Whew. We are pretty wiped out.

General Assembly is over. We had a great time, and got a lot out of it, but the schedule had us on the run the whole time. Louise more so than myself -- I finally made time to fix the bay door (although one of the replacement joints fell apart in my hand while I was installing it, so I put the other one in, and we are crossing our fingers until we're in Sumner).

It's hard to list the high points of such a full conference here, so I won't even try. A couple of things stand out in my mind, though. One was the music, starting with folk music legend and fellow UU Pete Seeger on opening night. Pete's voice is pretty much gone now, but he still led us in a rousing rendition of Turn, Turn, Turn which brought down the house, and made me tear up. Also, there is a brand new hymnal out, and many of the musicians who performed and/or led songs at the conference have pieces in the new book, which they peformed here for the largest audiences to date. The music was very upbeat and moving. And, lastly, the combo that accompanied much of the music, consisting of piano, bass, guitar, drums (trap), percussion (latin/african) and sax/flute, was really, really hot. More so considering they came together from across the country and had little time to practice together.

The other thing that stood out, for me, was the incredible dedication of so many people to justice in the world at large. There are too many examples of this to go into detail, but let me say that I am leaving the conference with a renewed commitment to standing up for equal rights for all people, in whatever small way that I can.

Closing ceremonies were last night, and Louise sang in the choir. They were great, again especially considering that they had exactly four rehearsals in which to get the entire program together. The closing ran to 9:20, so we missed the 9:15 bus and had to take the 10:15, making it that much harder to get up this morning.

We caught up with quite a few people that we know, and met a few new friends as well. Definitely an uplifting experience, and we are already thinking about attending next year's conference in Saint Louis.

We did the whole holding tank drill this morning, packed everything up, and bailed out of cowtown on US 287. Tonight we are in Childress, TX (map), after fuel and grocery stops in Wichita Falls. We are at the fair grounds, where they have five camp sites with 30 amp service, cost $10.00 (Texas, I must say, has been the most welcoming place in this regard). They also have a pool ($2 per person) but it closed half an hour before we arrived. Oh well.

Tomorrow we will fill our fuel tank in Amarillo (the cheapest diesel we will see from here to the west coast), and cross into the very northeastern corner of New Mexico.