On the road with Jim and Pat

Hello from Evergreen, CO

2012-01-24T10:15:00.000-08:00

Hello from Evergreen, CO

Tuesday morning January 24, 2012 (fourth travelogue of this trip).

Before we get started, I did “wash” the last post by pasting my word processing work in a text editor and then pasting the text editor document in the blog. It did seem to solve the word spacing problem. Not a big effort, I just have to remember to do it.

In our last post, I talked about leaving San Antonio on Sunday and taking a leisurely drive home. Well, that did not happen. Sunday our GPS program took us on a route that had very few towns with reasonable hotel options. We finally made a course change in Paducah, TX and headed west so that we could connect with I 27. We ended up stopping in Plainview, TX at a Holiday Inn Express. That put us a bit less than half way home (about 450 miles that day). We ended up crashing after having a great Mexican dinner at a local restaurant.

Monday we left the hotel about 8:00 AM and arrived in Raton, NM about noon (with one hour time change). The weather was great, but there were some indications that it would snow today (hasn't really started). We ate lunch and made the decision to drive the rest of the way home on Monday.

We really could not have asked for better traveling weather on Monday. The same could not be said of Sunday. We fought terrible high winds most of the day. At times we could not see more than 100 feet in front of us due to blowing dust.

We had noted that our route on US 87 in NM took us through Des Moines. We had hoped to have lunch there to say that we had spent some time in Des Moines, NM. Turns out the town is very small and like most of the towns in the area, it is slowly becoming a ghost town.

The vast amounts of blowing dust conjured up pictures of the terrible “Dust Bowl” that took occurred in the 1930's. While the terrible dust bowl conditions existed in a large area of the US and some of Canada, the major impact was on the Oklahoma and Texas panhandle area – right were we were.

There are lots of good reference on this terrible period. Here it the Wiki link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl

I have often wanted to read John Steinbeck's “The Grapes of Wrath”. The excerpts I have seen suggest he vividly portrayed the tragedy and suffering of that era. What we saw was very scary. The farmers had really tilled the soil to the point is was very finely divided. That coupled with the terrible drought they have suffered the past couple of years make you wonder if the conditions might be conducive to a repeat.

We do not have any plans for travel until May. You never know when that will change. As a result, our posts will not be frequent for the next few months. You can check in once in a while or sign up for the email option.

That is all for now.

Hello again from San Antonio, TX

2012-01-21T17:04:00.000-08:00

Hello again from San Antonio, TX

Saturday evening January 21, 2012 (third travelogue of this trip).

First, I would like to acknowledge that some of you get these blogs via email. Those email versions have a word spacing problem (often, several words are run together). The word spacing looks fine on the Internet version of the blog. It looks like “Word” type programs contribute to the problem. I type this blog in an “Open Source” version of Word, and then paste it into the blog. I will try an intermediate step of pasting it in a basic text edit program to see if I can “wash” some of the control characters that may be causing the problem.

Now, back to our normally scheduled program. Thursday I traveled west on I 10 to Boerne, TX to finish a fire suppression system installation. The customer wanted to install a second system triggered by a “safety switch”. I had done some of the installation on the system when we worked on the coach in CO in September. It took all day to finish the install, but I took my time and “spruced up” the original install. The weather was in the high 70s and sunny. That made the install pretty pleasant.

Yesterday it was cool and very overcast. It was foggy most of the day and it seemed to me to be a misting rain, although the weather folks did not report that. By afternoon, it cleared up a bit. I took a long walk on the River Walk. It really goes on for many miles. Our hotel is on a “U” shaped channel of the river. I walked about a mile to the main river. The River Walk is lined with all kinds of restaurants, including many well known chains. There are also many large hotels on the River Walk.
All of the River Walk is located below ground level. Both sides of the river have walking paths and wonderful landscaping. It is just plain beautiful.

Just down from our hotel on a branch of the River Walk is the River Center Mall. It is as large as any mall in the Denver area with dozens of stores, including many well know chains. It also has a fairly large food court that has served our food needs many times this week.

I have been enjoying my quiet time during this trip. I had a bunch of computer email digests to read, did a bit of tax record preparation, and generally just goofed off. To top it all off, the Barrett-Jackson multi-day classic car auction has been on the Speed channel several hours each day. They are selling over 1300 vehicles this year – many for over $100,000, some for much more. They even have a fantasy bid contest that I have been playing with. Update: we just came back from dinner and they were auctioning off a '48 Tucker and it went for $2,650,000!!

Last night Pat and I, along with one of her downline, went to eat at Luciano's on the River Walk. It was a great Italian restaurant. They had great Crème Brulee that Pat had scoped out a couple of days ago {grin}.

Pat's Leadership Convention ended yesterday. Obviously, she had a ball. Today is a lower-key regional convention. As usual she thoroughly enjoyed both of the events.

Tomorrow we will start home. We will probably take a leisurely 3 days to drive the 1000 miles. Looks like we could hit some snow.

That is all for now.

2012-01-18T15:04:00.000-08:00

Hello from San Antonio, TX

Wednesday afternoon January 18, 2012 (second travelogue of this trip).

Monday we drove fromDumas, TX to San Angelo, TX – about 370 miles. We again stayed ata Hampton Inn (this chain has become a favorite of ours). Tuesday wedrove a bit over 200 miles and got to San Antonio about noon. Thatgave us the afternoon to walk around the area.

Our hotel room overlooksthe famous River Walk. River Walk is described on one website asfollows:

The San Antonio River Walk is a public park, open 365days a year. It is a network of walkways along the banks of the SanAntonio River, one story beneath approximately 5 miles of downtownSan Antonio. Lined by bars, shops and restaurants, the RiverWalk is an important part of the city's urban fabric and a touristattraction in its own right.

The River Walk winds and loops under bridges as two parallelsidewalks, lined with restaurants, shops, hotels and more. Itconnects the major tourist draws from the Alamo to Rivercenter Mall, Arneson River Theatre and La Villita, the San Antonio Museum ofArt, and the Pearl Brewery.

The photos below show the River Walk. Since it is January, thetrees are not leafed out, but it is still beautiful and peaceful.

View of the River Walk from our balcony

View of our hotel from the RiverWalk

Yesterday it was almost 80 degrees and we ate lunch at an outsidetable beside the river. It was gorgeous. There are many signsasking you not to feed the birds and other animals. Obviously folkshave ignored the signs, as a couple of beautiful ducks walked rightup to us and waited for us to offer part of our lunch (we obeyed thesigns).

After lunch, we walked to the Alamo. It is well restored, but notat all what we pictured. It is not a fort as most folks think. Itstarted as a mission in the 1700s and slowly changed so that it had amilitary basis including a hospital. The grounds are well kept withbeautiful trees, shrubbery, and flowers. It is only a couple ofblocks from the hotel and right in the middle of downtown SanAntonio.

Pat's activities started today, but we were able to get away forlunch. She has her Manager's Reception tonight, so I will have tohave pizza and beer on the River {grin}.

Tomorrow I will travel about 30 miles back up I 10 to finishinstalling a special auxiliary fire suppression system on acustomer's motorhome.

That is all for now.

Hello from Dumas, TX

2012-01-15T17:17:00.000-08:00

Hello from Dumas, TX

Sunday evening January15, 2012 (First travelogue of this trip).

Well, it has been a longstretch since I last posted. As I have mentioned many times, most ofthe posts in this blog detail our travels. We have not traveled muchin the past few months.

We did make a short tripto Dillon, CO between Christmas and New Years. We stayed two nightsat our daughter Kelly's family's townhouse. They have a wonderfularrangement for their place. It is leased year round by ClimaxMolybdenum (not sure that is their name today). They house selectedemployee families there while the employee looks for permanent housing orfinishes a temporary assignment. For the last two years, the unitwas vacant during the holidays. So, they get to use their greattownhouse and still collect rent!

We were surprised at howlittle snow Dillon had. Last year, they had a huge amount byChristmas. We had planned a lot of activities, but ended up justbeing lazy and enjoying ourselves.

Now, let's talk about thistrip. Pat has a Stampin'Up convention in San Antonio and I have aninstallation to finish up in the same area. We are traveling in thePT Cruiser. I had hoped to get the Durango engine back in and brokenin, but it is taking a lot longer than I had hoped.

We left Denver early thismorning and had a pretty uneventful drive – avoiding any badweather. We drove south on I 25 to Raton, NM and then traveled on US87 to Dumas. I had forgotten that US 87 is a pretty good road. Theyare finishing up making it a four lane highway. The construction wasnot bad and the traffic was very sparse.

We watched the outsidetemperature climb to almost 70 degrees. With the sun load, we had torun the air conditioner for a while. We arrived at the Hampton Innmid-afternoon.

We drove just short of 400miles today and have about 550 miles to go. We will make onemore stop before we arrive in San Antonio.

That is all for now.

Breast Cancer, The Journey

2011-11-07T18:58:00.000-08:00

Breast Cancer, The Journey

Monday Evening, November, 7 2011 (thirteenth post in this series)

We started this blog todocument our travels and for the most part we stick to that goal. However, we are “off the road” for a few months and I need tocatch up on the thread we started earlier this year on our daughters“journey” with her breast cancer diagnosis.

Kelly publishes updateemails that describe her journey. I am posting the last three ontoday's blog. My goal is to present, through Kelly's words, themajor elements of what is entailed in making the decision to have adouble mastectomy. The process is incredibly involved, includingseveral surgeries and a great deal of physical and mental pain.

I started this series inMarch of this year withthis post. As you can see from the header to this post,this is the thirteenth post in this series. Here are Kelly'supdates:

6/23/11

My healing process has had its ups and downs, but I’m still sothankful that I will not have to have any radiation orchemotherapy!! The recovery from the surgery has gone at leastas well as I expected, if not better. My only remaining symptomfrom the surgery is the fatigue that I expected, but wish it wouldprogress a bit more quickly. I continue to work on patience!

The reconstruction process has been a bit more than I expected,but, I guess if I stop to think about it, it all makes sense. When they did the mastectomies, a plastic surgeon placed “tissueexpanders” as the first step in the reconstruction process. Iguess I didn’t stop to think exactly what expanding the tissuemight entail. Each week (or every couple weeks depending on ourtravel schedule), I have to have saline injected into the tissueexpanders, thus stretching the tissue. At first I described theprocess as being similar to having your braces tightened, but I’mnow realizing that the similarities are pretty limited. LuckilyI only have two more “fill” appointments and then I will haveabout three months to heal from this process before the next surgery.

Kelly and Damon

8/26/11
I continue doing well with my cancer journey. My last “fill”was July 18^th and I expected to be back to myself by thenext week, but realized that it was another time to practice the artof patience. The reconstruction process continued to bechallenging, but I finally felt like I had a breakthrough last week. I started sleeping without ice, sleeping almost through the night,and being able to sleep on my sides for a few minutes at a time (allthings I took for granted before this journey).

I have discovered that physical therapy is a great tool duringthis process. I have found a therapist who knows what she’sdoing and is incredibly supportive. She helps me remember thatit’s not uncommon to take five steps forward and then a coupleback, but I’m so thankful that she’s helping me through thisprocess. We started with the simple art of breathing because Ihad to re-train my body since I hadn’t been able to take a deepbreath for so long. She has taught me some great stretchingexercises and we’re hoping to progress to some weight work in thenext week or so.

My next surgery is scheduled for November 9^th so Ishouldn’t have any more appointments and will continue the healingprocess until then. During that surgery the tissue expanders(or rocks as I fondly refer to them) will be removed and permanentimplants will be placed. That surgery will be a day surgery andshould be much simpler than the first one. As Madison says, thesurgery will also probably be easier than the fills.

Kelly and Damon

11/4/11

One of the most moving points of ourfall was our participation in Race for the Cure. Damon and Iused to do the full walk/run before we had the girls and even upuntil Molly was walking. We still look back at that last yearbecause Damon had Madison on his back in a backpack and I had Mollyon my front in a pack and they both kept getting in and out of thebackpacks and it wasn’t a whole lot of fun.

Each year since then we’ve done Sleep in for the Cure which wasjust our speed. This year Molly talked us into going down forthe family event and we’re so glad we did! We were amazed atthe number of people who come for that event. It was anemotional day for me, realizing that I wasn’t walking for the womenin pink shirts, but was now wearing the pink shirt.

It was also a day to remind me of my good fortune. Seeingthe women without hair and talking to a woman who went through lotsof radiation and chemo helped me keep my perspective and continue tofeel lucky in my situation.

The next surgery in my reconstruction will be next Wednesday. During this one they will remove the tissue expanders (AKA rocks) andreplace them with saline implants. I’m looking so forward tohaving something more comfortable and I know it will be nice to beable to comfortably cuddle with the girls.

Damon and I went to the pre-op appointment yesterday and learnedthat, although this surgery will be SO much easier than the last one,some of the restrictions will be the same. This surgery will beabout 2 ½ hours versus the 4 hours for the last one. Thisrecovery is expected to be shorter, hopefully only a week or two.
I’m still coming to grips with the fact that I won’t be ableto lift my arms over my head (including washing my own hair) or drivefor two weeks and I won’t be able to work out for a month. Iwill only be able to lift 5 pounds for about a month. I guessthese are small sacrifices compared to other things I could have gonethrough. I am especially thankful that I won’t have drainsthis time!

As I continue to focus on humor, I’m picturing the “IronMaiden Bra” that I’ll be wearing for a couple weeks. I’msure it’s going to be very sexy, but I promise not to sendpictures!

Kelly and Damon

Hello from Evergreen, CO

2011-10-26T12:17:00.000-07:00

Hello from Evergreen, CO

Wednesday afternoon October 26, 2011 (eight travelogue of this trip).

Well, as you can see fromthe title, we are home. As I write this, there is about 8-10 inchesof snow on the deck and it is predicted to snow most of the day.

I wanted to comment aboutthe Wal Mart in Topeka. After it got dark we noticed a large neonsign in front of the coach (all we could see from the windshield wasthe end of the sign). I went out to investigate, and it was a greatlooking sign marking the site of the Chief Drive-In Movie Theater(see photo). Apparently, they built this store on the drive-in moviesight and left the great sign.

Great Looking Neon Sign in front

of the Topeka Wal Mart

Monday night we stayed inthe Wal Mart in Goodland, KS. We have stayed there before and it haspretty good parking and ease of entry.

Yesterday we left right atsun rise to make sure that we would beat the storm. They hadpredicted it would not hit until the evening, but you just neverknow. We got here at about 11:00 AM – plenty of time to unload andpark the bus in the shop. I elevated the bus with the jacks and haveit sitting of jack stands so that I can do some work underneath andin the lower bays (more comfortable working position) over thewinter.

That is the good news. The bad news will be detailed in a minute.

Periodically I present asummary of our travels in the bus. The bus made it's inaugural tripin March of 2006. Since that time we have driven it over 65,000miles, through 27 states and have stayed in the bus 716 nights.

This trip covered close to3100 miles and we were on the road 41 days. The bus performed very well. We had one minor incident in IA where the charge air coolerhose came off. It took about 15 minute to get it secured back inplace. Other than that, we had no problems.

Now for the bad news. Asmost of you know we tow a rather heavy service truck behind the bus. About a mile from the house, the hitch broke and the truck swervedfrom side to side quite a bit. It could not have happened in a worsespot, as the truck swerved into the ditch and the right front wheelhit a big rock and tore up the front end pretty good. I lost a tire,a high dollar aftermarket wheel and at least two of the control arms. Because of the snow, I can't inspect for further damage. My guessis that it will be several hundred dollars to repair – with medoing the work. Long ago, I converted to very robust safety chains,and the kept the truck from breaking away from the bus.

Funny thing was, I hadjust added to my to-do list, an item for me to thoroughly check all ofthe hitch components over the winter.

As a side note, I have abunker where I store the trash bags until I can take them to thedump. It is pretty darn secure, as the walls are made of railroadties and the top is made with 2X6 boards. When I walked around backit was fairly obvious that a bear had ripped the boards off and dugthrough the trash. What a mess. There have been several reports ofbears in the area. We are careful not to have any food in the trash,but they probably smelled the food containers containers (we evenrinse them out, but their powerful sense of smell tells them thatfood is/was present. It will be interesting to see if they comeback.

That is all for this trip.

Hello from Topeka, KS

2011-10-23T18:46:00.000-07:00

Hello from Topeka, KS

Sunday evening October23, 2011 (seventh travelogue of this trip).

We are parked at a WalMart in Topeka KS (map). This Wal Mart parking lot is large and fairly easy to get into. Wecan park quite a ways from the store and that makes us feelcomfortable that we are not blocking valuable parking.

Yesterday we stayed at a Wal Mart in StCharles MO and it was rather difficult to get into and the parkingwas not the best. Indeed we had to unhook the truck to get parked inan appropriate location.

We left the Blue Springs parking areaabout 9:00 which should have easily gotten us to St Charles by 10:30AM. The drive was less than 60 miles. It always seems that theshort drives are the worst. Even though it was Sunday morning, thetraffic was terrible and then, we came to an area where they had I 70shut down for a accident. It took us about a half an hour to edgeforward in the traffic (they were diverting folks off the highway.) When we got within a half of a mile of the wreck, they opened up thehighway and we did OK after that. That said, the traffic was stillpretty bad and our exit was a bit of a challenge, but we made it.

By the time I got into the Wal Mart lot(did I mention it was very tight?) I was a wreck. As I was unhookingthe truck two folks came up and asked if I was a Colorado driver. Ithought that was a strange question, and then the guy introducedhimself as Kevin Brown – the son of the lady we were going to spendthe day with.

As a bit of background, Kenny and KayBrown had three boys in the same time-frame as our three girls. Kenny and I were good friends and we attended a lot of car showstogether all over the country. Kenny and I would work on some paintproject in the garage and Pat and Kay would play all kinds of gamesan compare notes on what it was like to raise the “opposite gender”children. They moved away from Denver about 44 years ago, but westayed in touch. Kenny passed away about 10 years ago.

Kevin and I have communicated a fewtimes over the years and we have a lot in common. He is an engineerand loves cars (races a 2009 Challenger). After Kay, Pat and I hadlunch, Kay dropped me off at Kevin's house and we had a great time. I got to see his car and we talked like old time friends.

Pat and Kay continue to have lots incommon. Now, they are both into genealogy. They picked up wherethey left off many years ago without missing a beat. The three of ushad two great meals in the amazing downtown historic district of StCharles.

Today we got an early start so that wecould get out of the Wal Mart lot before it became “crazy”. Wehad planned to drive the 900 miles to Evergreen in four days so thatthe drive would be relaxing. I wanted to make sure that we gotthrough Kansas City today (not a fun drive normally, and today theyhad I 70 closed for construction – had to take I 435 around thetown to the south). By the time we got out of the traffic, we couldnot find a place to park, so we jumped on the turnpike and ended uphere. That was a bit over 300 miles.

We are watching the weather inEvergreen and there is a winter storm watch for Tuesday, lateafternoon (sever inches of snow possible). That is changing ourplans. We will try to get around early tomorrow and get close to theCO/KS border, so that we have a fairly easy shot into Denver onTuesday. If the conditions look bad, we will stay at Chatfield StatePark for a Day or two until the weather gets better.

That is all for now.

Hello from Highland, IL

2011-10-21T18:00:00.000-07:00

Hello from Highland, IL

Friday evening October21, 2011 (sixth travelogue of this trip).

We are in the parking areafor the Blue Springs restaurant (map). We wrote about this place in a blog a couple of years ago (here). We have stopped here many times over the years and really like thehome style cooking, blue plaid table cloths and there “foot high”pies. We called ahead to see if we could park in their lotovernight. They said fine. When we got here the lot was muchsmaller that we had recalled, but we have a spot for the night.

