Kuma Bear is Disappointed With Me

Today, Lisa and I attended this year's Great Oregon Steam-Up which is an annual two-weekend event at Brooks, Oregon (north of Salem) where the many museums at Antique Powerland all open up at once and display everything they have while people bring in their various types of antique equipment and display and run it. The Oregon Electric Railway Museum, of which Lisa and I are members, are one of the museums on site. Lisa and I paid our way in because we don't have the time to be event volunteers -- besides, next weekend we'll be on a train bound for Chicago. It was quite hot at Powerland, although not so bad when you could keep to the shade. We walked all over and looked at everything on display, but I have no photos to show because I left the camera at her father's house. Lisa says that Kuma Bear is cross with me because Lisa was going to take photos of him in a couple of places that he would have fit well, like the little bitty yellow tractor that was labeled "D8 'Kitty'" (a joke that works if you understand what a D8 Caterpillar is).

After a bit more than four hours in the hot sun, we found ourselves all the way at the rear of Powerland and pooped. At one of the places where one of the access roads crosses the trolley tracks, Lisa flagged down a passing trolley and we boarded. The crews recognized Lisa (and incidentally me) as members, so we didn't have to pay the fare. We actually used the trolley as transportation, not just an out-and-back ride, to get us back to near the front gate, and then we made our way back to the car.

I was driving Lisa's father's car, because we don't want to drive my van except to take it to the dealership tomorrow, and she didn't want to drive her vehicles because I am hopeless with a manual transmission and she -- having gotten no sleep at all last night due to the tinitus -- was in no shape to drive. I drove us back home, stopping to get groceries. We had a bit of a start when the car refused to start in the parking lot at the grocery store in Stayton, but it's a problem with which Lisa is familiar, and she got out and did the correct jiggerty-pokery to the engine to get it to engage. (She says the dealership can't replicate the problem and therefore won't/can't fix it. She knows what the problem is, but doesn't know how to fix it, just how to make it go away when it happens.)

Anyway, we headed back to Mehama and Lisa tried to get some sleep, sending me away to check mail and such. I may go to bed early myself. It's quite hot here, and I'm still very tired.

Thankfully, It's a Moot Question

The Via Rail strike is over as the parties have agreed to submit to binding arbitration. So we won't have to worry about whether Amtrak's assurances that the Adirondack would continue to run to Montreal were correct or not. To my astonishment, today's edition of train #69 to Montreal arrived 25 minutes early, although the Saturday arrival was a more typical 2:23 late.