A nail-biter

I gotta say -- as much as I enjoy time spent helping my bhikkhuni friends in California, it is truly good to be back among creature comforts and 'ordinary' life! My nice soft air bed compared to a hard pad on the floor (my choice -- could have put a frame together and used that or taken the bedroom with a real bed in it); a soft, comfortable place to sit (in my experience, comfortable places to sit, relax, read, etc. are unheard of at a Buddhist facility); and yes, even my TV and my big computer monitor and desk to sit at, rather than a plastic milk crate on the floor next to my 'bed'. The bed was not uncomfortable and I actually slept very well every night I was there, but my old body was less positive. Aching bones and joints were daily companions. So yeah, good to be home.

Drove up I-5 yesterday in just over 9 hours, compared to just over 11 hours driving down there via 101, plus it was simply an easier drive. My car (my sweet little car that's approaching 100,000 miles and still runs like new) almost drives itself with cruise control, the seats are comfortable and I had good music to drive by. Mostly low traffic. Rain the first couple of hours, maybe more, and the last couple of hours,  but the middle of the drive was mostly dry. Somewhere south of Shasta City all the fog and clouds cleared, blue skies and bright sunshine appeared, and while the sky had plenty of fluffy white clouds, they didn't stop the sunshine. All that high-desert area was greening up after some recent rains, and it was absolutely ethereally beautiful and lasted all the way into Oregon. Awesome! Mt. Shasta was wrapped in a big dark cloud, but I knew it was there.


The coolest part of the day happened not too long after I reached I-5 somewhere around Williams, after the lengthy connector interstate from around Vacaville on I-80. I was tooling along and my eye caught the word "Oregon" spelled out in huge yellow letters on the side of a big, green tractor-trailer. And it was the Oregon Ducks logo, not just the word. Of course, this caught my attention and I wondered what it was about until it cruised alongside for a second as we passed one another and I saw the word "Athletics" in smaller, finer print under "Oregon".  Then, it was obvious: team gear headed to San Jose for tonight's Pac-12 championship game! A yell and a fist-pump, and a big rush of adrenaline. Had to call a friend in Eugene to tell him I'd seen it -- way cool. After all, that game is the reason I came home yesterday rather than today. I missed two games down there, and that was ok, but I wasn't about to miss watching this one.

So -- today is laundry, shopping, getting life back to normal and ready for a nail-biter of an evening.