Finished up the last of the dance weekend yesterday afternoon. What an absolutely wonderful 3 days spent with some of the best people you can wish to be with. Contra dancers are just nice people over all and it is so nice to be around such a happy, spontaneous group of people. It makes you think that maybe there is hope for the world after all.

     Saturday nights dancing was great of course. Filled with lots of hot, sweaty people having fun. There was some beer drinking afterwards of course and along with that a spontaneous group sing-a-long. Lots of old sea chantey's and beer drinking tunes, most of which I had never heard before, but would very much like to learn. Have never experienced that type of group singing before, we really don't have much of it out west where I'm from. A few songs around the campfire once in awhile, but nothing like this. Some pretty amazing voices in this group also, lots of 3 and 4 part harmonies going on. Of course it meant not getting to bed until late, but that is always okay for me.

   Got back to the trailer and tried to boot up the computer to check email and fb and stuff while finally winding down but found that the screen on the newest one looked like someone had pulled a really torn up old curtain over most of it. Not a really good sign. Lucky for me I had gotten the other one fixed a couple of months ago and pulled it out. Of course the batteries were nearly dead, and with no shore power there wasn't much to do other than watch as it downloaded all the last 6 months updates and preceded to upload them. That, of course, ran the rest of the battery out on me before I could get much else done. I finally just went to bed.

    A beautiful, sunny day yesterday. Even at 9:30 it was already warmer than all of the last two days. Friday night had been downright cold at a chilly 37 degrees. Went out to the truck to plug the computer in and charge it up and found that I must not of shut the door hard enough the night before as the battery was also dead in the truck. In the past I have just grabbed one of the trailer batteries and jumped it from it, but after two days and nights of use it didn't have enough power in it either so it was then on to 'Plan B'. Walked down and asked my friend Cathy if she could give me a jump later on and had it all set up to do just that, but when I got back to my trailer the other guy and his wife who are camped out with me, Bill and Betty Jo, were there and he agreed to give me a jump with his truck. Started right up of course and I managed to get Esmerelda and the beast turned around. It's hard to turn a pickup truck and 25' trailer around in about 50' feet of space, but with Bills help we did it and I ended up headed out the way I came in.

   After that it was just a matter of eating some lunch and then doing the final 3 hours of dancing. Another wonderful period of hot, sweaty fun, but it finally came to an end at 3:30, and it was time to pack up and get on the road again. Said goodbye to some friends and hit the road west bound. Am ultimately headed for a little town just west of the DC area, but am going out west to Scranton before turning south, just to bypass what I would imagine is the mess around NY city. It will take me two days to do it this way, but hey, I'm retired. Made it as far as a rest area just inside the Connecticut border last night and pulled in for the evening. I was in bed by 7:30 last night and slept all the way to 8:00 this morning. Must of been a hard weekend. :)

    Just sitting in a Micky D's at the moment waiting for the computer batteries to charge back up again. Another 4-6 hours of travel today and I should be about where I need to be for the night.