A Working Woman's Lunch

Back at the RV, I put things in place to get on the road. Unlike a car, you can’t just turn the key and go. I have a half-page checklist of things to do before we can check the mirrors and pull out. Many of the items on the list have been learned by experience and we don’t wish to repeat them. It’s real annoying to go around the first good curve at highway speed and hear a big crash from the back of the vehicle.

I got some gas before getting on the Garden State Parkway, headed for the place where my sister, Andrea, works. A couple of weeks back I had offered to treat her to lunch in DD on this day as I headed south and west toward our cousin Patt’s house. She readily accepted and invited me to come in and see her workplace and the people she works with in the north Philadelphia area.

The journey to Andrea’s was kind of interesting, because I had planned it on my computer, using my MapSource software and then loaded the detailed map data from the blocks that surrounded the route into my several-year-old monochrome Garmin GPS V. However, when I told the GPS to take me to Andrea’s company in Horsham, PA, it sent me via a route completely different (but probably equal or better) than planned. That would have been okay, but the new route, which I had not confirmed, but blindly followed, happened to go through detail map blocks which I had not loaded in the GPS. In such a situation, the GPS falls back on a basic map of the U.S. that just has all the major highways. This mode of operation will get you there, but the navigation is kind of loose and the screen doesn’t picture the little details of intersections, ramps, and such. So I made a couple of wrong turns, including missing a return to US 202 which forced me to slog through the narrow, tourist streets of downtown “historic” Doylestown. Another mistake I’ll try not to make again!

Anyhow, I arrived “on time,” instead of a couple of hours early, as intended. However, it was a great stop. Andrea gave me $5 worth on the “nickel tour” of her company. I got to meet the company president and the respective vice-presidents and key coordinators as we went through each area of the well-organized building such as sales, engineering/production, service, and estimating. It was especially great to meet the president, Joe, to whom Andrea reports; like me, he is a pilot and we seemed to think alike on the few subjects we were able to touch on during this short visit. The office emits an air of pleasant functionality and friendliness. It seemed perfect to me, but Andrea tells me her big project for this year is to get the whole place redone to integrate years of expansion and the ad hoc shuffling of rooms and resources that is naturally done piece by piece. It was a wonderful tour. Thank you, Andrea.

It’s a challenge to drive DD, especially when Essie is in tow. The primary rule is that you cannot back up with the tow car attached. It does not behave like a two-wheel trailer, and it you try it, you’ll articulate a broken tow bar...or worse. So you can only drive where you can continue driving forward. Getting trapped in a dead end carries a penalty—you have to disconnect your tow, maneuver each out where you came from and re-hitch, a delay you try to avoid. Thus, I was not able to park in Andrea’s parking lot and ended up in a generous lot behind the company across the street. So we went over there and I microwaved a couple of Panini sandwiches for our lunch. Well, I dressed it up with a little cottage cheese and peaches and a soda. Ah, the comforts of home.

Andrea headed back to work, and I ran the parking lot departure checklist.