Time Flying Read Free Page A

Bay data center. 
    So, in January of 2007, after the holidays, I travelled to Cincinnati on behalf of LeftCoastX for a six-month site setup. Even though the work took me away from my home and family and barely allowed me to commute every other weekend to spend time with said family (and home, of course), the money and prestige working for this client brought our company made the sacrifice worthwhile. Also, the job was only a couple hours from where I'd grown up, and I thought checking the place out might be fun, since I hadn't been back for over 10 years. My parents had moved right after I graduated from High School, and still live on the West Coast not far from my home in San Diego.      
    All went well, we completed the project three weeks early so I took a couple extra days to get ready to ship my things, including a new car, purchased while in Cincinnati. With one more weekend to go before returning home to San Diego, since I had already visited my hometown a couple of times, I decided to drive a little further west and visit both the lake where my family had owned a summer home and my father's hometown, a little village about half an hour away from the lake. The spur of the moment trip, conceived of after an early Saturday morning latte at Starbucks would absolutely and profoundly change my life. 
    The weather perfect and the traffic light, I skirted Indianapolis to the South, and an hour later passed through Avon on Highway 36. More than 20 years had gone by since I last drove the road, and much had changed. Traffic increased, but moved at a pretty good clip, and I was surprised and delighted to see an antique police car up ahead, and after a few minutes caught up with him. I'm not a car buff by any stretch of the imagination, but this particular classic squad car really impressed me. Little did I know at the time, but this particular sighting would be a foreshadowing worthy of a bad bit of short story sci-fi. Fortunately, I had my digital camera and was able to snap a couple pictures as we drove west.
     
     
    The drive to our old  summer home, a cottage near a lake that US 36 crossed over was uneventful, though how little the place had changed shocked me. It had been 26 years since my family sold it, but it looked as though time had hardly passed. A tornado had taken out several big and old trees on the property, opening the view to the lake and destroying a portion of the deck that ringed the two story chalet. The owners had rebuilt the deck and added a larger sitting area on one corner.
    The son and wife of the man who purchased the house and land from my father still owned the place, and were there when I drove up. They warmly welcomed me in and despite my not wanting to impose, insisted I take a look inside. We walked in and I stopped short. Not a THING had changed. Maybe the carpet and some furniture were different, but little more. The appliances in the kitchen were the same, the goofy colored glass light fixture over the dining area. Everything in the cottage was the same. None of this prepared me though, for what I saw when I reached the bottom of the stairs leading  down to the walk-out basement. For the second time since starting the  day, a bit of foreshadowing would intrude.
    My family sold the cottage in 1979, when we moved across the country to San Diego. My parents had had enough of midwestern winters and wanted to spend the next phase of their lives in the sun, near the ocean, where they remain today, retired. For the most part, it represented a new start and except for some cherished pieces of furniture and heirlooms, we sent truckloads of stuff to auction. Halfway through my four years of college, I had decided to transfer to the University of San Diego. I’d had my fill of dorm life and decided apartment-living sounded much better, so we set aside a few pieces of furniture me, a sofa, big round oak table and to go with it, some cool (at the time) very 70s rustic chairs that looked like they