I'm heading to Redding for a 10 a.m. hearing and it was just too chancy to get up at 5:30 am and head over the mountain short cuts. I hit black ice 4 times on the Alderpoint road Saturday morning going to KMUD for my show. The roads to Redding are a lot worse than the Alderpoint road when it comes to potential for black ice. Higher, less travelled, less familiar. So I'm in Arcata. Doesn't save much time - its 3:15 from Alderpoint, and 2:45 from Arcata (and almost 2 hrs to get here) but I'll be on 299 which is a major highway, with more traffic, fewer weird curves, and I hope better Caltrans maintenance like gravel on the black ice.

So I'm in the Motel 6. It’s on a kind of Motel Row just north of 299. The clerk was nice and changed my internet discount to a senior discount, which saved me $2. Total price including tax, $41.57.

The room is about 20x12,and out of that comes an 8x8 bathroom with a shower, no tub.
Electronic key (which erased itself) but no internet, not even an Ethernet plug-in. We’re right next to a Best Western and I was hoping their wi-fi would bleed over but no luck. No, wait: it's kicked in, so I'm able to post this.

The room is basic, but satisfactory. Desk, table, nightstand, Bedspread is very bright colorful pattern symboling Motel 6 in the grat American west, I think. Its jarring in the otherwise neutrally colored room. But sleep is the deal, and to quote one of the greats, so to bed.

At least as far East as Quincy. Today was a real chase around. I just got home from the MCLE weekend - and let me recommend Brit Marie on Solano Av as a fine restaurant with an excellent Sharaz, if that's the way people spell it. Check it out in the Bay Area. The only thing that worried me was that the two waitresses were really skinny. "Fashionable" says Mary Alice. "Worrisome" is what I say. The food is really good, how come they aren't eating it?

So I run around like mad trying to get some medical marijuana back from the Eureka Police Department after going to court for another client. I gave the EPD credit for this: they are evolving. This case has gone from "get a court order" to "Show us your 215 recommendation and we'll check it out." We did, and they said they'd be back to us in a couple of days. We'll see.

Meanwhile the Yreka DA's office called to say they thought SB 420's definition of medical marijuana means that hashish (concentrated cannabis is the techincal term in the law) is illegal for medical patients once again. It is not. In the first plast SB 420 can not restrict 215 because 215 was a ballot initative, in the second place Sb 420 includes "plant conversion" in the definition, and concentrated cannabis would be that, would it not?
I'm in Quincy tonight because the Plumas County DA's office says marijuana is illegal under Federal law so the court can't give it back, even if it's legally possessed under California law. Tomorrow we'll hope the judge can see through that.

Its a long drive to Quincy from Arcata. Mapquest said take 299, so rather than backtrack to 36 that's what I did. I was at the Arcata CHP office trying to subpoena an officer for a DMV hearing (but he's on a two day vacation and one day is the DMV hearing day) when my chores ran out, so I took 299. That means I ate dinner at.......

The Subway in Willow Creek. A 6 inch "steak" sandwich. Passable but eating on the road just doesn't have the same pleasures as a sit-down meal. Still, I was going to go through Redding and Red Bluff but had no faith in being able to find a decent meal in either with no tips to guide me. And Weaverville has never been the site of a really good dinner for me.

Desert was an oatmeal cookie or two from the big supermarker in Weaverville. I probably could have held out till there and bought a deli sandwich, but I was ok with the 6" sub.

Got to Quincy about 10:30 and the town was shut down entirely. No where to buy a carton of milk for morning cereal.

I'm sleepy. See you later.

Up in the morning and off to school - continuing education of the Bar school, that is. I managed to get through the East Bay (ebay?) streets and park at the Claremont hotel where the classes are, with no problem. Mapquest scores again. The hotel is unreal as it looms up all bright white against the mountainside looking for all the world like a computer simulation. It could be heaven in one of those feel-good angel movies. Inside it is like the Winchester house - a real maze with poor signage. Eventually, after almost signing up for a Spa treatment by mistake, I found the MCLE registration desk and they gave me a map - but it was upside down. By noon I was on target with a clear picture of where the meeting rooms are and how to read the map upside down.

What stands out from my first long full day at the law conference? There is a genetic component to addiction and it is related to depression. Cultivation of marijuana convictions are not eligible for Prop 36 probation. Credit card payments can't be made directly to the trust account. I'm sure there was more.

Tomorrow I'll remember all the twists and turns of the Claremont and will slip into my classes with no puzzled standing around, or following people who look like they know where its at. At 8:30 I'll be getting information about ethics for Criminal Defense Attorneys. See you later

And what a long strange trip its being. I hit Eureka with two afternoon court appearances, then I had to get to Yreka. But which way to go. Mapquest said take RT 299, it will take you 4 hrs and 16 minutes. Ok, but its really cold, and 299 goes over some high passes. Suppose we take Rt 96 up the Klamath River instead? Well, Mapquest didn't want to hear about an alternate route. Finally I got it to give me info to Happy Camp, and then from Happy Camp to Yreka. Time: 4 hours 12 minutes. Hmmm, that's quicker, even if marginally so. Why didn't Mapquest show me that route the first time?

