Uncle Roger's Notebooks of Daily Life

Big Weekend

Saturday was a big day for everyone. For some reason, on the day the kids didn't have to be up early, they, of course, were up at six a.m. If you're interested, click on through to read all about it.

Rachel was off for an all-day workshop, so I took Jared, Sara, and Ezra to Sara's dance class. Ezra was trying to sleep, but couldn't because the sun was shining right on his face, so Jared and I packed him up and went across the street to the St. Vincent de Paul thrift shop and picked up a heavy sheet for a buck. We returned to the van, loaded Ezra back in, and put the sheet in the window to block the sun. It worked for a while... until he woke up for good. At that point, I just brought the boys in to watch Sara's class.

Once class was over, Sara got changed and we headed across town to pick up a friend from Jared's class (and, quite possibly, my future son-in-law). From there, our destination was Sunol, a small, East-bay town whose claim to fame, among other things, is to have elected a dog as mayor. Our reason for going, however, was more moving -- we were going to ride a train. Unfortunately, we had to take the car to get there and that meant traffic.

Our first problem was downtown -- we hit a massive traffic jam trying to get south of Market street. The whole civic center area was blocked off and traffic was a mess. Eventually, we managed to get across Market onto Sixth street and promptly came to a stop once more. This time, it turned out to be a disabled vehicle in the left lane, so once we got past that, it was clear sailing. At least, until we got to the hill just West of Dublin and the 580/680 interchange. There we came to a stop before beginning to crawl the rest of the way up the hill.

We eventually made it over the top where we saw a truck with a big utility trailer facing the wrong way and blocking the left couple of lanes. Not sure how it got that way, but I do remember seeing it go by earlier. After that, it was smooth sailing to Sunol where we checked in and picked up our tickets. Then we had just enough time to run across the street and grab some grub from the cafe. We took it back to the tracks, pulled out that sheet from earlier, and had ourselves an impromptu picnic.

Finally, the train pulled into view and the kids could hardly contain themselves. We gave up on the idea of a picnic and took our food on the train where we ate it in a dining car while waiting to head out. When we got underway, we went to the first car behind the steam locomotive. Half of the car had bench seats and the other half was mostly open. It had big open doors on either side (with big strong gates across them, of course) that the kids (and I) enjoyed looking out as we rode along.

The kids wanted to go to the other end of the train, so we wandered through the different cars and Jared and Sara even got to go to the bathroom on the train! There were open cars, a car with fancy, reclining seats, and one where they sold snacks. We rode all the way into Fremont, crossing a couple of bridges and passing lots of folks stopped to see the train, and then returned to the Sunol depot. I brought along a few of the pamphlets [PDF] we had put together when Jared did his project on identifying trains last year and handed some out.

After the train ride, we headed back to the city, picked up Rachel, and went over to Mel's on Geary for some dinner. The kids' friend's mom met us there and we had a good time. The kids even got ice cream for dessert. We finished eating and parted ways and then headed over to Rachel's mom's to join in the birthday party for Rachel's brother. We had some dessert and coffee (the kids had cookies but no ice cream) and Jared and Sara were pretty well behaved. Then it was home to bed.

Sunday was swim class, as usual. We also hit Costco to pick up lunch (cheap pizza) and groceries. That afternoon, I took the older two over to Brooks Park where there was a music jam in progress in the community garden. The kids played with some of the really cool percussion instruments one of the organizers brought and then played in the playground for a while. It was a neat neighborhood event and good to see a lot of folks out enjoying the day.

It was indeed a big weekend. The kids had a lot of fun and a lot of excitement.

Related Links Notebooks: Classic Beauty Northern California Railroad Resources [PDF] Northern California Railroad Resources Brooks Park

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