September 10, 2005

September 10, 2005

Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba

YEAR 2 DAY 85

 

Today was cloudy and warm, with a brief, light rain in the afternoon.

This morning after showering, morning chores, and breakfast, we drove into Wasagaming town site to meet with Wilf Rumball, the owner of the Loondromat. We spent the morning viewing the business, and discussing it with Mr. Rumball. We arranged to meet again tomorrow morning to review some of the financial statements of the past few years. We were quite impressed with the business he is selling.

We had lunch, and spent much of the afternoon discussing the pros and cons of buying this business, or any business for that matter. We are very ambivalent. Joanne's very good suggestion was that if we do decide to pursue the purchase of this business, we should not do so any earlier than next spring. In addition to our ambivalence, it appears that one of the few factors that might influence Mr. Rumball to reduce his asking price for the business is time. He is ready to sell, and the longer it takes for him to do so, the better, from a buyer's perspective. We were in the same predicament ourselves when trying to sell our stores in Ottawa. It came to a point where getting out was the priority, not how much money we got. That worked against us then. Maybe now that can work in our favour. Mr. Rumball doesn't really want to operate his business for another entire summer season next year, so maybe next spring he will be that much more eager to sell. It's a roll of the dice that we can well afford to take, particularly given our ambivalence.

We walked to the registration office, and paid our camping fees for 2 nights. The office was closed when we arrived yesterday. I had a short nap, then did today's preventive maintenance. We took Bo for a long obedience training walk. We did not use the choker. Joanne wants to try "weaning" him off the choker, and convincing him that he has to obey commands even when he's not wearing the choker / training collar. It went well. When we have tried obedience sessions with Bo in the past without using the choker, he didn't respond to commands appropriately. Maybe he's finally ready to work without the choker. Let's hope ! He's such a stubborn, unruly little hound, from an obedience perspective, despite being a sweet little dog socially. I printed and reconciled our bank statement. I drove back into town to buy a newspaper. I couldn't get a Winnipeg Free Press, so I bought The Globe And Mail. I did today's accounting and began work on today's journal entry. While Joanne prepared supper, I read the newspaper.

We had supper, then I made a small campfire. We sat outside by the campfire, chatting for a couple of hours. It was a warm, pleasant evening. When we took Bo for his late night walk, there was a nice display of Northern Lights. When I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, the Northern Lights were astounding !

DSK