Hanging with Sean and Ruth

I arrived at my son’s place in Portland around noon today after an uneventful ride up from Redmond.
Well, maybe not uneventful if you consider cold to be an event. It was downright chilly coming past Mount Hood. Overcast skies and temps in the mid-50s.
It’s great seeing Sean and Ruth after several years. We should all be ashamed of ourselves for letting so much time get away from us. He’s working on an audio project while I catch up on blogging.
I was up before 6 this morning and walked over to help Charlie and William with the coffee. They started serving at 5 a.m. and had made more than 1,000 cups of coffee by the time I got there. We were all surprised by the huge demand for coffee on the last morning of the rally, even as the rally’s tent city was disappearing before our eyes.
I made my tent disappear about an hour later. I managed to lash the big pink canvas chair to my luggage rack, but gave up on the cheapo sleeping bag. At Wayne Garrison’s suggesting, I offered it to the BMWMOA folks, but they pointed me to the Airhead compound. The Airheads bring big stuff like couches, so they have plenty of room to take stuff home and were glad to have the slightly-used bag, It would be OK for car camping for kids’ sleepovers.
There were dozens of dogs at the rally and I petted as many as I could. My favorite was Max, a 13-month-old Australian cattle dog who is one-quarter Australian shepherd. I met him yesterday afternoon in front of the vendor building. He was unusually friendly for the breed, which tends to be a bit stand-offish with strangers.
None of us won anything at the closing ceremonies drawings last evening. As usual, they were a little long, but not egregiously self-congratulatory like some I’ve endured.
The high point for me was when the woman singing the National Anthem hit the high notes and a little dog two rows behind us started howling.
The official attendance tally was 6,109. Not a record, because the center of gravity of the BMWMOA is east of the Mississippi, but still a good turnout for a rally in the Pacific Northwest. If the weather is good, it will be much bigger next year in Pennsylvania. Bloomsburg, Pa., to be exact. Right at 1,000 miles from my home.