Heading North By Nor' East................

I just got back from spending the holiday weekend with good friends Nancy R., Shorter Half and Sweet Daughter. As you can well guess, the 4th of July is a BIG holiday for those of us who reenact the Revolutionary War so we went to a historic site and did a day of interpretation for the public.

Since my vehicle (a extended cab Dodge Ram truck with crew cab) was already packed, we took it to travel in. Nance and Sweet Daughter in the back seat, Shorter Half and myself in the front.

During the trip, Sweet Daughter started calling out the direction that the truck was traveling since I have a on-board compass that she could see from her seat. Shorter Half (with understandable pride) was bragging about how smart his daughter was to be able to figure out the direction we were heading in. He went on talking about how he had talked with her about how looking at shadows, the sun, bark on trees and such had helped her to figure out direction and true north.

I listened for a wee bit, then told Shorter Half that he no doubt had been helpful with his advice but that Sweet Daughter most likely found it much MUCH easier to look at the compass. There was silence in the cab for a few moments, then S.H. cursed me under his breath and made various obscene gestures in my direction.

For the rest of the trip, I helped S.H. figure out which way we were heading by asking him about the shadows, sun location and other woodsy stuff. I don't know that S.H. had a good trip after that, but I had a GREAT time..............(grin)