Getting here was quite an adventure. We were heading towards St Louis on I 64 and had to go across countryto get to I 70 (about 25 miles). I forced the GPS to re-route us,but did not check the route. That is always an open invitation todisaster. The GPS put us on some very marginal farm road that werenot wide enough for two vehicles to pass comfortably. In addition,there were at least a dozen sharp turns that were quite a challenge. Onehad a drop-off on both sides and I just barely made it. We came toa bridge that had a 10 ton limit and before I could think we wereacross it (we weigh over twice that amount!!!!).

We chose this spot because we wanted tobe fairly close to St Charles, MO. We are about 50 miles away andcan avoid the terrible traffic in St Louis by arriving early on aSaturday. We plan to visit a friend from many years ago. Kay wasmarried to a good friend of mine who taught me how to paint cars. Wewere in the same car club and we really got to know them well as eachof us began to raise our families. Ken passed away a few years ago,but we have kept in contact with Kay. She and Pat have a lot incommon including genealogy. By arriving fairly early Saturday, Patand Kay can have a few hours together. We will then start home onSunday.

Now, let's catch up. On Tuesday, weleft the site of the rally and returned to Choo-Choo Garage. I wasscheduled to do a welding workshop today at Choo-Choo, but that gotcanceled. Tuesday we visited with some of the folks that came overfrom the rally. We went to dinner with Sean Welsh on Tuesday. Wemissed seeing his wife Louise (she went to CA to visit family). Wehave met up with them several times over the years in lots ofdifferent locations. They are neat folks and I love to pick Sean'sbrain on all kinds of subjects. Sean documented our visit in hisgreat blog (here).

We set Wednesday aside to do some sightseeing. Our first stop was the Battles for Chattanooga museum. Theyhad a slide show detailing the civil war battles in the Chattanoogaarea. We then went across the street to Point park. These arelocated on the top of Lookout Mountain. Even though the weather wascold and overcast, the views were great (see photos). The drive upto the top of the mountain was very steep and twisty. It was heavilywooded with gorgeous trees that were beginning to display the fallcolors

Point Park on Lookout Mountain

Civil War cannons in Point Park overlooking

Chattanooga and the Tennessee River

Our next stop was the Moon Pie GeneralStore in downtown Chattanooga. Moon Pies are very popular in thesouth and they have been made in the Chattanooga plant since 1917. RC Cola was also formulated in Chattanooga. The video in the MoonPie store said that the coal miners loved their 10 cent lunch (MoonPie and RC Cola each cost 5 cents in the 20's).

For our last stop we went to the ChooChoo Hotel. This hotel is the converted train station (details). It is a fabulous hotel. There are several train cars that have beenconverted to hotel rooms. In addition there are several other trainrelated displays including a Baldwin Steam locomotive. The hotellobby is the original train lobby/waiting room with a beautiful domedceiling. I have included a couple of photos.

Choo Choo Hotel Garden with train cars used for sleeping rooms

Baldwin Steam Engine

A lot of businesses and locations havethe words Choo Choo in them. Apparently that all stems from theGlenn Miller song in the 40's with the title Chattanooga Choo Choo.

We left the Chattanooga, area onThursday and drove to Kuttawa where we stayed at Huck's Travel CenterTruck Stop. We don't normally stay in truck stops, as they tend tobe very noisy with the truck engines idling and trucks coming andgoing. Since it was chilly (got down to 34 degrees) we did not havethe windows open and the noise was not a problem.

The drive from Chattanooga, to Kuttawawas beautiful. There is a pretty good pass which the locals callMount Eagle. There is a town at the top called Monteagle, whichprobably gives the pass its coined name. In any case, it is notquite as dramatic as some of the passes in Colorado, but it is stillpretty steep and long. The road is lined with trees beginning todisplay the fall colors.

That is all for now

Hello from East Ridge, TN

2011-10-17T17:19:00.001-07:00

Hello from East Ridge, TN

Monday Evening October17, 2011 (fifth travelogue of this trip).

We are in East Ridge, TNat the Camp Jordan Park (map). This is the site of the Bus Conversions Magazine bus rally. Therally is over, and we are the only ones left in the park from therally. Friday was “arrival day” (may folks arrived Thursday) andthe majority of activities took place over the weekend.

Even though we moved fromRossville, GA to East Ridge, TN the trip was only three miles.Indeed, when we moved here, I did not hook up the truck. I put thebike in the bus and then rode it back to the shop so that I couldpick up the service truck.

The rally turned out to bea compromised event. The editor had over 100 people respond thatthey would attend the rally and started planning accordingly. Itturned out that only about a third of that number actually registeredand that caused a significant scaling back of the activities. Theevents had to be moved from the large arena building to an open-airpavilion and an outdoor stage. That was not all that bad, as theweather was quite nice and the outdoor locations were not a problem.

A friend of ours, helpedthe editor arrange the music for the event. Saturday night had threegood entertainer individuals/groups. Two of the Sunday groups weregood, but the other two went way overboard with religious music andpreaching to the audience. We stayed through thefull program the first night, but left early the second night. Bothnights the “crowd” was embarrassingly small. When we left lastnight, we were the last ones left in the audience, but we heard themcontinue to play.

There was also whatsounded like good gospel music Sunday afternoon, but they scheduledthe technical sessions at the same time. That resulted in only ahandful of folks in the audience.

I did three seminars and they had reasonably good attendance, given the smallnumber of people here. Because of the tight schedule, and all of thecompromises, there was no vendor area, nor any time to set up aformal display. This morning I set up some fire extinguishers andended up selling several. When we attend a bus rally, our salesexpectations are not very high. Just the nature of the beast. Mostof the folks know me and those that want to buy product don't waitfor the rally.

Pat only had three ladiesin her session, but they were all friends and they had a good time. She got a couple of good orders.

Our regret when we arevendors and doing seminars, is that we don't get as much time as wewould like to talk to old friends and meet new ones. However, wemade the most of the time we had and got to talk to a lot of folks.

The technical sessionsassociated with the rally did not draw registrations. It could have beenbecause of the cost, or extended schedule (mine was scheduled forthis Friday). As a result, they canceled the remaining sessions. That leaves us with some time to do a bit of sightseeing before weleave. Not sure what we will do, but the first order of business isto relax tomorrow. We came in several days early to help with therally. Unfortunately, there were almost no other volunteers, so wehave been running the whole week.

That is all for now.

Hello from Rossville, GA

2011-10-12T19:36:00.000-07:00

Hello from Rossville, GA

Wednesday Evening October 12, 2011 (fourth travelogue of this trip).

When I started this blog,we were parked at the Choo Choo Garage in Rossville, GA (map). This afternoon we moved to a different state (trip was all of threemiles), but that will be the subject of our next post.

The Choo Choo Garage is a pretty famousbus repair shop and the site of the Bus Conversion MagazineWorkshops. I helped with the first two workshops – mostly as agopher and video camera operator. However, being me, I just had tojump in and “contribute” to the workshops {grin}. Indeed, thetwo presenters and I made a pretty good team as each of us came fromdifferent backgrounds.

Now let's catch up on some of theevents since our last post. Last Friday we took an unbelievable tourof the KitchenAid factory in Greenville. This is the only plant inthe world to manufactures the counter-top or “stand” mixer. WhenI say only, that is significant. They export this type of mixer allover the world including China – from this plant! The pride of theworkers is amazing. But, even more amazing were the huge number ofworkstations hand assembling components for the mixer. This is workthat is typically sent overseas, but KitchenAid has staunchly refusedto ship jobs overseas (Tom are you reading this). Indeed they areworking towards bringing jobs back to the US on some of their otherproduct line.

They charge $5 for the tour but it iswell worth it. The lady that gave us our personal tour was a greatambassador for the company. She took us all over the huge plant andhad knowledgeable answers for almost all of my technical questions. Probably the most impressive part of the tour was seeing all of thebeautiful colors that are used for the mixers.

Saturday we left Greenville and droveto Lexington, KY and stayed at a Wal Mart. Our main reason forstopping there was to visit with a customer and his wife. Bill and Ihave grown to be great friends over the years and he has offeredgreat support when I was struggling with some issues a few years ago. I have told some of you about Bill - he was a governmentpsychologist who evaluated many major criminals including John Gottiand the unabomber. I have talked to Bill on the phone many times onmany subjects but had never gotten to meet him.

He was as fun in person as he is on thephone and his wife Genie is a great lady. We had a lot of funlooking at the Prevost that he converted himself - a beautiful bus. Bill and I also went to visit another busnut who is working on anEagle with 4 slide outs. It has an amazing amount of great work. While Bill and I were looking at buses, Pat and Genie went to a horserace. In the evening we toured around areas where there werebeautiful horse farms. Lexington is in the heart of the horsecountry that Kentucky is so famous for.

Sunday we drove from Lexington toRossville and met with Mike Sullivan who is the president of the BusConversion Magazine and who has almost single-handily arrange the BusConversions Rally. Monday we helped Mike with some of the details. Yesterday and today were two of the workshops. There will be onemore this week and several next week including the welding workshopthat I will co-present.

The color of the trees on the drivedown from Greenville were gorgeous. As we got closer to Chattanooga,we noted that the colors were not as great. We are quite a bit southof the areas with the best colors and we will probably see the treeschange here in the next week or so.

That is all for now.

Hello again from Greenville, OH

2011-10-07T07:43:00.000-07:00

Hello again from Greenville, OH

Friday Morning October7, 2011 (third travelogue of this trip).

This week has sure gone byquickly. We leave tomorrow.

Pat has been having a ballusing the various resources available here. In addition to the greatresources at the Garst Museum, she has spent some time at the countyrecords facility looking at old documents. But the really greatresource has been the Library. They have a genealogy department. The woman who works there is so very helpful. She is apparently acontract person (low pay, unfortunately), and just loves her job. She has been working directly with Pat and the two of them have madesome pretty good progress.

We have again gone to acouple of graveyards. Some folks think that is kind of weird, but itis rewarding to find the markers of our ancestors. Besides that, thegraveyards are beautiful in their own way.

I have been spending quitea bit of time on work related efforts. It seems that when we lefttown, the world discovered that our business exists {big grin}. Ihave had to process a couple of nice orders for our fire detectionand suppression system and have an order for a specialized versionfor an industrial customer (indeed, all of my orders have beennon-RV). That is a great trend. Hope it keeps up.

We are heading toChattanooga next week to participate in the Bus Conversions Rally(website). I have been working with the Bus Conversions Magazine owner,offering several seminars (including Pat's rubber stamped greetingcard seminar) as well as any type of help he needs. I am alsoscheduled to be a co-presenter of a one day welding workshop(assuming there is sufficient registration). We will arrive a coupleof days before the workshops begin and help with the variousactivities needed to facilitate a rally of this magnitude.

The welding workshop will be a firstfor me. I am doing the “textbook” presentation and the otherperson will work with the attendees to do actual hands-on welding. Ithink it has the potential for being a good session. I have beenspending a lot of time pouring over welding books to get the slidepresentation developed. I have a lot of welding experience (since Iwas 15 years old), but I have never tried to “teach” a class.

Our daughter asked about the fallcolors. The trees here are just starting to turn and the colors, sofar, are great. I think we will hit the best colors in Tennessee. Ihad mentioned that the weather was rather cold when we got here. Ithas now gotten pretty nice with daytime temperatures in the high70s/low80s and nighttime in the mid 40s.

I had noted that we are staying in thecampground at the Darke County fairgrounds. I had linked to asatellite view in the last blog and that view shows how extensive thefacilities are. Here is the link: (map). There are a large number of barns and facility buildings. Thegrounds are immaculate. Many years ago, I attended a car show in the'56 Chevy in Hamilton, OH. My brother-in-law and I drove up here toattend a very large steam tractor event. I fell in love with thefairgrounds when we were here and it has been just as neat as I hadremembered. At least one source says that the fairgrounds is locatedon 176 acres and has 1000 campsites. The Darke County Fair is saidto be among the largest county fair in the US.

Last night and this morning we aretrying to catch up on washing. It is sure nice to have the washerand dryer in the bus. That lets Pat do the washing while we relaxand do other things. We have 30 amp service at the campground, butthat is not sufficient to run the dryer. We are running thegenerator when we do the drying, but that is a very small price topay for the convenience.

That is all for now.

Hello from Greenville, OH

2011-10-04T08:35:00.000-07:00

Hello from Greenville, OH

Tuesday Morning October4, 2011 (second travelogue of this trip).

We are camped in the Darke CountyFairground campground (map). We planned this stop as a part of a large circle trip includingbeing vendors/presenters at the Bus Conversions Rally in Chattanooga,TN.

If you have been a long-time reader ofour blog, you might recall that we stopped here as a part of a tripto an FMCA rally in Bowling Green, OH in 2009. This is the town thatJim's father and grandmother were born in. The blog detailing theinformation is (here).

Our trip here took a day longer than wehad planned. We left Prescott on Wednesday 9/28, planning on drivingabout 300 mile (half way to Greenville). However after a bit over100 miles, Pat saw a sign for Fairfield, IA. Her genealogy work hadindicated several of her grandmother's relatives were buried there. She had wanted to travel there for sometime, so we made the decisionto spend the night there. We were able to find the rather remotegraveyard and located the gravestones of her relatives. Two of thegravestones were impossible to read other than the name Miller. Patcalled a relative in Iowa and confirmed that both of the gravemarkers were her ancestors. When asked how they knew, they said thatthey lucked into visiting the grave just after a hail storm and themarkers had been “cleaned” by the hail!

Thursday night we stayed in a Wal Martin Champaign, IL. We arrived in Greenville on Friday afternoon. Saturday and Sunday we spent some time at the Garst Museum(http://www.garstmuseum.org/home.php). They bill themselves as “Home of the Annie Oakley Center”. Annewas born in a log cabin close to Greenville and is buried in BrockCemetery in Greenville. Frank Butler, her husband of over 40 years(also fellow showman), is buried beside her. He quit eating aftershe died and passed away 18 days after she did.

The Garst museum is a wonderful place. It has great exhibits. More importantly, it houses the Darke CountyGenealogical Society. They have extensive resources.

Prior to our trip, Pat had sent lettersto several people with the names Shepherd or Culbertson (Jim'sgrandmother's maiden name) in Darke county. As a result of one ofthose letters, we got to meet Rick and Nancy Shepherd. They are greatpeople and we hope that we find that we are related – so far nolink yet, but we are both searching. Yesterday they took us on atour of the Ithaca and Abbottsville cemeteries. We were able tolocate several grave sites of Jim's relatives. We will be goingback and spending more time at both locations.

That is all for now.

Hello from Prescott, IA

2011-09-26T06:43:00.000-07:00

Hello from Prescott, IA.

Monday Morning September26, 2011 (first travelogue of this trip).

We have been in Iowa forseveral days, but I am just now finding the time to write this blog. We left Evergreen on Thursday (9/15) and spent the night at our oldstandby: Wal Mart in North Platte, NE. We arrived here on Friday. Pat's brother, Jeff and his wife Julie arrived on Friday as well. Weare staying at Pat's cousin Jeanne and her husband Bill's house inthe bus.

We love to visit Iowa anytime, but especially this time of the year. The heat of the summerand the cold of the winter are forgotten for a while and the greatseasons (spring and fall) are fantastic. The photo below is the viewwe see out of the bus windshield. The photo does not begin to dojustice to the amazing landscape.

View out the front of our bus

It has been very hecticsince we arrived. Saturday and Sunday we did quite a bit of visitingwith relatives. Sunday we celebrated Pat's aunt Jaris' birthday atthe nursing home. We got to visit with a large number of friends andrelatives. Jaris had a ball.

On Monday we took a greattour of the area including visiting some of the bridges of MadisonCounty (see photo). This is scenery was wonderful and it was a greatday.

One of the Bridges of Madison County

The weather here has beenvery cool. Indeed, it is generally cooler than Evergreen. Most ofthe nights have gotten into the lower 40s and it has been as low as37 one evening. We even put an extra cover on the bed to stay warm. That said, the days have been comfortable most of the time.

Pat has been working onGenealogy with Jeanne. We have visited several cemeteries to findgrave stones of some of her ancestors. We again visited the housewhere her dad was born. The people who live there are very welcomingand they both have fabulous collections of all kinds of things. Thehouse has been extensively remodeled, but part of the original houseis still evident.

I have had to spend sometime getting parts shipped in to fill a nice order. I have made achange to my system and had to have some brackets made here in IA. Fortunately, there is a great manufacturing company in Corning (wherePat was born and about 10 miles from here). I have had them do somework for me in the past, but they outdid themselves this time. Thebrackets are very nice looking and they did them the same day.

Bill and I have done someproject work here at the farm (I love to help in any way I can) and Ihave been able to get a few things done on the bus and service truckthat did not get done before we left.

That is all for now.

Flying in a Gooney Bird

2011-09-25T08:36:00.000-07:00

Flyingin a Gooney Bird.

Myfamily arranged for me to take a flight is a C-47 military aircraftas a birthday present. It was a very special event, as I have alwaysbeen very impressed by the design and product life of this aircraft. My flight took place on Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2011.

TheC-47 (aka Gooney Bird) was developed based on the DC-3 civilianairplane. Here is a bit of background on the two versions of theplane:

TheDouglas DC-3 is an American fixed-wing propeller-driven aircraftwhose speed and range revolutionized air transport in the 1930s and1940s. Its lasting impact on the airline industry and World War IImakes it one of the most significant transport aircraft ever made.Many DC-3s are still used in all parts of the world. Translated,that is over 75 years of flying and the clock continues to tick.

TheDouglas C-47 is a military transport aircraft that was developed fromthe Douglas DC-3 airliner. The first flight was Dec. 1941. It wasused extensively by the Allies during World War II and remained infront line operations through the 1950s with a few remaining inoperation to this day.

DuringWorld War II, the armed forces of many countries used the C-47 andmodified DC-3s for the transport of troops, cargo and wounded. The USNaval designation was R4D. Over 10,000 aircraft were produced in LongBeach and Santa Monica, California and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. TheOklahoma City plant produced 5,354 C-47s from March 1943 until August1945. The 10K units was in addition to the over 16,000 civilianplanes.

WhileI am not a strong student of aircraft, the DC-3 has always fascinatedme. Many years ago, I arranged a business trip so that I could flyon a commercial airline that was still flying the DC-3. I was sothrilled to fly on an aircraft with so much history.

Canyou imagine how thrilled I was to be able to fly on the militaryversion? The flight was out of the Colorado Springs Airport. Thepilots flew us north so that we could fly over The Garden of theGods. All in all, a very impressive and fun adventure.

Hereare some photos (not the best quality as they were taken with my cellphone).

The C-47 is a classic "tail dragger"

Looking out the window with an opening

that was used to permit firing rifles during the war.

Taking pictures out the window.

They let us get out of our seats for most of the flight.
Note that you can see the structure of the fuselage
and the seats are very primitive.

Flying over The Garden of the Gods

Looking into the cockpit during the flight.

The right side seems to be original, while the pilot

has a modern display.

Hello from Chugwater, WY.

2011-08-31T08:18:00.000-07:00

Hello from Chugwater, WY.

Wednesday morning August 31, 2011 (third travelogue of this trip).

Well, we are a day behind our schedule. More about that later.

Sunday, we toured Yellowstone and The Tetons. We drove the truck. In total, we drove a bit over 320 miles!!! It had been years since we viewed the gorgeous and amazing Tetons. We had lunch at a great little restaurant in Teton National Park. We then drove north towards Old Faithful. We saw it erupt just as we entered the area, so we knew that we would not be able to wait for the next eruption. We did walk around the area and had a quick snack in the lodge.

We then drove around the north loop (Madison, Norris Canyon Village,and Fishing Bridge). From there we headed back to Cody (about 50 miles from the east entrance). We saw some elk and lots of buffalo. We had hoped, like everybody else, to see moose and bear, but it was not to be.

We had planned to leave the campground early Monday and be home Tuesday. We had the engine started, but noticed one our the chapter members was having a problem with his bus. He was not able to release his parking brakes (cause by a failed brake diaphragm). He had the parts to convert to a more modern system (from DD3 to Spring brakes for the bus crowd). It took 4 of us the whole day to do the conversion. Mounting the parts was the easy part. Getting the air brake control system was the challenge.

