The Makati district in Manila is the night life and high roller hot spot in the city. All of the good restaurants, night clubs, hotels, and shopping is in Makati. Last night we ventured downtown for dinner and a short walk around. This advertisement caught my attention and garnered a picture. It reminded me of what someone once said about the difference between men and women in marriage. The man sees the woman of his dreams and wants her to stay the same forever. The woman, however, sees the potential man of her dreams and sets about to change him into her ideal. The problem often is that he doesn’t change and she does.

The business meetings will come to a conclusion today. I’ll be here another week with a slew of other meetings and activities before getting on an airplane on the 18th to return to Pocatello. I’ve got a three-day weekend coming up. So far the only arrangements I’ve made is to go to Church on Sunday at the Las Pinas 2nd Ward. I’m feeling much better and am looking forward to a couple of nights of good sleep!! I don’t expect to get back to Makati on this trip….

I’ve arrived in Manila, cold and all. The flights were most uneventful. The luggage arrived. The lines through immigration were very long, it was very hot and humid, and most folks were cranky. By 1 a.m. I was in bed for a few hours. I went into the office but was having so much trouble with coughing and hacking that I came back to the hotel to put this cold to bed. It’s about 9:40 p.m. and I’ve got a meeting in about 20 mintues. After that it’ll be back to bed. Tomorrow should be a much better day.

Thunderstorms roamed the skies over Manila this afternoon and some of them were quite loud — enough to wake me up! This is the rainy season in the Philippines so rain is definitely to be expected. Clouds produce nice sunsets and this was the picture out the window of my seventh floor hotel room at about 6:30 p.m. this afternoon.

When we were living in Colorado Springs, we had a fairly small grassy area needing to be mowed. Nina bought an inexpensive walk-behind mower (more adequately described as a push-along mower). We brought that here to Pocatello where we have about four times the amount of grass needing to be mowed. Last summer I hired a young man to mow the grass, but haven’t had an opportunity to talk to him about mowing the grass this year. But, there was no way that I was going to mow the grass again having to push that other mower around the yard. I mowed the grass before we left on our road trip and it had grown considerably while we were gone (helped by the fact that the sprinklers were set to run every morning). My brother Perry told me that he’d bought a new Troy-Bilt self-propelled mower with an electric start. I wasn’t so sure that I needed an electric start mower, but I definitely wanted a self-propelled machine. Yesterday I went to Lowe’s and came home with the same mower that my brother bought. I mowed the front yard yesterday, which wore me right out. I was very happy for the self-propelled aspect of the machine. The only problem with it is that the speed the mower propells itself is set by how hard I squeeze a small handle. It’s easy to squeeze too hard and have to run to catch up with the mower! Tonight I mowed the back yard. It was definitely easier than previous times mowing the yard! This has already been a worthwhile expense. Maybe it’ll help entice our young man to mow the yard again this year? I hope so! I’m too old for this and Nina’s knees aren’t made for the walking, either.

As a result of the past two nights being taken up with lawn mowing, I’ve not done anything more with pictures. Maybe tomorrow??

We’ve arrived home after eighteen and a half days on the road. We arrived in Soda Springs last night about 5:30 p.m. and spent the night there. My brother Perry and his wife Chris along with my sister Eileen were there for the holiday. We had a lot of fun visiting, talking, and eating. Perry roasted the chickens on the grill using his beer-can basters (Diet Coke with Lemon, actually). We enjoyed the stay. We arrived in Pocatello about 5:30 p.m. today, dumped the tanks, and put pretty much everything away. We’ll head for bed in a few minutes and we’re back to full reality tomorrow.

We drove a total of 5,276 miles, mostly on nine and a half driving days. We got as far east as Easton, Pennsylvania and as far south as Paduca, Kentucky. Gasoline prices ranged from $2.579 per gallon in Green River, Wyoming to $3.079 a gallon in West Chester, Pennsylvania. The average price was $2.756 per gallon for the trip. We had a great time and really enjoyed the trip.

The town of Chesterfield, Idaho holds their celebration each year on Memorial Day. The town doesn’t really exist anymore — I’ve some pictures that I’ll put in in a few days that’ll tell some of the story — but mother, Eileen, Nina, and I went over to Chesterfield for a few hours this morning. The Holbrook Store closed its doors in 1955 and is now being renovated. As we came up on the store and the gas pumps standing outside, mother remarked that there was indeed something in Chesterfield older than she was…. They even matched in color!

Addendum: My brother pointed out that I had mis-named the place we went on Monday — twice — and got it right once. We were in Chesterfield, Idaho. For many years we lived in a neighboring township to Chesterland, Ohio and I’ll plead a fatigued brain for the slip. I’ve corrected the place name!

We made it quite a bit further than we had thought. Driving from Jim’s to Kansas City was on two, three, and sometimes four lane roads with stoplights and small towns to go through. When we were established on I-70 I did a quick calculation to find that we had averaged 56 miles per hour. A few hours later I checked again and we were averaging 61 miles per hour. We also gained an hour back when we crossed into Mountain Daylight Time around mile marker 36 in Kansas. We’re now in a very nice KOA campground near Denver. There is free wifi here and we’re both sitting at the table with computers open and busy. I’m writing in my blog, Nina is sending out some e-mail. It’s quarter past eight and we’ll figure out something to eat from the fridge/freezer in a few minutes. This has been our longest driving day of the trip.

And what a driving day it was. Shortly past Topeka the winds picked up from the south. Big, gusty winds that blew trucks and motorhomes around on the freeway. That made for active driving so we changed drivers more often so we wouldn’t be so tired. After a sketchy night’s sleep last night and a hard driving day today, we’ll both crash tonight. But — we’re in a good campground. The air conditioning is on. We’ve got hot water. It’s quiet. We’re not bouncing all over the freeway….

Nina asked me what were some of the memorable sights from the trip. My answer was “trees.” Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and across Kentucky literally all we could see from the roadway were trees. As we’ve come west today we went from trees everywhere to trees nowhere. We left rolling hills with lush greenery in Missouri to dry high plains in Colorado. The contrast is pretty stark. Tomorrow we’ll be in Soda Springs. Hurrah!