Today is the tenth of September (not for much longer, however). The day between two poignant dates. Trevor was born on September 9, 1971 and had he lived, he would have been 35 years old yesterday rather than being forever 29. Although I had a very delightful day yesterday, he was on my mind during the entire day. I do miss him so very much. And, of course, tomorow is the fifth anniversary of the Al-Queda attack on the United States. That’s another day painfully burned into memory. But today is the in-between day. It has been a very pleasant day indeed.

I’m surrounded by females today. Most of them will be gone by tomorrow sometime. Some have already left. A bunch of folks flew into Salt Lake City on Thursday evening to go to “Time Out For Women”, a Deseret Book event held on Friday and Saturday in Logan, Utah. Nina’s sister Pam, Pam’s daughter Vanessa, and our daughter Dawnmarie came out for the event. Ashlyn (Pam’s daughter and BYU-I coed) and Nina met them on Friday and went with them to the event. They all came here late last night. Dawnmarie had to leave this morning at 7:30 a.m. to fly back home. Vanessa and Ashlyn will leave tomorrow morning some time. Pam will stay the rest of the week and we’ll have a good time with her. They seemed to have had a great time at the event and perhaps Nina will say something about it on her blog sometime. I enjoyed the very brief visit with Dawnmariel. She’s arrived safely back home.

Yesterday I drove down to Salt Lake and met up with my brother Perry and his wife Chris. Our main purpose was to go to the Recreational Vehicle Show at the convention center. As long as we were there, however, we could also do some other shopping (Ashlyn and Vanessa just brought me in some freshly baked brownies!!). We first went to Cabela’s to look at some camping and outdoor gear. We all spent more money than planned, but of course came away with some great treasures that will get a lot of use as we go camping. From there we went to Camping World to continue shopping. I needed a replacement shroud for the rooftop airconditioner on our motorhome. I also picked up a cover and a few other needed items. After lunch at Wingers we then headed for the RV show. It was mid-afternoon when we got there. I thought we’d be there a couple of hours at the most. Three and a half hours later, I needed to leave to head back north. There were some lovely vehicles there! Lots of dreaming … but none of those will be in our future any time soon. It’s always fun to be with Perry and Chris. We’re talking about a trip to Glacier Nat’l Park next year. That will definitely be fun.

So, the day is done, I’m finished, and life is good.

Monday morning I woke up with a sore throat. Nothing else seemed to be the matter and it wasn’t really all that sore anyway. Tuesday morning I got up with a really sore throat. On a scale of 1-10, Monday was a 2 and Tuesday was a 9. I went into the office because I was expecting a contractor to arrive and begin working. He didn’t get there until the next day as it was. By mid morning, I headed out to see my doctor. Of course, he doesn’t work on Tuesdays. My option was to go through urgent care. They swabbed the throat and a physicians assistant told me I had strep. She prescribed a five-day course of medication and sent me home.

We have had a trip to Seattle planned for some time. We were going to leave on Thursday morning and then start the return trip on Sunday afternoon. We would have time to visit a little bit with Jared as well as seeing Kendra. I can be sick in Seattle just as easily as being sick in Pocatello. So, we loaded up the motor home and headed to the great northwest.

The problem with really sore throats is swallowing. That has become impossible. I’ve managed to choke down the daily pill, but that’s about it. Thursday morning I was feeling so crappy that we stopped in Baker City, Oregon at their emergency room to see if there was something they could do relieve the pain enough so I could drink some fluids. Their solution was a fairly strong narcotic in the butt. The headache subsided, but no hope for the sore throat. They prescribed some vicodin and dripped a liter of a saline solution into my body (two sticks to get the IV started. I almost didn’t care). The vicodin managed to make my mouth so dry that it puckered automatically (and that was the end of that medication. It’s a horse-sized pill, anyhow). There seems to be no change in the pain levels. On the same scale, I would say today on this quiet Saturday morning that my throat is an 8. Some improvement — but it almost put me on the floor trying to get the last of the Zithromax (azithromycin) tablets down. Thank heavens this was a once-a-day tablet. Now I don’t have to try and get anything else down until the throat eases up.

There is always an upside, I guess. I haven’t had anything to eat since Tuesday morning, either. Every once in a while my stomach cuts through the pain noise from my throat to remind me that I haven’t eaten in some time. It’s easy to ignore because the thought of trying to get something down is quite nauseating. But, I keep telling myself, it has to get better. I’m sure I still believe that….

It’s about 1 p.m. CDT and we’re somewhere over southern Utah or western Colorado. There are no bright geographic markers on the ground and I’m sitting in an aisle seat making seeing the ground even more difficult. We are cruising along at 33,000 feet in a fairly smooth flight. The “we” consists of grandson Michael and me (and about 150 other people). Michael and I will eventually end up in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania (if not, then this is the last blog entry, I expect). The itinerary has us changing planes in Houston, Texas and then continuing on to Cleveland, Ohio. Pam (Nina’s sister) will pick us up there and drive us the rest of the way to New Wilmington. This was by far the least expensive routing for the trip. I’m taking three days of vacation for this trip.

