The Gimbel Way of Life: Out of my Element

It is very rare for me to travel and to feel completely lost, turned around and out of my element. I have complained before about no longer experiencing the “oh fuck factor” when travelling. So imagine my feelings of confusion and surprise when confronted with exactly these feelings a mere 45 miles away from home. I was out of my comfort zone.

Quick background. Oskar and Martin had their special weekend planned up in Nevada City and given that Alva and my official special weekend was in San Francisco I opted to get out of town for our weekend alone. I am still not sure how I decided on San Jose but that is where I booked a hotel room so that is where we were going.

With Martin taking the car I booked a rental car which sounds straightforward enough. Except when I went to pick up the car my two options were either a pick up truck (not ideal) or a fully electric car (how hard could it be). Electric it was. And so began my first new experience in a really long time.

The battery was only charged 60% which according to the dash would get me 130 miles. As someone who gets stressed when our gas tank only has 70 miles to go and San Jose is a 50 mile drive, the entire weekend was spent calculating and researching how much more time I had until I needed to recharge the car, looking for places to recharge the car and figuring out how to actually recharge the car. I attempted two places on Friday night while out for dinner, two new spots on Saturday during the day (finally having success at a Safeway while Alva and I ate ice cream in the parking lot) and failed completely on Sunday when trying to recharge before returning the car (opting instead to pay the fee).

After a whole weekend driving the car (which was actually a really nice car to drive) I think I finally figured it out. And if we did have a place to reliably charge when needed I would be onboard for a fully electric car when we need to replace our current gas guzzler. But man, it was stressful in the moment.

Car troubles aside, I was also directionally challenged the entire weekend in San Jose. I couldn’t for the life of me get my bearings of NESW! We drove almost everywhere and while everything was only 10-15 minutes away, each trip involved a new freeway which took us in a completely different direction. Thank god the car had a full screen for our google maps to guide the way… although in hindsight that may have also exacerbated the problem.

Stressors aside, we did have a blast. Pizza at San Pedro Square, a morning of hotel breakfast, checking out the solar eclipse, playtime at the Children’s Museum, an afternoon at Happy Hallow Zoo (where we didn’t see any animals but did get face painting and ride all the rides), sushi /Thai dinner, unhealthy snacks and a hotel room where we snuggled in bed and watched TV.

For Sunday Alva told me she wanted to see her new BFF from our previous girls weekend. With Lilah only an hour drive south, it was a date! However, while we had planned to paint ceramics at Color Me Mine (only to find out you had to wait 7 days for the items to be fired and no they didn’t ship), we settled on the Build A Bear workshop. And while we meant to go to high tea for lunch (only to realize with a phone call before heading that way that they do set seatings and were fully booked for the day) we ended up at Cheesecake Factory.

It was the perfect day but a true reminder of how out of my element I was… after a few hours with besties, we said goodbye to head towards our respective homes, with big hugs and two incredibly happy but exhausted kids.