We all left yesterday morning and we met up with them a few times – the last time a bit north of Chugwater. The system was functioning well.

If you follow our blog, you know that we have stopped here a couple of times (once on the way up to Cody). It is a quite little town that makes a good logistic stop. Last night I unloaded the bicycle and rode around the town. Once you get off the main street, the town does not look like it is “dead”.

Responding to Judy's comment on PETA and the pig race. PETA would have no problems with the race. The pigs love it, as they all get a nice treat at the end of the race. The track is very small and they don't have to run a lot. You can tell that they have done the race a bunch of times. As soon as the gates are raised, they run very fast. The owners of the saloon had to work with the Montana legislature to get approval so that the patrons could wager bets. I think they said that the proceeds go to worthy charities and a state fund for recreation. The whole event was a lot of fun.

We got an off-line comment from some friends asking us to post some pictures. We have gotten very lazy about taking pictures (took a few) but even more so about taking the time to process them so that they can be posted.

That's all for this trip.

Hello from Cody, WY

2011-08-27T20:12:00.000-07:00

Hello from Cody, WY.

Saturday Evening August 27, 2011 (second travelogue of this trip).

We are parked at the Absaroka Bay RV Park map. This was the site of the Eagles International Rally. It has been a blur since we got here. I will try to catch up as quickly as possible.

We arrived here Sunday about mid-day. While the rally was scheduled from Wednesday (8/24) to Friday (8/26), there was a lot of pre-rally events. Sunday we rode with some folks up to Red Lodge, Montana so that we could have a great dinner at the Bear Creek Saloon and Steakhouse. The town is in the middle of nowhere and is about 60 miles from the campground. The food was great, but the real fun was the pig races. They are famous for this event.

On the way up to Red Lodge, we went through a big thunderstorm. On the way back we could see a pretty large fire going up the side of the mountain – apparently started by the lightening. We heard later that it is a fairly large fire. It has rained a bit this week, so we hope that helped the fire fighters.

Monday we drove up South Fork road to the end of the road (about 30 miles). It was a pretty drive. The end of the road is not far from the boundary of Yellowstone and there were several signs warning of grizzly bears in the area. About the only wildlife we saw was a large herd of elk. Monday night the hosts had a great spaghetti dinner at their house for the early arrivals.

Tuesday we kind of cooled our jets, and I worked on an article for Bus Conversions Magazine.

Wednesday, the buses started rolling in. We had something like 32 Eagle buses and 4 or 5 other types of buses. That is a great turnout in this economy and with fuel being so high. That evening we had a big pig roast.

Thursday, we all took a trolley ride around Cody and then went to the Cody Rodeo. This rodeo is held every night during the summer and is a well known event.

Friday we had a board meeting at 9:00 and a General Membership Meeting at 10:00. The major item was a discussion/review of the chapter bylaws which are undergoing revision. A couple of us were very concerned about some folks who were very vocal prior to the meeting. However, it went well and the bylaw committee got some very good input. Friday night we had a great pot luck dinner.

Today we watched many of the Eagles depart. There are still about 6 coaches here now. We went to the famous Buffalo Bill Cody Museum. It is a great museum and is famous for its extensive firearm collection.

Tomorrow we will make a tour into Yellowstone. I suspect it will take most of the day. We will travel in the truck. We had thought about driving the bus though the park and down towards the Tetons, but that just did not seem to provide us to much opportunity to see the park and driving the bus on a sightseeing tour did not seem like a lot of fun.

We did have one exciting event this week. A couple of us were sitting in chairs close to our bus. One fellow noticed that one of our tires has some very severe wear. I thought I had been careful to check the tires, but apparently the part of the tire that was not worn was where I did my inspection. I was pretty sure that the bearing setting was too loose but I never got a chance to adjust it. In truth, I simply blew it and forgot the put it in the priority list. I was able to locate a good used tire, and they came out and installed it yesterday – all for the bargain price of $182. That is a very good price – especially when you hear the horror stories of traveling folks being gouged.

That is all for now.

Hello from Thermopolis, WY

2011-08-20T19:33:00.000-07:00

Hello from Thermopolis, WY.

Saturday Evening August 20, 2011 (first travelogue of this trip).

We are at the Fountain of Youth RV park in Thermopolis map. This is a small little campground, but it has a wonderful hot springs pool. The hot springs flows over 1 million gallons of water in 24 hours. I think the temperature is 130 degrees and it has a very heavy mineral content. We spent about a half hour in the medium temperature pool (they won't let you in the hot temperature pool). It felt really good, but I don't think we feel all that much younger {grin}.

We are on our way to an Eagle Bus Rally in Cody, WY. We are only about 30 miles from Cody, and could have easily made it there today, but we thought it would be fun to spend some time in a hot springs. Little did we know that we would have our own pools in the campground.

We left Denver on Friday and stopped in Chugwater, WY. We stopped in Chugwater last year and documented our “relationship” with the town in this blog. As we noted in that blog, we have fond memories of taking an Eagle bus to a membership ranch we belonged to and stopping in Chugwater to get great meat for the meals at the Ranch. It is sad to see the town main street almost deserted. The only place that is open is a great store/restaurant that is said to have the oldest continuously operating soda fountain in Wyoming.

The Eagle Rally does not start until Wednesday, but we hope to do quite a bit of sightseeing prior to the rally.

That is all for now.

Hello from Grand Junction, CO

2011-07-20T07:27:00.000-07:00

Hello from Grand Junction, CO.

Wednesday morning July 20, 2011 (third travelogue of this trip).

Monday, we went to my favorite breakfast restaurant (Lambs Grill) and had breakfast. We then went to the Mormon Family Library and worked with the wonderful folks who really seem to want to help you with learning more about your family genealogy. At noon, I went over to the Mormon Tabernacle building to hear a wonderful organ recital.

The Tabernacle building architecture (something like a fancy huge quonset hut with rounded ends) looks very much out of place in Temple Square, but the organist demonstrated why - the acoustics are absolutely fantastic. He dropped a pin on a wood block and you could hear it all over the building. The organ is unbelievable. It was originally built in the 1860s by Joseph H. Ridges. It has been updated several times, the largest of which was done in 1948 under the direction of G. Donald Harrison. It has 206 ranks, 11,623 pipes and is organized into 8 divisions played from a five-manual console. Needless to say, the recital was amazing.

After lunch, Pat went back to the library and I did some work in the room. Pat did not make huge headway in her quest to explore our family genealogy, but she did learn about more resources. I suspect she will return to the library in the future.

Yesterday we drove to Grand Junction. Our original plan was to make our typical stop in Green River, UT. However, that stop is quite a bit short of the half way mark and we wanted to get closer to home. We booked a room at the Hampton Inn, but they upgraded us to the Marriott Springhill Suites (same owner). The room is very unique but well done. The hotel is brand new and the folks seem quite friendly. The hotel is on Main street which has undergone a huge reconstruction. There are many sidewalk cafes and great local restaurants. We went to the Rockslide Restaurant and Brewery and had a great meal (ribs) which was neat since we were celebrating my birthday.

We had a lot of fun strolling by the sidewalk cafes. They had a lot of people enjoying their leisurely dinner. However, just as we got to the room, a huge rainstorm (more like a monsoon) hit with almost no warning. We had to wonder what all of the happy diners did

That is all for this trip.

Hello Again from Salt Lake City, Utah.

2011-07-17T18:38:00.001-07:00

Hello Again from Salt Lake City, Utah.

Sunday evening July 17, 2011 (second travelogue of this trip).

The Stampin' Up! Convention concluded Saturday, late afternoon. Pat tells me that there were 3,300 attendees. That is up a bit from last year but down from several years ago where they had to divide the convention into two sessions and around 7,000 demonstrators attended. They, like everyone else, are suffering from a “soft” economy. There is no doubt in our minds that they will thrive when the economy improves.

I have been able to find a wonderful local restaurant for breakfast – Lamb's Cafe. The food is great and reasonable and the coffee is the best I have tasted in a restaurant. In the evenings I have been going to a pub with a sidewalk seating area. The draft beer is local (several varieties) and the sandwiches are great (take half back to room for lunch the next day).

I have been amazed at the number of local beers available. Somehow I pictured Utah as being mostly Mormon and anti drinking. Sure not the case. The beers run the gamut from very light to dark stouts. The ones I sampled were great.

I have been doing quite a bit of catching up on computer work during the day. Still way behind on some reading projects, but I will probably never catch up on those. The Marriott charges $12.95 per day for Internet access, so our air card is really paying for itself.

On Friday I drove about 40 miles north to the town of Hooper to visit a good friend of mine. Kent is another bus nut and a really great guy. He is really struggling with cancer and I worry about him all the time. He seemed to be doing reasonably well and continues to plan for the future – including several big bus projects. We had a ton of fun talking about all kinds of things and then went to two car shows in Ogden. We then went to a local hamburger stand that is famous in the area. Great burgers.

We are staying over a couple of days so that Pat can spend a day at the Mormon Family History Library. She has said several times that she wanted to spend a day there to see what resources are available. As was noted in a comment to our last post, the reputation of this resource is extremely good. Pat has been working on our family genealogy for the past few years and hopes that she can get some new information to expand her work.

We did not have anything scheduled today, so we just relaxed. Pat is absolutely worn out from all the activity and it was fun for me to cool my jets as well. Still got some work done, but at a more relaxed pace. My new fire detection system project is really consuming a lot of time right now. I sure hope it is worth all the work. The system performs very well and the total system is far superior to anything on the market, but it will be more costly. The person we are developing the system for seems to have good contacts.

I tried to attend the practice of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on Thursday night. The information in Temple Square says they practice most Thursday evenings, but not this past Thursday. I then went to hear the organ recital on Saturday. I could not tell if it was a normal recital or not, but I was a few minutes late and they had locked the doors. I should be able to attend one tomorrow and I will be on time {grin}.

That is all for now.

Hello from Salt Lake City Utah.

2011-07-14T12:26:00.000-07:00

Hello from Salt Lake City Utah.

Thursday afternoon July 14, 2011 (first travelogue of this trip).

Before we get started on documenting this trip, I want to mention that I have not given up on adding more details and photos for our family vacation in Dillon, CO. We had a blast and I want to tell the readers a bit more about our great time. Maybe next week.

We are in Salt Lake City for a Stampin' Up! Convention. Pat attends each year. I have accompanied her twice. The last time was in 2009 (documented here). We are again at the Marriott Downtown (map).

As was the case last time, we have a corner room that overlooks the continuing construction of the huge reconstruction of downtown Salt Lake (details here). Most of the huge cranes are gone, but the construction continues. I am still able to do a little “sidewalk supervision”.

We left Denver about noon on Sunday (7/10) with the intention of taking a leisurely, scenic drive in the PT Cruiser. We chose to take US 40 through Colorado and Utah. We enjoy this route as an alternative to the interstate. We stayed the first night in Craig, CO at the Hampton Inn. It was a great experience as the room was very nice and the employees were quite friendly. They even gave us a tip about a great Mexican food restaurant.

Our next stop was Park City. We had decided to try the Hampton Inn again, but it was booked. We decided to fall back on our “normal” choice: Holiday Inn Express. It was your typical Holiday Inn experience which is just kind of OK.

The drive from Park City to the Marriott is about an hour, so we did not leave Park City very early. As usual, Pat was a bit behind in getting her swapping cards read for the convention, so she worked on them at each of the motels.

Swapping cards is quite a tradition at these conventions. Most attendees prepare between 100 and 200 cards and then trade them with other demonstrators. It really gives them a large base of ideas for cards they can prepare for their workshops.

Pat qualified for the VIP level at the convention. That gives her access to a large room in the Salt Palace Convention Center where she can relax (yeah, right). It also qualified both Pat and I for a special tour of the Stampin' Up! headquarters and distribution headquarters. It is a huge, beautiful new facility that Stampin' Up! paid cash for. The distribution facility is huge and extremely well equipped. At the time of our tour, they were filling two large UPS trailers for the day's shipment. We were transported both ways in beautiful Prevost Buses (for the readers with buses, that is our bus content).

Pat is on the go from basically sun-up to sun-down. There are tons of activities and, of course, meeting new and old friends. While she is attending the activities, I am trying to catch up on a bunch of work/projects. I have also been taking long walks and viewing the amazing Temple Square which is just a block from the hotel. On the walks, I was able to scout out a great historical, local restaurant for breakfast, and a pub with sidewalk tables and a huge variety of beers and good sandwiches for dinner.

That is all for this post.

Hello from the Oakland Airport.

2011-07-07T18:22:00.001-07:00

Hello from the Oakland Airport.

Thursday Evening July 7, 2011 (first travelogue of this trip).

First of all, these next few posts will be a bit confusing. I did the first post from Dillon for the family vacation and was too busy to do any further posts. I will catch up on those posts – hopefully next week.

On Tuesday 7/5 we left the campground early and drove home so that I could get ready to fly out that night. Some of you who know me, know that I always try to arrive at the airport at least 2 hours early and usually 2.5 hours. Well, as I headed down the mountain, I hear that I-70 was closed due to an accident. It was in an area where there is almost no alternatives. The sad story is that I missed my 6:45 flight and had to take a 9:45 flight.

I got to Oakland about 11:00 PM and rented a car. I had loaded my destination (The Marriott in Walnut Creek) into my Hand held GPS. Only problem, was that there was a lot of construction at my first exit (big work lights that blind you and an exit you can't see). I ended up taking the Bay Bridge to the island in the middle. There, the construction had closed my entrance back on the bridge going the other way. It took me a bunch of time to get back on track and I arrived at the hotel at 1:30. Had to get up at 5:45 so that I could get to my appointment.

This trip was to present our new fire detection and suppression system to a very large potential end user. We did all of the preparation work at the suppression vendor's shop and that worked well, as their shop was well equipped..

The project has grown in complexity by a factor of at least two – depending on how you categorize the project changes, the factor is really more like three. I had spent a great deal of time during our family vacation to make a detailed display and test all of the new components.

The preliminary testing yesterday went exactly according to our design. Today the customers came to the shop for our presentation and then we traveled to their location to do an simulated installation on one of their large pieces of industrial equipment. Again, the system functioned flawlessly.

The project is a huge technical success and I think the customer was very impressed.

Unfortunately, the team dynamics are a real mess and I am very frustrated. These issues are not new. I would love to detail a few of the issues, but that would not be very professional.

I can only hope that I can find a way to continue working on the project.

That is all for this trip

Hello from Dillon Colorado.

2011-06-26T07:53:00.000-07:00

Hello from Dillon Colorado.

Sunday morning June 26, 2011 (first travelogue of this trip).

Tuesday, we drove all of 60 miles to the Heaton Bay Campground (map). Our daughter Kelly and her family camp here every year around the fourth of July. They have fantastic fireworks over the lake and it is an area where there is lot of fun things to do.

We decided to make this our family vacation. Kelly and her family will be here the full two weeks and our reservation is the same. Our oldest daughter Lisa and her family will come up the 29^th. Their two boys have been with us a couple of days. Youngest daughter Judy and her family sold their motorhome a couple of months ago, so they are staying in a condo that Pat “rented” as a part of our timeshare. We arranged the condo, as it give us all a place to swim and do some laundry.

When we were getting ready to leave for the campground on Tuesday, the morning news showed a picture of the campground with 3-4 inches of snow on the campers. By the time we got here, everything was melted off. Judy's older boys and a friend are going snowboarding this morning, as Arapahoe Basin is still open on the weekends.

I took this picture of the bus on the day after we arrived. There is still a lot of snow on the mountains.

Last night four of the kids slept in the tent. They came into the bus about 4:00 AM as they got cold. The weather service said that the low is supposed to be the mid-40s at night, but they said that our outside temperature thermometer was in the thirties. I think they had a great time. The youngest granddaughter (5 years old) had not slept in a tent and was really looking forward to sleeping with the cousins. I think they still had a lot of fun.

My new project is getting pretty hot and we are scheduled to do an install in California as soon as we get back. I will probably have to fly out the day we drive home. I have been spending a few hours most days testing all of the components here in the campground. I also had to make a trip to Denver to get a couple of things done at the house and meet with the person who has done such a great job designing the new system. This install threw us a bit of a curve, as they want a dual suppression system and an automatic battery disconnect. Our system needs a minor modification (provisions already built into the design) and some special relays for the battery disconnect. So far everything seems to be working very well.

It is a bit of a bummer to have to work during the family vacation, but it is so beautiful here that the working conditions almost make the work fun {grin}

That is all for now.

Breast Cancer, Surgery Recovery Update – GOOD NEWS!

2011-05-25T12:57:00.000-07:00

Breast Cancer, Surgery Recovery Update – GOOD NEWS!

Wednesday afternoon May 25 2011 (twelfth post in this series)

As has been the case all along, we have been spending a great deal of time with Kelly and her family helping out doing whatever we can. Over the past week or so, we are seeing signs of the “old” Kelly coming back. The pain that was engraved on her face is mostly gone and the wonderful smile comes out a bit more often.

As you will see in her update, she is FREE AND CLEAR OF CANCER!!! We could not ask for a better outcome.

She still faces a great number of doctor visits as the reconstructive process begins. Those treatments, followed by at least two more surgeries are not pleasant to think about. It appears that the final surgery will take place early next year, so it will be a lengthy process.

As we have said many time, SHE CAUGHT IT EARLY AND THAT MADE A HUGE DIFFERENCE!!

Pasted below is the update she posted last night:

Hello Family and Friends!

We hope you’re all doing well!

The good news just continues for us! My drains were removed last Thursday as expected and, although it was a pretty painful process, it was so FREEING to have them out. I could actually dress myself without any assistance because I didn’t have any attachments!

Sunday was my first shower and that was a wonderful gift! Spongebaths are fine, but can only last for so long!

This week is a busy one with doctors’ appointments. Yesterday we had an appointment with the oncologist who had nothing but good news. It was a short appointment and she hugged me and told me that I no longer need her (she confirmed that I don’t need radiation or chemo). It doesn’t get much better than that! I guess we can check that one off our list and know that we’ll have one less appointment to think about.

Today we had a follow-up appointment with the medical surgeon who said that everything looks just as she would hope and that we will see her in a year when we go for the first of our annual follow-up visits with her. Another one to check off our list!

Thursday we will see the plastic surgeon again to continue the reconstruction process. It sounds like we’ll continue to meet with him on a weekly basis for a while.

I feel really good considering the major surgery I had just over two weeks ago. I’m down to pain medication on a very occasional basis and I really have no complaints! I haven’t loved sleeping partially upright every night and I’ll look really forward to sleeping on my side soon, but that doesn’t seem like much to worry about. I tire very easily, but I know that, too, will improve with time. I’m still working on that ever-important patience!

The girls have three days of school this week plus next Tuesday and then we’ll be out for the summer! We’re looking VERY forward to moving at a much more relaxed pace and doing some fun things.

Thank you all for being part of this journey! It sounds like there won’t be many changes for a while, but we’ll continue to keep you updated.

With love,

Kelly and Damon

Breast Cancer, Surgery Recovery Update

2011-05-16T07:03:00.000-07:00

Breast Cancer, Surgery Recovery Update

Monday Morning May 16 2011 (eleventh post in this series)

Kelly and Damon have written an update that is pasted below.

This has been a very trying 10 days for us. It is terrible to see your daughter in so much pain and so helpless. To be sure there have been some positive and “funny” events. Obviously, the positive is the fact that the cancer has been removed and there does not appear to be a need for any further cancer treatment.

As noted in this update and from Judy's comment on our prior post, we went to the sock hop with the girls last Thursday. Some of you are familiar with the fact that I have very sensitive hearing. For two hours I was exposed to perhaps a hundred screaming kids {grin}. I was so glad that they were having fun, but I left the dance with a screaming headache (another big grin). Yesterday, we took the girls to McDonalds and the “playplace” was equally loud. Someday I will learn to carry ear plugs.

