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Tuesday, July 29, 2008, The Reynolds’ house, Denver, Colorado
We woke up one by one to the sound of park workers arriving. At around 7am, I got up and walked around the park looking at the zoo, amusement park, and open restrooms for the family. Soon all of us were up so we went to the park office where the director gave me another key and several dollars worth of amusement park tickets for the family. Nice guy. Then we drove to the Laundromat where we washed clothes and dishes; then it was off to two different libraries; the first one had no Internet service. I updated almost all of my journal, but couldn’t upload pictures. Some libraries are very limited in this respect; it’s been an ongoing problem. After the second library, we stopped at Little Caesars for lunch. Then we dropped everyone but Becky off at the movie theater to watch Batman – The Dark Night. Becky’s friend, Emily Reynolds, was driving over from Denver, 130 miles away, to see her, so Becky wanted to be here when she arrived. We went back to the post office to see if my mom’s card had arrived. It hadn’t, so I gave a forwarding address to Alexander, Kansas, where we should be in about a week. Then we went back to the library where I finished updating the blog. Emily called later and came to meet us at the library. She brought another friend with her who was visiting from Georgia: Haley. Emily convinced us to change our plans and stay at her house for a couple of days. Before we could accept, we had to make arrangements for our bikes because they were at the maintenance facility and we were supposed to be out of there by tomorrow morning. It was already past 6pm, so the park director would normally be already gone. If we could not get permission, we wouldn’t be able to leave them there. It was already raining again when we arrived back at the park and the director had already left. [The normal summer weather pattern so far here in Colorado seems to be clear and sunny in the morning, cloudy weather in the afternoon, thunderstorms in the late afternoon and early evening, and clearing skies in the later evening]. We needed someone of authority to give us permission to leave the bikes. The only one available was Ed, the tennis director; he was still in his office by the tennis courts. The youth tennis class had just been cancelled and the lobby was teeming with kids and parents scrambling to get out of the rain and into their cars. I waited for the bustling to simmer down then asked Ed if he could help. He did. He said we could keep our bikes in the tennis lobby and pick them up when we returned. Nice guy, real helpful. So, off we went to pick up the kids from the movies and ride our bikes over to the tennis facility. Then we were off to Denver to stay with Emily’s family. It was already dusk when we left and I was sleepy, so Gloria drove. We got there around 10:45 and Mr. Reynolds, John, had already cooked up a bunch of hamburgers and Mrs. Reynolds, Susan, had prepared other food. Everything was delicious and even though it was late, the food, activity and conversation energized us and we ended up staying up till after midnight. The Reynolds had beds or mattresses for everyone. What a treat! I hadn’t slept in a bed since Nevada.