I think this will be not too long; I have pretty much not stuck my head out the door this week except to go for meals. This might work more as an explanation to a few of you who have stumbled onto this lately.
My two main hobbies lately have been judging barbeque and collecting match covers, and matchcovers seem to be holding sway. Both activities take me on the road to some interesting places. I used to write three or four postcards home, but then I’d get a hand cramp; you have to find a US post office to buy an international stamp to send the postcard back to Canada, and then if you’re not careful, you have to find a mailbox.
A few years ago I started doing it electronically; taking pictures on my iPad (like all of these) and send an email to about 40 people. A couple of months ago, a friend of mine quite knowledgable in the world of tourism suggested I should consider a blog – something I have never, ever thought about. I am a true Luddite when it comes to much of this world of technobabble. But he set me up, and this is it. I really only blog when I’m on the road. If you have fairly broad interests, there is a wealth, a world of fun things to see. I hope you’re seeing them in some of the blogs you’ve been reading (if you read at all to catch up).
So, to bring you up-to-date, I am in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the annual convention of the Rathkamp Matchcover Society. In fact, at this convention, Canadian attendees outnumber all others except Oklahomans. We gather for a week to trade match covers, look for freebies in the piles that are heaped on banquet tables in a conference room; we have a business meeting, we see old friends. It is warm, and collegial. But I don’t drive directly to the convention, there is stuff to see along the way! Or when I get here.
We had a very nice write-up in Friday’s Tulsa World. It explains a lot:
Above you see the logo of this year’s convention; you see the contents of a box of matches, and the number of the people who are at this year’s convention. The T-shirts by the way are a test run for future convention possibilities.
I cannot say with any absolute certainty that this is Ringo Starr; I cannot say with any certainty that it is not. But several of the women at this convention, have been just all a-flutter for the last couple of days since they saw him getting coffee… And, in fact, Ringo Starr and his All-Star Band are appearing here next week. So who knows? Ringo, not Ringo, it was just a hoot when someone brought him into our room!
One of the restaurants here is the Highway 66 Diner. Joe and I split a huge chicken fried steak. The diner is a nice re-creation of an era in which route 66, the mother road, was really cementing it’s legend. This is Caitlin, our waitress, decked out in Waitress costume. That final picture is not about someone’s piece of pie, but about that logo that is a skilfully created piece of white chocolate – that’s the thing that impressed me in the picture. Believe it or else!
I’ll be bolting for home on the weekend; there are probably only a couple of things I want to take time to look at, because I’m only home for a day, and then have another trip – one without all the sightseeing, but we’ll see what we can do. There is a lot more from this trip that I have not shared with you yet – but I will…
The Matchcover Storyteller 