Friday, June 8, 2018

There's always next year

Well we all believed but our great Golden Knights just couldn't stop the CAPITOLS. Congratulations to them, only took them 44 years. [Meow]
Got up early and got some cleaning done here in the house. Will do more tomorrow morning before it gets too hot. Doing deep cleaning - tired of the dust. But today the wind is supposed to be in the 40 mph gusts again - so lots of dust blowing around. 
Bill is out playing with the Jeep getting it ready to go for a short trip. Still planing on going Monday for a week or so. It will be hot but the scenery will be different, give me something to write about.
The Soccer World Cup starts the 14th - of course we will be pulling for
Argentina. But unless there is an upset they won't make it to the final. They have one great player - Messi - a couple of good players and the rest...better left unsaid. Argentina won the World Cup in 1978 and we were living in the motorhome in Argentina in Buenos Aires that night. The whole country celebrated for days. You can read about it in our book All The Way To Argentina, available in e-book or hard copy. [It is about our drive from Los Angeles to Buenos Aires and Rio in our motorhome with our five kids in 1978.] A short excerpt from it - from Curitiba Brazil
After spending time at the falls we drove into town to a grocery store and found: jelly beans, grape jelly, peanut butter and sugar pops! It was the first jelly and peanut butter since we left Mexico.  Also bought some coffee that was wonderful. The food prices were cheaper than in Argentina, but gasoline was $1.60 US a gallon.
As we continued traveling the countryside we passed through was very pretty, mostly farms. The houses were small and made of wood and all were painted vivid colors: yellows, blues and greens. We don’t have any pictures of this area as Bill’s camera had stopped working right after we left the falls. When we took the camera in to get fixed the repair person told us we must have placed it near a magnet - a ha - Randy was using it to take pictures of the falls. Our son Randy has a truly “magnetic” personality. Before we left the US we knew he couldn’t wear or carry a watch - after a couple of days they would stop working. There was and is something in him that acts like magnet and messes with certain mechanisms.  In this day and age with digital there is no problem.
We drove about 350 miles to Curitiba where we planned on stopping for the night. By the time we reached the town it was dark. Again I was reading the map and giving Bill directions that he blindly followed.
“Turn left here.” I told him, He turned and we proceeded down a paved road.
“Isn’t this road awfully narrow?” he remarked.
“Yes, but it gets us where we want to go,” was my reply. That was no sooner out of my mouth when I saw the sign.
There was a picture of a bicycle and below it a picture of a car with a line drawn through it. The words I assumed said “BICYCLE PATH”
“Oh my God, we’re on a bicycle path - we need to get off of here.”
“A WHAT?”
“A bicycle path - that’s why it’s so narrow.”

“Look for a way off.”  On both sides of us were three foot pilings - making the path.
Why are we driving on a bicycle path Dad? How come Mom told you to drive on a bicycle path?” This from Gil who had wandered up front just in time to hear my observation.
“Quiet - Dad needs to concentrate. Go sit down,” I told him giving him a push towards the back.
I was sitting forward peering out the window into the dark. Just ahead of us the headlights picked up a path leading to the left. “There. There’s a way out,” I said. “And I think it leads to a real road.”
Sure enough, we reached it and saw the road I had seen on the map - running right next to us. Bill gave me an “Again!” look and made the turn. Whew now we were on the right road.

We found a motel where we could also park the motorhome. So we checked in. Got a room for us and the kids would stay in the motorhome.
Time to stop and watch NASCAR and cool down.

4 comments:

Wendy said...

Anybody reading this must get a the book it is so good you do t want to put it down, the fun of hey got to to is funny. Yes hey did a great Job of writers my it

Wendy said...

This phone sure changes the words

Carol and Bill said...

thank you for your endorsement.

SandyM said...

We both enjoyed reading your book; thank you for that gift and the autographs, too.