Anyway, that's the route I took. By the time I got to Willow Creek - which is the moment of decision since you either leave 299 there for 96, or you don't - it was snowing like crazy. I gassed up and headed off to Hoopa and beyond. The snow stopped almost immediately - it was showers and not a storm - but I passed emergency vehicles pulling some vehicle up out of the ditch. It wasn't bad till Weichpec, which the experienced traveller knows is where the road reaches the Klamath river. There was some snow on the road, and that amount increased as I went on. No driving problem - except I had to go slow because the road has no guard rails at a lot of points where there is a very long drop to the river. Intermittant snow but never much falling. Outside of Happy Camp the road goes seriously up and down a hill (mountain?) and it was icy and I was all over the road going up. Going down I went quite slowly and had no problems. As I proceeded I encountered gravel trucks from time to time, always in the west bound lane, of course, so not helping my travels eastward. It got dark, and it took forever but eventually I climbed up the long grade from the river to Yreka and found snow everywhere. The Best Western, where I had a reservation, had a long line at the check-in desk. It seemed that I-5 had been closed due to the snow, so lots of people needed a room.

I got my room, and then the internet was down. I went to eat, nearby due to the cold, and that was Dennys. It was awful. The people were nice but the food was similar to packaged sandwiches which have sat in the store too many days. I thought roast turkey would be good - it tasted like processed slices. I'll be avoiding Dennys, once more, on my travels.

Back at the motel there was a fellow lawyer from Humboldt sitting in the lobby using the internet (worked there, just not in the room). What was he doing there? Same thing I was, it turned out, he was handling a pot case the next morning. And the next morning it was like a pot lawyers convention. I saw more pot lawyers in court in Yreka than I had at the medical marijuana law MCLE class I took recently. We hung out in the hall and talked pot law - something only interesting to pot lawyers and medical patients probably, but intensely interesting to them. Case after case was pot - Siskiyou county has been busting medical growers at an alarming rate. Three lawyers from Humboldt, 3 from Sf. O
I had a wonderful morning. Every time another lawyer handed someone a business card, so did I (you give them to the court clerk, and the court reporter, so they know who you are and how to spell your name); then my co-counsel began to address the court when our turn came. He said all the right stuff and all I had to do was say "me too." It was effortless, like zen law. We got a huge package of discovery (that is, the police report and other evidence concerning our client, which is given to the defense attorney at the first court appearance) and we both filed requests for a lot more while we sat around waiting for the demur hearing.

A demur is a request for a ruling that the prosecutor has failed to state the elements of a crime when she made the charges. They are the hot new thing for medical marijuana cases. Most of the MCLE I attended was taken up with demur talk. I was tipped off that one of the Sf lawyers had filed a motion for a demur in her medicial marijuana case and it would be heard later that morning. So we sat in court reading our discovery and waiting for the demur. Then it came. She argued well, I thought, and she was quite right that law enforcement had no business busting people who were obviously in compliance with the medical marijuana laws, and certainly the prosector should not be charging them even if the cops did arrest them.

The prosecutor's counter-argument was right out of the dark ages. Marijuana is a schedule 1 drug, it has no medical uses, growing it is illegal, medical status is a defense that must be proven. A Doctor's recommendation from Oakland doesn't take into account that marijuana plants grow differently in Siskiyou County than they do in Oakland. We all chattered about that argument for hours afterwards. I don't know how the judge liked it, but he took the motion to demur under consideration. We'll find out later if he grants it.

Actually I admired the part about the plants growing differently. It's nonsense, of course, from a legal point of view; but it seemed like an original thought and I'll have to see if I ever get the chance in some case to reverse it and say these plants in the mountains are so much less productive than those in the valley that you should let my client go.

I was going to Berkeley from Yreka, for another MCLE session, so I headed down I-5, right into a huge traffic jam. A trucker told me that a tractor trailer had flipped blocking the south bound lanes, and we waited for about 1..5 hours, just sitting on the highway, looking at about a mile of unmoving trucks, watching the daylight dwindle and wondering if this would mean I needed to get a motel somewhere instead of driving on through to my friends home in the East Bay.

After we got going again I got sleepy and pulled off to doze for 20 minutes or so. I find this really works well. I can usually go for hours and hours after a short nap by the side of the road. I dream intensely during those naps.

So, in the end I made it by about 10. Got some good wine, nice conversation, and a very pleasant East Bay cottage to sleep in. All is joy.

It is cold. It is very cold. This is the second time in the 27 years I have lived on the 10 Springs Ranch in Alderpoint, that we have had a sustained cold spell. Last time it froze up and blew out all the pipes. I learned my lesson that time. But I forgot it, and this time I have a lot more pipes which look like springs or fountains when the sun hits them. By the end of the week it should be back above freezing during the nights, and then I'll see just how bad things are. So far the irrigation system valves have all blown, but 1. The outdoor shower hot water valve is gone, and that's the same line that goes to the washing machine so no hot water in the washing machine until the shower valve is fixed. We've been leaving faucets on dribbling, and so far to my surprise that has worked.

Still, the trees were beautiful Saturday morning, bare branches coated with ice and frost, and Smiles the dog loves the frozen grass. She runs thru it, then rolls in it, her entire body expressing joy, as if she were at some exotic high-end spa getting the ultimate treatment.
Last night I slipped and fell directly on a pier block which caught me in the ribs - quite painful but I don't think there was any lasting damage. Today I uncovered the hydraulic log splitter and split almost a face cord of wood so my sweetie will be ok next week while I go to the far reaches of the State protecting the wrongly accused. I do think about installing gas heat when the cold waves come - and then joining those Amercans with the $800 a month heating bills, I suppose.

Actually right now we have electric cooking, wood heat, gas hot water, and a real land-line phone as well as the carry-arounds and cells, so we can get through the times when one or another of the systems fails. Power outages are the most frequent problem. But I'm 66, going on 67, how much longer will I be able to lift those logs up for the splitter? (A long time I hope).