Saturday, August 13, 2011 Leaving Hollister

Everybody at Sarah's the day Ryan left for Afganistan

We left Sarah’s about 1 P.M. and took Ryan’s care package to the Hollister P.O. only to find out that it had closed at 1 o’clock. Ryan has called us 2 or 3 times via satellite phone to tell us of his activities in Afghanistan. He is based on a hilltop or ridge that is heavily guarded and fortified, but goes out on “missions” for a few days at a time. It’s the “missions” part that makes me and his Mom nervous.

We had been waiting for almost 2 weeks for Greg at Mickey’s RV to finish the entertainment center cabinetry in our trailer that would accommodate our new 42” T.V., our sound system, and the DirecTv box. I had gone over to Mickey’s in Gilroy on Tuesday to give him Sarah’s old white bathroom cabinet to install over the potty and discovered that the TV & stereo components would not fit on the 1 shelf because it was not wide enough. That got Jan and me really upset, so we went over to Mickey’s the next day to find a solution, which we did, and that cleared the way to have the DirectTv guy come over on Friday to install the satellite dish.



Our truck & trailer take up the front of Sarah's house.

Our trailer was parked in front of Sarah’s house when the DirectTV guy got there on Friday morning. He did not have a tripod for the dish as he said that it was not part of the order. I had remembered that George, a friend of Sarah & Joe, told me that he had an extra tripod at his place, so we quickly got it from him. As it turned out, the tripod was for a regular dish and ours was a larger HDTV dish, so it didn’t fit. However, being the handy guy I am from the training grounds of the 1847 Warwick Place 100 year project, I did some modifications and got it to work. So now we could finally leave! We got as far as Redding that day right after sunset and began to do our hookups in the fading twilight. Unfortunately, the lawn sprinklers were going off at the time, so we got a little wet in the process.