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December 17, 2017: Ho Ho and Mo Ho Ho

I am in a somber mood tonight. Today Pete and I did our dog and pony show at the local recycling center. (VCRS). I did some body awareness exercises followed by a talk about living off the grid, followed by a video of Raudi doing agility. We had intermission, lunch, and after that Pete gave a slide show on our 2011 Tolting the Divide trek.

Very good friends attended. Bill Schmidtkunz, Terri and Bob Mielke, Ellie Van De Visse, and Pamella Meekin were there. In addition, our VCRS buddies Mollie and Carol were there. And Pete’s student Josh was there.


Valley Community for Recycling Solutions

I think that it turned out to be too much for our audience of a dozen people. Pete and I should have pared it down, and had just one of us give a presentation. But we were both eager to talk about those things we are most interested in.

The body awareness work – I brought our horse supplement bucket along and with it, tennis balls. And I had everyone tossing balls – the purpose being to increase awareness of hand/eye coordination. This seemed to go okay. Afterwards, a student of Pete’s saved the day by indicating he understood what I was getting at in relation to proprioception and ideokinesis. This lent some validity to what I was having them all do.

The off-the-grid talk was a bust, a complete and utter bust. It was the same talk that I gave last spring –it was one of the Untold Stories presentations. People didn’t laugh – just sat there watching me talk about how we go about watering the horses.

Lunch was excellent. Ours is a small town and most people knew one another. Carole made and brought Hungarian soup and Pete made muffins that were soup-complementary. After lunch, Pete did his Tolting the Divide trek talk. Point blank – our photos were not that great. I should have taken a lot more. I mean, who is interested in seeing a photo of a burn barrel at a border crossing? Should we ever do another trip, and this is unlikely, I will take more photos.

The real hero of the day was Carole Henry who is the VCRS Volunteer Coordinator. She was the one who organized this event – and to her Pete and I owe a great debt of gratitude.

We started at 1:15 and finished at 4:15. And it was then dark. Unreal. It felt like we had gone well into the evening in putting on this event, but not really. After, we had the entire evening ahead of us.

We drove home, tended to the animals, and then began what is going to be a massive cleanup effort. Pete is sorting out maps. And I am cleaning up my workspace. My project is going to take a while but far better to do it now, in the later part of the day, than earlier, when the sun is shining.

So now we are into the holidays, though I am not in holiday mode. I am now looking around the room. Tomorrow I work on paring down my extensive wardrobe. Har har.

Next: 349. 12/18/17: The Horse Life sans the Bicycle Life

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