Fourth Of July

To start their holiday, Ira, Marcy, and Daniel Gershin flew into Oakland from Las Vegas, and drove to Sacramento (Daniel's sisters Rachel and Beth are gallivanting across Europe and thus couldn't come). They checked into the Hyatt Regency Hotel and called about 1:15 p.m.

We drove to Old Sacramento and went to the California State Railroad Museum. Afterwards we bought salt water taffy, and bought some bottled water at the Alhambra Safeway. They returned to the hotel to swim and relax. I went home for a nap.

In the evening, we went to Cal Expo to see the free fireworks display, billed as the biggest spectacular ever staged in Sacramento. Indeed, it was a big spectacular, with various 'Saturns', 'Hearts', 'Smiley Faces', and all sorts of big booms, enough to panic the ducks along the American River into flight. Too bad I lost my camera - lots of fun shots!

Incredible amounts of smoke came from the fireworks, from the cars, from the fair food concession booths, and from the smokers among the tens of thousands of people present. For an air pollution perspective, it was awful - a vast mob gathered to make just as much smoke as humanly possible, short of an auto-da-fe, or a forest-fire fiesta.

Marcy mentioned being very tense from the close-pressed crowds that somehow none of us anticipated, but she wasn't the only one - I was quite tense as well. Cal Expo has been known to have security problems over the years. It took half an hour in claustrophobia-inducing lines just to get through entrance security. I was worried about the stampede potential in those lines. The fireworks display itself took about half an hour, but in order to drive them back to their hotel, it required an hour - an hour at the wheel to drive from Cal Expo to downtown Sacramento (!!!!) Horrible traffic jams - just the worst! An urban hellhole!

But what are holidays for, after all?