Coloma RV Resort

My last blog post was all about Type 1 Diabetes, and (spoiler alert) this one is going to end up there. I’ll start off with my usual shtick though.

A few months back, I reserved a site in Columbia because Richard wanted to see an old timey gold rush town. Working in a school, I knew just the field trip to take him on, except I got Columbia confused with Coloma. Both fit the bill, but this was the place I was thinking of. I had come here years before as a chaperone for 4th grade camp and it coincidentally timed out to follow our stay at 5th grade camp.

The RV park is really nice and we got a site overlooking the American River. The weather was beautiful and it promised to be a glorious setting in which to unwind. It was a long drive from Pescadero and I was pretty tired already, but the roads were easy and we hit only a little traffic as we passed through SF and Sacramento. As we got set up in the site, we drew quite the crowd from the big rigs next door, hearing multiple exclamations of: “No shit!” as Dory showed off her tricks. Always fun.

We checked out the cute gifts from the campground store, which was nicely stocked with all manner of touristy things. There is a playground in the park that is gold rush themed and there are many, many nice cabins to reserve. Then we took a stroll across an old, narrow bridge and did a bit of exploring in the historic park before dinner. I’d planned to come back to all of these and go to the Visitor Center the next day, but that didn’t happen. I was also going to hook up with a dear friend who lives not too far away, and I was very much looking forward to that. Oh well, activities for a return trip.

For dinner, we went to a place called Argonaut Farm to Fork Cafe. Ok, I was in a mood to enjoy myself, but this was one of the best places I’ve ever eaten. It is located inside a historic building and the ambiance is beautiful. It reminds me of New Sammy’s Cowboy Bistro in Ashland, as the prix fix menu is tailored to whatever ingredients are fresh. You will get excellent service because the place is really small and the staff is friendly and very enthusiastic about their craft. We even got a story about the carrot in Richard’s salad that came from “Ben’s garden.” I got a bottle of their own label red wine and it was fantastic. Richard got to enjoy the “bathroom experience” where you get to enter a historic, preserved gold rush house, staged authentically, and use their facilities. No fear, I hear the actual bathroom is updated. I missed out on that, so again, a do-over is in order.

My plan was to sleep in, a lot, on Saturday morning, but this is where diabetes enters and messes everything up. I got a text first thing in the morning from our daughter, saying her Omnipod PDM (insulin pump controller) had failed. We texted through trying to locate and use the backup, but alas, it is an older model and did not work with the newer pods. She called the tech support hotline to see if she could hard restart it and that was a no go, though she says they were very nice to her and very supportive on the phone. This was on a Saturday though, and the best they could do was get her a replacement Monday morning. This left her with pretty much one option if she wanted to stay alive until then: multiple daily injections. I can’t even remember the last time we had to do that, so it took some serious thinking to work through the calculations. “Do you know your basal rate?” “Yeah, pretty sure it’s 1.2/hour.” “Ok, so that would be a total of 28.8 u for 24 hours, but you might want to under bolus that.” “Right.” “We’ve got Lantus for emergencies right?” “Yes.” “You know your carb ratio?” “Yes, it’s 1 unit for every 8 grams in the morning, but 1 to 10 for the rest of the day.” This went on as we texted through correction factors, which she couldn’t look up on the PDM because it was dead. She injected herself so she could eat. And live. I’ve been completely out of this loop for a couple of years now, but I’ll say, any worries I may have had about how she’s been managing things are gone. The girl is ON IT. She knew everything. After all of this went down, I called her to make sure she was ok. If you ever wonder what could make us abandon a beautiful river side site without a moment’s hesitation, it’s the crack in your adult daughter’s voice when you ask if she’d feel better if you were home and she says, “Maybe.”

We all knew there was nothing I could actually do to help by being home, but there was zero chance we’d be staying. We went from bed to showered, hitched, and rolling in about thirty minutes. I half hoped someone from the Diabetes Online Community would chime in with a spare PDM I could pick up on our way home, but, to be honest, it’s probably not a bad thing to go back to shots once in a while. At least she knows she can do it. And so do I.

I hate diabetes. But she won this round and it can just fuck right off.

Total miles to home: 126.1, 16.9 mpg, 3 hours 18 min. Total miles from Memorial Park: 192.5, 16.6, 5 hours 17 min. Site: 72. Great river view, right on the corner. Great solar, but there were electric and water hookups. There is a dump, but it’s one of those high ones, so it’s difficult to get the hose water in the drain. No service for ATT, but LTE for Verizon and fairly good campground wifi.