Afterglow 2012 - Day 1 Saturday

My Mom has this arrangement with her friend Pam that they watch each other's dogs while on vacation. We had taken care of Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen and they would be picking her and Gracie up today. Jenny was thrilled Mad Dog was here today.

The one nice thing about the delay is that it gave me more time to hang out with Coach Bombay. We played with his mouse, I gave him some treats and he posed for a few more pictures. But the time had come for me to say goodbye for real. And here we go...

This kind of picture is standard procedure on this website by now so you should be used to seeing it. But the difference here is that Coach Gordon Bombay looks a weary like he's been down this road too many times. Little did I know his journey was ending.

I'm weird in the way that I pack for vacation. I haphazardly lay out all my personal effects late the night before we leave and throw them all in a bag. There's no rhyme or reason to it which is why I always have that feeling like I forgot to pack something.

Home

At the time I didn't know that Bombay only had a month to live. It's painfully evident now that he looks frail because I've been going through some old pictures of him in the last few months since he coached his last game. But back in July when I left him in the care of my best-good friend Jessica I was still committed to him being my best friend forever. I just didn't know that forever wasn't possible. I miss the little guy terribly but he was sick. That's no way to live. I hope that all cats can go to heaven too just like the animated dogs do.

We normally try to leave around 9am to head up North. The whole reason why Jenny had time to chill was because I got the car all packed up and then it wouldn't start. Nothing. So I did the only reasonable thing - I stood in the street and flipped it off.

While we were waiting for AAA to arrive it is evident that Mom's car wasn't going to take us up to Afterglow. Since my car is pushing 160,000 miles it was Jenny's car or no Afterglow. She was reluctant to put that kind of mileage on there but we didn't have any other options. So that meant I had to unpack the expertly packed car and cram it all back into a smaller space. I'll admit that it was a bit of a challenge but I grew up playing Tetris, so I was an expert at asymmetrical stacking and rotation of uneven pieces into a tight area.

Eddie came over to take a look at the car and we went over all of the possible scenarios and tested fuses. When we found what we thought was a dead fuse, I went up to the auto parts store and bought another one. Nothing we tried worked and we spent a good hour monkeying around before calling AAA. They were able to determine that is was the starter and that it would need to be repaired. So he was able to jump the car and get it to start so we could drop it off at the mechanic. By now I just really wanted to be up there.

I was all set and ready to go at 9am, but the delay cost us 3 nearly hours. I look forward to Afterglow all year long and I need this vacation, so not being able to leave really hurt. But in the mean time I was able to mix myself a drink and mentally prepare.