Teaching and Traveling

Eight weeks down, forty-four left to make a difference.

This past weekend we held the last two All Member Instructionals, one in Riverside and one in Chowchilla.  Lots of members attended - we had three rows of chairs full in Riverside and fifty some members came up from San Diego - now that is cool!

Some of the members told me that they weren't going to come, but then they heard about the great time that others had in San Pedro two weeks earlier and they made the effort - that is really cool too!  It almost makes me wish we were doing a couple more, to get more people to attend, but I did say almost, which means not quite, since they were very exhausting to do and odds are that most of the people that wanted to attend one have already done so.

I also think that it didn't hurt us to have fabulous door prizes.  A few people who had to leave early for one thing or another left their tickets with others who were staying, but I am not sure that any of the early departure people will ever see any door prizes because the people who got them wanted to keep them.  We'll see if I ever hear otherwise.

The Grand Family is starting to get used to travel in a caravan up and down the state, having made two long trips now.  They don't know how easy we are taking it, compared to some of the last few years, where we might do two or three of these with trips in between and not done teaching until 10:00 pm, then getting up early the next morning.  Of course there will always be those who think that the caravan goes too slowly and those who think it goes too fast, and those two groups never seem to talk to one another to figure out why we stick to a reasonably midrange travel speed.  Of course, very few of them have done as my WGP and I have done, traveling in the front, middle and rear of the caravan to get a feel for all three types of driving.  And we still have a few nervous nellies in the middle who speed up too much and then hit their brakes, causing those behind to get whiplash from the back and forth, but they'll get used to it.  We actually did manage one caravan without a hollow square, but of course someone will think that I am making that up because no one is sure that it is a real caravan if you don't hollow square or U-turn at least once.

So far we've also managed to find food, mostly sticking to chains where we know what we are getting.  Luckily most of the family likes Mexican food and Italian is good too.  Most like some form of Asian food, but this is one Family that is not going to have sushi!

Of course, between weekends, there is lots of paperwork and reports and such, for running the business of the Order.  But I wasn't doing anything else, like shopping or cooking or laundry or anything with my evenings anyway.  And of course, once you learn that sleep is optional, you can get lots done!

Next weekend, we are not on the road, so I will be catching up on yet more paperwork, putting the finishing touches on our Deputy Brush Up Schools and ramping up for our first OVs in January.