without racquetball ended well. We were home by three o'clock and playing racquetball by four.
Judy and I met up in Reno. She had an uneventful drive up to San Jose where she met up with Mike and Katie and Jack, and Jacob and Yousun. A quick visit and a bassinette later she was on the road to Reno.
My drive west in the motorhome was uneventful as well, until I was almost through Utah. I had a little wind trouble crossing the salt flats. The wind was driving straight south while I was driving straight west. I needed just a little shift in the angle of impact, but the road didn't twitch for fifty miles. Neither did the wind.
I ended up driving on the shoulder between fifteen and twenty miles an hour, sometimes in whiteout conditions from the salt flat being blown across the road, while the awning mechanism tried to shudder and bend and flap itself off.
All the awning mechanism was intact, and locked tightly into place, but the top part which is held in by the spring mechanism in the roller wanted to unroll. After struggling along in the wind for an hour or so, all the mechanism was still there, but the fabric holding it all together was thoroughly shredded. Later that evening, parked for the night in Wendover Nevada, I figured out that a couple strips of duct tape wrapped around the top of the arms would secure the awning closed for the rest of the trip. In fact, if I had thought of it then, I probably could have taped the mechanism shut right during the windstorm and saved the awning fabric. In fact, I might tape it up before the next trip as a preemptive strike.
The weather was no problem the rest of the trip.
In Reno, Judy and I did finally meet up after almost a month apart. Within twenty minutes our reunion turned into a trip to the all-night emergency veterinary clinic to get the foxtail removed that Annie had snuffed up her nose. It was not visible, but the uncontrollable sneezing fit, the blood running from the nostril, and the contorted face were enough to convince us she needed attention. We had to leave her overnight while they put her all the way out to retrieve the deadly burr. The recovery was complete the next morning when we picked her up.
Five days, two thousand miles, all on interstate 80. Overnights in Laramie, Wendover, Reno, Wendover, and Rawlins. Gorgeous drive this time of year. Everybody home for a week. Off this weekend for a motorhome camp trip to Bonnie reservoir out on the Kansas border. Then off the Saturday after that to a conference in Orlando for a week. There is a shuttle launch while we're there, so we'll stay an extra day. Then another extra day for a swim with the dolphins, then home.
Well, that's the news from Louisville.