The other positive is that we have been able to spend some quality time with the girls. They are at that wonderful age where the love to be with Grandma and PaPa!

Here is the update:

Hello Family and Friends!

I’ve been wanting to write this note for a couple of days now, but have been doing LOTS of sleeping so it’s hard to find time to e-mail between naps.

The past week has been one of peaks and valleys. The highest peak was that we received the final pathology reports and all of the cancer has been removed! We will meet with an oncologist later this month to confirm that and then determine what future scanning procedures will be like since I will have no more mammograms (hooray!). As we understand it, we have confirmed that there will be no radiation or chemo and we’re VERY thankful for that!

I did get to come home from the hospital on Saturday as I had hoped, but it wasn’t quite as smooth as I had hoped. We had some issues with pain medication and thought we got it under control until my pain pump wore off on Wednesday. Luckily, I was able to endure until our post-op appointment on Thursday and I think we’ve now found a medication that will keep the pain under control.

As I said, I’ve been doing lots of sleeping, pretty much the opposite of what Damon has been doing since he’s now carrying both of our loads plus getting up to give me meds in the night.

It’s been GREAT to have my parents “camping” in their bus at Chatfield because they’ve been here every day trying to make sure that we’re all where we need to be. They had the distinct pleasure of taking the girls to a Sock Hop at school last Friday and I’m sure that was at the top of their list!

The girls have been doing well – between their cousins, their friends and my parents, they’ve had incredibly busy social lives and I know they’ve been enjoying that!
Two quick blessings that I have to be sure to mention:

Before my surgery, I had to have radioactive dye injected into the breast to trace it to the lymph node that was removed. When the doctor walked in to do the procedure, it turned out to be the same very kind doctor that had identified the abnormality in the second mammogram and very nicely told me that I have to have it biopsied. I thanked him for being cautious (for catching it so early) and for being so kind to me at what was the beginning of this long journey. I know this doctor was carefully placed in my path because he is rarely at Littleton for these procedures.

The next blessing occurred with my family in the waiting room. As the tissue was removed, it was immediately sent to pathology for a first review to make sure that all affected tissue was removed. As it turns out, the pathologist studying that tissue was a member of our church, someone who is well-known in his field. He actually took the time to visit with my family twice to reassure them about the tissue. Again, I know he was carefully placed at Littleton Hospital that day because he’s usually only there about once a month.

I continue to be thankful for so many blessings (especially my husband) as I work through this recovery process. I am realizing that it is going to be a long process and I will focus on the advice of the plastic surgeon: PATIENCE.

Our next appointment is this Thursday and we are anticipating that the drains will be removed. I can’t tell you how thankful I will be Thursday night – even though I try really hard, I can’t find a single positive thing to say about them!

I hope you all have a great week! Thank you for your continued thoughts and prayers!!

Love,

Kelly and Damon

Hello from Chatfield Reservoir.

2011-05-15T20:07:00.000-07:00

Hello from Chatfield Reservoir.

Sunday evening May 15 2011 (second travelogue of this trip).

When I last posted about this trip (5/1), I talked about getting the bus ready for its first trip since last October. Our travel in the bus, since 2006, has been considerable more frequent and we really miss being on the road. As noted in the series on our Daughter's breast cancer journey, we have canceled one major trip to CA and NV planned for earlier this year. We have also delayed a trip to Iowa. There was never any question that we would change our schedule so that we could be a part of Kelly's support system.

On Wednesday May 5^th, we made the short trip from our home to Chatfield Reservoir (map). If you look at the map, the subdivision to the left of our location is where Kelly and her family live. That is one of the main reasons we are staying here. As the crow flies, it is a short distance to their house. However, we must drive around the lake, so the distance is about 5 miles.

Chatfield is a state park. It is a beautiful facility. There are a ton of things to do here. Unfortunately, we have been so busy that we have not been able take advantage of the facilities. Today I did ride my bicycle over to the radio controlled air strip and watched a couple of folks fly their planes. Really fun to watch.

The weather has been wet and cold most of our stay here. We even had a bit of snow a couple of days ago. We have had terrible drought conditions for several months, but this week we had over 2 inches of rain. We have been watching some of the folks camping in tents and really felt sorry for them. I am sure it was not a lot of fun. The weather has not been much of an issue for us. The bus is nice and warm and we are not here much. We have spent most of our time at Kelly's house helping wherever we can. For the most part, that was taking care of the girls. Damon has been very good about helping Kelly during her recovery from her double mastectomy. She has had a rough recovery, and has needed a lot of support.

Staying here has also been convenient for my physical therapy. The facility is only a few miles from here. Kelly and Damon lined me up with their physical therapist and he is great! I am amazed about the factors that I must work on to strengthen the knee and prevent any further damage. One example, is that I have had to learn how to walk up and down stairs so that my butt muscles do most of the work.

We have had the granddaughters stay over in the bus a few nights. We had them over night last night and had planned to do some fun outdoor things today, but it was just too cold and wet. We still had a lot of fun.

The camping limit here is 14 days and we will need to pull the bus out Wednesday morning.

That is all for this “trip”.

Breast Cancer, Surgery Recovery

2011-05-10T20:34:00.000-07:00

Breast Cancer, Surgery Recovery

Tuesday Evening May 10 2011 (tenth post in this series)

The past few days, since her surgery, has been rough on Kelly.

She did very well the day after her surgery. She was able to eat dinner Friday night as well as breakfast and lunch on Saturday. The doctors took precautions to make sure she did not get sick from the various anesthetics and/or medications. She was released Saturday afternoon.

Just before they released her, they gave her two Vicodin. She really did not tolerate the medication well. The doctor then prescribed a non-narcotic medication (Tramadol). She is not having reactions to that drug, but it is also not as effective in pain mitigation.

As I looked at our last post, I realized that I did not report the initial pathologist report. It was an excellent report that suggested that the surgery got all of the cancer. As I was writing this blog, Kelly called and she got the detailed/final report. They got all the cancer. She will NOT have to have any secondary treatment – radiation, chemo, or other medication. What good news!!!!

She has a pain pump and two drains. Those are cumbersome, but a part of the process. She has extremely limited movement of her arms (normal) and has quite a bit of pain at times. She has been doing quite a bit of walking and has been going to school with the girls in the morning (Damon driving).

A double mastectomy is a terrible procedure, but it was the correct decision and resulted in a very positive health report. We are all grateful for that outcome.

As we have said many times, we are amazed at the tremendous response from her family and friends. One friend set up a meal calendar online, and a large number of people have signed up to furnish meals for the family over the next six weeks! That is a huge help and so appreciated!!

That is all for now.

Breast Cancer, Surgery Today

2011-05-06T08:51:00.000-07:00

Breast Cancer, Surgery Today

Friday Morning May 6 2011 (ninth post in this series).

I will add several updates to this blog today and the events unfold.

Most of you know that I am an engineer and I have dealt with facts all my like. So, here as some facts:

Our family is lucky in that we have not any of the really bad events in our life – at least compared to what some other folks have had to endure. Another fact is that we have three daughters and they have all had some pretty major heath issues. Lisa has recovered from hers. Judy has some pretty significant health issues that she will have to deal with for the rest of her life (seizure disorder and pretty significant back issues). We are glad that Lisa is in good health and that Pat and I are in pretty good health. Our heart breaks for Judy as she deals with her problems, but she is managing pretty well with the cards she has been dealt.

Some more facts. A huge number of ladies (and a few men) will have breast cancer. The technology has improved greatly and the long-term survival rate has improved significantly over the past several years. Further, double mastectomy surgery is performed thousands of times each year.

The other major fact is that Kelly is healthy and detected the disease early.

So much for the facts. Lets talk real world. The whole ordeal has simply and completely kicked our a**es. When it is your daughter all of the facts fade and the word “Cancer” becomes overwhelming.

Now our healthy 43 year old daughter is facing a terrible procedure and and a few more followup procedures. She has dealt with this situation with a tremendous amount of dignity. Damon, her husband, has been very supportive. All of the family (close and extended) has been an extraordinary support system. We have been blown away by all of Kelly and Damon's friends and associates who have offered all kinds of help/support/prayer.

Kelly and Damon's girls are at their aunt Lisa's house and seem to be handling the situation well. Lisa and Dan have texted a couple of pictures and they are hunkered down with their cousins and their dog, Toby. Toby seems to understand that something is wrong and is staying pretty close to the girls.

Judy, our youngest daughter, made a special trip down from Bailey to say HI to her sister. That really meant a lot to all of us. We are fortunate that we are a very close family and that really helps at a time like this.

Kelly is being prepped for surgery now. She will go into surgery at 11:00 and the surgery is expected to take 4-5 hours. It will be performed by a oncology surgeon and a plastic surgeon.

I will update this post in a few hours as we learn more.

Update 12:15: We got to meet both the surgeon and the plastic surgeon and visit with Kelly just before they took her to the OR. The surgeon was about 45 minutes behind schedule, so our updates will be delayed a bit. Kelly seemed to be in pretty good spirits. Like all of us, she is anxious to get this ordeal behind her.

Update 1:15: Dr. Kercher just came out and told us that Kelly's surgery went very well. She said that she went to sleep with a smile on her face and patients tend to wake up the same way they went to sleep. She said that she did not find any signs of cancer in the lymph nodes and that was the preliminary finding of the pathologist. She still has about 30 minutes or more of plastic surgery.

Update 2:40: Dr. Bateman (plastic surgeon) just came in and told us everything went very well. She will be in recovery for another hour or two and then will go to her room. The hope is that she will get to come home late tomorrow.

Update 5:17: At 4:17 Kelly arrived in her room (456). .She is still pretty groggy, but seems to be doing pretty well. The nurse said that all vital signs are good.

I forgot to say that she is at Littleton Adventist Hospital. This is a wonderful place. The folks are very friendly. We were surprised that there were not many people in the surgical waiting room. At times we had the whole room to ourselves. There was a great table in the room in a little bay window-type room. Damon and I were able to work on our computers there and had a great view of the main entrance.

Breast Cancer, The Journey Continued

2011-05-05T06:30:00.000-07:00

Breast Cancer, The Journey Continued

Thursday Morning May 5 2011 (eight post in this series).

I have attached Kelly and Damon's latest letter. As you can see, the surgery is tomorrow. We are all very emotional right now. Tomorrow we will post a couple of update blogs as we get information about the surgery while we are at the hospital

Jim and Pat

Hello Family and Friends!

The weather in Colorado this week is spectacular – it’s beautiful spring weather!

It’s been an interesting week as we prepare for my surgery on Friday. Some of you may know that we had a little excitement with Molly earlier in the week, but all has turned out well. Molly has been having some quirky little symptoms which we were attributing to anxiety but our pediatrician and a neurologist felt that we needed to rule out a brain stem malformation. The MRI went very smoothly on Monday and we got the great news on Tuesday. Yet one more thing to be thankful for!

The reality of my surgery is setting in and we’re preparing for the challenges of the next few weeks. Surgery is scheduled for 11:00 at Littleton Hospital on Friday and should last about four hours. The plan is for me to spend one night in the hospital and come home late Saturday afternoon or early evening. I’m really looking forward to having the surgery behind me and moving into the recovery stage.

The girls will go to my sister’s house tomorrow night and stay until Saturday or Sunday. We’re thinking they’ll be too busy to miss us because one of our nephews doesn’t have school on Friday so they’ll have a great time. There’s also a school carnival that night so that should be so much fun for them.

Some interesting parts of the recovery process include:
No showers for two weeks
No driving for 2-3 weeks
Very little range of motion with my arms
Weekly doctor appointments

Maybe this means I’ll have time to catch up on some reading and computer projects.

My parents have brought their bus down to Chatfield campground for the next two weeks. It will be nice to have them so close!

We thank you for all of the prayers and well wishes!!

Love,

Kelly and Damon

Getting the Bus Ready

2011-05-01T14:07:00.000-07:00

Getting the Bus Ready

Sunday May 1 2011 (First travelogue of this trip).

What? You thought we were not going to travel for the foreseeable future based on our last several blogs.

Well, we are taking the bus down to Chatfield Reservoir this Thursday. We have reservations for two weeks. The trip will be all of 30 miles, but at least we will stretch her “legs” a bit.

Kelly will be having her surgery this Friday and we thought it would be convenient to have the bus about a mile from their house. That will let us come and go and perhaps have the girls stay with us a few nights. We will be right by the lake and close to the playground.

Today we really scrubbed the interior of the old girl. And she needed it. We are looking so forward to staying in the bus for a couple of weeks. We really feel comfortable in it and have all the comforts of home.

I just looked at our travelogues and was amazed that we have not had the bus on the road since October of last year. No wonder we are kind of homesick to spend some time in her.

We will give you updates on Kelly's surgery and our little camping trip as time permits.

Hello from Orange County Airport.

2011-04-23T19:43:00.001-07:00

Hello from Orange County Airport.

Saturday afternoon April, 23 2011 (First travelogue of this trip).

I am making a quick post that is sort of a travelogue – the main reason we started this blog. Wednesday I flew from Denver to Orange County Airport and then took the shuttle to the Embassy Suites (map) in Anaheim. This trip was to work with our customer to do some further fire detection/suppression system testing. I wrote about the last trip (here).

The actual testing took place Thursday, Friday, and this morning. I believe the testing went very well. I have been asked by the customer to not discuss details.

The weather could not have been better. They have been having a lot of rain in the LA area. It was overcast, but we did not have rain, The temperatures were in the mid 60s. Those temperatures are unseasonably low which made the working conditions ideal.

I had been concerned about the possibility of spring break and a huge number of school kids at hotel. It was not all that bad. The hotel has an Anaheim address, but it is not located in the tourist area of the city. Indeed, it is in a pretty industrial area. They do, however, get their share of tourists. The kids I saw this morning at breakfast were well behaved and were from some school band.

We got finished today at about 11:30. I had arranged for late checkout, so I was able to take a much needed shower before traveling to the airport with two other people involved in the project.

Pat tells me that they expect snow in Evergreen tonight, so it will be a bit of thermal shock. It also snowed on Thursday at our house, so I missed that as well. At this point in the game, our drought is so bad that we will gladly take moisture in any form. There have been at least three small forest fires within 25-30 miles of the house, so we are concerned.

Well, as I was writing this, they called me to the podium and asked if I minded if they switched me to stretched seating so that they could accommodate a family. I told them that I would sacrifice {grin}.

That is all for this trip.

Old Knees -Fixed-Update

2011-04-19T12:43:00.000-07:00

Old Knees -Fixed-Update

Tuesday Afternoon April 19 2011 (third post in this series).

I wanted to do a quick follow-up on my knee surgery. When I last posted, it was the day of the surgery. At that time I had almost no pain. I should have known that I was still loaded with the surgical pain killer {grin}. The second and third day were a bit harder in terms of pain However, I was able to avoid using the darn crutches for all but the first part of the second day - instead gingerly putting my weight on the leg.

The pain, all things considered, was not all that bad. I only took a 3 or 4 pain pills and found out that the side affects were worse than the pain. After that, Advil took care of most of it. After just a few days, I was able to do almost everything, including stairs.

Yesterday, I had the stitches removed, and the doctor reviewed what he had done. As best as I understand it, they had to repair tears in two ligaments, remove a bunch of junk and smooth out the bone in a couple of places. Sounds like he found a bit more damage than expected. All seems well now.

He cleared me to fly (they want you to wait for two weeks – possible blood clot issues). That is good since I leave for California tomorrow.

Changing subjects, we continue to be overwhelmed by the response to Kelly's situation. Thank you all for your kind responses!!!!

Breast Cancer, The Journey Continued

2011-04-18T07:01:00.000-07:00

Breast Cancer, The Journey Continued

Monday Morning April, 18 2011   (seventh post in this series).

Pat and I have been aware of the process that Kelly (and Damon) have been going through in terms of what surgery option they will select. We have waited for them to formally present their decision. The following is their email post:

Hello Family and Friends!

It’s been a while since we wrote – we’ve been enjoying a bit of a lull between appointments.

We had a wonderful trip to Durango and Glenwood – nice family time to swim, read, play games, and spend time together. It was a great time to escape from reality for a while. Damon did work while we were gone so it wasn’t quite as relaxing for him, but it was fun for us all to be together.

While we were gone, we received word that my breast cancer gene test came back negative; this means that I don’t carry the gene for breast cancer. What great news for all of the women in our family, especially Madison and Molly!

After taking in as much information as we could handle, we have decided to move forward with a double mastectomy. There were numerous pieces of information that influenced our decision including:
·    I still have two spots that need to be biopsied. By choosing mastectomy, we avoid the biopsies and the results that may or may not come with them. Any of you who have had a biopsy will probably understand this decision.

·     If I were to do a lumpectomy, I would have to have 6 weeks of radiation and 5 years of Tamoxifen. If I had radiation and the cancer came back, I would not be able to have reconstruction so this is my chance to do that. Also, the side effects of Tamoxifen in women my age can include premature menopause and osteoporosis.
·     The chances of the cancer returning with lumpectomy are somewhere between 8% and 20% in 10 years. The chances are less than 1% in my lifetime with mastectomy.
·     I can spend the 6 weeks after surgery focusing on recovery rather than radiation.

We have ultimate confidence in the surgeon and plastic surgeon that we’ve chosen. The initial surgery is scheduled for May 6th and that will include the mastectomies and the beginning stages of the reconstruction. It’s amazing to me that all of this is done in one surgery.

The surgery will also include a sentinel node biopsy. We’ve been fascinated about this modern medicine procedure. Rather than taking several nodes for biopsy, they will inject dye into my body about an hour before surgery and the dye will travel to the “hot” node which we understand is the node that the cancer would go to first if it was going to travel. That way they remove just that one node rather than several.

The entire process will include three surgeries, the first major one, then two outpatient surgeries and should take somewhere between 8 and 10 months.   If the pathology remains as is, I won’t need radiation or chemotherapy and the remaining steps of the reconstruction will be all I have left after the initial surgery. We will meet with an oncologist about two weeks after surgery to confirm the pathology results.

We’re all doing pretty well, trying to get things done before surgery. Damon has spent the last three weeks traveling so he can be home for a couple months after surgery. Madison seems to be holding up well, but has her occasional moments of anxiousness. Molly seems to be showing the most signs of anxiety and we’ll start seeing a counselor this week to help with that. I am focusing on maintaining a positive attitude and being thankful that this is the best case scenario when all things are considered.

We will try to be in touch one more time before surgery to give you a bit more information as we get it.

We are so thankful that you are part of our support system! We continue to be amazed at the people who have reached out to us!

Love,

Kelly and Damon

Old Knees -Fixed

2011-04-06T18:16:00.000-07:00

Old Knees -Fixed

Wednesday Evening April 6 2011 (Second post in this series).

Today I had arthroscopic surgery on my right knee. As I write this, it has been about 7 hours since the surgery was completed. With the exception of “pain” of not having my morning coffee, the surgery was a non-event {grin}.

I had the surgery done at what was called a Surgery Center. I was not aware of this type of facility. They specialize in outpatient surgeries that do not require a full service hospital. They make a point of differentiation between the two by pointing out that a hospital surgical facility must be staffed and equipped for every type of surgery.

My procedure was done at the Lowry Surgery Center (http://www.lowrysurgery.com/t_lowry.htm). It happens to be in the same medical building as Dr. Gersoff's office.

As a patient, there is no noticeable difference as compared to a formal hospital facility. The staff was very professional and I was attended to by several nurses. The anesthesiologist interviewed me and was very thorough in describing his function in the procedure. Dr. Gersoff gave Pat and I a good description of the procedure before the surgery and then talked to her afterward to make sure she felt comfortable with results of the surgery and the details of the recovery process.

As noted in the first post, the surgery was done to repair a fairly significant longitudinal tear in one of the ligaments and remove a bunch of “junk”.

