Saturday, June 26, 2010

RAINY AFTERNOON FOR A RITZY WEDDING

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PART OF THE BEN MILLER INN COMPLEX ABOUT 20 MINUTES FROM OUR PLACE & ABOUT 20 MINUTES BEFORE THE RAINS CAME TODAY!!...Supposedly a 'movie stars' retreat.  Rumor has it that Bert Reynolds & long lost love Lonni Anderson were here years ago.

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Worked today & my mobility van travels took me to a wedding!!  Picked up wheelchair lady in a neighboring small town & took her to a well known place for rich folks called the Ben Miller Inn.  The outdoor wedding took place outside the main building around 4 & just beat the rain by about 20 minutes.  All of today's photos are from the grounds of the Ben Miller Inn while I had a 2 hour wait before returning the lady to the little town of Brussels.

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THAT RED DOOR LEADS TO THE FRONT DESK, ACCOMMODATIONS, & $FINE DINING$

Thursday's trip over to Waterloo Ontario quickly brought back the harsh reality of why we do not live in a city.  Mass suburbia!!  I lived in the Kitchener-Waterloo back in the late 60's & the area around Erbsville where we went Thursday was familiar to me.  It is not familiar any longer!!  We might just as well have been transported to some far off planet from the future.  Miles upon miles & rows upon rows of crowded houses interspersed with the ever present acres of shopping malls, twisting streets, traffic lights, & the ever present metal monsters all racing & competing for space to get to whatever seems so important for them all to get to.  The shopping malls I suspect!!  Kids on the sidewalks, kids on the roads, & kids on the lawns of well manicured houses all squished together.  All perfectly fine & normal for the people living there but what a contrast it is to our lifestyle. I think that is why big city living just jumps right out at us every time & bops us on the nose whenever we see that sort of thing.  It's always a good reminder for me of why I totally avoid all cities wherever possible!!  We are sooooooooo fortunate to live where we do both here in the summer & in the southwest during the winter.    And, whenever I start my blustery complaining stuff about being home I should just be put in the car, driven to the nearest city & forced to spend half an hour in the madness.  Instant cure for AL!!!!

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Finally got my pocket voice recorder to a practical level of understanding I can use.  I am now well on my way to recording miles & miles of mindless drivel to annoy myself with on miserable rainy days.  The instruction manual goes on in detail how to use the device for a multitude of operations, & I expect, had I read the manual to the end, I would have found on the last page how to directly plug the USB cord into the operational flight deck system of a 747 Jumbo Jet & program the recorder to not only fly the jet but land it as well on obscure runways somewhere in southern Zimbabwe.  However, I just took it to a level where when RVing down the road I can easily record trivia like what State lines are being crossed & when.  Maybe comment on a traffic incident like a passing car exploding in a ball of flames or a dozen alien space craft blocking traffic on I-10 west of Tucson.  Stuff I would normally forget about by the time it came to write the blog at the end of the day. 

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For any RV'ers traveling in risky weather areas where there may be severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, etc., be sure to read LAURIE'S weather experienced post  today on how they prepare themselves for any worst case scenarios.  And it sounds like RV'ers JOHN & JUDY'S have themselves pretty well surrounded by all the G8 & G20 stuff going on up around Huntsville & Gravenhurst Ontario, Canada.  Military aircraft, limousine convoys, army maneuvers, & RCMP everywhere.  They are currently in a KOA campground right beside an airport being used as a command center.  A couple of days ago John found himself inadvertently at the head of an RCMP 3 limo motorcade......on his motorcycle!! (check back a day or two in his blog when you get there)

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I am still waffling badly on the decision to sell the motorcycle.  It is a classic heart & head battle going on within.  My head tells me that selling the bike is the right thing to do both from a financial & simply logical point of view but my heart is on the opposite side of the fence saying, 'nooooooooooo, do not sell the bike dummy!!'  So, it is quite a tussle I am having with myself here for sure.

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GROANER'S CORNER:(  And here's what some of those computer terms mean to our local farmers....

1. Log on: when you want to make the house warmer.

2. Log off: Timberrrrrrrrrrrr.

3. Mega Hertz: when your not careful getting the firewood.

4. Lap top: where the cat sleeps.

5. Hard drive: maneuvering through those rocky fields on the northern range when there is snow on the ground.

6. Windows: what to shut when it's cold outside.

7. Byte: what mosquitoes do.

8. Modem: what I did to the hay fields last week.

9. Keyboard: where the keys hang.

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Tourists see the world, travelers experience it.

"UNTIL ONE HAS LOVED AN ANIMAL, PART OF THEIR SOUL REMAINS UNAWAKENED"

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The only thing better than right now will someday be the memories of right now...... AL.

8 comments:

  1. DON'T SELL IT!!!!!!
    You will just spend the money, then you won't have the BIKE or the MONEY!!!!
    that's my story and I'm stickin to it!!:-)

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  2. Your pictures of the Ben Miller Inn brought back sweet memories. Ken and I were there a few times and spent lovely weekends. We loved it there. Haven't been back though since they apparently did some renovations.

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  3. I feel the same way about cities, shopping malls, traffic, etc. Some day I might try a year in Montana or some other place with lots of space.

    I still vote for keeping the motorcycle.

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  4. The Ben Miller Inn looks like a pretty nice place to hold a wedding celebration.

    Now that you and Gypsy both have fancy new voice recorders, I'm kind of wondering who will be the first one to "stomp it to death" or "throw it in the water" after the first time it doesn't do exactly what you want it to??? I can't wait!!

    Glad to see you are still waffling on the bike question too.

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  5. Pops Mike up there in that first post's got it damned straight as far as I'm concerned!
    Rod

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  6. Keep the bike, or we'll be subjected to dozens of posts about how you wish you hadn't sold it!

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  7. Al, when my son was 2 I mistakenly sold my Kawasaki Vulcan.
    I regret that decision to this day. I could have garaged it for a few years until he was older, but thought (at the time) "well I can't take a 2 year old on a motorcycle can I!"
    I will never see the bike again as it was burned that year in the Kelowna fires (sold to a guy in BC), but she was a beauty.
    I miss that bike. If you enjoy it, don't sell it. If you don't really NEED the money, don't sell it.
    That's just my opinion.
    I didn't need the money and should never have sold it.

    Pics are beautiful, what a great place!
    Cheers!

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  8. Hey Al..and Kelly.
    The Ben is for sale!!! Bad economy...go figure. Don't sell the bike..put it on the back of the motor home and take it out on nice days till your 98 then rethink!!! Boy that G20 has stirred alot of---- in T.O! (and the world)

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