Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

October Family Visit Travelog #3
Outside Harrisburg · Fri, 16 Oct 2026. 3pm.

We've been at my inlaws' house for less than 48 hours so far but already I'm feeling like things are clicking better than on previous trips. It really helps that MIL is in better shape than the previous few visits. But also both Hawk and I are more familiar with the new normal here. We're more ready to accept, rather than fight, the bad parts of it.

For example, we know that things are slow. MIL and FIL have always have been slow moving, a fact I've shared my exasperation with a variety of times, and it's worse now with MIL having cancer and both her and FIL getting older in their 80s. Instead of railing against them going slow, we just plan around it. We start planning out mundane things, like a quick grocery shopping trip, a day in advance with them. We offer to do it for them so we're not hung up waiting on FIL to take 3 hours to get ready. We accept that things in the house move glacially. We go out and do our own thing when we need to.

And it's gratifying that MIL is healthier right now. I mean, she still has cancer. The survivability statistics are poor. She may have 1-2 years to live. And while her physical mobility is still very limited, she has much more energy for conversation right now. Last night we were all up until midnight chatting in the living room. Being able to do that makes these visits so much more meaningful for all of us.

I've shared that since drugmaker Novo Nordisk reformulated Ozempic a few months ago I've been worried the new, reduced dosage amounts are not as effective as the old formula's higher doses. I observed in my first month on the new formulation that my indicators were flat or up (up = bad) for most of the month... until a sudden drop of several pounds at the end of the month. The second month was almost flat. I shared these concerns with a new doctor I'm seeing, an endocrinology specialist, and she recommended to up my dosage right now.

That was just one of a few choices available. I'll call that Option A: increase from 4mg to 9mg on the Ozempic pill. Option B would've been to cross over from Ozempic pills to injections at the same level. The theory there would've been, the pills seem to have reduced effectiveness after the reformulation, let's try the injectable which hasn't been reformulated. Then there's Option C. That would've been to try something else... either a new drug in addition to Ozempic or switch from Ozempic to Mounjaro. The doctor and I agreed that Option A made the most sense. It best matches the approach of "First try the simplest change that offers a realistic chance of improvement."

Stepping up to a higher dose isn't just a matter of "Let's see if this works better." At a higher dose it's likely I'll experience increased side effects. I mean, I'd love to see increased appetite suppression / earlier feelings of satiety. Those help me eat less. And they have frankly disappeared since the switch to the new formulation. Side effects I'm nervous about are nausea, gas, and diarrhea. I'll see how it goes.

October Family Visit Travelog #1
SJC Airport · Wed, 14 Oct 2026. 10:30am.

We're off to visit Hawk's parents in Pennsylvania again. ...Not just again but again-again. Actually it's again⁴: our fourth trip this year. Or even again⁵ as it's our fifth trip in the span of 12 months. Wow, our family trips are becoming a higher order polynomial! 🤣

This time around the task of getting there will hopefully be easier than before. Last trip I picked a travel date when the two best flying options were to (a) take a redeye nonstop or (b) take a connecting flight during the day. After choosing (a) on previous trips left me with a screwed up sleeping schedule— including that time I memorably napped in the car in a parking lot mid-afternoon— I chose (b) in July. Well, (b) left us stuck for several hours in Nashville on a weather delay and then driving until almost 2am after our flight landed.

There's gotta be a better way, you might lament. Well, there is. It's called "Take a nonstop flight during the day." 😅

So this trip I booked for a day when Option (c) is available: a nonstop that departs and arrives at perfectly reasonable times. We leave San Jose at 11:55am and arrive in Baltimore at 8pm. Adding in time for picking up the rental car and driving to Harrisburg, we should be at Hawk's parents' place not long after 10. Maybe we stop for a late dinner along the way and it's more like 10:30pm. Not bad, especially as we'll still be accustomed to Pacific time (10:30pm feels like 7:30pm to us) for at least a day or two anyway.

One of the items we bought in our shopping spree with Amazon Prime Day last week was an air fryer. Yes, I've finally joined the trend of having an air fryer... 6 years late! 🤣 The model I picked is the Ninja Flip.



I chose this model because it's a combination toaster oven & air fryer. The toaster oven functionality is useful for small baking tasks because it heats up fast and doesn't heat the whole house the way using the full-size oven does. "I really don't want to heat up the whole house" is a factor I consider in summer months that dissuades me from cooking a lot of meals that require baking.

Plus the toaster oven is a toaster. I actually don't have a toaster... and haven't had one for years! I see toasted bagels in my future.

