Aylmer Express "MoHo" Extravaganza 2006

Yesterday’s word was:

toothsome \TOOTH-suhm\, adjective:
1. Pleasing to the taste; delicious; as, "a toothsome pie."
2. Agreeable; attractive; as, "a toothsome offer."
3. Sexually attractive.

It feels like our time in St. Louis has been too short however we must move on as we have a BBQ in Kansas City this afternoon. We were pretty confident that we could get up, pack up, let the kids have a swim, and move out before 10:00. As usual, there are always 17 more steps to each chore than expected so we didn’t actually make our target. But to be honest, we felt fortunate to have left the campground by 10:30. While I was unhooking the MoHo from all the services, I struck up a conversation with the guy next to us who was doing the same thing. He had a 4-door Dodge pickup with the “Hemi” engine which is the most powerful gas engine they offer and he was pulling a 26’ trailer with it. I found out that he was from Evansville, IN which is a city I have actually been to one more than one occasion with ZixCorp. Anyway, he and his family had just returned from the Grand Canyon. I mentioned that we were planning to go there and asked him about some of his experiences getting there and back. What I was most amazed by was that he left on his vacation June 30 and he managed to drive there and back already! Hearing that made me feel like our schedule was almost relaxed in comparison. I then asked him about driving through the Rockies which he had done on his way back through Denver. He told me that some of the grades were so steep that, even with the Hemi engine, he had his foot all the way to the floor and he was still only going 40 mph! I was a little surprised when I heard this. He had paused after telling me this and I was letting that sink in when he finished by saying. “… for about 20 minutes.” I then slowly turned my head to look at our 31’ MoHo with the Toyota Matrix connected to the back and started to wonder just how slowly I would be going through the Rockies. I guess I’ll find out soon enough. As we continued chatting I found out that he was the service manager at a Dodge dealer in Evansville. He was telling me that going down the big grades was even more nerve racking than going up. He said that in his case his trailer weighs more than his truck and that keeping the trailer behind the truck while also keeping the speed of the whole rig at a manageable level was his primary goal. He said that he was completely paranoid the whole time. As a service manager, he explained, he knows of all the types of things that can go wrong with his truck and he couldn’t help but visualize all the possible outcomes in the event that each of these scenarios took place. He said he saw all kinds of people flying past him with trailers in tow and he admitted that he was jealous of these people who were obviously oblivious to all of the potential perils. This was a good example of how ignorance can be bliss.
Our time on the road was relatively uneventful. It was a sunny day with not too much wind. I have to admit that I was surprised to find that Missouri is not as flat as I was expecting. I would actually describe it more as primarily rolling hills. Much of the way there Morgan and I played a game that we had purchased at the Arch in St Louis. The game is basically Trivial Pursuit with only one topic which, in this case, was American Presidents. It was fun trying to guess the right answers but in many cases, the stories behind the answers were quite entertaining as well. My favourite bit of presidential trivia so pertains to Calvin Coolidge. Apparently whenever he had an unwanted guest in his office, he would simply sit completely motionless until these people would to go away. After 2 or 3 minutes of this treatment virtually all visitors would get the hint and leave. I wonder if I might be able to employ this deceptively simple method when I get back to work? Or perhaps I can try this around the campfire? Or maybe you can try it and leave me a message on this blog letting me know if it works!
On our way to KC we stopped to fill up the JoRo MoHo’s gas tank. Everything seemed to go well until about 20 kms down the highway. I took a look at the trip odometer which I had set to 000.0 to see how far we had gone since the fill-up and noticed that it had not moved from 000.0. Now this trip odometer is one of the old mechanical type which, if you are old enough to remember, sometimes get stuck when the reset button is pushed and they don’t start moving again until you press reset once again. I went ahead and did this but I was a little perturbed because I knew that now my gas mileage calculations and my overall statistics will be off. Then I realized that it was no big deal as I also wrote down the overall odometer’s reading at the gas stop so I’ll simply subtract the appropriate values to get the numbers I require. It was when I took a look at the overall odometer’s reading that I saw that it too had not moved since I filled with gas! That shocked me at first as I realized that it was not capturing the vehicles mileage. Then I started to smile thinking I should just leave it stuck and I wouldn’t rack up any more miles on the MoHo! Then I started to frown thinking about how many times the previous owners had taken advantage of this same phenomenon. I pushed reset and continued down the road.

We made it to KC at around 4:00 that afternoon. John and Shannon already had the BBQ festivities underway. I was surprised to see that John also had a Weber BBQ and was using his chimney to get the charcoal lit. So Andy, I did get to see it in action and it was quite impressive I must say. Jim and Jane were also in attendance as well. I meet John and Jim through work way back in 1997. It was great to everyone together again and it was my first time meeting Jim’s wife Jane. I have always wanted to meet Jane who, based on the stories I hear from Jim, must be a very tolerant, woman. We also got to see Piper and Natalie for the first time. As you can see from the photo, Piper will be a heartbreaker for sure. We had a fabulous time but then again, who wouldn’t with Jim’s home-made, 24-hour smoked brisket and pulled pork “appetizer” followed by John’s now-famous BBQ-ed chicken. All were an apotheosis of BBQ dining. Jim was in fine form and a good time was had by all. Somewhere during the evening we slipped out to the front yard and backed the JoRo MoHo into John’s driveway and plugged her in. As you will see in an up coming picture, the MoHo didn't exactly blend into John and Shannon’s exclusive neighbourhood comletely, but what you won't be able to see are the horrified faces of the neighbours watching the process. Time will tell how this affect’s John and Shannon’s relationship with their neighbours.