March 27, 2006

March 27, 2006

Charleston, South Carolina

YEAR 2 DAY 283

 

Today was sunny and mild.

I had a really "off" day emotionally.

This morning we had to prepare for departure, move to another campsite, then set up again. What a lot of work for nothing. I played "telephone tag" this morning with Margaret ( last name unknown ) and Charles Fox, the organizers of FestiVELO. I had accepted a WorkCamper job with FestiVELO for next November / December, and wanted to come here to Charleston to check out the city, and meet with the FestiVELO people. I finally connected with both Margaret and Charles by the time we finished moving to our new campsite. Margaret was unavailable to meet with us today, as she was caring for her sick grandchildren. Charles invited us to meet him for lunch at 12:30. Or so I thought. I had difficulty understanding him because of bad cell phone reception, and his accent. And the cell phone problem was his phone, not ours. We got lost trying to follow the poor directions I had written down. We ended up at the far end of Folly Island. I phoned Charles for clarification of directions, and then found out he had invited us to meet him at 5:30, not 12:30. < sigh > It wasn't a total loss, however. The Atlantic Ocean beach at Folly Island was very nice.

We had lunch at the trailer, fed the animals, walked Bo, and headed for downtown Charleston. First objective was to find the restaurant where we were supposed to meet Charles at 5:30. Once we found the restaurant, we headed for Joe Riley Park and Brittlebank Park. Joe Riley Park is the baseball field that will be the centre of FestiVELO activities. Brittlebank Park across the street will be the camping area for FestiVELO participants. We found them both. I was disappointed to see that Brittlebank was not really a campground, and had no camping services.

I finally made a decision that I knew months ago I was going to have to make. I decided to decline the FestiVELO WorkCamper job offer. I don't really want to "boondock" / dry camp for a week for the privilege of getting up every morning to start work at 6:00 A.M., preparing coffee, tea, and hot chocolate for the FestiVELO cyclists. Joanne has wanted me to decline this job offer ever since it was made a few months ago. I shouldn't have procrastinated this long. We decided to call Charles later in the afternoon, cancel our dinner plans, and decline the "job" offer.

We drove over to the Charleston Visitor Centre and picked up some information. Not much ... they weren’t very helpful ! We drove to the downtown waterfront, parked, and walked around for awhile. Then we drove down the street along the waterfront where all the historic, grand old homes are. We found our way to the Market area, and parked again. We spent the afternoon walking around the Market area, exploring and browsing. At 4:00 P.M. we returned to the truck to put more money in our parking meter, and phone Charles. I got his answering machine, and left a message cancelling our dinner plans. It was too early for supper, but we were really interested in eating downtown at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, a restaurant spawned by the movie Forrest Gump. We had a late afternoon snack / early dinner there. It was great !

We drove back to the trailer at James Island County Park, and decided to treat Bo by taking him to the off leash dog area of the park. As we were driving from the campground, to the dog park, Charles phoned, at 5:40 P.M., to find out where we were. He had not received my 4:00 P.M. message, and was waiting for us at the restaurant. I felt like such a jerk, telling him that we weren’t coming for dinner, and we wouldn’t be coming to work at FestiVELO at the end of November. < big sigh >

The negative experience of that was offset by the positive experience of taking Bo to the dog park. We let him out of the truck, without a leash, and off he went ! He ran, and ran, and ran, and ran, and ran, and ran. He played with big dogs. He played with little dogs. He chased, and was chased. He ran into the lake with other dogs. He ran into the lake all by himself. He’s got very good social skills with other dogs We allowed him to romp and play with a lot of other dogs for about an hour. The whole time I was worried about his usual unwillingness to return and be leashed after he’s been allowed free. When it was time to leave, he was still a bit unwilling to be put back onto a leash, but not too bad. We returned to the campground, to feed Teddy and Bo. Bo ate double his usual amount of supper. I guess he used up a lot of “fuel” running around like that.

I prepared e-mails to send to the FestiVELO people to formalize our decline of their offer. We watched some TV. I did today’s accounting, and did some work on my photos of Savannah, although I didn’t finish them. We had a late, light supper / snack. I worked on today’s journal entry. Bo spent the evening snoozing on the sofa. Very late at night, I went to the activity centre to get online, send e-mail, and update my blog.

I felt like crap all day !

DSK