North, South, East and ......A New Baby Arrives

Well the big news this week is that Jennette had her 2nd child last Wednesday night / Thursday morning. Jason Robert Polgar was born just after midnight on July 13th, 2006. He weighed in at almost 8lbs, more than his mom weighed when she was born, and was almost 20" long. Wanda got the call from Jennette last Wednesday afternoon and her and Ri were on the road a couple hours later, bound for Hobart Indiana. I got several calls during the evening with updates, the last one at just about midnight, when the doc was saying won't be long now........The phone rang the next morning, just as I was heading out the door for work and it was Jen, who was still understandably wired and awake, calling to give me the details. I had to keep the call short so I could get to work on time, but it was good to know that everything went fine and I was now a granddaddy x 2. The plan was that Wanda and Ri were going to stay down there and help out for the next couple days and that I would come down for a visit on Sunday.

It was a busy weekend and I racked up a bunch of miles and burned a lot of fuel at 3 bucks a gallon. man, that hurts. Saturday morning I went in to work and plugged along until noon. Then I came home and got stuff around so I could take off about 3:00pm and head West to Greenville for a Cruise-in / Car Show. The Greenville deal was adverstised as a multifaceted event with the first stop, for the first couple hours, at Klackle Orchards, a couple miles West of Greenville. I got there right about 4:00pm and got directed to a place in line. I parked the car, grabbed the camera and took a stroll around the grounds. Truth be told, there wasn't a heckuva lot for someone with my taste in cars to see.......only one or two fat fendered hot rods, darn few cars from the 50's and way too many cars that didn't meet the "25 years or older to be a classic car" rule. I spent a little while talking with a couple old timers and then about 5:45pm they announced it was time to get in our cars and go cruising. Well, my impression of a cruise is to ride around for a bit in parade fashion with some sembalence of a audience, but this cruise was simply a ride from Klackle's Orchard to downtown via the industrial park. Maybe 4 miles tops with no audience......and when we got downtown we were instructed to park on either side of the street in an angled fashion, which I did. By 6:00pm I had the hood up, the display set-up and was heading over to get a bite of supper.

After dining I grabbed the camera and did a pass up and down the street. A few more cars had showed up for this portion of the evening, but there was still a deficiency of quality rides compared to most shows I've done in the last 3 summers. Not only was there a small number of "classic" cars on display, there was also a small number of spectators passing by. In Greenville's defense it was in the low '90's, even at 7 in the evening. I'm sure that the temps had an effect on the turnout, most people who owned an air conditioner were probably within a stone's throw of it for the duration of the hot weekend, but it's not likely I'd do this show again next year simply because there were just too many non-classic cars on display. They didn't hand out dash plaques either, which is a small issue, but something I collect and use for proof I was there. The best part of the whole deal was the ride over in the afternoon and the ride back home thru farm country as the sun sat on a perfectly beautiful summer day in July, proving to me once again that it's not the destination, it's the journey..........by the time I got back home it was a bit after 10pm. I worked on website stuff for alittle while and then, knowing I'd be up early Sunday morning, I gave in to the sandman and went to bed.

Sunday morning we were up and on the road by 7:30am, headed North to Whiskey Creek to work out the (hopefully) final details with MarkE for where we wanted the well dug and the electricial service box placed. I know I haven't spoken much lately about the campsite and progress we're making with it, but I will one of these days real soon go over what's been going on the last couple months. With any luck at all we should have running water and electricity hooked up to the camper by the end of this month to go along with the sewer that's installed and ready to go. Then it's simply a matter of finding the time to go up there and spend some time. At this point we're going to just use the pop-up for the remainder of this year but I'm hoping my next spring to be able to put a decent trailer up there that I can build the rest of the site around. A deck, permanent fire pit, storage shed, a gazebo eventuallly......all stuff that'll be added once there's a decent trailer up there with a inside bathroom and a fridge.

Anyhow, we got up there about 8:30 and found Mark cooking breakfast. Something he says he loves to do. He took off his chef hat for a couple minutes while we rode out to our site and discussed placement of the well and electrical box. 10 minutes later we were back in the lodge dining room, waiting for our breakfast on the house. After a scrumptous breakfast we jumped back in the van and headed back to Grand Haven.

Back at home Chris decided to stay there rather than make the trip to Hobart. Adam, Ri's squeeze, took his place so that riding the bike was out of the question. The plan at this point was to bring back Ri with us as she was homesick. we left GH about 11:00am and headed South, arriving at the Polgar homestead at 1:15 / 12:15cdt. During the afternoon we were treated to another steak cookout, this time with corn on the cob thrown in for good measure, met some of Eric's relatives, took a dip in the pool and spent time playing with and taking pics of both the grandkids. It got to be 6:00pm Indiana time real quick so we said our goodbyes and headed out of town and for home. The ride back was uneventful and we pulled in the driveway just a bit before 9:30pm. After two days driving in 3 compass directions we were burnt out and broke......gas costs for the weekend totaled $135.00!

The plan as of departure time Sunday was that Wanda would stay there until Tuesday afternoon to help Jen out with doctor apointments for the kids, but Monday night she added another day to the stay and arrived home this afternoon. This evening's report is that mother and baby are doing fine and will be coming up here next week to stay for a couple days. Might be a good time to introduce Ryan to Dairy Treat before he moves to

Kansas if I can get his mom to loosen her grip for a couple minutes. :-)

Time for bed now....stay tuned for futher developments.

TC