Calgary
Got up, did the gym thing and showered to get ready for a meeting with Dan Lowe and his son Michael. Dan has a couple of Calgary-based companies on the leading edge of some entertainment technology. My writer/director friend Jeff Craig – who helped me with my memoirs, Between Rock and a Home Place (buy it here from my online store!) told me about the company and suggested I might meet with him while we were there. Jeff has suggested to them that I be on board as a consultant, which would be interesting. Rose Lane and I went down to the lobby to meet Dan and Michael at 1 p.m. and we went to the hotel restaurant for lunch. Had a really good meeting, listening to him talk about what they are into and what the possibilities are.
Rose Lane and I had just enough time to walk around before doing the final packing of our carry on luggage…so we went out to stroll around downtown Calgary for a bit. We ran across a cool Western store called Lammle’s. I bought a couple of pair of black Wrangler jeans and a John Deere T-shirt, and we bought a couple of other t-shirts for presents for Mike and Mark back home. We didn’t have a whole lot of time, but we did manage to walk around just a bit more before we had to go back to the hotel, check out and meet everyone to take the bus to the airport. The flight to Seattle was pretty short, about an hour…but as we had to wait to go through customs in Seattle, we were on the ground for another good hour before we could head to the Fairmont Olympic hotel. We finally got through all the formalities and arrived at the hotel around 5. Our friends David and Diane Russell were to meet us for dinner, so I called him to confirm everything. It was all set, so we had a bit of down time to relax before meeting them. They arrived at the hotel at 8 and we all walked to the Union restaurant a few blocks away.
David is a consultant for wine merchants and we’ve had some wonderful times in the past going to restaurants and wine tastings with him. He selected a Santa Barbara white to begin, and a French red to compliment our dinner. We caught up on our respective lives and had a nice time. Rose Lane and I headed back to our hotel as they did, and it was lights out.