I have been amazed at the fact that there is not a great deal of pain. I waited for 6 hours after I took to first pain medication to see if the pain was being masked by the medication. I told Pat that I wonder if they even did a procedure {grin}. Hopefully the pain will continue to be minimal.

They indicated that I would need to use crutches for the first couple of days, but that I could bear weight on the leg to a level of acceptable pain. Well, I have basically put full weight on it a few times and did not experience a great deal of pain. I am now using one crutch – only because they suggested that I would need crutches.

So, in a few days, I should be able to dance a jig – well maybe not dance a jig, but I should have full use of the leg without experiencing a bunch of pain.

Many of you have asked about the status of Kelly's breast cancer journey. There is not much to report. She has an appointment with a plastic surgeon next week. That will be about the last piece of the puzzle that will allow their family to make a decision what the level of surgery will be. We will keep you posted.

That is all for now.

Old Knees

2011-03-26T07:45:00.000-07:00

Old Knees

Saturday Morning March, 26 2011 (First post in this series).

Well, our “travelogue” blog has taken yet another detour – again for medical issues.

If you have been reading our blog recently, you have been following our daughter Kelly's journey with breast cancer. Right now, there is not much to report, as they are waiting for the BRCA test results and that will guide their decision. She will have surgery in late April. In the interim, I will update her journey as information becomes available.

Since we have canceled our travel for the foreseeable future, I thought I would have a knee issue looked at by a specialist.

First some background. Over the past several years, I have had periodic problems with my right knee. Most of the problems were the result of “dinging” my knee doing something stupid. The first event was a skiing accident when I was in college {dirt had just been invented at the time}.

I had talked to my general practice doctors several times and they laid it off to osteoarthritis and just getting old. There was a tone in their voice that would suggest that they thought I was a wuss. The symptoms have come and gone over the years, but each time they came back, they got worse.

On March 5^th, I went skiing with Damon and the girls and from the time I first got off the lift, I knew I had a problem. I could not control the right ski without huge pain. By the end of the day, my knee was a mess.

I thought the symptoms would go away, but they did not. Damon suggested a clinic where he had shoulder surgery and treatment for a significant back injury. Thursday (3/24/11) I saw Dr. Gersoff and had both X-rays and an MRI. The MRI revealed a fairly significant longitudinal tear in a ligament and a lot of “junk” (cartilage?) in the knee.

As a result I am scheduled for arthroscopic surgery on April 6^th.

I am impressed with Dr. Gersoff's credentials. He has been involved as a team doctor for several amateur and professional teams (http://www.advancedortho.org/physicians_gersoff.html).

The surgery will be straight forward. It will not require general anesthesia.

I have mixed emotions about the surgery. I don't think anyone wants to have their body invaded, but the pain has become rather persistent and has increased in intensity and I will be glad to get the problem fixed.

Bottom line, I guess I am not as big a wuss as had been suggested {grin}.

Breast Cancer, The Journey Continued

2011-03-25T08:36:00.000-07:00

Breast Cancer, The Journey Continued

Friday Morning March, 25 2011 (sixth post in this series).

As would be pretty obvious, the family has been involved in detailed discussions about the diagnosis and recommendations for Kelly's situation. We have tried to be very careful to give only general statements so that Kelly and her family could deal with, and communicate, the details in a manner that they felt comfortable with.

Last night, Kelly and Damon wrote a very detailed public email discussing of the situation. I am posting that information below. As you can tell, they have some pretty significant decisions to make over the next few weeks. The good news is that they have options and that the decisions will be based on very thorough evaluations by the medical people they are working with.

We have said this from the very start, the situation is scary, but the disease was caught in the early stages.

Please ladies, make an appointment for your yearly mammograms!!!

Hello Everyone!

Happy Spring!

We had a great appointment at the University of Colorado Breast Center on Tuesday. Over a period of about 4 hours, we met with a surgeon, an oncologist, a radiation oncologist, and a plastic surgeon. The information that we received pretty closely matched the information we had received the previous week. It was nice to feel like we’ve been receiving accurate information and the two options presented to us were basically the same. It was really nice to have my sister Lisa there to take notes and provide a bit of a medical perspective (she is a clinical dietitian at University so she speaks the medical language that Damon and I don’t).

Again, it was very reassuring to hear the doctors say over and over again that this is not “invasive” cancer and that it could be so much worse.

The two options on the table now are:

1) Lumpectomy, 6 weeks of radiation, and 5 years of Tamoxifen (a preventive chemo pill that doesn’t have the same side effects of typical chemotherapy, but has its own side effects)

2) Mastectomy

We are still waiting on some important pieces of information to help make our decision. Last Wednesday we started the process for the Breast Cancer (BRCA) Test. Because I have no family history of breast cancer, it will be surprising if these test results are positive, but we felt it was necessary to do the tests, both for the benefit of our girls as well as my sisters and my mom. If that test would come back positive, that would mean that there was an 80% chance that I would have recurring breast cancer and the recommendation would be double mastectomy. Those test results are expected sometime next week.

In addition, I have two other spots that need to be biopsied. We are holding off on those biopsies until we have the results of the BRCA test. If the test came back positive, the biopsies would be unnecessary. If we moved forward with the biopsies and one of the spots came back positive, the recommendation would again be a mastectomy.

So…we are looking at surgery, of some version, toward the end of April. That gives us plenty of time to gather information and make the best decision.

At this point, we’re thankful to have a little break from appointments and procedures. The girls are on Spring Break next week so we’re going to tag along with Damon on a business trip to Durango and Glenwood Springs. It should be some nice time for the girls and I to relax.

Again, we want to say thank you to all of you who have reached out, pitched in, and shown support in so many ways! I know Jamie has an incredible collection of quotes and I can’t wait to start reading them. We feel SO fortunate to have such an incredible support system!!

We’ll continue to keep you posted as we learn more.

With love,

Kelly and Damon

Breast Cancer, The Journey Continued

2011-03-23T08:04:00.000-07:00

Breast Cancer, The Journey Continued

Wednesday Morning March, 23 2011 (fifth post in this series).

Yesterday Kelly and Damon, along with Lisa met with the Breast Center team from University Hospital. Lisa is our oldest daughter, is a clinical dietician at University Hospital, and facilitated the review of Kelly's case.

I will briefly summarize the results of that meeting. Kelly plans to write a summary of that meeting, and when she does, I will post it here.

The team basically verified all of the details that Kelly has been given to date. They had reviewed all of the tests and confirmed the diagnostic results of each. They also agreed on the various treatment options that have been discussed by the first surgeon.

The oncologist was a lady almost exactly Kelly's age and she heads up a study of breast cancer in young women. It is possible that Kelly will become a part of that study.

Both opinions suggest that the results of a special test need to be a part of the decision process. This test is called a BRCA test. Information on this test is detailed at:

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/BRCA

This test evaluates human genes that are related to some forms of breast cancer. A description of these genes is as follows:

“BRCA1 and BRCA2 are human genes that belong to a class of genes known as tumor suppressors. Mutation of these genes has been linked to hereditary breast and ovarian cancer “

The results of this test, if positive, could also suggest that Pat and our other daughters will need to have more detailed breast cancer screening. Both opinions suspect that the test will come back negative, but the results are still a significant factor in the evaluation process. The results of that test are expected in about 10 more days.

For sure, Kelly will have to have surgery. The extent of that surgery will be based on decisions by the doctors and Kelly. There is a very good chance that Kelly will not have to go through chemotherapy and we are very hopeful that is the case.

We will update you as we get more details.

Breast Cancer, The Journey Continued

2011-03-21T09:00:00.001-07:00

Breast Cancer, The Journey Continued

Monday Morning March, 21 2011 (fourth post in this series).

This will be a fairly quick update. Kelly had some additional tests on Thursday. They suggested further tests, but Kelly is going to defer any additional tests until she and Damon meet with the University Hospital team tomorrow.

Kelly and Damon told the girls about the situation last Friday. They told the girls that they could ask questions at anytime. Madison and Molly seem to be handling the situation very well. We went to the movies yesterday with Kelly and her family and the girls seem to be their normal selves.

Kelly seems to be handling this situation very well. Lisa, our oldest daughter describes it best when she said “Kelly is handling it with dignity”. Kelly said that she was not angry, nor does she ask: “why me?”. Pat and I have said several times that if it was us, we would probably be on the floor screaming and crying. I am sure that she has some pretty tough private moments at times.

Tonight we will stay overnight at their house so that we can get the girls ready to go to their early morning swimming lessons and then take them to school on Tuesday.

We are very anxious to hear what the University Hospital team has to say. We will update you as we get that information.

Related to this situation is the tremendous outpouring from friends, family and even “remote” acquaintances. A huge number of our friends and family have contacted us with encouraging thoughts and prayers. Kelly and Damon are amazed with the tremendous response of folks. It really helps all of us keep going. Thank you all so much!!!

Breast Cancer, The Journey Continued

2011-03-18T07:51:00.000-07:00

Breast Cancer, The Journey Continued

Friday Morning March, 18 2011 (third post in this series).

Last night (3/17/11), Kelly and Damon published an email to family and friends that summarizes the events to date. We though that we would share it with the readers of this blog:

Hello Family and Friends!

For some of you this is an update and for some of you this is new news. We apologize if we haven’t been able to contact you personally, but this last week has been a busy one.

I had a routine mammogram on February 28^th which then led to a second mammogram and a biopsy. Last Friday we found out that I have breast cancer, but feel VERY lucky that we caught this early. (Public Service Announcement – don’t forget to get your mammograms!!)

Although no one wants to receive that kind of news (especially on a Friday afternoon when you have all weekend to stew), the news that we have received most recently is mostly good. I have had a number of tests and procedures since the initial diagnosis and we’re still in the process of collecting information.

We met with a surgeon yesterday and were very pleased with her. Her bedside manner was outstanding and she offered us a lot of understandable information and a couple of options. It was great to hear her say that this is Stage 0, that I’m not going to die from this and that it is highly unlikely that I will need chemo.

Next week we have an amazing opportunity to meet with a team of doctors to get second opinions. It will be great to get that information to help us make decisions.

My family, both immediate, and extended, have been amazing! Damon and the girls are holding up well – we feel so lucky to have the family that we do. We are trying to provide the information to the girls in small amounts and in understandable ways.

For those of you who have already reached out to us, we want to thank you! Although we haven’t been able to reply to each of you individually, we greatly appreciate knowing that you’re thinking of and praying for us.

One thing I’d love to do right now is collect positive and inspirational quotes. I have always loved quotes and carried a few of them around with me. This seems like a great time to collect some new quotes as we prepare for the next steps of this journey. A good friend of mine has offered to compile these quotes for me. If you have any that you’d like to contribute, please e-mail them to Jamie at j.s.blevins@comcast.net .

We’ll do our best to keep you informed as we gather more information and make our decisions.

With love,

Kelly and Damon

Breast Cancer, The Journey Continued

2011-03-17T12:48:00.000-07:00

Breast Cancer, The Journey Continued

Thursday Afternoon March, 17 2011 (second post in this series).

Yesterday Kelly and Damon went to the surgeon recommended by her doctor. They were very impressed with her approach to the situation. Based on the tests done to date, she (the surgeon) believes that the tumor was caught in the early stages. There is some concern that there might be more spots and Kelly is having some additional tests today. Based on those tests, there will be a decision as to whether another biopsy is required.

The surgeon indicated that some level of surgery will be required. The best option would be a lumpectomy. Unless they detect a spread of the cancer, she does not believe that chemotherapy will be required.

So, the first opinion suggests that the early detection offers Kelly some options.

One of the contributions to the overall trauma of the situation is the fact that Damon's mom died of breast cancer. She died about 5 weeks before her first granddaughter (Madison) was born. She was a jewel of a person and we all miss her very much.

I have posted a photo of Kelly and her family. From left to right: Madison (7), Kelly, Damon, and Molly (5).

Breast Cancer, The Journey

2011-03-16T09:04:00.000-07:00

Breast Cancer, The Journey

Wednesday Morning March, 16 2011 (First post in this series).

Those that are familiar with our blog know that it was created to document our travels. For the foreseeable future, our travels are on hold and we will change the format of this blog. As you read this blog, the reason for this format change will become obvious.

On Friday (3/11/11), our 42 year old daughter, Kelly, was diagnosed with breast cancer!!! She is healthy, eats properly, exercises regularly, is not overweight, has never smoked, etc. We do not have a family history of cancer.

In late February she had her yearly mammogram. The results suggested that a second mammogram was needed. Both tests revealed a growth that needed to be biopsied. On Thursday (3/10/11) she had the biopsy. The next day we got the bad news.

Before I start the documentation of this journey, I need to discuss something that has been very troubling to me. About a year ago, the medical community suggested new guidelines for scheduling these tests. The preliminary recommendation suggested that women under the age of 50, with no family history of cancer, did not need to schedule a mammogram. That was very troubling to me at the time, as Pat and I have three daughters under the age of 50.

Fortunately, the National Cancer Institute still recommends 40 years as the base age for scheduled mammograms:

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/detection/mammograms

I need to say this loud and clear: ladies please schedule your yearly mammograms NOW!!!

Now back to our situation. We are very strong family (three daughters, three wonderful SILs, and eight great grandkids). We will all support Kelly, her husband, and their two precious daughters (5 and 7) as they proceed through this journey.

We are fortunate that Lisa, our oldest daughter, is a clinical dietitian at University Hospital here in Denver and she has arranged for Kelly's case to be reviewed by the well regarded team at the Breast Center.

As I write this today, we really do not have a lot of details on Kelly's condition. Since last Friday, she has had several additional tests and is scheduled for a few more. These include MRIs, another mammogram (post biopsy), ultrasound, etc. The preliminary indication is that the cancer was detected early and we have confidence that her journey will be successful.

Today she is scheduled to see a surgeon that was recommended by her doctor. She will use the recommendation of this surgeon as one of at least two opinions.

I will try to update the story of this journey as time permits. For the new readers, I always recommend that you sign up for the email notification link on this blog. That way you will be notified when I do post.

We have been contacted by a huge number of friends and acquaintances who have been so supportive and kind. Thank you so much for your thoughts and prayers.

Hello from Gunnison, CO

2011-02-25T21:13:00.000-08:00

Hello from Gunnison, CO

Friday night February, 24 2011 (First travelogue of this trip).

Hi folks. As has been the case too much lately, we have not posted to this blog very often. With rare exception we limit our posts to travel-related dialogue and we have not traveled much in the last few ~~years~~ months. In a few weeks, our bus travel will begin and then our posting will be more frequent.

This is a very special trip. I am with my daughter Judy, grandson Thomas and his friend Austin. Judy refers to Austin as her third son. Fortunately, they have taken Austin under their wing and will become his legal guardian in the near future. This trip was to visit two colleges that Thomas has been accepted to.

Pat is helping with daughter Kelly and the kids while Damon is on a business trip.

We left the Bailey, CO area Thursday morning and traveled to Alamosa to visit Adams State College. This was mainly a quick visit to get a feeling about the facilities and their program. It seems like a good school, but it is not Thomas' first choice.

We left Alamosa late in the afternoon and took a short cut route (CO 114) over to Gunnison. It turned out to be a very scenic drive and the weather was great, albeit cold. We would not attempt that route in one of the frequent snow storms, but it worked out great for this trip.

We are staying 2 nights in the Super 8 in Gunnison. If any of you followed our non-bus travels, you know I really do not care for Super 8 motels. Their idea of a “Super Starter” breakfast is Fruit Loops and toast. Well, my usual choice of Holiday Inn Express was over $160 and we were not going to pay that kind of money. As it turns out, this Super 8 seems to be the exception to the rule. The rooms are the typical lower level affair, but clean. But the real surprise was that they had a very good hot breakfast!! Not even a Fruit Loop in the place {grin}.

Today we went to a formal “Preview Day” at Western State College (http://www.western.edu/). Both Thomas and Austin have been accepted here and it was the school that they were interested in. All of the attendees today had preregistered for the all day event.

Thomas, Judy and Austin

The day started with a tour, followed by a general presentation by the staff. Then the parents and students split up. The parents were treated to some more great informational presentations followed by a question and answer period.

Tour of the campus in the snow

The students rejoined the parents and then the big group split up into academic interest groups. Our first stop was Natural and Environmental department which includes the Geology curriculum that Thomas is interested in. It was very informational. The next session we went to was the athletic department session. Austin is very good at football and track. It looks like he might be interested in trying out for the track team.

We were then treated to a great lunch in the student cafeteria. It is a fantastic buffet offering almost any kind of food that a person would want. They can eat all the want for that meal. And it was very tasty food.

The afternoon had more presentations and all of the clubs and societies had booths to show the students what activities are available.

I think I will ring off here and fill in some additional details tomorrow.

Pat is back in Evergreen, CO

2011-01-19T20:39:00.001-08:00

Pat is back in Evergreen, CO

Wednesday evening January 19, 2011 (third travelogue of this trip).

Thought I would summarize Pat's trip.

The convention was very hectic for her. They normally schedule 3 days, but a booking problem forced them to condense everything into two long days. The convention ended late Friday. Pat stayed over Saturday and flew home in the evening. I picked her up about 7:30 PM. She was one tuckered lady.

There were 1000 attendees (limited by the hotel booking). 600 Managers attended the Manager's dinner at the Wildhorse Saloon (they booked the whole facility).

As is always the case, Pat comes home enthusiastic about building her business. This time was no exception. She has started her Stampin Lady blog (here). In addition, she has subscribed to a great email marketing service that makes sending professional newsletters much easier.

We hope that you will visit her blog and sign up for her newsletter.

That is all for now.

Hello from Nashville, TN – Number 2

2011-01-13T09:07:00.000-08:00

Hello from Nashville, TN – Number 2

Thursday morning January 13, 2011 (Second travelogue of this trip).

Hey, this is kind of fun. Pat has been sending me some photos from her phone and I will include a few of them. We have not been able to talk much, but I am gathering from the photos that she is having a wonderful time – as usual.

My wonderful wife of 47 years!

First, she has described the Gaylord hotel as “unbelievable”. It must be spectacular and very luxurious. I asked her if there was any signs of the flood damage from this the terrible floods this spring and she said that she did not see any.

Pat at the hotel

A view of the hotel

For those of you who do not know much about Pat's association with Stampin' Up!, I need to give you some background. First of all, the Stampin' Up website will tell you a bit about the company (click here). Pat has been a demonstrator for them for over 11 years. She maintains the executive level and has almost 80 other demonstrators in her organization. She has earned eight wonderful cruises/trips. The last one was in 2009 to Hawaii (documented in our blog starting here). She has a website that ultimately links with her page on the SU website (here).

Stampin' Up! is a wonderful company with fantastic products. But, more importantly, they truly appreciate their demonstrators and treat them very well. I often say that it would be difficult to earn a large income with the company, but the experience is unmatched. It is wonderful to attend one of the conventions, or go on one of their cruises, and see how much positive impact that the company has on these demonstrators.

I mentioned the fact in the last blog that Pat was invited (as were some of her downline who have achieved the manager level) to the Manager's dinner last night. Stampin' Up! always makes this a “big deal”. They do not tell the managers where the dinner will be held until they board the buses. Last night's dinner was at the Wildhorse Saloon (link). I have not talked to her since that dinner, but one of the photos suggests that they had a lot of fun {grin}.

I probably need to clarify “fun”. When we attend the functions, it is interesting to note that there is almost no drinking (indeed, Pat can not drink alcohol because or her Rheumatoid Arthritis medications). We often laugh at the fact that when SU charters a large ship for the cruises, the ship companies must cringe – the bar charges must be almost nonexistent.

The ladies at the Wildhorse Saloon

I mentioned in the last post that the ladies love to swap cards. The photo below shows that activity, but not the frenzied level that I have witnessed {grin}

Swapping cards

I had intended this post to be a simple introduction to some photos that Pat sent me, but I have rambled on – as usual.

That is all for now.

