At your service

David, for all of his fine qualities, is simply too damned self-sufficient. In general, he does favors for me and there aren't many that I can do for him in return. Well, the favor-returning gods have finally smiled on me.

David's Explorer (Alberta) has developed what he and I believe to a mild case of vapor-lock. If he starts Alberta in the morning and drives to work, she is happy to start right up when he leaves in the evening. If, however, he drives to some section of the Washington and Old Dominion Trail and leaves Alberta there for a couple of hours, she sometimes becomes, like the wizards and the butts in the urinals, cranky and hard to light. So a few of his hikes have had "waiting for the guy from AAA" as their finale. His mechanic couldn't seem to reproduce the problem and mechanics can't fix what they don't observe, so he and I have been waiting for the inevitable day when Alberta would become obdurate when he needed to be somewhere or when he wasn't convenient to home.

Thursday was the day.

I was down in Tysons Corner (Virginia) having dinner and a production meeting with Mary Ann, who is my producer at Elden Street for The Emporer's New Clothes (auditions September 6 & 7 - please come and read for me!!) - when I got a call from David. Sure enough, he had stopped at Panera for a quick dinner before his rehearsal and Alberta chose not to start. He walked the mile or so to rehearsal and called me to ask if he got a lift from someone at rehearsal to my place, could he stay with me and Metro to work in the morning?

Sure, but as I was out and about anyway, how about if I come to his rehearsal after my meeting and collect him, stop by my place to feed the cat, and we would stay in Reston so that each of us could get to work in a reasonable amount of time in the morning? (The commute via Metro or car between Aspen Hill, Maryland and Vienna, Virginia is beyond icky. The commute via car between Reston, Virginia and Silver Spring, Maryland isn't too bad.)

So I got to see a bit of one of the early-ish off-book rehearsals for Book of Days, got to hang with Casey for a few minutes, and got to hear the whole "how we got engaged story" from a couple of David's other castmates.

David started mapping out his options, re: Alberta, and I signed on to be his chauffeur for the weekend, should he like to have one.

He bused into to work and home on Friday. Saturday after he went to the studio, I met him at the Shady Grove metro and took him to Alberta. She started right up, of course, so we drove to his house and parked her out front, stopped for a quick lunch and then I took him to his Tai Chi class. After Tai Chi we stopped for a slightly less quick dinner and then we went to see Longacre Lea's production of Energumen and The Real Inspector Hound. Neither one of us and seen Inspector Hound in years and years and this production didn't let us down. It's an enormously fun script.

Sunday we headed up to the Stage to see the second weekend of the One-Act festival, hit the grocery store for salad makings (and ice cream for me), and headed home for a nice, relaxing evening of a Gunsmoke radio broadcast and the Phillies-Diamondbacks matchup at the BOB.

Of course, before we did the grocery store/dinner/game thing, we stopped by the WOD Trail, I put on my trainers, and we did a brisk-for-me, slow-for-David two miles. Got to see a hummingbird and a goldfinch, some crows, and, uh, other birds. The Jewelweed is in fine shape this year as well as the Poke Weed and the Joe Pye weed. I suggested that Joe Pye weed was named by someone familiar with the Ann of Green Gables books, but that remains mere speculation.

All in all, a lovely weekend and I got to do something nice for David.

For instructions on how to induce vapor-lock in an otherwise healthy vehicle, write to me privately......