The trip evolved over time and finally came together. Nina has wanted to go out east for some time (and this trip only whetted her appetite for a much longer stay). Daryl was taking a new job in Philadelphia and needed to get his stuff out there. Dawnmarie and family have moved into a new home and really wanted us to come and see their new surroundings. Meanwhile, grandson Michael had reached the age where he needed to be invited to spend a week with Nina and me. Of course, that visit had to include a trip on an airplane, because everyone else before him had flown on an airplane. In fact, when Michael learned that we were moving from Colorado Springs (thirteen hour drive) to Pocatello (three hour drive), he was decidedly unhappy because that might mean no airplane flight to go visit grandpa and grandma.

We decided to meet as many of these needs as possible. Nina would drive the motorhome out east, taking Daryl’s stuff and towing his car. He would go with Nina providing an additional driver and assistance if anything happened (which it did, of course). That would get him moved out there as inexpensively as possible. Nina would then go on to Connecticut where she would visit with family out there. Dawnmarie and family would join her there for several days of fun at the beach and in the sun. They would then go to Dawnmarie’s new home for another several days. Michael and I would fly out to Pennsylvania, giving Michael his big plane ride, and then he and I would drive back with Nina.

So far, that plan has worked out. Nina’s trip got off to a rocky start, however. The first problem was that the tow equipment on the back of the motorhome used to tow our car had to come off so that a U-Haul vehicle dolly could be used to tow Daryl’s car. When I bought the tow equipment, I put on a locking hitch pin. We couldn’t find the key! Finally Nina had to leave Pocatello and go to Salt Lake where she called a locksmith to come and pick the lock. It took him about 5 minutes to open the lock and then he made a new key for the lock. By this time they were a couple of hours late leaving Salt Lake City. Then U-Haul didn’t have the promised equipment! They had to go to another U-Haul location about 45 minutes away. All in all, that put them about four hours behind plan. U-Haul is a very difficult company to do business with and this just continues to prove how bad their customer service is.

The motorhome has not been on a trip of this distance before, at least while it has belonged to us. As luck would have it, a tire blew out about 30 miles from Des Moines, Iowa. The vehicle has a spare tire, but changing it is nearly impossible without some heavy-duty tools. For that reason we have Good Sam Emergency Road Service. Nina called them and they dispatched someone — not from Des Moines which was about a half-hour away, but from some place over a hundred miles the other direction! They sat on the side of the freeway for almost three hours waiting for assistance. I’m sorry, Good Sam, but we’re going to look elsewhere for road service when this policy expires. This was just plain stupid.

As an aside, whenever I post an entry to my weblog, notification is sent to several search engines that a new post is available. Some of these search engines are geared towards searching weblogs — Technorati and Pubsub are two examples. Several large corporations are searching these weblog search engines for mentions of their company name because they’ve learned from sad experience that people who write weblogs can be very vocal about bad service when it happens. In this case, I expect that neither U-Haul nor Good Sam are smart enough to look at weblogs to know what is being said about them on the Internet.

Daryl arrived safely and intact at his new digs near Philadelphia. Nina had a good week in Connecticut visiting with Peter and his girlfriend Moe and with her aunt Jean. Dawnmarie and family had a great several days staying in the motorhome with Nina and playing at the beach for several days. Nina is now back at Dawnmarie’s house and Michael and I will arrive there late tonight.

This trip didn’t start off to smartly for me. I needed to be to the Salt Lake Airport about 8:30 a.m. The drive down was wonderful until I got to Ogden. From there it was very heavy stop and go traffic the rest of the way to the I-215 turnoff for the airport. I had not expected the traffic to be so bad (I’m glad we don’t live there anymore and have to make a daily commute in that traffic). Consequently, I was about 15 minutes late meeting Michael and his dad Ty at the airport. We had plenty of time as it turned out, even with my problems at security. I packed this morning with the intention of checking my suitcase. It’s a small suitcase, but in it I had some scissors, a small pocketknife, a Leatherman tool, and a couple of screwdrivers so I could see about fixing the microwave in the motorhome. At the last minute, I decided not to check my suitcase because Michael also had a very small bag and didn’t need to check his either. I forgot about the stuff in my bag! Security found them, of course. So I’ve joined the list of dumb people who bring dumb things to the airport in their suitcase. My choices were to give the items up or to mail them back home. I choose to mail them. It’s a good thing that we had plenty of time!

The flight is completely full. I’m at the front of the plane, a bulkhead seat just behind first class. Michael is back in row 23. He originally had a window seat, but the flight attendant moved him because a woman needed to sit beside her infant. He’s now in an aisle seat. The next flight is not so full as this one and he has a window seat on that flight.

The motorhome has a couple of other problems. The fridge for some reason has stopped working with the result that a lot of food had to be thrown out. The microwave didn’t work when we were in the Tetons in June. That is probably an interlock problem. The machine doesn’t think the door is closed, so it won’t turn on the wave generator. I’ve no idea what the problem is with the fridge. When we get back home I’ll take it to the RV repair shop and have then fix the unit or replace it. Other than all that, the vehicle has performed quite well for Nina.

We’ve started our descent into Houston. We should be on the ground in about 45 minutes (it does seem a bit early to be going down as quickly as we’re going). It’ll be good to get some lunch!