View of
the day-The final destination…Cherokee, Oklahoma.
We got
rolling about the same time this morning, leaving several hours earlier than we
did with the Freightliner load. Good
thing, too, because the wind was blowing hard out of the south which made for
slow going…that and a lot of traffic. Guess we were getting back into “civilisation”.
We made
Great Bend and stopped to fuel the rigs up and we were right beside another
camper pulling a jetski. They took off
just before we did and we ended up following them all the way to Oklahoma…and
they weren’t in a hurry. Marilyn could
easily pass them, but then Al would have just had to dawdle behind them anyway,
so we both dawdled.
We made
Cherokee around 2:30pm, kissed the ground, then took the camper out to John’s
farm to get it parked. With all the oil
business going on around Cherokee, John had put up in a couple RV spots, so we
decided to make use of one, since no one was currently staying out there. Interesting that our last combining job from
last year and the first one for this year have us parking next to a bin…this
one quite a bit smaller though. We got
the camper set up, hooked up and both A/C’s blasting before heading back into
town.
Back in
town, we went looking to see if John was at his office. He wasn’t, so we figured we might as well go
grab something to eat…the breakfast burritos were wearing off. We settled on Pizza Hut, because it seems all
the restaurants in town have closed, so the options were narrowed down quite a
bit. We got hold of John and asked him
to meet us for tea, so he brought Peggy and we visited while we waited for our
pizza.
There
weren’t a lot of people in the restaurant and we had chosen a table in the
middle of the joint and were having a good gab, when all of a sudden, the air
intake vent cover (about 24x24 inches and not really heavy) fell down on Al’s
head. He covered his drink with his left hand and the vent cover ricocheted on
to his hand, taking a divot out of his ring finger and scratching the back of
his hand. It was quite a shock.
The kids
working in the restaurant didn’t know what to do, the manager on duty wasn’t
much older, so they were all confused…and Al was bleeding. The got hold of their district manager and he
filled them in on what to do…fill out some forms, take some pictures, etc. They brought out some bandages and antibiotics
for Al’s hand and we got it patched up.
There was some concern about making Pizza Hut pay for the accident, or
the doctor bill and all Al kept saying was “We’re from Canada, we don’t do that”.
We got
our meal, with everyone apologising to no end, then John grabbed the ticket for
the meal, went up to the cash register and said “this one is on the house,
right?”…and so it was. They were only
too happy to rip up the ticket and wish us well as we went out the door.
Once we
were fed, we went over to see if we would be able to park the combine trailer
where we had left the cart trailer. We
found R.L. and he said no problem, so we got the shop trailer unhooked from
behind the combine trailer and while Al drove out to the lot with the General,
Marilyn hooked the shop trailer behind the Dodge and followed him over.
John met
us at the lot after dropping Peggy off and we got the combine unloaded. Marilyn
drove it out to the farm with Al following in the General and John in his
pickup, then John took Al back to get the Dodge. Marilyn stayed back at the camper to start
straightening cables out for the satellite dish, after all, there was a hockey
game on tonight.
Al got
back with the shop trailer and unloaded the dish brick so Marilyn had someplace
to hook the dish on. After 20 minutes of
trial and error, Marilyn finally had signal and Al had hockey. Now, this dish has been on the run for
several years and has a lot of duct tape holding it together, so it isn’t
really as tight and accurate as it was when it was new, so aiming is quite an
adventure. When we finally get the two
green bars with full signal on the receiver, it is almost like winning the
lottery. Marilyn went to hook up the
extra coax line for the other receiver in the bedroom and just nudged the dish
enough that no end of tweaking would get the good signal back…and it had hardly
moved, so where was it?
Fortunately,
we did have local TV, which was good, because there were weather warnings out
for Alfalfa County, which was where we were situated. We could see the dark clouds moving in and Al
did have some channels working on the dish…although not the HD ones…so Marilyn
packed it in just as the lightning was starting to get intense.
It did
start raining and we got some heavy gusts of wind…not really any stronger than
the stuff we drove in during the day…and plenty of lightning, but that was as
severe as it got. It looked to be a lot
worse to the south of us.
While
all this weather was going on, Marilyn was texting home to Darlene, our
neighbour to get her to go over to our house and find some medicine that she
was sure she had forgotten. The medicine
was Hormone Replacement Therapy(HRT) and Al was anxious that Marilyn get this
ASAP…something about mood swings and temperament. Darlene scoured the place but couldn’t find
it, but after checking through the camper, Marilyn discovered what had been
missing in one of the many hidey-holes this place has. That was a relief for everyone.
So it is
still raining, internet is sketchy out here, but at least we are done driving for a while.
Or, are we...
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