Bit by bit...putting it together

One would think that after my hellish vacation experiences with my first Subaru, that I'd be looking for new cars the minute I came home. Well... Jody, the Subaru customer service manager who I'd been talking to daily during my car problems out West, also anticipated this. The day after I got home, she called to say "I'm guessing that you might not ever want to see that black Subaru again. Am I right?" Of course she was!

So, she pulled a few more strings at Subaru headquarters in New Jersey (where she works), and put me in touch with another dealer in Chicago who was tasked with getting me a replacement car. I told him I was flexible on the options and almost any color...except for black! Within a couple weeks, he found me a beautiful blue and silver Outback.

One night, I decided to make a formal portrait of Mom, Millie, and I in front of the new car to print and send to Jody at Subaru as a thank you for all the hard work she did on our behalf.

So now with the car problem solved, and a beautiful Labor Day weekend on the horizon, I was starting to go through serious camping withdrawls! I had gone out to my T@B dealer hoping I might be happy with buying one of their models off the lot, but none of them were quite right, so I ended up placing a special order for a new one....and would only need to wait about 12 weeks for delivery!

To make the wait more bearable, I decided to do two things: 1. Buy a tent so I could still do a little bit of camping this season, and 2. Plan to co-host a T@B Rally with a T@B friend I had met out at Minden. I figured if I couldn't have a T@B myself for a while, the next best thing would be to hang out around them and their owners for a weekend.

I decided to go with an LL Bean tent that matched my new blue car. Millie and I took it out to White Pines State Park for Labor Day weekend to christen it. Tent camping again was fun, but I had forgotten what a chore it was to pack and unpack all the camping gear into the back trunk (with the T@B "always packed", I had only needed to hitch it up and go). But it was sure better than not getting to be outdoors at all!