Party in the Parking Lot

Track Town USA: Quite a frustrating day for me as, for some reason, my roof-top dish was not finding the satellite in the sky and I was unable to communicate with the world via the internet! So frustrating! Luckily, this park has wifi, so I was able to post a question on the forum we satellite internet people read. And, luckily again, someone knew what I needed to do to repair the problem. It involved downloading two items to update my firmware and something called a "sat table". I was able to do this (because I am geeky), but still had problems connecting. Urg. Later, after posting yet another question on the forum, I was able to (figure out that I am, indeed, an idiot) change one simple setting that I had wrong and - voila - we are surfing, baby!

Are you bored much by that last paragraph?

Anyway, who cares about the internet - we had a football game to play! The University of Oregon v the Purdue Boilermakers! And don't you worry, we also have a TV dish on top of this bus that found the DirecTV satellite so our group of tailgaters (about 35 today) could watch other Pac-10 games in HD while tailgating before the Duck game.

USC v Ohio State game on our exterior television


I believe this is called "Beer Pong". Don't worry - they are all over 21 and have graduated
from college... unfortunately one of those colleges is Purdue.

Not only do we have Purdue alums in our little group, we also have Oregon State Beavers. (Not too many students were around as school doesn't start for a few more weeks.) It was quite a diverse group today. All friendly people welcome.

Woody skewered fifteen pounds of tenderloin and grilled them over charcoal. Wow, they were wonderful, and anything grilling over charcoal smells so good! I made my Farro Salad and Julie contributed a very cool pasta salad: she found "O" shaped pasta and tossed this appropriately-shaped ring-like noodle with herbs and tomatoes from her garden. Wonderful and very pretty! Mary brought cookies, and Donnie made his signature cocktail - Long Island Iced Tea. Perfect menu and we had no leftovers.

The Magna Peregrinus was very popular at her debut to Autzen Stadium. DT and I gave countless tours of her interior.

The afternoon was so warm, so we were surprised when it started to rain (thunder and lightning) during the game! (Since our bus was washed earlier in the day by a crew in the campground, we should have known it would rain.) Everyone and everything was just drenched. But the outcome of the game was good - the Ducks won 38-36 - and hopefully the faithful can now forget about that awful loss last week in Boise.

Until my next update, I remain your GO DUCKS correspondent.