Friday, August 9th, 2019
Ride Report: None (Rest Day)
Have I ever mentioned that I live for Rest Days? Well, maybe not in the literal sense, but figuratively. When I finally got out of bed today the clock said 0930. I assumed it had failed to pick up on a time change somewhere along the line. Nope. It was actually 0930. Wow. I haven’t slept that late since, well, I don’t know when. It was glorious - in so far as a slumber induced state of unconsciousness can be.
But eventually, as is the case with all good things, it ended. After all, this was a rest day. I had things to do: eat breakfast, sit around, wash Delta, sit around, eat lunch, sit around, nap, sit around to recover from the nap, have Susan cut my hair (no comments about that being a quick job please - I’ve heard it all before), sit around some more - stuff like that. This to say nothing of eating dinner and going to bed early. I tell ya - these Rest Days can be exhausting. But one does what one must.
But before we plumb the depths of today's doings, how about a quick pic from last night. We had dinner at a local BBQ place. The “17th St. BBQ”. Apparently it’s at least semi-famous, having earned some award or another in the past. Lotsa pics on the walls of D list celebrities with the owner, that sort of place. But none of that matters, what matters is that they had a giant, carved, wooden statue of a pig...
A classic - and right on the snout! (We professional statue kissers refer to this as a "snouter".) The waiter volunteered to take a pic of both Susan and I kissing the pig. I'll leave to the reader's imagination how that suggestion was received. It doesn't require much in the way of imagination. Let me put it this way - one of us thought it was a great idea and yet there's no pic of us both kissin the pig.
Now on with the rest day...
The usual stuff - Delta gettin a bath. But I'd be remiss if I didn't mention something about the campground we're at for the Rest Day. As the reader cal tell from the pic, it's a pretty nice place: paved road, plenty of shade, electrical hook-ups, not very many spaces full. Plus, when we got here, the site we wanted was reserved for the second night of our stay, so the camp host was kind enough to let us use a fully paved handicap accessible space. (There are prolly 3-4 more - the reader shouldn't be alarmed as the camp host says they're hardly ever used.)
Few people know this, but when the Teamsters first organized they were driving covered wagons West across the plains to fulfill our Manifest Destiny. As it happens, there were no barbers out there yet - the Barber's Union having not yet become sufficiently dissolute to vote itself into being. Well then - what's an enterprising Teamster to do? That's right, they had to cut their own hair. And to this day, the Teamster hair cutting tradition continues. For obvious reasons, they use mostly volunteers. Just doin my part to keep history alive.
This is us doing what we do on every Rest Day - plan not the next week, but the week following. Hard to imagine, I know - us planning that far out. It involves the ACA maps; Google Maps; phone calls to RV Parks, Churches and Schools; etc. This is an exercise in logistics worthy of Patton turning his EB 3rd Army 90 degrees to the North in order to relieve the siege of Bastogne. I'd have it no other way. (The reader should note the raised eyebrow on Mrs. Schoen and the look of fear in my eyes. Normally that eyebrow thing spells trouble for me. But in this instance she's looking not at me but at the camera. Clearly one of you readers has been up to something and she's gotten wind of it.)
This is dinner tonight. Elaine's (our neighbor) famous, "The BEST Slow Cooker Cowboy Beans". There are bean varieties in there I'm certain I'd never eat if they didn't have mixed in with them ground beef, bacon and brown sugar. This stuff is so good, I'll prolly end up looking like the pig I'm kissin in today's first pic. Plus - with a crockpot that size, there'll be left overs. (Ignore the crockpot being sideways in the pic. The Cowboy Beans look the same rotated 90 degrees.)
And finally, planning day is a good time to bring this up since we just experienced it yet again. From the time we broke out of the Rocky Mountains, other than hitting RV parks to dump tanks, we've been staying in parking lots of mostly schools and churches, with the occasional museum thrown in for good measure. Hey - they've got the biggest parking lots. Almost universally the people we've talked to in order to get permission to stay in these places have been very friendly and welcoming. In this way, we've been blessed by the kindness of strangers on numerous occasions. And at no charge. There's been no bureaucratic run around, no hesitancy, when we leave a message they call back and apologize for taking so long to do so; just great people.
Till next time.
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