"Do you have any cases in Susanville" the lawyer asked me?
"No," I said, "but I do have one in Quincy."

And that's the one I spent 5 hours driving to today. When its not winter the route is easy. Up to Zenia, down the Van Duzen road now that its paved - about 1 hour to get to route 36. But then its route 36 forever. Surely the most dangerous state highway in California, is old route 36. Not so much in the mountains where they've made extensive improvements, but in the river bottom just west of Red Bluff. There are these short rises where the road goes up perhaps 20 feet and you can't see over them till you reach the top - and then you find that the road turns just over the top and if you're going fast, you're going off the road. You car may well lift off the road anyway when you top these rises. It can be fun, if you know which ones are safe and which are dangerous. Maybe someday Caltrans will improve this last dangerous section by straightening and leveling it out. The rest of it is quite passable now.

East of I-5 route 36 is really nice. It climbs pretty steeply into the forest and reaches about 5000' elevation near the Lassen turnoff. The forest is beautiful now - pretty nice when there's a lot of snow too. Not a lot of gas stations or anything else open after 8pm, however, so as we travellers say "Eat, and get gas" in Red Bluff.

In Quincy I stay at the Gold Pan Inn, where I am writing this. It is very near the courthouse - walking distance, which is a big plus for me. The Gold Pan is an old motel. So old that it still has metal key locks on the rooms. Even the Townhouse in Eureka has gone to card locks. The rooms at the Gold Pan are rustic. I'm in 146 right now which is quite large - and the motel has wifi internet. Microwave and refrigerator, too. I'd prefer a bathtub to the shower, but nothing is perfect. Tonight will cost me about $87.

Heard Bush's 9/11 speech on the radio. Unconvincing. The problem is not what he says, its that he doesn't understand what the words mean. I read White's book on the McGovern campaign of 1972 where the same problem cropped up. McGovern outlined a complete plan for winning the election, and as White is listening he comes to realize that it is a fantasy. McGovern is not actually going to do the things he is talking about. So too with Bush who has a "clear" plan for Iraq, is "protecting freedom" and things like that. I don't know about you, but I just tune him out. Its been that way for years. I would not have tuned in his speech, but there was only one NPR station available, and it was covering Bush. What a waste of airtime. I mean, really, there is nothing newsworthy in Bush repeating the same phrases one more time. They could have just put a little tag into the regular news saying "President Bush repeated his theory of the war again as his poll ratings plummet" and gone on to cover something new and interesting.

The main trouble with taking these remote cases (and the one I have in LA is really remote) is that you have to remember to block out the travel time. I'll get home about 4 or 5pm tomorrow after a short court appearance here in Quincy, then almost immediately take off for Ukiah where I have an 8:30 hearing day after tomorrow. Car time can be fun time, though. I practice trial openings and closings, listen to lectures on CD (got a really depressing one about the Supreme court recently) and books on tape, not to mention NPR where available.

I'm home, briefly, before dashing off on my final week before the China trip. Its nice to be home. Slept in late, spent some time with my sweetie, walked the dog on the ranch trail, cut some blackberries back - the usual home stuff.

But finally I have the feeling that I'm going to go on a trip. My world cell phone arrived. It seems that as usual cell phones in the rest of the world work differently than they do here. A world phone has a place for a SIM chip which you buy. That SIM gives you an account in a country or group of countries, with some prepaid time on it. My SIM is for China, of course, and now I have a phone number which will be mine while I'm visiting China - and a phone which will let me call people there, and from there. When I got to Europe next year (I hope) I'll buy another SIM and install it, and presto, I'll have a European phone number and can use the phone there. If you're going abroad and want to be in touch, I think these phones are the deal. Mine is from Telestial. There is a company that sells a world SIM for their phones (Google cell phones to find them) but I'm told its cheaper to get the country SIM if you're going to be in one country a long time - which I am. I'm also told there are tricks to avoid expensive international phone charges but we'll see about those later. Right now I'm settling for getting the SIM in the phone and charging the battery.

Local travelers may like to know that I spent Friday night at the Johnson's Motel in Garberville, because it was late and the Best Western was closed. Johnson's was quite inexpensive - about $50 - and while not fancy, comfortable, and quiet. The room had two double beds, which crowded it, a microwave, refrigerator, phone, shower, and desk. No internet that I could find (it was really late and I was sleepy so I didn't check with the innkeeper).