Then there's the air fryer part of it, of course. In case you don't know, "air fryer" is a bit of genius marketing. There's no frying going on. It's actually just a fan that circulates the oven's hot air for even heating. Air fryer is just a made-up new term for a convection oven, a technology that's been around for over 100 years and in commercial use for the past 80. But now there's a new term so it's cool all over again. ...Wait, is it still cool 6 years later? 🤣



I guess since it took me so long to jump on this bandwagon it makes sense that I haven't been in a rush to use it. We unboxed it Saturday and cleared a space on the counter for it. Today's Monday and I still haven't finished setting it up or used it yet. I'm tentatively planning to use it for dinner tomorrow. Plan: Buffalo chicken wings! 🦬🪽😋

Officially the start of fall was 3 weeks ago. Aside from noticing the days were getting ever shorter, though, there wasn't much reason to think of it as fall around here. We had a hot streak the past 3 weeks. High temperatures were often in the upper 80s to low 90s. It might as well have been summer still.

Yesterday the weather changed. The hot snap broke. Not only that, the weather pattern totally switched around, with the jet stream shifting to pull cooler air from far north, out of Alaska and Canada's Northwest Territory. Across California temps dropped 20° in a day or two. Here, today it reached a high of just 70°. That's 5° below normal for this date... compared to the figures of ~15° above normal we experienced the past few weeks.

Despite these changes it's not quite fall yet by my personal indicators:

• Do I choose to wear trousers instead of shorts because of the temperature?


• Have I switched on the heat in the house?


• Is it raining at least a few times a week?

Currently the answer is No to all three. Though it's getting close on #1 and #2. Today I thought about doing both. Maybe tomorrow? Though by Wednesday we're headed into another warm streak! ...Not as warm as the past few weeks, but one that will bring back highs in the 80s. And the earliest chance of rain is still over a week away.

We arrived home from our Lake Tahoe trip to what felt like Christmas morning. Boxes of new stuff, everywhere!

What happened was Amazon Prime Day. It was earlier this week. Usually Prime Day is a nonevent for us. We're just not into buying lots of stuff. But this year we hit it hard. It turned out there were a few discretionary items we'd had our eyes on recently, and we added to that a number of ordinary consumable things that need restocking anyway. Suddenly BOOM! we bought 8-10 things.



Ironically we bought all this stuff on Prime just before leaving town for Tahoe for a few days. That means it all piled up on our doorstep while we were out. ...Or it would have, if we didn't arrange with a neighbor to stop by once a day and put it all inside. (We know how to foil porch pirates. 😏) We came home to this neatly stacked pile just inside the door. It's like Christmas morning... but one brought by Lazy Santa, who didn't bother to wrap anything! 🤣

Tahoe Travelog #11
Downtown Sacramento · Sat, 10 Oct 2026. 8am.

Last night I did something I don't do very often. I checked in to a hotel outside my usual brand preferences. We stayed at a SureStay hotel in Sacramento. Why? Because I wanted to spend points. 🤣

SureStay is a brand in the Best Western portfolio, Yes, Best Western, a name that's been a mainstay of family road trips for, like, 70 years now, has a lot more brands than Best Western now. Like most other brand families they're making up new names so they can license new franchisees without violating the exclusivity terms in their existing franchise contracts. (If that sounds like a very business-y and lawyerly reason, that's because it is.)

The points are from when I stayed at Best Westerns a few times in 2024. I've been looking since then for the right opportunity to spend them and clear my ledger. It took a few years before this opportunity popped up while I was trying to book a stay in or near Davis. The BW in Davis is too expensive; this one in Sac, 15 miles away, is cheaper and on the way.

But would it be any good? The reason I've steered away from BW for years is that a lot of their hotels are older, basic amenities only, and in sketchy areas. A Best Western a few blocks away from this SureStay looked pretty sketchy even in its marketing photos. And this hotel is cheaper. Though at least its promotional photos didn't look too scary. 😅 I went in knowing it wasn't going to be the Four Seasons. The question was, would it even be one season.



This hotel is "conveniently located". That's real estate speak for next to a highway. 🤣 In this case there's an on ramp to the 10-lane I-5 freeway maybe 20' from the edge of our balcony. It's not a great visual, but we really can't hear the traffic with the AC running.



Since the rooms here are all cheap I booked one a category or two up. So this room is large. Like I've found with a lot of cheap hotels, though, larger rooms still only have as much furniture as rooms half their size. We could teach a 6 person yoga class with all the floor space here.



An acre of cheap carpet isn't what sold me on this room, though. It was having a balcony with a view of the pool and hot tub. This makes this room seriously nicer than the cheaper alternatives here. Half the rooms don't even have a proper exterior window. Their "window" faces into a corridor. 😨 I walked out of the last hotel that stuck me in a shithole like that. (There was also the matter of the carpet going squish-squish as we walked across it, but that's a story for another time.)

Alas the pool was too cold to enjoy yesterday afternoon. That was surprising as we're at the end of a 10+ day heat wave where Sacramento saw temps above 90°each day. But we enjoyed a good soak in the hot tub.

Would We Stay Again?

The balcony, the pool, and the hot tub are the good side of things. Oh, and the spaciousness. Just about everything else is poor, though.

• The building is old and the amenities are very basic.


• There's traffic noise whenever the AC isn't drowning it out.


• The hotel's parking lot is surrounded by a security fence with a gate you need to punch a code into to enter. That signals this is a high crime area.


• Yesterday evening I saw 2 homeless people camping out on this block and 2-3 more who may just have been passing through.


