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September 30, 2022

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

Can you believe that September is over and October is here?! My goodness' I feel like I am on a bullet train!

I had my 60+2 years high school class reunion on Saturday. We drove into town, ran some errands and made it to the reunion in time. It was nice to see everyone that came. Out of the 275 graduating seniors, about 30 showed up. Some live in Hillsboro and the surroundings, some came from California and other parts of Oregon and so many of them have passed away. But when you're 80 years old, and you have traveled a long distance, you have accomplished something!

After the reunion, we stayed the night with Lara in West Linn. Her girls were over at their Dad's, but they came over the next morning for breakfast. They are all growing up so fast and have their own lives and friends, so we feel lucky to see them when we can. Lara has been busy planning her wedding. She says everything is just about ready. That's a good thing because the wedding is only a couple of weeks away.

Sunday we drove down to Leslie's and Dave helped Jason do some wiring on his boat. We wanted to spend the night at their place as we were headed for Redmond, Oregon the next day and it would save a couple of hours if we started out at their house in Salem instead of coming from home. Jason gave us some fresh Salmon and Halibut that he had caught to give to our friends, George and Margie.

After lunch, we left for Redmond and enjoyed a nice trip over the Santiam Pass. We got to see a part of the Cascades that we normally don't get to see - Mt. Washington, Mt. Jefferson and the Three Sisters. We were following our GPS (SatNav for my European friends) and, for some reason, it detoured us off the recommended route and took us down some forested back roads. Back when we were on the main highway, we had passed two trucks piled high with bales of hay and when we got back on the highway from our back road detour, we pulled in behind those same two trucks and we had to pass them again! I call our GPS "Never-Lost Nancy" (it has a female voice) but this time, I'm pretty sure she sent us on a wild-goose chase. I don't know if we saved time or not.

We arrived at George and Margie's in Redmond late that afternoon and she fixed the Salmon for dinner. It was delicious. Redmond has a lot different terrain than we have at home. Well, it's Central Oregon with Juniper, Sagebrush, a lot of rocks and a variety of lizards. Their back yard overlooks a small gorge and, after dark, we sat outside and looked at the heavenly bodies which included Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and all kinds of stars. George has an app on his phone that shows the night sky. All we had to do was point the phone to an area of the sky and it would identify what we were looking at! George and Margie also have some interesting yard art. They had taken a bunch of lava rock and made a giant lizard alongside the house. They call her Lucy. We got this photo of a couple of real lizards sunning themselves on Lucy. George is a blacksmith and when we look around, we see all kinds of things that he has made. He is quite the craftsman and he also works with wood. A friend of his painted this portrait of George wearing his "Smithy" apron. It is a beautiful work of art. The last time they visited us, we had given George a piece of Oak and also some Cholla. He took the pieces home and made a beautiful coffee table from the wood. He carves birds and makes about everything. He has a metal working shop and Dave wanted to take advantage of George's expertise, so he bought a small welder and George showed him how to use it. Another project!

On Tuesday, Margie and I took a trip to Sisters. The town of Sisters is a real tourist destination and the town is just charming with all kind of shops. We walked around town and I bought a couple of things. We ate lunch at a place called the "Open Door". After lunch, we drove to Bend and she showed me the Community College where she worked for many years. Following that, we drove around as she showed me other highlights of the city. I hadn't been to Bend in years and boy, has it changed.

Wednesday morning, we said our good-byes to George and Margie and drove 4 1/2 hours north to Pasco, Washington where Dave needed to pick up a small trailer he had purchased to transport his golf cart. We also picked up a couple of tires, as we had been told the trailer did not have any. As it turned out, it did have tires but they were in terrible shape. In fact, one of them was shredded! Dave was given a set of used tires to replace the old ones and they had to be airplane tires. Yes, I know... It's complicated. The easy answer is that the trailer originally had been built using aircraft stuff. So, we needed to get airplane tires. Anyway, we had them mounted and on Thursday we were finally on our way home.
However, on the way, we stopped to get coffee and while we were stopped, Dave was checking the tires and noticed a spot where the paint appeared to be burned off on one of the fenders. It turns out that the new tire had been rubbing on the inside of the fender and got so hot that it burned the paint off the metal! Dave got out some tools and "adjusted" the fender so it wouldn't rub and then he crossed his fingers! We watched our mirrors for tire smoke for a while after that, but finally decided it was no longer a problem. We did make it home in one piece. It took us about 6 hours to go from Pasco to Wheeler. We drove almost exactly 900 miles on the trip. Pretty good for a couple of octogenarians!

So, we are home now and it feels good to be in our own bed once more. It was a fun adventure and we thoroughly enjoyed visiting with friends, old and new. But it's always good to be back home.