Our last day on the road--Part I

Saturday, 10/13

Well, our wishes regarding the temperatures last night were NOT to be granted.  The sky was utterly clear all night and the day dawned sunny and crisp and utterly frigid....as cold as we've ever experienced while RV-ing.  Not one cloud to help insulate us from the low temperatures.   Just so you know, it was never that cold inSIDE the RV.  It stayed 60 or above, thanks to our trusty little space heater.  But--it was really, REALLY cold outside.   Poor Nils didn't sleep at all well, he kept getting up to run more warm water from the various faucets to forestall possible freezing.     It was definitely time to be on our way home before we burst some pipes or tanks or whatever.

Nils scratched the temp into the frost on the windshield--you can see the frost on the grass, too.

28 degrees, can you believe it?!  We couldn't.  It was too cold for me to think about showering (even though we DID have hot water, once we unscrewed the frozen water filter off of the end of the outside hose!)--just dressed (warmly) and got the RV ready to pull in the slide-out and hitch it up for the last time.  Especially because of parents weekend, we knew that we wouldn't be able to find a big enough parking space for it on campus, but fortunately there was a peripheral parking lot with shuttle bus service to within short walking distance of the SigEp (short for Sigma Phi Epsilon, FYI) house.  We went with Bjorn to a coffee shop around 10am and by noon we were at the house again, getting ready for the Open House/BBQ.

Without us I don't think there would have been a BBQ, at least not anywhere close to on time!

Grillmeister Nils

Action shot!  Joined by Matt Skurnick's dad, who pitched right in and did a ton of work too

We helped to set up tables, put the food out in an artful way (something I love to do), arrange chairs and then run around like crazies re-filling bowls of chips and macaroni salad, finishing cooking the hotdogs on the stove, and the like.

See the big curved sectionals facing the fireplace/tv?

Bjorn was his usual eloquent self, addressing the mix of parents, brothers and SigEp alums (including the founding president of the chapter who graduated almost 30 years ago).  He was totally verklemmt by the end and had a few of us in tears as well, talking about how much this extended family meant to him.    It was very sweet.

President Bjorn addressing the crowd of alumns, parents and current SigEp brothers

Then he handed things over to Nils who made the pitch for some parental donations to the moving-into-the-SigEp-house fund.

Nils makes the pitch to parents asking them to contribute toward moving-related expenses

They've raised $1200 so far!  Which means they can buy some large plastic bowls, serving platters, a bigger grill and a heavy-duty metal spatula, to name just a few things I wish we'd had available on Saturday.

At around 2:30pm we said our good-bys and hurried to the shuttle stop to wait for our ride back to the RV.  Soon we would be on the final leg of our trip back home......