The weirdest thing about the law is that you travel for hours and then spend a minute or two actually doing something in court. Yet if you don't go, things don't happen. Yesterday I traveled for about 14 hours for a meeting which in essense took 15 minutes. I'll tell you this: airplanes are still no fun. The planes from Arcata to SF are small, and noisy. The stewardesses seem to be a bit more casual and uninhibited than on larger planes, which is enjoyable; but still the noise will drive you nuts. On the return flight, which was late in the evening, the lady at the check-in stand in SF announced they had filled the flight but they were overweight and needed 4 people to get off the flight and stay overnight in SF. They offered a free round trip ticket Arcata-SF, which is a nice incentive. But I didn't take it, and neither did another person I spoke with who said she was not willing to go through security again. I figured by the time we actually got to our SF hotel, we'd get about 4 hours sleep. I couldn't tell if 4 people took them up on it but the plane took off - with a great many rattles it seemed to me - and we made it.

The SF-LA flight was a "real" plane - a 737 or similar. The seats were cramped just as I remembered. Its so strange that we've got this incredibly advanced technology that allows us to go great distances in a short time, but we can't make it comfortable or enjoyable.

I bought a book Berlitz puts out which rates cruise ships. Slower, certainly, but ever so much more fun to be on. Lots of space to walk around, sights to see, good food. Even the train is worlds better than modern airplanes. Perhaps they'll bring back the dirigible.

Now that I'm travelling I mentally chew over life's big questions. What are we doing here? When you come over LA as you are landing and you see those millions of homes, businesses, cars on the freeway, its really hard to imagine that we're doing anything here, in the great philosophical sense. We're just here. If we had a purpose, surely that's more people than we need to achieve it - and the inhabitants of LA are just a small part of humaniity. There are 6 billion of us on earth right now, I think.

Thanks for the mention, Eric. We'll see if anyone cares enough about any of this stuff to respond.

I am flying to LA for a one-day business trip, and staying at the Holiday Inn by the Arcata airport (that's Eureka to you non-natives) because the flights leave way early. I have a 7:36 flight and have to be on the 6 a.m. shuttle. No fun. I liked it better before we beefed up security, at least as far as getting on planes. I do favor non-terrorist flights, of course.

I was disappointed to see a sign saying they would confiscate medical marijuana even from patients for whom it is legal in California, and cite the patients. The Feds rule, in effect, the sign said. I'm not so sure that the Feds do rule on an in-state flight but aviation law is not my field.

"Threat Level Orange" the sign by the parking lot says, and I have to admit that even for a skeptic like me that is one scary sign. The more so for having a kind of handmade aura about it. Inside they have a nice display of knives you can't take on a flight, and a newer sign about liquids and gels. I'm taking a computer and apparently that's ok. I saw someone get kicked out of a courtroom in Eureka today for having a computer, however. No electronics in the courtroom says the bailiff. They weren't even using it, the computer was just in a backpack. No backpacks allowed either. Our court in Humboldt County (Eureka) hasn't gone security crazy yet, unlike Mendocino's Ukiah courthouse, or Marin County, or Contra Costa county or....its a long list. No problem in Glenn County, Plumas, or Del Norte, yet but its the coming thing.

I walked to the airport terminal from the hotel across a field (yes, we are a rural area) which took a few minutes and was no doubt good exercise. It also left me wondering if being the sole pedestrian to approach the airport would lead to questioning ... but it did not. I'm going to eat at the airport restaurant this evening. There's no restaurant at the motel and they've offered to shuttle me up and back, which was really nice of them.

I'm seeing so many motel rooms all over northern California these days that I feel now like an informed commentator. As such let me say that Holiday Inn express by the Arcata airport is quite good, and quite pricey at about $130. Hi-speed internet, which is a sine qua non for me in booking motels these days, is by cable but works well. Two beds, TV, fridge, microwave, breakfast in the lounge, and a bathtub - another sine qua non nearly.
And, of course, airport shuttle.

I travel a lot now. I haven't always, but since I became a rural lawyer in the Coastal Mountains of California I've been putting about 30,000 miles a year on the Volvos. Mary Alice and I have been traveling quite a bit lately, too. We met as whitewater river fans, but lately we've been going on ships powered by fossil fuels. We've been from the Black Sea to Amsterdam by riverboat, and up the Yangtze, and Li rivers; on the ocean cruisers from Santiago to Buenos Aires, and coming up: from Anchorage to Beijing.

This blog will probably be about traveling and the thoughts it engenders - rather than about, say, law.