A California wedding

Waymo driverless taxis are everywhere in downtown San Francisco.

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If you dear readers wondered why this column did not appear in last week’s Times Pilot, Mary and I were in Northern California for the marriage of our son Justin to a wonderful woman, Piper Akol.

I was also honored to be one of his groomsmen. So today I will take a point of privilege of a proud father to brag about his son and new daughter-In-law.

The wedding was in Lafayette, a beautiful Bay Area community of 25,000 people about 20 miles northeast of San Francisco. It’s Piper’s hometown. Justin and Piper both live in Washington, DC, and they will return to our nation’s capital after a little honeymoon to Hawaii.

Justin, a 2008 graduate of St. Mary’s High School, has been working for the federal government since graduation from the University of Notre Dame in 2012. For the past four years, in addition to his full-time day job, he has attended law school at night and in May received his law degree from Georgetown University. He has accepted a position with a prominent Washington law firm that specializes in litigation.

Piper is also an attorney. She is doing noble work as an immigration lawyer. They are both committed to the cause of justice. It’s important to have principled people like them in our nation’s capital.

Justin followed in his old man’s footsteps, taking his time getting married. He is 35 years old — the same age I was when Mary and I tied the knot a mere 40 years ago next month.

We were joined in California by daughter Bridget and her husband Branden from Chicagoland. I got to brag about them four years ago when they were hitched.

The Cullen and Tolan families turned out in force for the Left Coast hootenanny. Cullens will show up anywhere there’s free food. It was heartwarming to see so many friends and family from across the United States honor Piper and Justin.

I’ve suggested Justin and Piper should hang out their shingles in Storm Lake, since we need lawyers here, but they seem to think DC is a more happening place.

WHILE IN CALIFORNIA we saw some sights, including a Napa Valley wine tasting, and in nearby San Francisco toured the notorious Alcatraz prison (I would not have enjoyed incarceration there) and saw the visiting St. Louis Cardinals edge the hometown Giants 6-5 in a baseball game at Oracle Park. It’s a beautiful place to watch a game, but it gets frigid after dark, even in summer, sitting on the shore of the Pacific Ocean where nighttime temperatures drop 20 or 30 degrees or more from daytime highs.

The City by the Bay is one of the world’s most picturesque. Its famous hilly streets are great for action movies like “Bullit,” but a challenge for everyday motorists. How did Bay City drivers manage in the days before automatic transmissions? Some of those streets seem to climb and descend at 45 degree angles. Better have good brakes!

We saw a lot of Waymo driverless taxis. They’re obvious by the giant contraptions affixed to the tops and sides that guide the small white electric cars through the maze of traffic in downtown SF. They seemed to do quite well, better than a lot of human drivers. I wanted to ride in one but didn’t get the opportunity.

Pre-dawn Monday there was an earthquake in nearby Berkeley that rattled some cages, but we were exhausted and slept right through it. It was the third earthquake I’ve been in and didn’t feel any of them. The others were in Indiana in 1968 (there’s a major fault centered in New Madrid, Mo., that reverberates through much of the Midwest), and the other was in Monterey, Calif., in 1986. As scary as earthquakes seem, Midwestern tornadoes and derechos are much more dangerous.

On our return flight Tuesday morning from San Francisco to Chicago’s O’Hare, we flew almost directly over Storm Lake. I waved to all of you as we passed over at 31,000 feet and 565 mph.