November 2020 SCCAN meeting... kind of...

[RobertB]

     Due to the pandemic, no SCCAN meetings have been held at our usual Panera Bread Restaurant in Northridge, CA.  In mid-November, outdoor dining at the restaurant was available, but there was no electrical outlet nor shade for our monitors.  Also Panera had instituted a 2-hour time limit on dining.
    SCCAN member Jeff R. wanted to meet so that he could pick up his 2 monitors which had been repaired by Ray Carlsen.  Well, I didn't want to drive the 3 hours down from Visalia to Northridge, and so, we compromised.  He would drive up from his area, and I would drive down 1 hour, 20 minutes to the Bakersfield Panera Bread Restaurant.
    We met on Saturday, November 19, at the noon hour, and he treated me to lunch at the restaurant.  We ate in the outdoor patio which was shaded and had one electrical outlet!  Of course, we tried to be socially-distant, him eating at one side of the table and me at the other side of table.  We talked a lot about computers, a little bit about Commodore (like the Mega65) but a lot about new news in the Amiga world (like new add-on's for the A1000).  It was like having a SCCAN meeting but without the computers to look at!  I speculated that with that electrical outlet in the patio, we would be able to have official SCCAN meetings.  However, we realized that few if any would come from the Los Angeles area all the way to Bakersfield for a meeting.
    We reached our 2-hour limit, though no one really came to shove us out of the patio.  Being the good people, we left anyway.  Jeff and I transferred the monitors out of my station wagon and into his car.  We said good-bye to each other, both of us wondering when we would meet again.
    Later that month, all outdoor dining was closed, due to the pandemic.

         Truly,
         Robert Bernardo
         Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network - http://www.portcommodore.com/sccan