Long—short—long

Monday dawned clear and sunny. Unfortunately, the bright sun made it abundantly clear that someone had keyed my car overnight. The hotel offered no assistance to review camera footage just to send me to the police station. That seemed like it would be a lot of time in invested for very little return because Sudbury is a very gritty, hardscrabble town with begars at the intersection right next to the police station, I.e. much more pressing problems than my first world issue.

So, I elected to move on. I wanted to stop at a local coffee shop and support the local econmy, but that requires downloading and app and paying for parking which would probably take longer than getting the coffee. Again I was not going to in ear the time. I happened by a Starbucks on the way out of town, and even there they had combination codes on the restroom doors.

I hunkered down for almost five hours of driving to get to Apsley, Ontario where I would be visiting a former colleague from ServiceNow who retired two years before me. While we worked on project together, we had never met in person.

It was a long day, but she was exactly how I thought she would be—frank, practical, and not lacking for opinions. We got to know each other's history and found we had both intended to be journalists, both did temp administrative assistant work, and both ultimately landed in tech.

We stayed up both evenings until almost midnight reliving some ServiceNow stories, politics and a myriad of other topics all whilst some bottles

of wine were consumed. .

Yesterday, we finally got out of our pajamas before 3 pm and went kayaing in her lake, Chinods. She took me by the osprey nest and then we paddled to the other side to see if we would spot any loons in a quiet cove.

Then we paddled around the little island in front of her house which I had been scanning with my binoculars. I had seen three loons engage in a territory battle. The two who remained seemed like they might have a nest on the island. I did not want to get too close to them, and I did not find a neat.

When we got back to shore, her sister and friend were on their dock so naturally we needed to have a glass of wine with them Julia’s sister had worked in IT for DuPont Canada at the same time I was at DuPont Merck. We reminisced about Cinda Hallman’s email that began, these are exciting times, only to tell DuPont IT people that their jobs were being outsourced to CSC. That initiative failed and DuPont took back IT, but that didn’t stop Cinda from getting into the IT Hall of Fame.

Her husband, Craig, was quite taken with Buddha. He even made bacon for her! She was not eager to leave this morning when I slipped out before 6:30. The visit seems much shorter than it was because I again had a long day ahead of me.

I reached Milton, VT around 2:30 to look at the camper trailer. Everything was all in order, so I decided to purchase it. I’ve been researching these trailers for theee years!!! It was time to shit or get off the pot as my dad would have said.

I had had two large coffees so I felt I could drive further so I wouldn’t have a seven hour day tomorrow to get to Delaware. I pushed as far as Kingston, NY which was bittersweet memories for me. My ex-husband and I did a Hudson River Valley trip for our fifth anniversary. Unfortunately, my marriage was not successful, but that trip was one of the few we had without conflict.

My next stop is Tappan, NY to visit one of General Washington’s headquarters during the Revolutionary War where British Spy John Andre was hanged. He’d been caught after meeting with Benedict Arnold about Arnold’s plot to let the British take West Point.

Many in the American army had been friends with Andre and admired him. Even Alexander Hamilton made a plea to Washington not to hang him, but Washington played strictly by the rules of war and even though he also liked Andre, he refused to give him a reprieve or grant his request for a firing squad which was considered a more honorable death.

I have an idea for a novel where Andre survives the hanging and is spirited away by a time traveler who helps him make sure Arnold gets his just desserts. So this is research!

I’m looking forward to arriving in Delaware tomorrow and staying out for a few days while I get my car trailer ready before I go back to Vermont to pick it up and I hope, drive home with my friend Jill who has pulled a trailer before and can provide technical and moral support!