Hello from Nashville, TN

2011-01-12T09:07:00.000-08:00

Hello from Nashville, TN

Wednesday morning January 12, 2011 (First travelogue of this trip).

Well, this will be a strange travelogue. You see, I am writing this from Evergreen, CO, but Pat is in Nashville for a Stampin' Up! Leadership Convention.

Yesterday, I drove her to the airport so that she could attempt to get to Nashville. I use the word “attempt” advisedly, as that part of the country is having terrible weather and Nashville was basically shut down Monday and the airport was closed. It turns out that her flight was only delayed about an hour.

The snow and ice have played havoc with the area. Several of the demonstrators came in early with the intent of doing some sightseeing on Monday. With the weather conditions, that did not happen.

Pat is staying at the Gaylord Hotel (link) in the Opryland complex (map). Actually she spent last night at a different hotel, as the Gaylord was booked up for another convention. She is getting ready to move today.

Apparently, the hotel adjoins the conference center so the demonstrators will not have to brave the elements. That said, she will be attending the Manager's Dinner tonight and that is off premises. I think she said that they will have buses.

I have only experienced these kinds of gatherings a few times. Obviously, there was a lot of similar activities on the cruises. I did go with Pat to a Stampin' Up! Convention in Salt Lake city a couple of years ago. I can not begin to describe to you the energy that is involved with these events. There are hundreds of demonstrators, all having a huge amount of fun and learning all kinds of neat stuff.

One activity that really defies description is what they call swapping. The demonstrators make up items with the Stampin' Up! products and then swap with each other to get new ideas. Pat typically does 100-200 cards and or decorative items (this year, a neat candy holder). I witnessed one swapping session that was nothing short of a fish feeding frenzy. That is not a great picture, but I think you get the idea {grin}.

She is usually very busy and only has a few minutes to talk on the phone. I will try to pass on some details as I get them.

That is all for now.

Hello from Dillon, CO

2010-12-29T08:44:00.000-08:00

Hello from Dillon, CO

Wednesday morning December 29, 2010

We are at our daughter and her family's great townhouse in Dillon, CO (map). They bought this townhouse as an investment/get away. The townhouse is currently leased by a company to house one of the working families. They are between families and Kelly and Damon have been able to enjoy their town house for the holiday season.

Their town house is wonderfully decorated and very comfortable. We are so glad that they invited us to stay with them. We came up Monday afternoon and will leave for home today. We would like to stay longer, but things have been quite hectic for the past few weeks and we have quite a few things that need to get done in the next couple of days.

Yesterday morning we just plain vegged out. That was good for all of us. Our daughter and her family are always on the go and they need to relax a bit. In the afternoon, we did a bit of driving around and then Kelly and Damon and the two girls went sledding while Pat and I watched from the top of the hill. They had a ball. After that we went snowshoeing into the campground where we will have our family vacation around the fourth of July. We scouted out the campsites that we have reserved and they look great.

The granddaughters (5 and 7) are great at snowshoeing. The day was beautiful, and the snow was great. They have had a lot of snow in the area and we were in “virgin” snow. I was glad that I could keep up with them.

This area has been devastated by the pine bark beetle. This beetle attacks the lodgepole pine trees. I was happy to see that there were pine species that have survived and there are also some aspen in the area.

Today we may try to get in a quick snowshoe session and then we will head home this afternoon. We will take the scenic route home. That will take us from Dillon to Breckenridge, then to Fairplay and home via US 285.

As our readers have noted, we have not posted in quite some time. We created this blog as a travelogue and we have not done much traveling lately. Our travel plans for next year are up in the air. We have canceled our trip to Quartzsite in January. We have made the decision that we will not be attending trade shows for the foreseeable future. The RV market is in the toilet and the trade show attendance is way down. It just does not make any sense to speed a lot of money getting to the shows and then not selling enough to pay for the trip.

Instead, we have a few great personal trips lined up. The first tentative trip is to the California and Nevada area in March to attend a couple of races and “veg out” in our favorite remote area south of Death Valley: Shoshone

As I have noted in the past, if you want to follow our travels, it might be best to sign up for email notification so that you will know when we post.

That is all for this trip

Hello from the Orange County/John Wayne airport

2010-11-14T10:06:00.000-08:00

Hello from the Orange County/John Wayne airport

Sunday morning November 14, 2010 (third travelogue of this trip).

I wanted to do a quick update on our testing. It went very well!!

Because of a confidentially agreement, I am not able to include details or photos.

I can say that we did several tests and our modules performed flawlessly! The person we are working with seemed very pleased and is quite anxious to develop the market.

The weather has been so nice here. Not sure I am ready to head back to the cold weather in CO {grin}.

That is all for now.

Hello again from Anaheim, CA

2010-11-12T11:25:00.000-08:00

Hello again from Anaheim, CA

Friday morning November 12, 2010 (second travelogue of this trip).

If you have been following my posts in the past week or two, you know that Pat and I were not very thrilled with some aspects of the Norwegian cruise ship – mostly design issues. However, after following the terrible situation on the Carnival ship Splendor, I guess my bitching pales in comparison to what those folks had to endure. At least we were not served Spam and our toilets worked {grin}. I also want to re-emphasize that the overall cruise was quite fun – primarily because we were with some wonderful family and friends.

As we were departing the ship last week, I began to develop all of the symptoms of a cold. Indeed, it looked like I would be under the weather for this trip (not fun to fly when you are congested). However, I started my regimen of Zinc and Vitamin C and it seems that I avoided the worst of the cold symptoms. I feel pretty good and have only minimal evidence of a cold.

Yesterday was a fun day. Gary (the person we designed the new system for) is a drag racing fan, so we planned on going to the Thursday qualifying session of the final NHRA national race of the year.

Before we did that, we went to the location where we will be doing our testing to make sure they were ready for us. This is a huge facility with probably 100 or more trash truck. Most are powered with compressed natural gas engines. When one thinks of a trash truck, the picture is not pretty. However, these trucks are immaculate and most look like they are brand new. Each truck is washed each day and the maintenance seems to be top notch (we briefly toured the maintenance area). They seemed ready for our testing. We will do quite a bit of the setup this afternoon and the actual tests will be performed tomorrow (Saturday) when the yard will not be as active.

We then went to Pomona and I had a blast at the races. I met up with a very good friend (a good Gates customer) and we spent most of the day together. Steve and my customer hit is off well, so it all fit together nicely. I even got to put on my “blower belt hat” on and worked with Steve in one of the pits of a top Fuel Funny Car. Steve was delivering a test belt and we got to talk quite a bit to the crew about the operation of the car and the installation of the test belt. Gary, my customer, had a great time in that pit area. I also got to say hi to a good friend/racer that I worked with many years ago. Lou, has terminal cancer and I really wanted to talk to him before it was too late.

My relationship with Steve started out as a customer/vendor when I worked for Gates. That quickly changed to great personal friendship. Some folks say we look like twins (he has more hair) and to a degree, I think we both feel like we are twins. We have kept in touch over the years and this year we have gotten together twice. We must act like a couple of old ladies trying to catch up on all of the events of the past few years {big grin}.

We got to see one round of the nitro car qualifications and that was icing on the cake!

That is all for today.

Hello from Anaheim, CA

2010-11-10T22:32:00.000-08:00

Hello from Anaheim, CA

Wednesday night November 10, 2010 (First travelogue of this trip).

I am in Anaheim, CA without the bus and Pat. I flew here today. More about that in a paragraph or two.

I did not get a chance to finish the last travelogue. When we left off, we were at sea and running several hours behind. The problem was that we were not able to leave the pier in Cozumel due to high winds. About half way from Cozumel to Miami, the captain announced that they would arrive in Miami at 10:00 AM on Saturday (over two hours late). That caused us considerable concern about making our flight. I got on the internet and started corresponding with our travel agent. She did some work with South West Airlines to see what our options were. As it turns out, we were at the pier by 9:00 AM and easily made our flight. Everyone noted the much faster speed of the ship on that leg of the trip. I would hate to pay the fuel bill for that trip!!!

In the last blog I was discussing the fact that this was not our favorite ship. Indeed, it was not our favorite cruise line. Pat loves the formal dining format where you have an assigned table in a very fancy dining room. Everything on the menu is included and you can order as much as you want. After dinner you can order a cappuccino – also included. Dress code is pretty strict. Most have at least one “formal” night. I, on the other hand like the Norwegian Cruise Line “Freestyle Cruising” where you go to one of perhaps 10 or more restaurants. The dress code is informal and you don't have assigned seats. It seemed neat to me the last time we were on Norwegian. Not so this time. There were 13 restaurants (including the pool bar). Out of the 13 only 4 were no cost. The rest cost between $10 and $30. The beloved room service pizza for the kids is now $5 and the cappuccino is no longer include in the cruise fee. That just goes against our grain. A major enjoyable feature of cruises is the fact that the food is great and included in the cost of the cruise. Perhaps that is a thing of the past.

Now lets talk about this trip. I am staying at the Embassy Suites hotel in Anaheim (map). This is a business trip to test a new product that we have developed. I will also get in one day at the NHRA drag races at Pomona. That will allow me to see some old friends.

As background, a bit over a year ago, we were approached by a major vendor to the specialized heavy duty vehicle market. Our fire detection system was very interesting to him and would compliment the gas detection system he markets to the natural gas powered commercial vehicles (mandated by the government). We did a preliminary design of a very comprehensive gas detection/fire detection system. The project became very complex and we decided to focus on the fire detection phase. A couple of months ago we finished developing a rather sophisticated detection system that would function with an new generation fire suppression system developed by the people who manufacture the suppression system that I market to the RV market. All of our testing was very successful, but the customer wanted to work with one of his customers to do some joint testing.

Our customer has arranged to do some testing at a refuse facility that has a fleet of trash trucks. These trucks experience fires periodically and it appears to be a good market.

I will try to detail the event of the next few days as time permits.

Hello from somewhere in the Caribbean

2010-11-05T15:49:00.000-07:00

Hello from somewhere in the Caribbean

Friday afternoon    November 5, 2010   (Fourth travelogue of this trip).

I will spend most of this post talking about the ship. However, there is one item that I forgot to mention. Pat got very sick late Tuesday night. Acted like the flu. She was pretty puny most of Wednesday, but felt reasonably good on Thursday for the wedding. No one else got sick, so I doubt it was the flu. We all ate about the same things, so that was probably not the problem. The doctors have to really minimize her immunity system because of the RA and it could have been a very benign bug that got her.

We are having a kind of exciting day. The captain announced last night that we could not leave the dock due to high winds. They did not seem all that high to me, but what do I know. Well, this morning I woke up early and we were still at the dock! We finally departed at 8:00 AM Miami time and that gave us 24 hours to travel 6-700 miles. We were supposed to leave Thursday at 5:30 central time. After we had been at sea for a couple of hours, the captain announced that we would arrive in Miami at 10:00 AM Saturday. That really puts us in a bind to make our flight. I have acted as the group correspondent with the travel agent to establish contingency plans. She seems to think we can make our flight. I think that is optimistic, as just about everything would have to go perfect (including clearing customs which can take quite a while). We will keep you posted.

Up until today the seas have been like glass. However, this storm really has us rocking. The waves are said to be at least 15 feet. I am surprised that a ship of this size with all of the latest stability technology is rocking as bad as it is. Most everybody is feeling OK, but the ship is handing out sea sickness pills to anyone that wants them.

Now to the ship. Before I start in with that discussion, which will be a bit negative, I need to be clear that we have enjoyed this cruise. This has not been our favorite ship for several reasons. First, the rooms seem to be designed by someone who does not have a clue. The theme is curved surfaces/walls and that resulted in separate toilet and shower areas -both of which are frosted glass enclosed and just plain uncomfortable from a privacy standpoint. The sink is very shallow and tends to splash. Indeed, they changed our faucet (without our asking) with the stated reason being to minimize splash.   The sink is at the foot of the bed. There is almost no room to walk around the bed.

As a side note: I often talk about the book “A Corporate Tragedy”. It is a story of the terrible mistakes that IHC made many years ago that took them from a company much larger than John Deere to a shell of itself. One of the major stories in the book was how they told the engineers to go to hell and had the marketing folks “design” a tractor. It was a terrible failure that caused the farmers huge amount of problems and they ultimately were courted by John Deere and many made the switch. This ship looks like it was designed by the marketing folks.

Next issue is a personal one with me. I have very sensitive hearing that is easily overloaded. The public areas have blaring music and then everyone tries to talk over the music making it even more obnoxious. The most annoying noise issue is in the spa.   The thermal pool is quite noisy by its nature. The problem is that they have it in the same room as the supposedly relaxing heated ceramic lounges. That problem gets worse when people try to shout over the water sounds. At times I have had my iPod cranked and still could hardly hear the music. On other ships, the pool is in its own room as it should be.

Now let's talk about the crowds. I have told the story many times that mom and dad took me on several cruises before I was 16. All but one were on freighters that had accommodations for about 100 passengers. This was because my dad hated crowds. I guess I take after him to a degree. We have been on ships that had almost as many passengers and it did not seem to bother me as much as this cruise. As I think about it, it might the the demographics. The other cruises were with Stampin' Up! folks.   Indeed they even chartered the entire ship for some of the cruises. These are pretty conservative folks who do not drink a lot and who are not out to impress everybody. Many of the passengers on this boat seem to drink heavily. That results in very loud discussion and some pretty obnoxious behavior. I am not a prude, but it just seems to grate on my for this trip.

Ok having said all of the negative things, I need to make sure that folks understand that this has been a wonderful cruise. We are part of a group of 26 great folks and we had a lot of fun together.

Maybe my bitching is based on the fact that we had to pay for this trip {grin}.

I have attached a group photo at the wedding. Looks pretty neat huh?

That is all for now.

Hello from Cozumel, Mexico

2010-11-04T17:44:00.000-07:00

Hello from Cozumel, Mexico

Thursday evening November 4, 2010 (Third travelogue of this trip).

I have had the best of intentions posting more often, but I just can't seem to find the time. I have a lot of catch up on, but the first thing that needs to get reported is the wedding.

Shawna and Bryan exchanging vows (note her parents in the background)

Man and Wife!!!

Today we departed the ship and took vans to Mr Sanchos where the wedding was held. This is a small little resort with some neat facilities. The weather was pretty good. A bit windy, but that made the surf really spectacular. I have included a few photos. The setting was absolutely beautiful with the beach and surf in the background. The actual wedding was on the beach and the sand was very clean and white. Shawna looked beautiful and Bryan was quite handsome. Bryan wrote the ceremony and it was very well done. The parents looked approvingly on the wedding and seemed very proud of the couple.

We returned to the ship after the wedding. After lunch, Pat and her sister Judy went shopping and I started working on this blog. We will have a reception dinner in one of the restaurants later this evening.

Now lets do a bit of catching up. Sunday was an at sea day. In the evening they had a big Halloween party. We were amazed at the number of folks dressed up in costumes. We estimate that it was several hundred. Many of the costumes were quite elaborate and/or unique. We positioned ourselves in the walkway that led to the party area and had a wonderful view of all the folks/costumes.

On the last couple of cruises we have splurged and joined the spa and we did that again on this trip. They have a very limited membership, so the place is quiet and relaxing. There is a huge hydrothermal pool, two saunas, a steam room and the wonderful heated ceramic lounges. We have gone every day.

Another splurge is purchasing internet time. The ship gets the internet from satellites (much like we do on the bus). However, the connection is pretty slow and you buy internet connection by the minute. I usually chase some business related activity and it has been kind of busy on this trip. Unfortunately, not much in the way of sales.

I mentioned that I was going to do a dive at Roatan, Honduras. Roatan is an island off he coast of Honduras. It has a mixture of beauty and poverty. When we drove to the dive support area, we passed lush tropical areas. These were intermixed with areas of what looked like shanty areas. These areas were on the main road. The houses were in poor condition and there was trash everywhere. A real dichotomy.

We did a two tank dive and both dives were spectacular!!!. The ship dictates that the dive masters not take us to a depth of more than 70 feet. It was obvious that they were not going to police that rule rigorously. Indeed, my dive computer watch recorded a depth of 95 feet. Both dives were what they call wall dives. We swam at a depth of about 30-50 feet for a while and then we came to a complete drop off where we could not see any floor. The coral was absolutely gorgeous. It was almost like parts were sprinkled with gold leaf. The fish were beautiful and the coral formations were quite varied, some of which I had not seen before. We even got to see a turtle and some lobsters. The second dive was supposed to be a drift dive. This is where the boat drops you off and picks you up some distance away. The current was not strong, so we had to do a bit of paddling with our fins, but we traveled quite a ways.

We could have made it from Roatan without an “at sea” day, but our ship had to perform some mandatory maneuvers. All ships that have been in service less than six months must perform these maneuvers. The process takes about three hours. One of the maneuvers is a 360 rotation of the ship. This is done in the length of the ship using the bow and stern thrust propellers. In addition to that, the ship is put in “anchor mode” where the various propellers maintain the ship in exactly the same location and orientation using a sophisticated GPS system. It is said that they can maintain location within 5 feet.

That is all for now.

Hello from Costa Maya, Mexico.

2010-11-01T21:56:00.001-07:00

Hello from Costa Maya, Mexico.

Monday Evening November 1, 2010 (Second travelogue of this trip).

We are at our first port (of three) on this trip. Costa Maya is a pretty plain Jane port. We could not see any good beaches and the area is.... well, kind of plain. We did not plan any shore tours. Instead, we walked around the dock area for an hour or so. There were the typical vendors selling mostly tourist type stuff – imagine that. We were the only ship in port, so things were not crowded.

Sunday was a day at sea. We always enjoy that, as it is a bit laid back. Having said that, it seems like we have not had too much time to relax. Sunday night we went to see the “Blue Man Group”. This is the “headline” group for the Epic. It is a very interesting show with lots of drums and all kinds of antics by three men in blue makeup (including blue skull caps that made them look bald).. Kind of like mimes. Very hard to describe. Since I love drums, it was a lot of fun for me and the rest of the group seemed to have a fairly good time.

The seas have been very calm and the weather has been good, but fairly hot. We should be thankful as a tropical depression went through here last week. I think today is the end of the official hurricane season and we have not heard of any storms in the area.

As mentioned in the first post, this is a huge ship. It is quite unique in its design and we are not convinced that they gave a lot of thought to creature comfort. I will talk about that in a post I hope to make on Wednesday which is another day at sea.

Tomorrow we will be at Roatan, Honduras. I, along with several members of the group, will be doing a two-tank scuba dive. It is supposed to be a pretty good diving area.

That is all for now.

Hello from Miami, FL

2010-10-30T07:05:00.001-07:00

Hello from Miami, FL

Saturday morning October 30, 2010 (First travelogue of this trip).

We are in Miami, Florida where we will depart on a cruise later today. This is a very special cruise since our niece Shawna and her fiance Bryan will be getting married later this week. Rather than getting married on the ship, their ceremony will be held in Cozumel.

Just a bit of background here. When we first heard of the wedding cruise, we knew that we could not afford to go. However, Pat was determined that we would go since most of her family was going. She decided to set a goal of paying for the trip with earnings from Ebay selling. Darned if she did not get the job done and we are not having to dig into our meager savings (wonderful economy {frown}).

Yesterday we flew from Denver to Ft. Lauderdale. What a trip that was. We flew Southwest Airlines and had fairly high seating numbers (no seat assignments on SW). We got all settled in and the pilot announced there was a problem. We ended up changing planes. Everyone was supposed to take the same seats – yeah right!!!! When we got on, almost every seat was filled except center seats. The stewardess talked a passenger into moving and we got to have a window and center seat. I don't like window seats (space seems too cramped), but it worked out OK for the long flight. When we did get to take off, the flight was pretty uneventful.

There were 20 people on the flight in our party. Additional folks will join us for the cruise – 26 altogether.

The travel agency that made all of the reservations arranged for a full size bus to pick us up at the airport in Ft. Lauderdale and transport us to the hotel in Miami. That normally takes 30-45 minutes depending on the traffic. It was probably longer last night, as we were in rush hour traffic and the Miami Heat (basketball) game traffic.

