The Buchanan's Rolling Down The Road

Sunday was a moving day we left Lake Huron Resort, but before we left there was a long list of things that needed to be checked, after sitting for six months. After a stop at the dump station to empty the holding tanks, we hooked up the towed, checked lights and tires pressures, and found one of the inside duels was down about 20 PSI, and the cause appeared to be a valve stem extension. I don’t know just how it got damaged, but it did and by doing our regular pressure checks it was caught before it could become an issue. Now the tires on the towed are always low, miserable slow leaks that take a month to trigger the low pressure warning system on the Sport-Trac, if the tires didn’t look so good and have so much tread left, I would just replace them…but I’m Scotish.

So we hit the road an hour or so latter than what I had planned, and the drive to Woodstock was uneventful, Thunder performed well and the roads were reasonably good just a few bad railroad crossings but nothing serious, and the fuel level was just under three quarters so we headed straight down the secondary roads to a fuel stop just outside Woodstock, where my sister Heather picked us up to visit my brother Scott on his 55th birthday. So just a quick stop for best wishes and some cake, a little catch up and we were off to a mooch docking spot with water and electric. And we were out of water so it was a no brainer…and the reason we were out of water? Well when the park got shut off, we lost our water supply so a week of regular use, a couple of showers and we were out, we just aren’t totally back in boondocking mode just yet.

Rob and Dianne were kind enough to offer us a flat drive way with a water connection and an electrical connection, so it was like a no brainer, and as a bonus it included dinner and of course a few cocktails. When you are driving a forty foot coach, big enough driveways to hold us are few and far between, but most greatly appreciated. So we only travelled about 100 miles (160 kms) and our fuel stop was for 168 litres of diesel at a cost of $200 dollars, but we had not fueled since April and the boiler did run a fair bit in the spring to keep us warm and the water hot, and it is what it is the cost of living this life style has some expenses that sound expensive but they are just different than most people have like utility bills every month…the same but different.

Getting back on the road just feels right, I have missed the nomadic lifestyle and getting back into it will take a while to adjust to, navy style showers, needing to turn the pump on to have water, it all comes back but maybe not quickly enough as shown by only going a week on a tank of water. Miss Laurie thinks she found our missing water, the dump valve on the fresh water tank has leaked on and off for some time, and as we are preparing to spend time in the desert it seemed like the right time to replace that valve. So we are on the road again this afternoon heading to Puslinch for a few days, visiting and preparing.

It’s Tuesday October 22nd and we lost Mr. Divot today. To say it is a sad day is an understatement, he has been a part of our lives for 23 years.

Mr. Divot’s story starts in Hamilton many years ago, when he was born as one of a number of an unwanted litter of kittens, that were dumped into the food court of a Hamilton mall when the pet shop would not except the kittens at only six weeks of age. At the time Laurie and I worked with a technician who’s son was doing a high school co-op at that pet shop. And as wrong as this will sound all the co-op students were told they should get one of the kittens and take it home, so his son did just that, much to the dismay of his father. But Frank knew a lady he worked with that loved cats, so a plan was hatched to get Miss Laurie and this kitten together, which obviously worked as he had planned. So this little tuxedo kitten came to live at our house, the name divot, came from his size, about four inches long, the size of an average golf divot. And on another note anyone who knew me would tell you that I was not a cat person, oh I have mellowed over time because of Mr. Divot, as for some unexplainable reason this kitten took to me. In fact the first night at our place he crawled up on my shoulder and nuzzles into my neck, pretty hard to resist that even for a tough guy.

So Mr. Divot became a part of our family when we lived in a small cottage at the end of Fifty Point road in Winona, and then moved with us to Fonthill where we lovingly referred to him as “Mr. Divot of the Fonthill Divot’s” a role he pulled off with true grace. Being an indoor only kitty, we moved into our house in Fonthill in December of 2000 and it had a sunroom that faced south and had multiple patio doors that let in so much sun, it would almost get too hot to sit in, but this became Mr. Divots favourite place he would lay in the sun for hours at a time. This was not an all season room so on a sunny winter day he would claw at the door to get into the sun room, and after spending a couple of minutes in the cold he would want back into the house. As we added a deck onto the back of our house Mr. Divot would occasionally venture out to the deck to sit on a lap but was never allowed to wander more that a few feet from the deck, as time went on he would try to get more exploring in but was still what I would call a scaredy-cat and would dash back to the door with any noise or movement.

As we redid the basement an addition of a natural gas fireplace, laying in front of the fireplace on a winter day until he would be too hot to touch was his go to winter spot, with a basement window being the place in the sun when the fireplace was not on. Of course there was never a shortage of cat toys in Mr. Divots toy box but there were a few favourites, a few were a little fluff ball about the size of a cotton ball in any number of colours, in fact an evening ritual has to find a fluff ball and carry it through the house all the time meowing until he would bring it to our bedroom before jumping onto our bed where he would settle in for the night. Others were just a pipe cleaners that Miss. Laurie would make into a spring shape, he would carry it around and play with it for hours, and he also had a little catnip triangular bag that he would throw off his cat post as the humans would retrieve and throw back to the top of the post, he had us well trained. And the most recent was a hard cat-nip ball that he liked to bat about the coach, we went through a few of those as the didn’t stand up well to outside forces like slides or such.

When we decided two years ago to travel, as concerned as we were about his age the vet gave Mr. Divot a clean bill of health and he moved into the role of an exploring kitty, very well as he would like to get out of the coach and go for what we would call a walk-about, so he has explored a number of provinces and states 5 provinces and 28 states in total. And even went for a walk-about yesterday where he met his first chicken, as he aged he became even braver and nothing seemed to scare him anymore, so it is with a heavy heart that we have said goodbye to such an amazing creature that has enriched our home and lives and leaves such a gapping whole in our hearts as we go forward.