#6F Go West, Young Man!

Hello, All,

After a week of fun, it's time to set off again. We had 3 days of "Cousins' Camp" with 3 grandkids   sharing activities and making memories of fun times together at Grandma's house on the river. Virginia (6) and Mireya (6) and Orlando (3), and a houseful of cats and dogs, plus us, gave us a lively mix. I enjoyed sharing kid videos of Frozen and Tangled (really, as I had only heard about them). Later in the week we had a marathon 3 nights of The Hobbit at my request. 

 

Two other nights were unique. We had a family-only Author's reading by my young cousin, Kevin. Just 21, he has completed a couple of series of novels, and has one manuscript in the hands of two possible agents at the moment. There seems no end to the stories and characters he carries in his head. I'm predicting solid success for him, hopefully in the near future. I know that we enjoyed his current project enough to request a 2nd reading, because we wanted to hear "what happened next."

Marvin spent his time customizing the ELF, adding a mount for the telephone, and installing strobe lights front and back (it already had taillights, brake lights, and turn signals.) And generally, making it more visible on the road. I'm still working on his personal flag declaring: SENIOR PEDAL POWER.

Kay and I had "cousin fun", too; going to the local Farmers' Market and picking up her weekly CSA box of super-fresh produce from Deerhaven Farm. While I was working on reports, etc., Kay was busy canning pickles. She declares she is the pickle Queen; the kids had a pickle tasting party, and I think there were 11 different kinds to sample!

Yesterday we set off on our homeward trek. It will be different from our East-bound trip in many ways. For one thing, Time will warp into "bicycle time", which means s-l-o-w speed, short distances. 

For instance, yesterday he set off at about 6:45 and pedaled about 3 hours (40 miles) to our planned meeting at Stony Creek. We "sheltered" in the van for lunch, and map studies and fiddling with our electronic challenges---2 phones and a tablet, 2 GPS units, and my gold star apps CoPilot, a GPS navigating system and Road ID, which tracks one another's phone and shows the current location on a map---that's really nifty!

We waited until about 2:00 for it to start to cool down, then decided that just moving would be cooler because it would create a breeze. I pulled into the Economy Inn in McKenney at 2:45, and Marv was only about 20 minutes behind me.  YEA! for the battery assist! That was a total of ~60 miles for the day, and one battery was exhausted and the other about 1/3 down. We're still learning what to expect as we encounter different terrain and such. Learning and working out systems and details is certainly the game at present.

More later...Marvin set out about an hour ago and is already 14 miles down the road. Today is a shopping day, and we're going to meet at WalMart in Blackburn. I'd better get on my way.

In the "carport"... how cool is that?!

....with Mireya and Orlando and their dad, Rafael Gomez