John Delach

We drove up in two cars a necessity of traveling with our daughter, Beth, her two, Marlowe and Cace plus Matt Delach after a stop in Fairfield, CT. Matt’s older brother, Drew, called the next morning asking me to drive back down to Deerfield, MA where his dad would drive him. “Why not,” I thought. Matt wasn’t too pleased to have his big brother intrude on his time here but we bought him off with a double sawbuck.

Sunday was cold and wet when I left the house at 10:30AM to pick up Drew. The rest of the gang drove to Keene where we met for lunch at the Colony Pub known for good food and long waits. All went well until we arrived back in Marlow later that afternoon where we discovered power was out. I had bought a small inverter for such an emergency that I hooked up to my GMC Arcadia to power the freezer and refrigerator.

The bad news: we were without the well with the primary and immediate concern of flushing toilets. The good news: water was available from the hot tub so I established a periodic bucket brigade. By 9 PM what fun remained was fast disappearing with the day’s last light and the Electric Cooperative gave no estimate of when power would be restored. We had enough flashlights for everyone and we all turned in early rather than curse the darkness. A bit after ten my restless sleep was interrupted by the sound of trucks on the road so I rose, put on sweats and a tee shirt and watched two line trucks pass our house. When they came back down ten-minutes later, I stepped out to ask when they thought we’d get power back?

One lineman said, “Soon,” and I started back to the house. It was then that I realized that I had on a Yankee tee. “Great,” I thought. “Soon, my ass,” I thought, “After seeing my shirt it will be a cold day in hell before power returns.”

Fortunately, we had it back ten-minutes later.

Beth took three of the kids to Mount Sunapee’s Aerial Adventure Park on Monday where they were strapped into harnesses and navigated various suspension “bridges” consisting of planks, wires, ladders and tunnels, some as high as 50 feet. One look convinced me that even back in the day when I was younger and more agile, there wasn’t any power on earth that would get me up there other than the army. The army made me climb telephone poles, never again!

Amazingly, Cace, Marlowe and Drew successfully tackled all four levels of the course. Beth also took it on four times but wisely restricted herself to level one, three times and level two, once. The park also featured two rock walls, one that ended with a 15-foot “gravity jump” onto a large air bag. Deliberately falling 15 feet is akin to trying to hurt or kill oneself. Wisely, Beth decided to forgo this plunge, but Drew, Cace and Marlowe chose to jump. Drew made it alright but the others hurt themselves, fortunately not seriously. If all of this is not enough to satisfy your daredevil, there was a two and a half-hour zip line trip; again thanks but no thanks!

On Wednesday it rained so it was off to the movies in Keene. Mary Ann, Beth, Marlowe and Cace saw the animated movie, Inside Out, while the two boys and I saw Jurassic World. Malowe and Cace liked their movie, the two adults, not so much. As for Jurassic World, this was Matt’s third time and Drew’s second. My impression in one sentence: “There goes the neighborhood.”

The boys and I returned to the house first just in time to have a weather cell pass over us and lightning strike really close by. So close that the boys saw a flash and sparks in the front room. Shockingly, we didn’t lose power!

The rest of family arrived Wednesday night and Thursday afternoon together with good weather. Six adults, five children and three Golden Retrievers successfully co-existed (mostly) over the next three days including a pontoon boat rental on Lake Sunapee on July 4^th.

Once they all departed on Sunday the quiet was inspirational!