A Different (and Very Excellent) Way to Spend a Saturday Afternoon

I was fortunate to be a speaker at the BlogHer 2014 Special Needs Mini-Con session on Saturday afternoon with Shannon and Jen at the San Jose Convention Center and, along with preparing a talk ('5 Ways of Blogging About Charlie' with each 'way' being a different genre of ancient Greek poetry), I had to figure out how to make my absence of a few hours as not-big-a-deal to him as possible.

Our weekend 'airport to Oracle' bike rides end on the Peninsula south of San Francisco and some 30 minutes from San Jose. Jim and I thought about it and decided I would drop him and Charlie off as usual by the airport. Then I would drive the silver car down to Oracle and leave the car, at which point I enlisted various family members to (1) take me to San Jose and (2) take me back to Berkeley.

There were a lot of possible glitches. Aside from a bit of being driven in circles in the San Jose area (I should have offered better landmarks!), everything went (who woulda thunk?) according to plan (here's to relying not on an e-gizmo to give a speech but a little notebook with hand-written notes and to the good-hearted and giving spirit of my sister presenters and the engaged, eager to speak and share audience), and Charlie had a big smile on his face as he biked up to our driveway where my parents and I were at work in the front yard.