Being Together: The Best Vacation!
Despite hard work earlier, the distillery wasn’t finished, so the vacation was cancelled. But Mary and the boys flew to join Gary at Highland Flats. The work was completed even before the deadline, and a great winter vacation happened as well!
We had planned a two-week vacation because I had been gone for five weeks traveling in Sri Lanka, India, Dubai, Kenya, and Somalia. So I told the boys, “If I go for five weeks, we’ll take two weeks at Christmastime and go to Whistler in British Columbia to ski; or we’ll go someplace where there’s nobody around and it will just be us for two weeks just to ski and play and have fun.”
Well, when I realized it wasn’t going to happen, it was really hard to pick up the phone the day before Christmas and tell Mary, “Honey, if I don’t stay here and build this distillery, it’s not going to happen. I don’t know how to tell the boys, because I made them a promise.”
She said, “That’s okay, Honey; we’ll come and help you.”
So they flew up and worked side by side with me every single day, right through Christmas, hanging sheet rock, taping, texturing, painting, welding, whatever it was; and Mary was cleaning. She’s the cleaning person and cleans up behind everybody, and then when the construction crews came back after Christmas, she was cleaning up behind them.
So I’d get up in the morning at 4 o’clock and go over and work in the distillery; then the boys would get up about 9. I’d go over and make breakfast, and we had breakfast together. Then we’d all go to the distillery and work until 3 o’clock. And I’d say, “Okay, boys, let’s go.” And we’d load up and drive up to the ski hill and ski until 9 o’clock. Then we’d come back and go to bed. Day after day we did the same thing, but they got to ski and they got to be with me; and I got to be with them.
