Slipstream - January 2003

Photo by Tinker Edwards
Not to my surprise, not one of my dinner companions had
experienced one glimpse/whiff /dream of a ghost.
The Ghost Struck Sunday Morning - Sunday started well
enough: the clouds were clearing, John and I both slept well and
breakfast was wonderful. Two families of ring bearers and flower
girls were milling about, all cuter than cute. John went out to pack
the car while I checked out. I thought.
I couldn't get the room door open. I pushed and jiggled the
lock and laughed when the bellboy I finally called on the phone
came to open the door for me but I couldn't get the room door
open. It took the bellboy ten minutes and three tries with every
room key he had to finally get the room door open. We were still
laughing about it when I went down the stairs because the elevator
(which had hitherto worked just fine, thank you) wasn't working.
Downstairs I met John who was reentering the hotel trailed by half
a dozen MR-PCAers.
"I locked the keys in the trunk," he said with this look of
incredible amazement. "I locked the keys in the car."
Photo by Tinker Edwards
the airport to get the keys, I decided to go shopping. I couldn't get
the door open, again. After 5 minutes of rattling and jiggling the key
again, I called the front desk again to get me out, again. Funny
thing.
I understand the trip back for everyone else was (mostly)
uneventful... A couple of folks left the main group to attempt to
really race back to Texas and got "rangered" big time. Otherwise,
'twas another great weekend. Lunch was at the Circle J restaurant in
Talihina, OK and the remaining teams split up in Greenville.
Lining up in preparation for departure from the Crescent
I wish you could have been there. (And I wish John and I could
have had lunch in Talihina instead of dinner at a McD's!!)
Some of the tour group at the Big Cedar Lodge
I have been married to this man for more than a quarter of a
century. He NEVER locks his keys in a car. I have driven that car for
nearly two years. I don't know even HOW to lock the keys in that
car. "I'm not sure what happened," John tried to explain. "For some
reason I opened the trunk, put the keys in my jacket, then for I put
the jacket in the trunk and closed the trunk. Eight steps away from
the truck I heard the car lock. The car locked. The car keys are in the
trunk. The keys are locked in the truck."
I'll spare you the details of 3 dozen Mavericks coat-hangering
my Boxster. Shall we just say it was not a pretty sight? It was
uproariously funny, though, especially the surrender ceremony: all
the drivers with electronic key clickers gathered in a circle around
D BXTER and simultaneously pressing UNLOCK on their keys. It
looked like a coven of (very nice) warlocks right out of the Lord of
the Rings. I almost enjoyed it. We finally managed to shoo them on
their way back to the greater Dallas/Fort Worth area and went back
into the hotel to call our daughter back in Dallas.
Neither John nor my cell phones would work. None of the
(three) public phones in the hotel were working. "Funny," said the
hotel store clerk, "the payphones were working an hour ago when I
came on duty. I called home on one of them and one of the guests
was talking on another."
I went back to our room, called our daughter on the room
phone and asked her to take the spare set of keys to DFW airport
and fly the keys, air parcel, to NW Arkansas. After John left to go to
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