Catching Up

June 10, 2007
Unionville, PA

I thought it was time to catch up for the last few days. Posting has been delayed a bit as we've been busy and moving, and this may happen again from time to time as we're not always going to have a connection (even with a dish on our roof).

We've left the DC area and are now just outside Philadelphia, near West Chester. We made sure that everything was battened down last Friday, which was good since strong thunderstorms ran through the DC area after dark. As usual, Merlin hid under the bed and Maya stayed in someone's lap. Fortunately, the storms were in relatively narrow bands so it wasn't a constant type of thing. I dumped the holding tanks and put all the outside stuff (grill, stove, lights, hoses) away before the rain came, so we were in excellent shape.

Saturday morning, we left the park around 7 AM. We had a "low pressure" alarm on one of the tires on the Range Rover (27 psi instead of the required 44 psi), so I pumped it up before we left. Although it was still up when we got to the Philly area, I noticed a large screw/nail/bolt/something sticking out of the tread, so I'll have to take it for repair on Monday (tomorrow).

We arrived at our destination park early on Saturday. Check in is 2 PM and we arrived before 10 AM. Fortunately, the people occupying the site we were scheduled for had already left, so we were able to pull right in. this was good since Geri had made a hair appointment at our "old" place in downtown Philly for 12:30 PM. I got her there just a few minutes late; there's no direct/highway route between where we are and downtown.

We're parked on a knoll with a relatively clear sky, but there's a tree right in the way of getting a satellite signal, so our main dish isn't "up". The park, like many these days, has a free WiFi connection, and our front "dome" dish is getting a DirecTV signal, so we're OK for now. The minor inconveniences are that the dome isn't getting the NYC network feeds (I need to call tech support for the dish on that tomorrow) and the printer is on our internal network not the park's. Neither is a huge deal for us for a few days.

While Geri was at hair, I shot over to NJ to get gas and wine (neither are cheap in PA). I bought 2 1/2 cases of wine at Canal's (one of our favorite wine shops) plus some grappa and Irish Whisky (for medicinal purposes only). Then, I did a little grocery shopping at Wegmans, a relatively new addition to the south Jersey shopping world. It's a chain focused on the NY/PA area, gradually moving east. It was similar to Central Market, in the Texas market, slightly better than Whole Foods but in a more limited geographical area. Just the same, we'll probably stop there once more before we leave the area.

Today (Sunday) was a slow day. We had "second sleep", which is always to be savored. Geri took the pups out to pee around 7, and the next thing we knew it was 9-something. We always enjoy that. Geri made us a great "Sunday Brunch" of loaded omelets and foccacia toast and we did a little shopping before heading over to Bob and Sarah Lopes' place for margaritas and fajitas. Dave and Sandy Thompson (in town for the annual bicycle race -- Dave as a spectator) and Bob Haver (a good friend from the Towers Perrin days) joined us. We had some good Scotch (Dave brought it down from Canada), margaritas, and wine (a Barossa Shiraz and a Clos Pegase cab from CA). We were mature enough to not over-do it, since we had a 35 minute drive through back roads to get back to the coach and the pups. Fortunately, we made it back without a hitch, and we didn't even leave a bread crumb trail. :-)

The pups were happy to see us, of course, and we did a quick walk so hopefully they won't have to "go out" in the middle of the night. The rest of the week should be fun. Tuesday night, we're planning to catch up with Peter and Paola Baxter (Peter and I have been called "Frick and Frack" on the food and wine front), and we have a few other friends we want to see while we're here. We'll be leaving for CT on Friday morning, so we have plenty of time.