We awoke to a pretty awesome sunrise, opting to get on the road right away in order to make it to Roger's RV Repair as early as possible, just in case he would need any time to replace or repair our brakes. We got there by late morning and dropped the camper off, returning an hour later. They repacked the wheel bearings and inspected the brakes. The latter were in good condition, with plenty of wear left on them. The bill came to around $80, which was more than $50 less than some other dealers had quoted us.
The next stop was the home of my former next door neighbor, Ron Sexton, and his wife, Rene (and their two dogs, Junior and Jack). Ron and I had gone to high school together, and had hung around together for about a decade afterward, before losing touch with one another. His house in Des Moines, WA had been the first stop on my two-year-long self-supported bicycle tour back in 1985. And the job that I had just left at that time (which enabled me to afford to take off and go traveling for so long) I had learned about from his father, Bill. So they were instrumental in setting the stage for me to develop my passion for bicycle touring.
We had arrived at their house at a time when Ron was in the midst of remodeling one of the bathrooms, in preparation for a visit from his father. After spending the evening together, it was clear that his plate was fairly full for the next two weeks, due to a long list of tasks that he was hoping to get accomplished within that span of time. Wanting to spend more time with him, and not wanting to be a burden, we offered him two choices: we could bug out on Saturday in order to give him a chance to work on his projects, or we could hang around for another day so that I could lend a hand with tiling his bathroom. Happily for both of us, he chose the latter. We made good progress on the project, likely putting him a couple of days ahead of schedule for getting everything completed. And it gave me a chance to repay him for things he had done for me in the past, and to make amends for having lost touch for so long.
Once all the tile was set it was starting to get hot outside, so we hung out by the pool and enticed Lana to jump in and cool off. She was hesitant at first, but eventually started launching off the edge of the pool to get her racquetball. Her normal behavior when swimming is to head for the closet shore to get out. But in the pool there was only one easy way out, which was by using the steps at the shallow end. It took her a while, but she eventually figured that out.
Ron fired up the barbecue and put two racks of ribs on the rotisserie to slow cook for our farewell dinner. We thoroughly enjoyed that, as ribs are not something that it is easy for us to cook for ourselves on the road (and if we could, we don't have much ability to store the leftovers).
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| Junior |
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| Jack |
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