May 26, 2005

May 26, 2005

West Hawk Lake day 9 of 113

DAY 343

 

Today was mostly cloudy, and quite cool. When I went outside this morning to do some chores, I put Bo out on his chain. After working on the other side of the trailer from where he was for about 15 minutes, I went around to check on him. He was shivering ! Poor baby Bo. Little Alabama dog isn't hardy enough for The True North Strong And Free < snicker >.

We still haven't seen our "boss" Courtney, after being here for 9 days. If we were younger, I suppose that might result in us spinning our wheels. At our age, and at this point in our lives, we'll just use this to our advantage. We are extremely annoyed at not seeing her, and not receiving any guidance, or having our responsibilities defined, or her expectations for us explained. However, we'll just define the job for ourselves, thank you very much. We've answered a few questions from campers. We've lent a few items to campers. We've cleaned up quite a bit of litter after the long weekend. Okay ! ! !

We met this morning with Paul Duncan, a real estate agent from Falcon Lake, and the listing agent for Mad Dogs, the snack bar at the Manitoba border Information Centre that's for sale. I reviewed the financial statements, and we explained to Paul what we're looking for, in general terms. This particular business is interesting, but from my perspective, a tad over priced. That's probably a function of an owner who's not really all that serious about selling ... yet ! We saw a lot of those in the world of PET VALU franchisees.

I worked on making some phone calls, but could not get decent cell phone reception in the trailer. After a bunch of dropped calls, and calls where the reception was terrible, I gave up. We drove to Falcon Lake. Joanne did grocery shopping while I sat in the truck with the cell phone and the laptop and made phone calls. I phoned Roger Gran-Ruaz, my investment broker in Ottawa, to get some money. When we started this journey, I had kept as much cash as I thought we would spend in a year. After 49 weeks, we're out of money, so I didn't do too badly on budgeting. I phoned Mechtronics, the repair shop in Tillamook, Oregon that rebuilt Dee-Dee's transmission a month and a half ago. I had sent them an e-mail shortly after leaving Tillamook, with some questions I had. They did not respond, so today I phoned them to get a response to my questions. I tried phoning Ontario's Ministry Of Transportation to get some information on the 3 license plates that I sent back to Ontario for cancellation and refund last August. I've received no refund, and no response to 2 previous letters I've sent them. After getting a lot of run around, and buck passing, I finally gave up when Joanne returned to the truck after finishing grocery shopping. I'll resume my efforts another time. Some governmental agencies and bureaucracies make it nearly impossible to deal with them.

After returning to West Hawk, I wasn't feeling well, so I took a long nap. While I napped for a couple of hours in late afternoon, it rained. I got up for supper, then spent the evening working on the computer, setting up new bank account information, and updating financial records. We watched half a movie on CBC, but the reception was poor, and it became too difficult to watch a movie about Cirque du Soleil that was so visual, with such a bad picture. I took Bo out for a long evening walk. He was demanding to go outside. He had been inside all day except for a brief period this morning. He's very high energy, and gets restless when he's been cooped up inside the trailer all day.

DSK