twinset.us

Dear Ellen,

That week with John and Betsy flew by pretty darned fast. And before you knew it, we were seeing giant fruit as we traveled down I-85 towards Athens, Georgia. We stayed there for a few days with Allen and we got to see him graduate from his Supply Officer Basic Course. He’ll be in Athens till July for a few shorter courses, all getting him ready to report to the fast attack submarine USS PROVIDENCE out of Groton, Connecticut. Sadly, he and Tina have broken up, so being close to NYC will no longer hold as much of a draw, but he is quite excited about getting to his first real assignment nonetheless.

The morning after graduation we got back on the road…and drove for a long time. We did get to see some fun things along the way…the Arch in St. Louis was impressive. We stopped just on the west side of St. Louis the first day. I was very grateful that we had planned the trip so that we would drive the longest distance the first day with each subsequent day about 100 miles less than the day before. It made it much easier to get up in the morning and face the car again. We stopped in Hays, Kansas on the second night of the drive and we had the added fun of spending most of the evening in the hotel basement avoiding tornadoes that were touching down all around the area. I was glad to have my knitting with me. The dogs thought it was an adventure and a chance to play with the children who were staying in the hotel. No harm came to Hays and we were back on our way the next morning.

Let me tell you, the drive through Kansas on I-70 is one long straight shot. There are, however, a few interesting sights to see along the way. You can, for instance, enjoy the many fields of eco-friendly windmills that stretch out over the plains. And sometimes you see funny handsome men trying to scrape some of the several thousand dead bugs off of your windshield. I had enough time to take the two balls of SWTC A-Maizing ribbon yarn that I won in a guild raffle and knit 3/4 of a Baby Surprise jacket. Then I ran out of yarn. I decided it needed frogging anyway — I could see where I managed to mess up the mitreing when I was first starting…I had the count wrong. (No, I didn’t use the safety pins to mark the stitches as EZ had recommended.) As it turned out it didn’t really matter since I didn’t have enough yarn anyway. The EZ Baby Surprise will have to wait a little longer.

Incredible as it might be, Dale and I never got on each other’s nerves throughout the trip. (The NPR podcasts of “Car Talk” and “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!” get some of the credit.) However, the dogs kept asking if we were there yet. Ruby made it a point to find the best vantage point to watch the road markers. And Max was extremely happy when he finally saw the sign for entering Colorado Springs! As you can tell, Dale was too!! Fortunately, it was pretty easy to find our hotel and we got settled in pretty quickly. We’ve got a two bedroom suite that is small, but very nice — and on the ground floor, a definite bonus with dogs to walk! (My next post will show you some of the things we see while we are out on our daily early morning 1.5 mile jaunts.)

Dale more than earned credit for investigating a knitting group for me to go to just two days after we arrived. Unfortunately, they meet on weekdays, so now that I’m back at work, I won’t have many opportunities to join them. They were a great source of information and I sure enjoyed spending a morning with them.  I’ll try to make it back again some time in the future.

I’ve been at work for a week now and I have to say it’s going pretty well. There will be more than enough for me to do to make sure I’m earning my paycheck, but I actually think I may be able to have some work-life balance…even possibly schedule some leave! I’m going to enjoy it. Enough for tonight…

Love, Jan