Come ON dear, we have to GO, I tried to hurry him.
But in the end, we ended up leaving not that much later than I had been planning on anyway, and in the end, it would have made not one iota of difference either way.
Googlemaps notes a distance of 223 feet to merge onto Cancar Drive. That was the fast part of the trip: 20 minutes. I think half the population of the Bay Area was trying to go where we were trying to go. I was marvelling at all the cars, thinking, I haven’t seen traffic like this since the Loma Prieta earthquake at 5:04 pm, where everybody was trying to go home at once and none of the streetlights worked. Wow.
We creeped up to the faire’s parking lot and got waved on past. At four minutes to noon, I figured Stephanie was probably done–I dialed Jasmin from the passenger seat.
It rang, she picked it up, and I heard about five words. Stephanie over a mike. Then clapping, as Jasmin tried to make herself heard over it. She had an extra copy. She’d also talked to Stephanie beforehand, and Stephanie had told her how much she was looking forward to seeing me. Thank you, Jasmin, thank you, Stephanie, that helps very much! It really does. I needed that.
Judging by where people were walking from, I was going to have to walk a mile in the noontime sun to get back to where Stephanie was going to be signing after the now-finished talk, assuming we were able to get parked and walk back there before she was completely gone. Gotta watch that wonder publicist of hers.
Richard told me, “I’m not going to tell you what to do. I CAN’T tell you what to do.” (Heh. He’s onto me.)
And with that we bailed. The northbound freeway traffic facing us was well snarled up to that exit. We walked in the door at home, I glanced at the computer, and just at that moment it pinged. Email from Lene. Hoping I was having a good time there.
And that’s when I finally cried.