• The cashier at check-in was almost helpless. It took her 12 minutes (I timed it) to check in the person in front of me.


• The clientele here are kind of sketchy. The people downstairs from us were smoking pot on their patio all afternoon, despite signs everywhere saying it's not allowed. The security officer patrolling the fenced-in lot saw them and did nothing.

I wrote years ago when explaining why I hadn't stayed at Best Westerns that what spending more money from this level buys you is not luxury but reliable comfort. This stay reaffirms my position that staying down at this level is very hit-or-miss. I may slum it like this occasionally when my needs are modest— "8 hours and a shower"— and/or when even slightly better places are eye-wateringly expensive.

Tahoe Travelog #9
Downtown Sacramento · Fri, 9 Oct 2026. 1:30pm.

We called an audible this morning. Our plan had been to drive over to the Carson Pass, 4x4 over the Forestdale Divide, and hike to the top of an artfully named mountain, The Nipple. But this morning we were both feeling pokey and not sure we had the stamina or care for a strenuous hike. We killed a bit of time in Tahoe to see if we'd warm up to the 4x4 and hiking plan, but alas we didn't. I was tired from being up (rough night) and just wanted to be at home and nap.

As we already had a hotel booked for the night in Sacramento, Hawk started looking up things we could do in Sac in the afternoon if we just drove straight there. She found a few museums. The one we liked best was the California Capitol Tour. Technically it's not a museum since it's where the state legislature actually meets and its leaders have offices, though there are also some museum rooms with replicas of what state leaders' offices looked like over 100 years ago.

I'll post another blog with a few photos soon.

Tahoe Travelog #4
South Lake Tahoe · Wed, 7 Oct 2026. 7pm.

Did you notice how I ended my previous blog by saying a nice room up the hill from the lake was fine because we could drive to the lake? Well, after stowing our bags and resting a bit that's exactly what we did. We hopped back in the car and drove down to the lake shore.



In many places around the lake, the shore is protected as public parks. Here in town in South Lake Tahoe a lot of the shore is hidden and private behind private property. But we spotted a few small public parks on the water and went to those. The first one was basically closed due to construction, with a chain-link fence blocking access to the water. So we walked along a road toward another park maybe 3/4 mile away.

At a few points along that road we found narrow paths for public access. Some only let to little dead ends with a single view of the lake, but one of them led to a path that followed along the shore for a few blocks. We walked that path the rest of the way.



It was interesting seeing views of the lake looking across the private docks. In the pic above you can see the casinos of Stateline, NV in the distance just above the lake. The California-Nevada state line runs across the lake north/south. The casinos and the town of Stateline are just across the border from California. Like, five feet from the California border... casinos!



We followed the hidden foot path along the shore of the lake to Regan Park, which is also kind of hidden. It's in a residential neighborhood a mile off the main drag with no signs marking it. Even at the entry to the parking lot there are no signs. You just have to guess from looking at your map app that the gate you're driving through is to a park. Though we didn't drive; we walked.

From here we walked back to the car. We walked the street rather than the foot path because the unevenness was starting to tweak Hawk's back. And by the end my sprained ankle was starting to throb. ...Not badly throb but more 3/10 like, "Bro, how much further you finna go?"

We got back to the car, drove around town unsuccessfully trying to find where we got married— I'll share the rest of that story another time— and decided to have a picnic dinner by the lake.



We didn't pack a picnic dinner, so we stopped and bought one. At Whole Foods. And the store graciously had picnic tables out front, so we sat there and ate. I also bought some dessert to enjoy back in the room later tonight. Oh, and that beer is one can of a 6er. I'll enjoy the rest of those over the next few nights.

Tahoe Travelog #2
At the hotel · Wed, 7 Oct 2026. 4:30pm.

Late this morning we set off for Lake Tahoe. It's a trip we planned just yesterday. While I was sitting in the dentist's waiting room.

It's a pleasant drive of about 220 miles up to Tahoe from our home. ...Well it was pleasant today because we drove midday, midweek. Doing this drive on a Friday afternoon/evening, or on a Saturday after 10am when everyone gets their boat trailer hooked up and on the road, is grueling.



We got an early enough leave on, 11:30, after Hawk had a few morning appointments, that we chose to stop for lunch on the road rather than eat in Sunnyvale. That opened up the possibilities of two of our favorites: Del Taco and Golden Corral. Hawk's a bit "meh" on Mexican food right now, so Golden Corral it was! We detoured our route through Tracy, the forgettable shithole where M.C. Hammer moved after his 15 minutes of fame were up, for the GC.

After lunch it was straight to Tahoe, with just a quick bathroom stop.

I enjoy the fact that we can travel spontaneously in retirement. We planned a trip on Tuesday and left less than 24 hours later. That's not even our record, though. Several years ago we planned a trip on a long weekend and left about 45 minutes after planning it. We were already off from work that day, so all we had to do after booking the hotel was pack our bags and and carry them to the car. Now in retirement every day is a day off from work.