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Thursday, July 31, 2008, Maintenance Facility, Pueblo City Park, Colorado
Like yesterday, I got up around 8:30 am and everyone was asleep except Sarah, who was sitting in the living room quietly reading magazines. I finally perused my bike maps and got a general idea of what to expect on the route to Virginia: the roads will be windier as we head east, more congested, narrower, and in poorer repair than what we’ve had so far. So in many respects, it will be more difficult and more dangerous as we head eastward. I’ll have to buy replacement mirrors for the ones that have broken off the kids’ bikes since we started. Later in the morning, Gloria gave me a haircut, the first one she has ever given me. It turned out good according to all reports. Then we organized the van and filled a box of unneeded items to leave with Emily until we head back west. At 2:30 we left back toward Pueblo. On the way, we stopped at Focus on the Family Headquarters in Colorado Springs. It’s a big place with lots of fun displays and activities for kids. James Dobson was in California, so there was no hope of meeting him. At 6:30 we arrived back at Pueblo. We stopped by the tennis facility to get our bikes and give Ed a bag of pistachios. He gave us all t-shirts from the youth tournament he was holding. After that, we all went to the amusement park and used the free tickets the director had given us. The rides were a great deal: $.25 a ride, the same price I paid for carnival rides as a kid. By 9:00 pm when the park closed, we were hungry so we decided to go to McDonalds, a mistake. It was the worst one I have ever been in. Why? Here are the ten reasons: 1) It was dirty, floors, table tops, counters 2) No ketchup in dispensers 3) Got order wrong 4) Got order wrong the second time 5) Slow, took forever. Some people in line even left 6) Didn’t tell us of specials until after we had ordered and eaten our food 7) Hamburgers were very lopsided, thrown together without any care 8) The ice-cream machine was broken 9) Some employees were openly hostile to one another in full view of the public and 10) The employees were young “cool” teenagers who didn’t like working. So, it took forever to get our poor quality food and it was late when we finally left to Walmart for addition food. By the time we arrived back at our evening resting place, the maintenance facility, and went to bed, it was past midnight, too late to get a good rest for our planned early start tomorrow. I’m tired and tomorrow is supposed to be a scorcher – 105 degrees.