Pocatello KOA, Pocatello
Saturday, 16 July 2022
When I got back from the repair shop yesterday, I was tired - odd how doing almost nothing can tire you out. And I was feeling rushed and pressured, though the only one applying the pressure was me.
So I signed up for an extra night here in Pocatello and called the campground in American Falls to move my reservation from tonight to tomorrow night. That gave me some breathing room.
Last night at about 11:30, Dext started barking, which he rarely does during the night, and he wouldn't stop, which is also rare. At bedtime, I hang a black-out curtain over the inside of the windshield, sticking it up with Velcro (which is starting to wear out after being used every night for 4½ years). So this night, Dext had his head stuck under the curtain, and I stuck mine under as well, so I could see what he was barking at.
The only odd thing I saw wasn't an animal, as I'd expected - well, not a 4-legged one anyway. What I saw were 4 or 5 young men pushing a sports-type car up a ramp into a brightly lighted trailer which had the words "Powered By Shine" on the side. They hadn't been there when I went to bed, but I go to bed so early I often see late arrivals when I get up in the morning. Still, it seemed odd for them to be pushing this car into the trailer - why didn't they just drive it in? - and to be doing it almost at midnight.
This morning, I found out what was going on. When I was walking Dext I saw a second trailer near the first, and this one had "Born By Fire" on the side. A large group of young people were camped in tents beside it, and I stopped one young woman to ask her what kind of group this was. She's an MIT student and part of a team of students that had built a solar-powered car. They were now almost at the end of a race with other such teams, driving their solar cars from Independence, MO, to Twin Falls, ID, roughly following the Oregon Trail. She said she got involved because she was looking for an engineering project. The team itself built their car, which all by itself seems amazing to me. I think of car-building as a factory process, not as college kids in the backyard (or wherever they built it). Her team left the campground hours before the "shine" team.
I looked the race up later and learned that the MIT team won! Here's a link to a local news article with some detail about the competition and photos of the cars. https://magicvalley.com/solar-cars-shine-along-the-oregon-trail Based on the photos, I think the car Dext was barking at was the Appalachian State team - it looks like what I saw (without my glasses so who knows) late last night.
Yesterday afternoon, when I was walking Dext around the campground, I saw a young couple in a truck + camper top set-up, and they were sitting at the picnic table with their small boy. I watched the little boy pulling himself up on his feet using the seat on the picnic table, and toddling a little bit, and plunking down on his bottom - only to repeat the process several times. I said to them, "They grow up fast, don't they?" and the mom said, "We're just learning that," and the dad said the kid had just learned to walk 2 days before. I thought the kid was moving around pretty well for a 2nd-day effort. As we walked by, he pointed at Dext and said a long non-word that started with "d" and walked our way, so I hustled us away to keep the kid from trying to follow us. Dext is more trustworthy with little kids than Gracie was, but I didn't want to take any chances.
I forgot to mention that in that pouch of mail David sent me was a sympathy card from the vet and her assistant who had helped ease Gracie away from her failing heart. It was so nice of them. I still have Gracie's collar, and when I hold it, it brings her back to me so clearly - as if she still lived in that collar. Sometimes I put it on the table with the sympathy card Anna and David sent me, and now also this one as well. Grief is such a strange thing; it's different each time I experience it, so I have to keep reinventing a method to help me through it.
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