October 3, 2005

  • It's Monday night and I'm back on the farm.  The rate of change in
    my environs seems strange:  breakfast yesterday in Bar Harbor,
    Maine, supper in New York City, breakfast and lunch in NYC today and
    supper tonight in Joliet.  I'll catch up to myself sometime later
    this week.

    There is normally a let down after the major goal of vacation has been
    accomplished (okay - yes, this was a men's vacation).  We climbed
    one mountain and drove up another on Saturday and, as you might say,
    things went downhill after that.

    In need of some new goal or objective, I remembered that Joel might be
    able to use a new futon.  We batted the idea back and forth and
    decided to make a raid on IKEA somewhere between Bar Harbor and
    NYC.  We identified a likely location. (In New Haven, CT, the IKEA
    is right next to I95.)  We drove pretty much straight through from
    Maine to New Haven.  In less than an hour we had found and
    purchased the futon and cover, packed it into the HHR and hit the road
    again.  I looked like something out of the godfather, sitting the
    in the back seat behind the driver, with my reading light on (because
    the futon took up the whole right-hand side of the car, back to
    front).  Then we had an additional goal: the dropoff point for the
    rental car was only open until 10pm.  But, by 9:15 we had
    completed our tasks and were sitting down to a well-deserved dinner at
    a local establishment.

    The vacation was a huge success.  EOWANE 2005 is now in the books.