Sep 21 - not much more to add

I pretty well covered yesterday in the last blog. I'm catching up on my reading -- accumulated issues of the Divers Alert Network and Wired, among other things. Lisa saves these here rather than forwarding up north. Sandy did more gardening.

We had grouper, rice, peas and salad for dinner. Today we planning on meat -- pork that's been in the freezer since the last time we were here. The fish store is closed today so we won't be tempted to change the menu !

Weather permitting, I'm going biking. The doppler is showing patchy storms, as usual, so I may get wet again. I might as well take advantage of the warm weather down here and get out though -- it will be colder up north. One thing that I did yesterday was give the bike a thorough cleaning. That was sorely needed and well deserved.

Another thing that I did yesterday was get Sandy's help to put the dehumidifier into the back of the SUV (and take it out again) to assess how the packing is going to work. This is not going to be fun. The dehumidifier is bad enough but the box of 8" flexible duct, which is 1'x1'x2' and the two grilles which are about 1'x1'x1' take up most of the balance of the space. I'll get my box photographic chemicals in there somehow -- 12"x12"x18", Aaron's biking orders and that pretty well does it for the back. It's lucky that the back seat moves so that it's vertical, which makes the space rectangular. People could not sit in the back seat with this arrangement, but Abby can.

Then of course we have more stuff -- luggage, a couple of water filters, guns -- they take up a lot of space -- a plug-in cooler ... camera bag ... hmmm. The guns can lie across the back behind the front seats; the luggage will take up 1/3 of the back seat; the cooler will probably have to stay behind.

Then we have additional stuff for Stef -- a dog kennel, a new food processor, a new set of pots and pans -- this stuff is all pretty big and would by itself take up much of the space in the SUV if it was not already occupied. The only way that we can bring any of this is on the roof, which makes for a noisy 1500 mile trip. I brought down the bike box in case we wanted to pack on the roof. A better (quieter) option would be one of those hitch-mount carriers, but they are expensive ...

I'm back -- having said the above, I went off for a while and researched these. The basic unit is cheaper than I thought -- around $89 -- but they range up over $600 for an enclosed box that has lights, a license plate holder etc. I guess that I never thought about the fact that you cannot obscure your license plate and that you'd need lights if you block your car lights in any way. The basic unit would probably pay for itself in improved gas mileage over having stuff piled on the roof, which is another consideration. The big enclosed box unit would be great if you are using something like this all the time -- it locks and swings away to gain access to the trunk.

Maybe we should just get a truck ... or plan to bring the box trailer down in November ...

Considering the full-up way that we will be traveling we are rethinking our travel plans. I'm going to get in touch with Frank Tetz and see if he and Nancy are available later in the month and perhaps do a trip down to Lake George via Hemmingford. We may end up only staying in Philly one night and get back earlier in the week, like the 29th or 30th. This is all a work-in-progress at this point.

Still no rain. That's quite amazing considering how much it has rained around us.

Well, this has been a typical blog -- started off not sure what I was going to say but managed to keep typing and typing.

Bye for now ...