Alamo car rental sign at the Rhinebeck airport.

The show was a yet another fairground. We should have left a trail of breadcrumbs to the show building...we got lost on our way out, and took a victory lap around the fairground racetrack...and on a similar note -- we were following our GPS directions back to the hotel Saturday night, winding down narrow roads in the dark, so when the GPS said "turn right", we did. The building on the corner had lots of lights on, and several cars around it, so we figured that it was a restaurant. Wrong. As we progressed on a gravel road toward our next direction "turn right in 800 yards" we passed a barn, a shed, fences, and as we came over a small rise, what appeared in the dark to be a cow pond. Uh-oh. So we cautiously turned around in what was now obviously a pasture, and quietly abandoned that route. :-)

I got back from Germany, but a day late (missed connction in Denver), and am frantically getting ready to leave tomorrow at the ass-crack of dawn for the Rhinebeck show. For thoses of you at StempelMekka, the luggage showed up this afternoon. Everything is in the bag, but aside from the grateful absence of shit, it looked like raccoons had been rooting around in it. I'll deal with your pre-orders when I get back from Rhinebeck. Thanks to everyone at Mekka for your help and understanding.
No time to post further, but here's a couple of pics from the Labor Day fireworks show at St. Maries, Idaho. It was an amazing display for a small mountain town.

Here's a pic from last month that I'd forgotten post. It was Day One to Helsinki, making a connection in Frankfurt. I've stopped a Frankfurt so many times that it really is a no-brainer, but going through transit was a different matter. It's kinda like Heathrow, but not quite as bad -- At Heathrow, the gates for the rest of the day aren't posted until the plane is at the gate and ready for boarding, so the huddled masses hang around the monitors until the gate is displayed (usually Gate 586, located approximately near Hemmel Hampsted), and then haul ass like a herd of wildebeasts down the concourse, with, of course, at least one more security check...but I degress...Frankfurt is not THIS bad. I had 5 hours to wait, so I figured that the United Lounge would have early gate info, so I headed that way, and two hours later, after 3 trips through different passport checks, 2 Customs gates, and 2 security checkpoints, then down 6 flights of stairs to this, dare I say "tunnel"



to learn that my gate was back where I'd started. Sigh.