There is one pic this week, but it’s not very essential to the post.

When does one grow up? When they’re 18? 21? 50? Retired? My next step in growing up is when Danita retires and we’re both free. And we have just figured out what we will do when we’re all grown up. We’re going to volunteer at Pipe Spring National Monument. In exchange for working 32 hours a week, we get free room and $10 / day. Our stint starts in late September and ends in early December. We’ll leave quite a bit before that. We’ll take I-70 to its end, stopping at interesting places along the way, which will certainly include Columbus, St. Louis, Denver, and Cove Fort.

I-70 sign

I-70 is interesting all in itself. Three stretches of I-70 have claims to being the first stretch of Interstate. I’m not sure all the ins and outs of being “first”, but certainly it is one of the earlier Interstates. It starts in Baltimore, where this sign gives distances to major points along the road. It ends at Cove Fort, Utah; at I-15. From there we turn left to get to Pipe Springs. We plan to arrive early enough to spend a day or two at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. We want to stop there before we start our volunteer stint because it closes for the winter not long after we arrive.

Of course, I have to have things to do in the meantime. So I’ve been working on our new website. Besides running a training series for people to help post on the site, I’ve figured out a reasonable way to give every resident in our neighborhood an account so they can log into the site. The login gives them access to a neighborhood directory. Eventually, it will allow them to sign up for any of several Email services we offer.

We usually go out to dinner Thursday night. Our Daily Bread invited us to a dinner at the Engineer’s Club last Thursday, so of course we went. They had horderves served by waiters walking around, several buffet tables with a choice of four entrees, and free wine and beer. The Engineer’s Club is in the Garrett-Jacobs Mansion. This is a 19th century house in Baltimore’s Mt. Washington neighborhood. It is an amazingly luxurious place. They have their own kitchen, and the food they serve is always first-rate.

In addition, we had our neighborhood Oktoberfest dinner last night. The three german sausages and the german potato salad were the best I have had in a very long time.

Just to round off the week, we saw “The Martian” with Matt Damon today. It’s an excellent movie, and stayed very true to the book. Of course, there were lots of episodes in the book they couldn’t fit into the movie. If you see the movie and like it, it should be worthwhile to read the book.

And just to round off this note, if you click this link, you will see a quick draft of the proposed neighborhood directory for our web site. Resident Login

I hope this finds everybody doing well.