We are staying at the Marriott close to the dock. Indeed, if you look closely in the photo taken from our balcony, you will see some cruise ships. We are not sure if one of them is ours.

Photo of ships from our hotel balcony

Our cruise will be on the Norwegian Epic. It is a brand new ship (July 2010) and it is huge. It is rated at a bit over 4000 passengers! The ship details are detailed here . We will have more details as we cruise.

That is all for now.

Hello from Evergreen, CO

2010-10-12T10:37:00.000-07:00

Hello from Evergreen, CO

Tuesday morning October 12, 2010 (fifth travelogue of this trip).

In our last post, I said that the travelogue for this trip was complete. As I drove yesterday, I thought of a couple of things that I had forgotten to say or wanted to add to this travelogue.

For our route home, I chose to go mostly two lane across Kansas and Colorado. Part of the decision was that we have traveled I-70 many times and I wanted to see new scenery. Secondly, this route was more direct. Lastly, I wanted to avoid the Kansas Turnpike (can you say cheap?). We chose to hook up with US 400 and US 50 for most of the trip.

We took most of that route when we traveled in September 2009 to an Eagle Bus Rally in Afton, Kansas in the service truck (blog link). On that trip we enjoyed the small farming communities and the huge feedlots in Kansas. On this trip, it was not quite as much fun, as we had a deadline to be back in Evergreen. Having said that, the small towns are fun to see, no matter what the situation.

We left Garden City at about 7:00 Evergreen time and got home about 2:30. I feel kind of bad that we cheated another towing company out of income {grin}. The bus did very well on the trip and we did not have to come home behind the hook.

The weather for the drive home was not ideal. It rained quite a bit in Kansas, and we had a pretty strong cross wind in CO. Guess I should not complain, as it is spitting snow as I type this.

As I had noted, we needed to be in Evergreen yesterday to be help our daughter's family while she has surgery today. She has had severe back problems for several years, and they are going to do a bit of a touchy surgery on her. She has a great blog that details her crazy life in Bailey, CO. Her blog yesterday details the surgery (blog link). Obviously we are nervous, but taking care of the grandkids will keep our mind busy. Her husband will stay with her tonight in the hospital.

Every so often, I publish the statistics of our bus travels. We bought the bus in late 2000 and planned to do a quick conversion. We finally got it on the road for its maiden voyage on March 6, 2006. The bus is fully functional, but still has a lot of finish work that will get done someday. I have detailed the bus project (here). The project pages are in sad need of updating, but you can get a general feel for what the conversion project involved. I have not kept my time log up to date, but I can document at least 3,000 hours on the project.

The maiden voyage was a trip to California. We can't believe that I finished basic bus conversion (including a huge engine conversion project) and we headed out on a long trip. I was not bloging in those days, but I do have a lengthy travelogue that I might post someday.

Since our maiden voyage, we have driven the bus close to 61K miles and have spent 635 wonderful nights in it. At times it has been a love/hate relationship, but we can look back on some fun times in this crazy vehicle.

That is all for this trip (for sure this time).

Hello from Garden City, KS

2010-10-10T19:39:00.000-07:00

Hello from Garden City, KS

Sunday evening October 10, 2010 (fourth travelogue of this trip).

We are at a - drum roll please – Wal Mart (map). We left Carthage this morning about 8:30 and drove a bit over 400 miles. We have about 350 miles to drive tomorrow. Under normal conditions we would probably take three days, but we need to get home tomorrow so that we will be ready to help on Tuesday when our youngest daughter (Judy) has back surgery.

Yesterday we went to the Apple Butter Makin' Days Festival in Mt Vernon, MO. I mentioned this event in the last blog. Unlike the last time we tried to attend this festival, we did not have a medical emergency {grin}. Mt Vernon is a small (population 4017) town about 30 miles east of Carthage on I-44. During the festival, it is said that 40,000 people will attend the event. We have no doubt that at least that many folks attend, as the crowd was huge. They close down all of the streets around the court house square and there are a huge number of vendors. Most of the vendors are craft type products. The “must do” stops are the ribeye steak sandwich cooked by the Cattleman's Association and the apple dumpling (with ice cream) booth. While we were enjoying the dessert, we saw them put the Mrs. Smith dumpling boxes in the trash behind the booth {grin}.

At the festival, we spent some time talking to one of the people cooking apple butter in a huge copper kettle over an open wood fire. In the “old days” they used to spend many days peeling and coring the apples. Recently they discovered the vendor that furnished peeled sliced apples to McDonalds. Of course, we had to buy a couple of jars to take home.

Last night we had another great barbecue dinner. After dinner both nights we all sat around a large fire and had great discussions.

Guess that is all for this trip.

Hello from Carthage, MO

2010-10-09T12:43:00.000-07:00

Hello from Carthage, MO

Saturday Afternoon October 9, 2010 (third travelogue of this trip).

We are currently at a bus rally in Carthage, MO (map). This is a small very informal rally that is held each year to coincide with the “Apple Butter Makin' Days” in Mt Vernon, MO (http://www.mtvernonchamber.com/mt_vernon_applebuttermakindays.php). We were at this rally two years ago and were walking to the Court House square when Pat twisted her ankle on a rock in the street and broke a bone in her foot. As a result we did not make it to the fun event. We plan to go today.

Yesterday I went to Colaw RV Salage (http://www.colawrvsalvage.com/). It declares itself the largest RV Salvage yard in the US. I walked through acres of motorhomes that are being parted out. It was amazing how many were fire damaged vehicles. That is really scary. They are pretty “proud” of their parts and I came away empty handed.

Last night the hosts of this rally served a wonderful dinner of smoked ribs and chicken. Attendees brought side dishes. It sounds like we will do the same thing tonight.

When we get to the bus rallies, we are so busy having fun that I don't have time to post a blog. So, I will try to catch up a bit on things that have occurred since my last post.

In the last post, I mentioned that we were going to detour to go to a cemetery. The cemetery is located close to El Dorado Springs, MO. That was not a big detour from our direct route to Springfield. However, that detour was “interesting”. Pat had found a map of the cemetery location, and I put the coordinates in our GPS system. Looked like a pretty straight forward trip – NOT. First of all, the GPS took us on some very narrow highways. Then when we got close to the cemetery location the GPS told us to make the last turn to the left off of the narrow road we were on. Turns out that it was a very narrow, rutted dirt road. We had to continue without making the turn, but that road turned to a dirt road. We had to unhook and turn the bus around at a “T” in the road. We then drove a round about route to El Dorado Springs and left the bus in a shopping center. We were then able to drive to the cemetery in the truck. It was a neat setting and we were able to find Pat's great grandparent's graves. In addition we were able to somewhat recreate a photo she found of her grandparents standing by grave with her standing in the same location.

We then traveled to Springfield and stayed in a Wal Mart. We unhooked the truck and drove to some very long-term friends. Jack and I went to high school at roughly the same time, but did not meet until we were both working at Gates. Jack left Gates and went to work for a competitor (Dayco) but we stayed in touch. Indeed, we see them whenever we get to Springfield or when Jack and I go to Bonneville together. As usual, we had a great visit.

Tuesday we traveled to Branson for the Eagle Bus Rally. This rally has been held every other year for several years. We have been coming since 2002. It is held at the Branson Lakeside RV Park (map). I think there were 30 Eagle buses at the rally. The rally is somewhat low key. We had a barbecue dinner Tuesday evening and a pot luck dinner on Thursday evening. Wednesday evening the group split up and went to various restaurants in the Branson Landing area. We went with a group to a Mexican food restaurant that was OK, but expensive. Wednesday the group went to the afternoon Pierce Arrow show. They have an extremely funny comedian.

I have posted a couple of pictures that were taken by one of the Eagle's International members (Paul Lawry). They were taken from a scenic train that tours the area.

Branson Lakeside RV Park from a scenic train on the bridge

View of some of the Eagle Buses. Ours is in the lower center behind the trailer

Friday, seven of the Eagles headed in a caravan to this rally.

That is all for now.

Hello from Clinton, MO

2010-10-03T18:56:00.001-07:00

Hello from Clinton, MO

Sunday Evening October 3,, 2010 (Second travelogue of this trip).

We left Prescott today about 10:30 and arrived here about 2:30. We could have driven all the way to Springfield, MO (our next stop) today, but we decided to make this a leisurely day. However, driving thought Kansas City with narrow construction zones does not exactly meet the “leisurely” definition.

We are at a Wal Mart (map). Other than the Kansas City part of the trip, the journey went well. This is a pretty time of the year in this part of the country. The colors have not started to change yet. The prediction is that they will not be as colorful this year, because of the large amount of rain. That seems strange, since they are saying the same thing about the aspen in Colorado – except that it is the result of too little moisture.

Shortly after I wrote the last blog, the rain stopped and it warmed up quite a bit. The farmers were able to get into the fields late in the week. Bill started combining corn on Friday and we hit it hard yesterday. So, I got to help with the harvest, albeit for only two days. The yields were very spotty. In the field that we worked on yesterday the yield was about 170 bushels per acre. Not the best, but better that they expected given all of the moisture damage.

While the weather was warm during most of the week, it really cooled down yesterday. This morning our thermometer registered 31 degrees, and wunderground.com (our favorite weather site) reported 32 degrees.

Pat and Jeanne spent a lot of time researching genealogy. They visited a cemetery not far from Prescott and then Pat and I went to one that was close to Brooks, IA. It was a very small beautiful cemetery.

We also got to see most of the relatives. Oftentimes our visits are so hectic that we don't get to see everyone. We also had a ton of fun and ate too much -as usual.

Tomorrow we will stop in Springfield, MO to visit some good friends. On the way we will take a slight detour to visit a cemetery where some of Pat's Kretzinger relatives are buried (Judy, one of the grave is Mary Isabella Kretzinger).

That is all for now.

Hello from Prescott, IA

2010-09-26T16:37:00.000-07:00

Hello from Prescott, IA

Sunday Evening September 26, 2010 (First travelogue of this trip).

We set up this blog to detail our travels and a few miscellaneous items. We have reduced our travel schedule quite a bit to minimize our expenses. A significant part of our travel was trade show related, and we often did not cover our costs on those trips. We finally decided to “stop the bleeding”. Because of the reduced travel, our posting frequency has been rather sporadic. Most of faithful readers know that they can sign up for email notification when we post. That will save frustration of checking in on the blog periodically.

We left Evergreen about noon on Monday. We stopped in North Platte, NE for the night at our favorite Wal Mart parking lot. We got a late start on Tuesday and arrive in Prescott about 6:00 PM. We have been going non-stop since then.

We are making this trip to visit family in Iowa and then travel to Branson, MO for an Eagle Bus Rally. From there we will go to Carthage, MO for a second bus rally and then home via a two lane US highway through rural Kansas and Colorado.

We are staying with Pat's relatives in Prescott, IA (map). We always enjoy staying with these folks and visiting all of the relatives. It is so convenient to be able to stay in the bus and still do a ton of visiting.

Prescott is a very small town (population 237). Pat was born about 10 miles west of here in Corning, IA (population 1554). Pat lived in the Corning area for 15 years, so she is used to small towns. For me, it is quite a change of pace, and I love it.

To give you a feeling of the small town way of life, Friday we marched in a parade down the main street of Corning (three blocks long). The parade was to celebrate the high school homecoming. One of the relatives is running for county supervisor and we marched behind a truck with his banners on it. It looked like the whole town turned out for the parade. What a blast.

We left a bone dry Colorado and landed in an area where they have had a tremendous amount of rain. In addition, it has been quite cool at night (43 degrees this morning). With all the humidity, we are freezing at times.

I had hoped to help with the harvest, but because it has been so rainy, the crop is behind schedule. However, we have been very busy doing all kinds of things including looking at auger cart and semi-trucks for the farm. Today we went to an auction run by some of Pat's relatives. This was not a great auction in terms of items, but it is always fun to people watch and listen to the auctioneer's chant.

Thats all for now.

Hello from Evergreen, CO

2010-08-21T19:13:00.000-07:00

Hello from Evergreen, CO

Saturday evening August 21, 2010

Wow, it has been over two weeks since I last posted.

First, I would like to post a picture of the grandkids at the campground. Boy are they growing up fast. I noted that Brando is wearing a shirt we gave the kids from a bus rally several years ago. That is our bus on the front of the shirt.

The rest of the family vacation week was a combination of relaxing, eating, and generally having fun. The remaining two families went home Thursday. Their busy schedule dictated early departures. We felt lucky to have had them at the campground as long as we did. We left Early Friday and had a good trip home.

We had two of the Jeute kids with us all week even though their folks were only able to stay a couple of days. Nathan got to ride up the the campground in the bus and Isabella got to ride home. Pat drove the PT Cruiser both ways so that we had a car with enough seats.

We had planned to travel from the family vacation to a rally in Indiana and then several stops including Ohio, a friend in KY and then to TN to visit friends and install a system. After weighing the cost of the rally, the fuel and all of the other costs, we decided to pull the plug on the trip. We would have also been fighting some terribly hot weather.

In lieu of the long trip, we were going to make a quick trip back to Iowa in the car to visit the relatives. We have delayed that trip a couple of times. May try in a couple of weeks.

We thought when we got home with an “empty” schedule, we would get a lot of projects done. So far, it does not seem like we got much accomplished.

We will be traveling to Iowa and then on to a couple of bus rallies in the bus next next month. In the mean time, I will try to make a couple of posts just so that you don't think we have been abducted by aliens.

That is all for now.

Hello from Fort Collins, CO

2010-08-04T14:59:00.000-07:00

Hello from Fort Collins, CO

Wednesday afternoon August 4, 2010 (First travelogue of this trip).

We are at the KOA Lakeside Resort for our Family Vacation (map). During parts of this week we will have all three of our daughters and their families here in their RVs. That includes 8 grandkids.

Each year we plan a week long get together. For some, that may seem strange, as we all live within a 50 mile radius of our house and we get to see them often. However, this week is special, as we get to just relax together. Judy and her family were only able to make it for two days. However, we get to keep two of their kids for the week.

Two families arrived on Saturday and two on Sunday. Because of hectic schedules, the last two families will leave on Thursday (we leave on Friday).

We are only 87 miles from home. Kind of nice. Two of the husbands have been able to work a couple of days so that they don't have to count it as vacation (actually, one is a real estate broker, but he is able to keep up with some important business).

This campground has a ton of things for the kids to do. Some cost money, but they got a wrist band for $44 (for the entire length of stay) and they have gotten their monies's worth. There are paddle boats, electric bumper boats, a huge jumping bag, large playground, etc. They also get one free meal at the “chuck wagon”.

Yesterday, we took an eleven mile bike ride along the Poudre river. A wonderful trail culminating at the fish hatchery. The kids have been riding their bikes a bunch in the campground area (including riding around the lake) and I have enjoyed riding with them.

The weather has been a mixed bag. During parts of the day it gets uncomfortably warm. Several afternoons, it has rained. As I write this, it is very windy and raining pretty hard.

Because of all the water in the area, the mosquitoes are pretty bad. Fortunately, they only come out late in the evening.

That is all for now.

Hello from Evergreen, CO

2010-07-19T18:26:00.000-07:00

Hello from Evergreen, CO

Monday Evening July 19, 2010 (Fourth travelogue of this trip).

We are back home and for the second trip in a row, we did not come home behind the dreaded hook {big grin}. Indeed, the bus did well. I have my charge air cooler heat problem under control and that sure makes driving much more fun.

This morning we celebrated my birthday by having breakfast (my favorite meal) at the “soda fountain” in Chugwater, WY We then drove to Evergreen (about 170 miles) and arrived about 2:30.

We have had several discussions about how fun the Eagle Bus rally was. Part of it was being with friends who have a common interest, part because I get to talk unlimited bus {grin} and part because of the fantastic setting in Custer, SD. There is so much to see and we missed a bunch. They are talking about have the rally there again in 2012.

We always have a let-down when we get home and have to face reality. Pat is trying to get several things done before she flies to Salt Lake City tomorrow (Stampin' Up! Convention). I have several small bus projects that need to get done before we head out again at the end of the month.

BTW, I just updated the map that shows the states we have visited in the bus. We have now been in 28 states.

That is all for now.

Hello from Chugwater, WY

2010-07-18T18:37:00.001-07:00

Hello from Chugwater, WY

Sunday Evening July 18, 2010 (Third travelogue of this trip).

We are parked on the main street of Chugwater (map). We had decided to make our trip home (a bit less than 390 miles) in two days. I did quite a bit of thinking about where to stop. As I thought, a wave of nostalgia came over me.

In the mid '70s we joined a membership ranch in Wyoming (Flying X Ranch). It was located on Wyoming 34 not too far from Wheatland. We were among the first members and the membership was not all that costly. At the time we were living in Lakewood and getting away to a huge ranch with lots of wild animals, horses, fishing, swimming pool, square dancing, etc made for a great get-away. We spent a lot of time at the ranch and have a ton of memories.

The nostalgia creeps in twice in this story. First, the ranch had a bus that transported us to the ranch – yes an Eagle Bus!!!! Secondly, the bus used to stop in Chugwater to pick up meat for the meals at the ranch.

I did some searching on the Internet, hoping to find a picture of the Flying X bus. I will contact the ranch in the next couple of days to see if they have any photo achieves.

Chugwater is much like most small towns – dying. Kind of reminds us of Prescott. However, as I walked around, I saw the sign shown below. No question about it, we had to eat there. We talked at length with the owner and she said that while the rest of the town was mostly shut down, her business is doing very well. There was a couple in the “soda fountain” that had lived in Chugwater all their lives (at least 70 years) and they remembered the great meat store and talked about all of the gas stations, stores, etc. that existed before the interstate went around the town.

Great sign that got our attention!

Chugwater makes a big deal of their chili contest and “Chugwater Chili”. So, of course, we had to have a bowl for dinner and it was great. We also had great malts.

Just across the street from where we are parked there is a small outdoor museum. One of the items is a sheepherders wagon. I had thought one time of putting mural of one on the bus and labeling it “Our Shepherd's Wagon” Pat was not too hot for the idea {grin}

Sheepherder's wagon in Chugwater

It was close to 100 degrees when we got here, so we have been running the generator to keep the bus cool. In SD, the weather was quite warm in the daytime, but cool in the evening. Last night we had a HUGE thunderstorm that got everyone's attention.

That is all for now.

Hello from Custer, SD

2010-07-17T21:51:00.001-07:00

Hello from Custer, SD

Saturday Evening July 17, 2010 (Second travelogue of this trip).

We are at the Broken Arrow Campground (map). This is a fairly new campground and does not show up in the satellite view. This is the site of the Eagles International Rally.

Today was the last full day of the rally. We arrived on Wednesday (7/14) and the rally officially started on Thursday. There is a good turnout with 21 Eagle buses and two SOB (some other brand).

Some of the Eagles at the Rally

Custer is located in the main tourist area of SD. Mount Rushmore is very close, as is Crazy Horse and many other fun destinations. Thursday we took the Wildlife Loop where we saw some really neat burros who tend to block traffic until you feed them. Later, we saw a whole field of Buffalo (perhaps 200-300). Many had calves who were still nursing. Later we drove over a tight twisty road to Mount Rushmore. You pass through several tunnels, two of which “aim” right at the monument.

Friday we toured Bear Country USA. This facility has a road where you drive through the facilities and view many wild animals including Elk with HUGE racks and mountain sheep. The last part of the road is through an area that has a large number of bears. The bears wonder all around the cars and one even started chewing on the front bumper of one car. At the end of the drive, you can walk through a zoo type area. One pen had several baby bears. There was a vet tech there talking about the bears. About four of the cubs were extremely playful, wrestling with each other and the vet tech.

