September 16, 2004

September 16, 2004

DAY 91

 

 

Today started for me with a seminar on saving money by boondocking / dry camping for no or low cost. Great seminar, learned some good tips. Second seminar was the on the history and evolution of RV's. You might think this was an interesting seminar for me. I'm sure it would have been, if the RV historian who conducted the seminar didn't have the speech cadence of the black kid in the wheelchair on Malcolm In The Middle. Joanne attended another seminar by the very inspirational Kay Peterson entitled How To Live In A Sardine Can Without Killing Each Other. I hope she took good notes.

After lunch, I attended a seminar on Internet options while on the road ; land line dial up, cell phone as modem, satellite, and Wi-Fi. I have 3 of the 4 capabilities, and I'm not ready to spend $6000 on an RV satellite dish and attachments.

The latter part of the afternoon was taken up with official closing ceremonies. Afterwards, we got together with all of the Ontario chapter members present and went out for dinner to a local restaurant. There were 16 of us. The only Ontario chapter members who weren't with us were Hans and Peta Arends. They were at the same restaurant as our group, but they were having dinner with the Christian Fellowship BOF which they lead. Their Keeshond dog named Tucson, named after the place where Hans and Peta rescued / adopted him, was in their truck in the restaurant parking lot. When our group came out of the restaurant after dinner, we discovered that Tucson had escaped from inside their truck, through the sliding rear window of the cab. His escape got him all agitated and he was now in the box of the truck, viciously protecting it from any one and every one. While some one ran back inside the restaurant to get Hans or Peta, I approached the truck and tried to calm Tucson down a little. His anxiety level was sky high. As I calmed him down a bit, I climbed into the back of the truck and sat down on the tool chest behind the cab's open sliding rear window. As he calmed more, I was able to handle him physically, and convince him to come sit up on the tool chest with me. From there, I was able to lead him physically back through the open cab window. As soon as he was back inside the cab of the truck, he settled down. I slid the window shut and waited for Hans to arrive.

We returned to attend the evening closing dance party. We noticed, whenthe band played a polka, ... these people aren't from Dauphin !

We finished the evening with a work shift, driving the tram from 9:30 to 11:00 P.M.. we returned to the trailer, and a couple of lonely cats, to plan our return route to Toronto. We're going to go quite a bit further north than we had originally thought we would, up into Michigan, before we cross back into Canada. We've decided to avoid Detroit.

Whew ! What a great, but tiring week this has been. We've found before at previous rallies that these old folks are really hard to keep up to.

DSK