When I started my first major job back in 1970 with Canadian National Railways I got a slip of paper from Head Office that said that I could retire in October 2018.  Back then the thought of 2018 was a life filled with flying cars and a space station on the moon.  It was so distant in my mind that October 2018 would never arrive.  But it did and I guess I qualify as an honest to goodness Senior.   We wanted to do something special to ring in this important date in my life, so we decided that we’d head down to Leavenworth, Washington to visit the little Bavarian town about four hours from Chilliwack.

We decided to leave on Thanksgiving Day and have a nice Bavarian dinner in town and for my birthday – we could walk the town and take in all that they had to offer.  The drive down was great, we traveled through all new areas with an abundance of yellow and red colored trees.  We checked into our hotel for the night, Alpen Rose which was a quaint Bavarian styled hotel just on the edge of town.  After getting setup, we drove into town and decided that we’d have dinner at Andreas Keller.  We both ordered the Schnitzel which by the way was gigantic.  My ex-Mother-in-Law, made the best Schnitzel in the world and this was a very close second.  We finished it off with Apple Strudel which was a great way to end our first day in Leavenworth.

The next day was my 65th Birthday – it all started ok – we had a nice breakfast in the hotel and then headed into town to take some shots of the cute little village.  After taking some shots, we decided that it was time to head back to Canada.  I turned the key and the idiot light came on – Check Charging System. Knowing that a big part of our drive was through a large National forest with virtually no assistance we made the decision to head about 30 minutes further away to the local Honda dealer.  As usual Deborah gets a little freaky about these kinds of things so she was very worried during our 30 minute drive to East Wenatchee, Washington.  Long story short, the car sputtered and spattered along the way until it finally gave up the ghost and shut down completely on the shoulder of the road.  What to do ?  We stopped right in front of a house, so naturally I walked up and knocked on the door.  Thankfully, I got a decent human being who gave me his phone to call Honda so that I could hook up a tow.

One Hundred dollars later, we arrived at Honda.  It was a new, full service Honda dealer so that was a good thing.  Now we’re hooked up for diagnostics, another $125.00.  Ricardo Woo, our service representative did an excellent job in handling my sensitive demeanor, checking in regularly as to what was happening.  The diagnostic decision was in – it was my Alternator – it needed to be replaced.  Great, not really they didn’t have the part so it needed to be shipped in from their closest distribution center – but because it was late in the afternoon, it might be two days before we can get this part.  So, they offered us a CRV rental and we drove off to find a hotel for the night.

Thank god that some young guy in their distribution center pulled out all the stops and got the alternator onto the UPS truck as it arrived the next day.  We pulled away from Apple Honda at about 1:30 p.m. with a total bill of $1,035.00 USD plus one night’s “motel” bill that we didn’t plan on.  The drive home went well, it was like old Bessie got a new heart – she drove perfectly on the way home but without any radio or GPS comments (that’s a story for another time).  All-in-all it’s a Birthday memory that will stay with me for as long as I might have left.