Ryan's grandmother Wilma passed away in June and Saturday her friends are celebrating her life down in California. We had the service up here in Portland at the tail end of June and this will be the first time we've seen Ryan's grandfather since then. Even though his entire working career was at the phone company, Ben doesn't really do telephones. We've tried to outfit his home with amplified models to improve the sound quality so he can hear us but still he seems to be having a difficult time with it. Plus, since he is from a generation that didn't really use computers, he isn't into email either. Needless to say it's been difficult to keep in touch on a regular basis. So this trip will be nice to check in on him and take care of some odds and ends he might need done around the house.
The original plan for the trip was for Ryan's Uncle to drive with us early tomorrow morning. He has his own house painting business so time and funds are really tight for him. Couple that with Oregon's unpredicatable weather and the poor guy never really knows what he is or isn't going to be able to do on any given day. With the fall weather rapidly changing he was concerned that he wouldn't have time to complete some of the outdoor gigs he had already started and really only felt as though he had enough time to drive up Friday, visit Saturday for the event and drive back home on Sunday. But after talking with him last night he came to the conclusion that still wasn't a safe bet and he decided that this wasn't a trip he would be able to make. It was really too bad because I know Ben was eager to have some quality time with him, but in that short amount of time any visit they would have been able to have would be very brief. I hope he is able to find a better gap in his schedule to make a longer trip down south and spend some bonding time soon.
Not having another passenger makes our schedule a little more flexible, allowing us to complete the new RocLok for Shorty Rossi and bring it down with us. We are trying to get together with him on Monday sometime. The tricky part is that Monday is his first day of filming Season 3 of Pit Boss and he doesn't really know when he'll be available. We really only need to get a couple quick pictures with him and the Dolomite for the website, but even then, who knows what time he will be able to dedicate. The cool part is we may get a chance to see some filming done which would be very fun. I definately don't want to impose on his time though, good thing he's near the beach we can go enjoy some sun when he's unavailable :)
Normally preparing for a trip can be flustering especially when you run your own business. Not only do you have to pack all the usual clothes, tolietries and alike but as a business owner you have to prepare the office for your absence too. Thankfully we are living in the digital age. It really makes life so much more fluid. We used to bring RocLok inventory with us so that we could ship out online orders when they came in but now that Bert is helping us we can email him the shipping label and he'll drop them off at FedEx for us! Still it is harder to sneek in working hours when your on the road. I for one get car sick if I'm not driving so I do that while Ryan Tweets and/or Facebooks on the Android. The bummer is that I'll have a great thought about something to Tweet just as he falls asleep and since I'm driving I can't do anything about it! Oh, well such is life.
We'll both try to update this blog over the next few days away from home, but as we learned at the beach, it's hard to blog without internet! Wish us luck.
