Trip Planning

After much consternation and consultation of both paper maps as well as the various trip planning bits of software such as Michelin and Google, our guests have decided against travelling all the way to Lyons, France.
Well, it's in that neighbourhood anyway, but you get what I mean.
No matter how it was calculated, it was just an awfully long way to go, (some 900 km) only to turn around in a couple days and come all the way back.
Plus, the weather around here has been bad, bad, bad.....since it's been raining almost nonstop for the last couple days, and it looks like it will continue to do so on into the next few days.
Yesterday afternoon a couple of the streets in Hengelo were closed due to flooding, and there was a report that came back from the plant that the parking lot was a bit of a pond this afternoon.
Somehow I thought the Dutch had that whole water management thing down pat, but maybe that just goes to show how bloody hard it has rained at times.
When the rain and wind wake you in the middle of the night out of a sound sleep....it's really coming down. Big, loogie sized raindrops!
Just a couple minutes ago, the sun came out, but then it rained again. There's no point getting one's hopes up, since you'll only get caught in it and get drenched. A tender subject on which we choose not to elaborate.
So they'll pick up their little rental car tomorrow as planned, and they'll tool around the Netherlands for the next few days, while using our digs as a home base.
We won't be here, since we're heading out on Sunday for across the pond.
My trip is pretty straight forward: direct flight to Toronto, and then straight back on the 25th of October.
Gabe's is a little more convoluted, since she's going first to Virginia by way of Chicago, then on to Toronto (there's that whole wedding thing) then back over this way to Birmingham, then back over to Pittsburg, up to Toronto to fetch me, then we come back to home sweet home here in Delden.

Oy!

She's certainly racking up those air miles, which will come in handy at some point in time I suppose. Nice thing is, she's now considered "elite" or "gold" or some such thing, which means that, if anyone is getting punted up to first class, she's it. That happened back in July for some mysterious reason and she was a quite the happy camper.

Since the car needs to be serviced anyway, and there is the hope that our new car will be ready when we come back, we'll take it to the plant and drop it off on Saturday. Previously we just figured we'd need to take a cab back home, and then a cab to the train station the next day. Now with the change in Anna and Harry's travel plans, they've offered to be our surrogate cabbies for those situations. They've even offered to take us to the airport, since they'd like to wander in to Amsterdam and have a look around.
I'm pretty sure a VW polo is a bit of a small car, but how bad can it be?
I'm most definitely packing light, since I'm simply going from one house to another. I made sure I left some clothing behind, and unless someone has been into my underwear drawer or that wretched cat has had a chance to somehow infitrate my belongings, everything should be fine.
The understanding was that our master bedroom was to be kept as a sort of a shrine, to which we could return with very little effort. (and without having to vacuum either cat hair or the remains of someone's snack that they might have left behind on the bed)
I changed those sheets before I left back in August, so there had better be nice clean sheets on my bed when I get home is all I'm gonna say.

One of my sailing buddies offered me the use of her car while I'm there, since she has been in for some foot surgery and the car is a standard. The poor thing has had to go and stay with her parental units in London while trying to recuperate, and offered to somehow get her car back to Burlington for me!
What a dear soul!
I just told her that that was out of the question, and I'll manage.
I have the impression that she may have had a reaction to the anesthetic, since it wasn't just her foot that was giving her trouble.
Gabe was able to work from home today, since we now have that whole wireless thing figured out. I also discovered that the printer that I brought from home not only will accept voltage ranging from 110 to 220, but I just plugged the sucker in to my laptop and it works! The two machines had a little chat of some sort, and it was all good. No need for that whole irritating installation wizard thingy, or having to download a driver or anything. I didn't even have any issues with the paper that's in use here, since it isn't the same size as the stuff we get back home.

Since my usual experience with technology results in disappointment, it was rather refeshing to have that pleasant little surprise.