Epilogue

“Been There, Done That”

Another one in the record books. The good news — no tickets to go on our records.
The bad — those detours we took meant folks lost homes and possessions. A few tragically lost their lives.

Hotel Internet connections can be slow at times, so I finally got to bed at 2 a.m., when I gave up on waiting on the pix to all load. We were up at 4 a.m. to make it to the Madison airport for 7 a.m. flights. Shane went one way, I the other. Shane left on time, my flight was fogged-in. The pix? They never finished loading — still 400 mb to go.

Welcome to 21st century air travel.

Finally, I was back in good ol’ St. Louis. My wonderful wife and 2 great kids picked me up, and we ran all day, catching-up on things I missed (mail and food, as examples). She drove, I slept between stops. Coming home from dinner, we exited the highway and saw two cars sitting on the ramp. Unbelieveable — they had Power Tour 2008 stickers on the back windows. What took me an hour of flying probably took them 9 tough hours of driving.

Welcome to 21st century air travel.

Right before starting this epilogue, I was looking back at previous years, and saw a funny statement in 1999’s epilogue — it talked about staying up all night to upload 6 megabytes of photos on dial-up. 6 megabytes? That’s one image today! I was uploading between 1.5 and 2.0 gigabytes of photos each night on this Tour. Thousands of photos, of which we only used a fraction.

Once we go through them all and fix my mistakes, we’ll post them up in the Gallery. Take a look — you may find your Power Tour conveyance in all its glory.

As for me, I’m going to go cut the grass, wash a few cars and reacquaint myself with my favorite chair. Then I’ll get back to work.

This year makes 14 opportunities for fun and frivolity. For those of you who lived the Power Tour vicariously through this coverage, I hope it was worth your time. Come out next year and play with us. For those who were on the Tour, I hope you had half as much fun as I did. Come on back next year, because we’re going to some places we’ve never been.

Between now and then, do something nice for someone. It’ll make the world a better place. Do something nice for yourself, too. See this picture? Just wait until next year for the new me. I’ll be a lean, mean, Power Touring machine. And without food stains on my shirt. The lawnmower’s calling. Enjoy life, and I’ll see you in 2009.

Your humble and obedient servant,

Forrest Tosie
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