Day Forty-Three...

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…went much smoother than Day Forty-Two. We actually stuck to the plan. Bob, Mary and Alyson picked us up for breakfast at 8:00. Ugh…8:00! Doesn’t Bob know about the day I had yesterday?!? I’m kidding. The place we went is a very popular breakfast destination so if you don’t get there early, you’re eating lunch. Breakfast was delicious. I had the blueberry crepes. The blueberries are about as big as the huckleberries on the bush in our front yard. Not the big blueberries I was expecting, but just as tasty and more of them. We stayed and talked for a long time…one last visit before we leave town. They drop us off back at Camp Kathy and we give one last hug all the way around. The rest of my morning and our afternoon is spent on the laptop dealing with the inevitable…blogging about our day in New York. I’m serious…it’s taking me FOREVER to write that and I’m not even close to being finished…plus I have a bunch of pictures to go through and decide which to upload. Adding the pictures can take as long as writing the blog sometimes.

Mike refilled some of the hummingbird feeders, puttered around the yard, then went out in the trailer to listen to the Red Sox game. He couldn’t watch it on tv because Kathy was recording a couple of NASCAR programs while she was at work.

While I’m blogging I often have to stop and ask Mike for help with specifics about what went on or the order in which things happened, but while he was listening to the game I was stuck. I decided I could start the blogs for the other days while I waited for the game to finish and him to come back in the house.

Each evening or the following morning on our way out here, I handwrote driving directions to our next destination as described in the online trip planner I used to create our route. I have half a small notebook full of these. Kathy has insisted we borrow her GPS for the remainder of our trip. She updated the maps (that took nearly 14 hours) and printed the owner’s manual so we wouldn’t have to depend on iffy wifi if we had issues. I took a break from blogging and took the GPS upstairs to her computer to see if I could import the route from the online trip planner. Not quite sure of, or confident in what I was doing, I managed to get the entire route copied over without causing irreparable damage to any electronics in the city. Now I just have to figure out how to retrieve them when I need them. Nowhere in the millions of pages of the manual does it tell you how to export, import or retrieve maps from outside sources.

Also to break up the daunting New York blogging, I tried to find the Seafair hydroplane races online. I checked to see if by some miracle they were on tv, but as expected, they weren’t. I did find them online, but it was between races. In fact I tuned in in time to see the air show. A new (to Seafair) precision flying team from Canada was showing off their skill. They had some pretty impressive maneuvers in their show. I’ve seen all three of the Blue Angels’ routines (low, mid and high) so many times growing up I know what to expect. It was nice to see something new and different. I toggled between the air show and blogging, keeping the sounds of Seafair running in the background. Between the Canadian team’s demonstration and the Blue’s there were wakeboarding and waterskiing competitions. I don’t care about those. For me, that’s not what Seafair is about. They also ran the last few races for the Grand Prix class of hydros. Also not what I tune in to the Seafair broadcast to see…but it’s closer...they’re fun to watch because they do more than go fast and turn left. But I want to see the big boats! Alas, I won’t get to see them. It’s dinner time and I have to back away from the laptop.

For dinner Kathy tried a new recipe on us…stuffed peppers. Oooooo…they were yummy! And she boxed up a couple for us along with some of the leftover mashed potatoes and spinach for dinner on the road! Our last outing was back to Peaceful Meadows for ice cream. It was Bob’s idea for us all to meet there at 6:30. We pulled in a little late. Carol and Ken were already there, Bob hadn’t arrived yet. We waited and talked, talked and waited. Carol asked how I was feeling. Still a little headachy, but otherwise okay. More talking and waiting…waiting and talking. Still no Bob. We decided we’d go ahead and get our ice cream; Bob could catch up when he got there. He didn’t get there. His loss. Maybe he was too choked up at the thought of not seeing us again for another long period of time. We enjoyed our ice cream and Mike and I gave Carol and Ken one last hug. I, of course, got choked up while hugging Carol. I noticed Kathy had turned her back to us.

At home, Kathy left us to do our final clearing of anything we had in the house. Before we headed out to the trailer for our last night here we gave Kathy huge hugs and lots of thanks for opening her house and driveway to us for the past two and a half weeks. She didn’t want to do a long good-bye for the same reason she turned her back to Carol and me. She was just going to beep her horn on her way to work tomorrow morning.

Beep.

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