attended the event. On Sunday morning, George and Marguerite renewed their wedding vows at Mass. Up to that point, the celebration had been dignified. Most of you know that I work with former gang members. I teach them conservation awareness and they teach me all sorts of things. For example, I’ve learned to rap from them, complete with hand gestures like those of Three Six Mafia, Dr. Dre, Young Jeezy, and my other favorite hip-hop rappers.

Over the course of the day, the Leipzig family dispersed back to their various west coast homes. Our flight back was supposed to be on Monday morning, returning on United Airlines to LAX. A friend planned to pick us up and take us back to our car in Long Beach.

Up until then, the trip had gone off without a hitch. Then came the call from Orbitz. Our flight had been canceled. All other flights from Sacramento to LAX that day were already booked. But being forewarned, we checked with United before returning our rental car. The best they could do for us was a shuttlebus to San Francisco to catch a 7:30 p.m. flight to Orange County Airport. But by the time we got to the front of the line to find this out, we had missed the shuttlebus.

I called Alamo. The nice man in Bangalore, India who was handling our call said that it would cost another $200 to drop our rental car off at San Francisco. I inquired about driving down to the Long Beach Airport. That option would cost $598. Unacceptable. I stepped over to the Avis counter. They try harder. We rented one of the last cars left, a Cadillac with OnStar, for $81. It was less than the cost of our refunded airfare from San Francisco to John Wayne Airport, and gas ended up costing us only $55 for the trip.

We enjoyed a delightful lunch at the Firehouse Restaurant in historic Sacramento, and wended our way south. OK, wending implies a slightly slower pace than the one we actually took. We may have set a new land record for drive time from Sacramento to Orange County. We blazed down the highway as oldies from the sixties and seventies blasted out of the Bose. The temperature outside the car hovered around 100 all afternoon, and the speedometer—well, let’s just say I don’t want to incriminate myself.

We stopped to buy some fresh apricots, almonds, cherries, and blueberries at one of the many fruit stands along the I-5 Freeway. Instead of sitting stuffed into a flying sardine can with sniffling strangers and crying babies, we saw cattle-filled feedlots, golden fields of grain, mile after mile of apricot and almond trees, and severely overgrazed and drought-crisped pastures. We still got home before our substitute night flight arrived in Orange County. As Shakespeare wrote, all’s well that ends well.