I am packed and ready for my flight. One surprisingly small bag fits my shoes, three days' worth of clothes, gifts, a video, some cd's, a book, and a dance costume. I can run with it slung over my shoulder, which I intend to do on the people-mover in Portland just for the hell of it.

So first to Portland, then on to Sacramento. Or "Sacramenna" as the natives call it. From there to Davis, for dinner and nostalgia, although both campus and town populations have doubled in the past ten years, and I guess there's no going back, but I do miss the quiet small town feel. Even the school buildings have changed, with renovations and demolitions and additions. The only thing the same are the massive cork oaks that line the campus streets, and the magpies.

Then MomnDadnGrandma will take me through the no-man's land of river sloughs and byways, rolling fields and over bridges, south to Antioch, where I grew up.
Antioch was a good place to escape.

When my folks bought their nice modest home 10 blocks from the river in the old downtown, when I was 4 years old, there were 16,000 people in Antioch. Now it is considered a "bedroom community" and the words "homogenized suburbia hell" come to mind. Yo yo yo, it's the East Bay, wuddup. Red necks and gang bangers and low-rider El Caminos (which never went out of style), where it's hot enough to boil eggs on the sidewalk in the summertime, where "culture" means graffiti and stylized mini-trucks.

But it will be nice to see everyone, especially my parents and Grandma, whose health has been failing in the past 6 months and who has had to move in with my parents. Also my oldest and dearest friend lives around the block from my parents' house, and I fully intend to collect on that bloody mary she promised me a year ago.