on the road again

On the road again

I just can't wait to get on the road again

The life I love is makin' music with my friends

And I can't wait to get on the road again

~ Willie Nelson

We hit the road at 10:28am, besting our time by 2 minutes. The new brakes were good, and the truck pulled the villetta as if it were built for it. As the landscape whizzed by we eventually fell silent… the past few days had been hectic getting the camper ready. I made countless trips back and forth from the house and a million trips up and down the stairs. At times I was frozen with anxiety and had to remind myself that I’d done this before and that, yes, I can do this. At times I had to break tasks down to micro units so that I could tell myself that I just had this small thing left to do and so I could move one foot in front of the other and not crumple onto the ground.

It’s crazy and makes no sense. These feelings crash over me out of the blue - there doesn’t seem like there are any triggers. My brain chemistry is wonky at times. But I don’t give in to the lying thoughts of my errant brain - or at least not often.

So where was I? Oh yes, all the hoopla getting the beast ready. What do people do when their camper is stored somewhere else? I guess I’m spoiled or maybe I’d simplify....

Eventually we got far enough from home and the radio crackled off so I dug out a mix cd. Soon we were singing along with our seriously out-of-tune voices, but we didn’t care!

We knew we were getting close when the bones of the earth reared out of the dirt. Pink granite outcroppings are an unusual sight in this end of Ontario, but geology has dipped a bit of the shield this far south.

Bella got some trazodone a few hours before we left and it did the trick. She was calm and quiet in the truck - no heavy breathing to exasperate her laryngeal paralysis. We were blessed with cool, cloudy weather which helped. Once we got all settled in we took the dogs for a short walk. Bella was slow - no big walks for her this week. I took Kabira and Spike a bit farther. It was a far cry from our first years here where I’d have to walk them around the big loop at top speed - multiple times.

So here we are at the Titanium rally for the 10th year! How can so much time have passed? Our first rally was 2008 in Ottawa, and I think we came to Kingston the year after. Carm remembers that we missed a year.

Our site is reasonably dry, but many of the sites are islands in a sea of water. And of course it is raining… not buckets, but each drop raises the water levels. Did I mention the mud? 16 feet need to be wiped after every outing.

Two other rigs arrived after us: Sue & Doug, and Sharon & Tony. We all got together for a supper at RAXX… Wednesday is wing night. I gobbled mine down, a) because they were good, and b) they were so messy that the sauce ended up all over my face (thank goodness for dim lights) so I didn’t want to sit there blithely conversing with sauce from ear to ear.

And so it begins - a pre-beginning actually as the rallly doesn’t officially start until tomorrow. We are looking forward to seeing all our friends, and perhaps making a few new ones.

But every memory of friendship shared, even for a short time, is a treasure, like sunshine and warmth in our lives, like a cool breeze on a humid day, like a shower of rain refreshing the earth.