Woodside, California
Suzy and I arrived at our west coast destination in Woodside, California, at 2.30am last night. We hadn’t left Las Vegas until about 4pm, reluctant to tear ourselves away from the hospitality of my Vegas benefactor at the Green Valley Ranch.
We hadn’t exactly planned to push on all the way through to my home-from-home in Woodside, but somehow we never got around to stopping for the night. We reached a point where we were so close that there seemed little point in paying out for a motel so we just kept going.
This presented us with the problem of where to leave Sedna for what remained of the night. The original plan had been to arrive on Saturday afternoon and drop her directly at the KKMI boatyard. But this was not feasible at 3 in the morning.
After considering numerous options about where to leave her (security and a generous turning circle being the main criteria), I decided to leave her at the top of the extremely steep driveway to the cottage in Eugenia Lane. Not easy trying to unhitch the trailer and make it secure in the pitch dark. The trailer has no handbrake, so we used the spare trailer wheel as a chock.
It seemed strange to be all of 50 yards away from her, after being in such close company for the last week, and I lay in bed hoping she would stay where I left her and wouldn’t run away and demolish the next door neighbour’s mailbox, and that nobody would crash into her in their car, and that nobody would vandalise her, and, and, and…. and then 3 seconds after my head hit the pillow I fell asleep.
As it turns out, my main risk was of getting a citation for parking a boat inappropriately (or whatever offence this falls under). My neighbour Joni came round to the cottage mid-morning to say that the police had been wanting to know what this strange contraption might be and why was it parked on their patch. She had saved my skin – she told them all about me, showed them my website, and invited them to my party later on this month. That seemed to do the trick, and Sedna escaped citation-free. Phew.
Now we just need to get her to the KKMI boatyard in Point Richmond, about an hour away. I will be driving very carefully. After 3000 miles we don’t want any mishaps at this stage…