Saturday, October 16, 2010

New England in the Fall? Really?

With all of yesterday's challenges and surprises behind us, we began the day with great hope, well-rested cheerfulness, and optimism for a great day ahead.
We spent Friday night at the Stratton Mountain Inn and I was anxious to hear that the "stuck in the snow" tour bus had finally returned safely to the hotel. As it happened they were stuck at the very top of the mountain we were attempting to cross and waited there for 2 hours before the snowplows came to plow them out. So we were very happy that Randy had turned us around with is 25-point turn so we didn't have to spend two hours stuck in the snow, especially with no heat in the coach!
Well Emily's group returned safely about 7:00 PM and were enjoying dinner and I was keeping everyone informed about Randy's trip to Amsterdam and the possibility of having heated transportation for the next leg of the tour. He returned at about 9:00PM with the best news of the day. When asked if we had heat in the bus, he said "We could have a bar-b-que in there!"
Turns out the heat was fixed so good that we couldn't adjust it or even turn it off! It got so hot in the bus on our way to Williamstown, MA that women were taking off their sweaters, and some of the men were stripping down to their t-shirts! They took it in good humor though, because no one wanted to give Randy any grief since he had ridden 200 miles in the Nor-Easter to get the heat fixed. Finally, just before I fainted of heat stroke I asked Randy to stop at
a pumpkin farm to let the people off to take pictures, (really it was so they could cool off).
So everyone got off and the farmer told Randy to pull further ahead onto the grass where the ground was "hard".
I decided it would be nice to buy 50 McIntosh apples and when everyone was back on the bus I was passing them around as Randy began to pull onto the roadway. After spinning the wheels a few times back and forth in the grass and getting no traction, we determined that everyone should get back off the bus and surely it would drive right out of what was now a ditch under the front and back passenger-side tires. So now everyone is standing around on the hill, in the drizzle, eating apples, taking pictures, and discussing what Randy should do. The farmer brought his tractor around and hooked it up and as he began to pull the bus, the front bumper came off. So Randy, the farmer, and 5 passenger men figured out how to put the bumber back on and before we knew it there were 3 or 4 local guys pulling up in pick-up trucks who proceeded to pow-wow about what to do, then set about collecting tools, and gravel and boards and the passengers, as far as I could tell, thoroughly enjoyed the show. So between the four pick-up truck guys, and the gravel, the tools, the boards, the farmer, and the tractor, (this time at the back bumper) the bus finally came out of the mud.
We re-boarded the bus and congratulated Randy and applauded the pick-up guys and the farmer and continued on our way.
I am officially renaming this tour "New England in the Mud!"

8 comments:

Ann Orlando said...

Now thats just an added little adventure, I bet you could charge extra for that!!

Anonymous said...

Very good entry. Looking forward to the next one.

Anonymous said...

Quality piece of writing! Could you followup on this particular subject?

Anonymous said...

Rarely leave comments, but really cool blog, good luck to you!

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

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