Low on endorphins

One of their original silos

These monumental bronzes commemorating the big land grab are amazing

Beautiful girl celebrating her coming of age

I hold tight when there are railings

We ate catfish here

One of the tour boats cruising the canal — Just like being in Venice

He was saying for his passengers not to frighten the horses

"A" took these pictures  for me during our visit to the canal because my  camera wasn't with us. Thanks so much, "A"

I'm not exactly gliding along, fueled by endorphins as I was for the trip up to and across Canada. When I got completely locked out of my car because of broken latches at Bar Harbor and then tried to get help from the high end VW dealer in Bangor, there began a slow descent. There were obvious exceptions while driving through New England and being wowed by all that delicious color, but somehow things were never the same as when I was on such a high while discovering the geologic and geographic wonders of coastal Oregon, Washington and Canada.

Only a few miles away, they are working on the complete rebuilding of my transmission. Steve says that will add value to the vehicle. Nice. Art has gone to Wikipedia and discovered all sorts of points of interest in this city where I am stranded. Very nice. My generous new Oklahoma City friend who prefers not to be named  (We'll call her "A"), took me on a marvelous tour of her city at dusk on Saturday. We finished with dinner along a winding canal that meandered through gardens, sculpture, foot bridges, restaurants and other points of interest. We both ate catfish prepared different ways and enjoyed breaded Okra which I've never had before.

"A" then drove me around the center of the city and passed all kinds of buildings with interesting architectural histories.  We drove right by what I think I remember her telling me was a pedestrian bridge featuring a spectacular rising structure which the locals affectionately call the Fly Catcher bridge. You'd have liked that, Art. And speaking of birds, there must have been 10 different kinds of ducks happily parading down the curving stretches of the canal where we walked and ate. There was also a black bird that looked like a raven but carried on an amazing song like conversation with another bird  that was perched way high in a tree. I must start learning some of those songs.

"A" is an attorney and she practices in the halls of justice downtown and has an office at a different location. It is so kind of her to take pity on me being stranded here but I don't want to become a burden to her even though she laughingly says I am her current "project." She is about the age of Mike and Steve and of course I relate to her very much like I do to Kathy. I hope some of you will have a chance to meet her on one of her trips to California. I may be her project but she is my current Angel.

Because of the effort to solve the "latch" problems I ended up rushing through a few places I wish I could have lingered. And now that I'm in a three storied kind of prison, I have a little too much time to ponder the various choices I felt I had to make. Don't misunderstand me. My room is large and perfectly adequate. There are rather pitiful lawns outside where I can walk Bobby. But it is not well cared for on the exterior or the interior halls so I do feel a little locked in. There is an OK neighborhood on the non-highway back side of the hotel, but their streets have no sidewalks. Not too inviting for a casual walk of your dog at sundown.

While trying to catch up with some paper work I have, as I said, I've been thinking of the places where I wish I could have lingered or driven to but felt I couldn't. First of all, I had to plan from the get go not to go to Vancouver Island and environs because I knew there wouldn't be time to visit everyone once I got there. That prevented me from visiting at least four good friends. I had really wanted to stop and see Archie and Susan's exhibit in Ottawa. I  went through after hours at dusk and horrific commuter traffic time. Really didn't have the courage to go back through those freeway interchanges again. So sorry Susan and Archie. I hope I can see those pieces somewhere on line. Possible?  Another thing I had hoped to do was to drive down south a little and visit Lynn Cosell at her new house. I'd love to have done that and definitely considered it until all that time was lost. The next stop I pondered was during my short cruise through Indiana. I hadn't identified where my friends from Oaxaca, Pat and Jim, had bought a new house just last year while we were all in Mexico. It looked like a charming, inviting and well designed home on the edge of a large pond or lake. As I drove around some dark streets (roads?) with names like North side, North lake, etc. looking in vein for a certain campground, I wished I felt I had the time to just pull out the map and their address and see if they revealed any possibilities. But I never did.  And amazingly, I just received an email from Pat telling me that they are going to be in California just as I get back (I hope) and that they'd like to come and visit. We talked on the phone yesterday and it sounds like a possibility. Oh, the emotional ups and downs you can experience when you are in confinement. Good thing I always like to write, eh? Who knows what there might be just down the road?