Burros on the Wildlife Loop

Buffalo on the Wildlife Loop

Bear Cubs at Bear Country USA

We have had some wonderful meals with the group, concluding with a great potluck tonight. Of course, there was lots of social time and the guys all stuck there heads in each others engine compartments and compared note on their buses and some of the experiences encountered while driving our “toys”.

Tomorrow we head home. We should have a relatively easy two days of driving.

That is all for now.

Hello from Devil's Tower, WY

2010-07-13T20:38:00.000-07:00

Hello from Devil's Tower, WY

Tuesday Evening July 13, 2010 (First travelogue of this trip).

We are at the Devil's Tower KOA campground (map). As you will see from the picture, we are right at the base of this magnificent formation. There are a large number of reference sites for Devil's Tower, but the National Park Service site is: http://www.nps.gov/deto/index.htm. A couple of interesting facts from that site: 1) Devils Tower rises 1267 feet above the Belle Fourche River; 2) President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed Devils Tower the first national monument in 1906. Words simply can't describe how majestic this rock formation is, nor do pictures do it justice. Today we went up to the visitors center and then another fellow and I took the 1.3 mile hike around the base.

Four Eagle Buses with the Devil's Tower in the background

This trip is to attend a Eagle Bus Rally in Custer, SD. However, several Eagle owners decided to make a bit of a detour and travel to this location prior to the actual rally. There are four Eagle buses here (see photo with Devil's head in the background).

We left Evergreen Sunday at about 8:30 AM and drove to Casper, WY where we met up with two other chapter member couples. We all stayed in the Wal Mart along with several other RVs and trucks. We all went to the Olive Garden for dinner. Yesterday we drove here and arrived about 2:00 PM. We sort of took it easy and then went to dinner at the KOA restaurant. At 9:00 last night we went to the showing of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind “(shown at an outside deck area on a big screen TV with a great sound system) . This is a 1977 Stephen Spielberg movie about UFOs that centers on Devil's Tower as the landing site for a UFO. Kind of a strange movie, but it was fun to see the area in the film.

I want to digress and talk about a fun day we had on Saturday. The family got together for a celebration of Pat's birthday and Father's day (we were out of town for both). In the morning, Pat had a Stampin' UP! party so Kelly, Damon and I rode our bicycle up Waterton Canyon – close to their house. This is a very scenic ride along the South Platte river ending up at the Strontia Springs Dam. The ride is 6.5 miles each way. The route up the river is a steady, moderate climb, which makes riding back a piece of cake. We got to see quite a bit of wildlife, but the best experience was seeing very young mountain sheep up on the rocks very close to the road. I have included pictures of the mothers and the lambs.

Mountain sheep in Waterton Canyon

Mountain sheep lambs on the rocks close to the road

As an added note, I have changed our blog picture to show the bus in front of Devil's Tower.

Tomorrow we will head for Custer, SD for the official rally.

That is all for now.

Hello from Evergreen, CO

2010-07-04T08:18:00.000-07:00

Hello from Evergreen, CO

Sunday Morning   July 4, 2010   (twelfth travelogue of this trip).

Happy fourth of July everyone.

This was quite a trip. We left in the bus on May 20th.   That means we were gone 45 days! Our trip took us through 8 states. We traveled 2900 miles. We even made it home without the benefit of a tow truck {grin}. During this trip we took a side trip, flying to Orlando to spend some time with Mickey and our daughter Lisa and her family.

Up until the last few days the bus did very well. In Kansas, we got a warning light that the water temperature was shutting the engine down. Water temperature has never been a problem. When I started to check out the problem, I found that the air line that turns on the radiator fan was melted and the fan was not turning. The water temperature got over 230 degrees, which is very high for a diesel and at the point that engine damage could occur!

Before I left home, I noted that some of the exhaust insulation had come loose, but I did not have enough time to fix it. The huge amount of exhaust heat coupled with the high ambient temperature got the engine compartment hot enough to melt the DOT type tubing (special plastic). The repair was pretty straight forward. However, getting the heart rate and blood pressure to settle down was not quite so simple. I drove the first few miles with my eyes scanning all of the gauges on the SilverLeaf, looking for signs of damage. After two days, and several hundred miles, the engine looks like it did not sustain damage.

Then yesterday, we had THE REAL SCARE – two miles from home. It is a very tough pull up long steep hills to get to our house (7500 feet). I had been keeping a close watch on the charge air temperature and was controlling it pretty well with some water misters that I had installed. We take a strange route home once we get to our tight twisty canyon road. Shortly into the canyon, we turn and go through a subdivision so that we do not hold up the folks who think the are champion race car drivers {frown}. In that subdivision, my fire suppression system warned me that the compartment temperature was getting high. About that time, it dawned on me that power was not getting to the wheels. The latter could be either a failed drive shaft, or worse yet, a failed rear end (think several thousand dollars). I checked and my engine water temperature was also climbing. My thought: two separate problems.

After I opened the engine hatch in the bedroom (180 degree engine compartment temperature overwhelmed the bedroom, I found another melted air line. This time, it was a major supply line. The fix was, again, pretty easy. As I was working on the fix, I recalled that my 10 speed transmission has an air operated “air shifter”. Could it be that the lack of air had put the range shifter in what would act like neutral? Well, that was the case! All was well and we proudly drove home without the tow truck.

Back to the last couple of days of this trip. From Junction City to Denver, it is 500 miles and we just did not feel like busting our tail to get home. We were pretty worn out from all the activities of this trip and I needed to do a bit of work on the bus before we hit the big hills. Our decision was to drive about 300 miles one day and then have an easy trip home the last day.

We ended up in Goodland, KS early in the afternoon on Friday. Of course, we stayed in a Wal Mart. We had to run the generator for the afternoon and early evening because it was very hot and we had to needed the roof airs. That kept us very comfortable. I had to fight a terrible side wind most of the way from Junction City to Goodland. Thank goodness the bus does well with GUSTING side winds. Had we been in the motorhome, we would have had to stop. We did get a kick out of seeing several folks trying to get their awing rolled up on the side of the road. A few years ago a huge side wind unrolled the awning on our motorhome and blew it over the top. It was not a fun job to get everything back in place!

We parked in the Wal Mart such that the wind was blowing on the side of the bus and it rocked us pretty badly until late evening.

As a part of my effort to keep make the charge air cooler more effective (keep the air inlet temperature down), I have been playing with water misters. This is a technique that many folks use on buses that have water temperature issues. The concept is to spray the radiator or charge air cooler with water from the domestic water supply tank. I have made many iterations of the system, but none seemed all that effective. So, I decided to redo the system once again. I walked over to a farm supply store, hoping to find a agricultural spray head that would work. They had spray heads, but none were easily adaptable. Then the light went on. I use special spray nozzles on my fire suppression system that would be just the ticket. I cut up my existing system and modified it so that I could use my heads. They flow a lot of fluid (2.25 gallons in 45 seconds with three heads). So, I have to flip on the switch on for only a few seconds at a time when the temperature got too high. The testing I did on the hills of SW Kansas and eastern CO suggested that they did a good job and would allow me to climb the big long hills to our house with minimal problem. Turned out that was the case.

I have been working on the hydraulic fan system (some details in previous posts) and think I have the handle on how to make it work better (change to a more viscous fluid). All in all, I think I have the charge air cooler problem at a manageable level.

That is all for this trip. We leave again next Sunday to travel to Custer, SD for an Eagle Bus rally. Stay tuned.

Hello from Junction City, KS

2010-07-02T05:48:00.001-07:00

Hello from Junction City, KS

Friday Morning July 2, 2010 (eleventh travelogue of this trip).

The Fleetwood rally was both fun and rewarding. We did a little bit of touring of the small town of Du Quoin – mostly to go eat or have ice cream. The Du Quoin fairgrounds are well equipped and nicely landscaped. However, it is quite spread out, and not easy to walk to everything. They had tractors pulling passenger trailers and that helped. Some folks drove their cars or golf carts. It was pretty darn hot and humid, so most folks did not walk to the events. Indeed, the attendees at these rallies have a few years under their belt and walking can be a challenge. The huge building we were in was well equipped including good air conditioning. The building was large enough to have a dining area for over 1000 people, the vendor area and several display motorhomes – and not be crowded.

They had two nights of entertainment. The first night seemed way too loud and we left early. The last night of the rally they had a great group. It was three guys that played perhaps 20 different instruments. They played a wide variety of music and the drummer mimicked some famous artists with very humorous skits.

The fairgrounds are the site of the Illinois state fair. It has several barns, a horse trotting track and a full horse race track. We saw several trotting horses (with the carts) working out on the track right in front of the bus.

I was able to ride my bike quite a bit and that was fun. Daughter Judy wrote a comment to one of our blogs that she was glad that we were getting some exercise. I suspect that her idea of exercise and ours is a bit different {grin}.

At the smaller rallies, we set up a double booth. On one side we have our fire suppression products and on the other side we have the SilverLeaf (http://www.silverleafelectronics.com/) products. The SilverLeaf products take the vast amount of engine data from the diesel engines data port and display them in the form of an electronic dash. It is a top notch product that folks really love.

This was a unique situation where the owner of the company spent a great deal of time in the booth. He was attending the rally because Fleetwood is a significant customer. In any case, Martin is a great guy. He fits the description genius very well, but he also has a great personality. His being in the booth probably helped our sales.

Speaking of sales, we did pretty good. That was also true of the Fleetwood rally last year. Guess we will keep this on our “attend list”

In a recent post, I mentioned our '87 trip back east in our '56 Chevy. I am including a picture we took at the end of the trip. You will notice that Pat and the girls are in poodle skirts. The event we traveled to dedicated to the '50s era. Pat made the outfits and had each girls initial on the sweater (think Lavern and Shirley TV show). Of course, Lisa's sweater had an “L” and she got ticked off every time asked if she was Lavern {big grin}. BTW, I still have the Chevy. It needs a complete makeover, but it is still fun to drive.

Our Family and the '56 Chevy in '87

We departed Du Quoin Wednesday and drove a bit over 200 miles to a favorite stop: Isle of Capri casino in Boonville, MO. Yesterday we drove to Junction City and are staying in a Wal Mart (map)

That is all for now.

Hello from Du Quoin, IL

2010-06-26T05:15:00.001-07:00

Hello from Du Quoin, IL

Saturday Morning June 26, 2010 (tenth travelogue of this trip).

We are at the Du Quoin State Fairgrounds (map) for a Fleetwood motorhome rally. We arrived here Thursday (6/24). Set-up day was supposed to be yesterday, but they let us set up on Thursday. That was nice and gave us a day to catch up on projects.

One of the projects was to pay state taxes for the last two rallies. I really need to vent here. Both the state of New Mexico and Wisconsin are terrible to deal with. I have had sign up ahead of time (a huge project where they want vast amounts of personal data and the birth certificate of our third daughter (sorry Judy {grin}). The latter is, obviously, an exaggeration, but not much. Then trying to file my payment (unfortunately very small) is equally a hassle. I would say that I have spent at least 4 hours (probably closer to 6) on each state. In the case of WI, I can't file it till we get home, since they mailed me a “Letter ID” which is separate from my tax account ID number which they emailed me. Arrrrrgh. Of course, CA is terrible as well, but we did not sell there this year. Other states like WY and here in IL make it so easy. They hand you a slip of paper and you simply enter your gross sales and extended tax and mail it in.

Now, lets catch up on Hannibal. We chose to stop there because of some very fond memories. In 1987 we headed out in a '56 Chevy that I had just finished a total rebuild with all three girls and headed to Springfield, IL for a big car show. To this day, we don't know how we talked the girls into going with us (Lisa was 21!) but somehow we did. They were getting a bit restless, so we decided to do something fun. Somehow we found Hannibal (famous for being the boyhood home of Mark Twain). One evening we took a dinner cruise on the Mississippi and had a ton of fun.

So, we decided to take the riverboat dinner tour again and it was fun again. I have attached a photo of the boat taken from “Lover's Leap” (an overlook on the huge bluffs adjacent to the Mississippi).

River Boat Cruise taken from "Lovers Leap"

I had mentioned that we had observed some serious flooding of the farm fields in the river bottom areas as we traveled south. Well, just before we went on the cruise, we got a call telling us that they had to move the departure location up the river a bit to higher land. Indeed, the city had to install the flood gates in the levy that protects the town (see photo)

Flood gates installed in the levy

We also toured the Mark Twain Museum and the buildings where he grew up in Hannibal. At the museum there was an actor that portrayed him and he did an excellent job!!

We drove south on MO route 79 which is a part of the Great River Road. It was a nice drive, but we did not get to see the river very much.

The Injun Joe campground was showing its age. The sites were very small and close together, but it was on our route out of town and had 50 amp service which let us run all three of our air conditioners at once. I was able to take a dip in the pool and that was really fun.

I mentioned air conditioners. Wow, do we need them!! There have been heat warnings all over the area for several days. The heat index has been well into the 100s most days. Even the locals comment about how hot and muggy it is. The same is true here in Du Quoin. We only have 30 amp service here, but that lets us run two of the air conditioners and that keeps us comfortable.

Got to get ready for the opening of the rally today, so that is all for now.

Hello from Hannibal, MO

2010-06-22T08:43:00.001-07:00

Hello from Hannibal, MO

Tuesday Morning June 22, 2010 (ninth travelogue of this trip).

Lots of miscellaneous stuff to catch up on. Our wonderful campground in West Salem, WI was right on the La Crosse River. It looked like a good place to fish, so I bought an out-of-state 4 day license ($24). I guess that is not too bad, but compared to the very reduced fee in CO for folks over 65, it kind of hurt. Worse yet, I never find the time to fish in CO. I did not catch anything, but had a lot of fun.

I talked about how neat the campground was. We were lucky and did not have any close RVs except for the last day. Even that was not bad. The camp hosts even had great rolls and coffee for Fathers Day. We had only planned to say a couple of days, but we enjoyed the area so much that we stayed 7 nights! I have included a photo which does not come close to showing how neat the area was.

I brought my bicycle with me on this trip and have been riding it a bit. Pat got it for me as a gift a few years ago and it is the first high quality bike I have owned. The shifting is flawless! I was able to ride it on some trails in the campground area and it was a ton of fun. Rides were not long, but I still got a bit of exercise.

I mentioned that I had been working on a problem with the bus. It is not a huge problem, but my charge air cooler air flow is not what it should be and it allows the air entering the engine to get hotter than I would like. I built/installed a hydraulic fan system before this trip. That should have solved the problem, but it did not. I have been working with the fan blade supplier and he said that I must have a shroud to make the fan work properly. So, I fabricated one out of fiberglass in the campground (see photo). The photo shows the raw shroud with the fan. I wrapped the fan with cardboard to get the best fit I could, given the situation. The shroud doesn't look all that impressive, but once I got it trimmed up, it looked pretty good. That did not solve the problem completely, so I am doing some more system analysis and working with both the fan manufacturer and the pump/motor manufacture.

When we were touring the upper Mississippi, we saw some strange purple contraptions hanging from trees along the highway. Then we found one in the campground. It turns out that they are bug traps that are mounted in selected Ash trees. It turns out that there is a terrible infestation of Emerald Ash Borer (http://www.emeraldashborer.info/). This threatens ash trees in North America.

We left the campground on Sunday and drove a bit less than 250 miles to a truck stop close to Mediapolis, IA on US 61. We then drove a bit over 100 miles to Hannibal. Normally we enjoy two lane roads, but the two days getting here were not a lot of fun. The trip through Wisconsin was not good at all. The roads were very rough and there was a lot of tight twisty areas. In addition, it rained heavily during parts of both days. Indeed, it has been raining in the Midwest a bunch. All along our journey we saw flooding of the farm fields. The rivers are out of their banks in some areas, and there have been a lot of flash flood warnings. It is probably not bad enough to make the evening news, but the huge number of folks affected are probably really suffering.

We are staying in Injun Joe Campground (map). We will have more about Hannibal in the next installment.

That is all for now.

Hello again from West Salem, WI

2010-06-19T11:30:00.000-07:00

Hello again from West Salem, WI

Saturday afternoon June 18, 2010 (eight travelogue of this trip).

Monday (6/14) we took a northern tour on the Great River Road. We drove up the Minnesota side from the I-90 exit to Wabasha, MN and then crossed the river and came down the Wisconsin side. That whole valley is so beautiful! We stopped in Winona, MN for lunch in a great bar/cafe right on the Mississippi. They are famous for their grilled cheese sandwiches. Pat ordered the grilled cheese and I ordered a barbecue sandwich. We split the sandwiches and they were great.

Our next stop was Alma, WI. That is a site of one of many dams/locks along the route. Most of the dams are very shallow and are probably used for flood control. The locks have an elevation change of less that 10 feet from the looks of it. When we got to Alma, we saw a tugboat and 6 barges approaching the locks. It was taking some time, so we decided to look around Alma (very small town) for a coffee house. Well, not only did we find one, but it looked like it was straight out of the '30s or '40s. As you can see in the picture, they use a very old espresso machine. Not only that, they had great pie for Pat and I had a great scone. By the time we got done, the tug and barges were in the lock. I have attached a picture of them leaving. I have also attached a photo of the main street of Alma. It is very typical of the small towns all along the river.

Coffee House in Alma, WI

Tugboat and barges leaving lock in Alma, WI

Looking down on main street in Alma, WI

Almost all of this tour (a bit less than 200 miles) was in drizzling rain. Sounds terrible, but it really made for some neat scenery.

Tuesday, we just took it easy and I started a fairly major project on the bus (more in the next travelogue).

Wednesday, we took the southern route from I-90 to Dubuque and back. This was a bit over 200 miles round trip. We took the MN/IA side down and the Wisconsin side back. As was the case with our tour on Monday, the scenery was beautiful! The weather was bright and sunny, giving us a contrast to Monday. One of our stops was at the Effigy Mounds National Monument in IA. The history of these mounds is not well documented, but it appears that the Indians created them as burial grounds. Some of the mounds are huge in breath and width. Some are shaped like the profile of an animal. We took a fairly steep hike in the woods (about two miles round trip) to get to the Eagle Rock overlook. It was much more picturesque that the photo shows.

Mississippi from Eagle Rock in Effigy Mounds National Monument

We then drove to Guttenberg, IA where we had lunch right on the Mississippi. The first half of our return trip was a bit disappointing as we did not see the river. However, we did go thought some very neat little towns. On the last half to the leg, we were right on the river and it was again very picturesque.

Lunch on the Mississippi in Guttenberg, IA

With all of the pictures we are posting, we will cut this travelogue short and pick up with more details in the next one.

Hello from West Salem, WI

2010-06-15T07:37:00.000-07:00

Hello from West Salem, WI

Tuesday morning June 15, 2010 (seventh travelogue of this trip).

We are at the Veteran's Memorial Campground in West Salem, WI (map). Getting here was quite an adventure. We wanted to be close to the Mississippi in the La Crosse, WI area. We saw an advertisement for a campground as we traveled down I-90. Trying to find it with the convoluted route and very small marking signs was a real hassle. Indeed, we took the wrong turn and had to travel over some very narrow roads. Eventually we found the campground, but the first problem was it had the word “resort” in the name and we don't fit well in that environment. This campground did not look that fancy, but they were very proud of their real estate (close to $50 per night!). We were tired and decided to pay the horrible fee. When we tried to get to our site, it was obvious that it would not work out. We got our money back and headed to this campground. It is a wonderful place and less than half the price! It looked like it would be hard to get into the huge park, and my nerves were shot from our experience with the “resort”. We had to cross a small stone bridge to get into the park/campground. As we did, we noticed about four kids (perhaps teenagers or in their early '20s) fishing from the bridge. As we approached, they turned around and got grins on their faces. One gave us a big “thumbs up” and that made my day.

The campground is in a huge La Crosse county park that is dedicated to Veterans. The campground is quite large. It has a ton of hardwood trees, lots of cute little squirrels and is right on the La Crosse river. We originally paid for two nights, but have decided to stay four nights. We will use this as our base for at least two one-day trips along the Great River Road (more about that later).

We need to catch up on the FMCA rally. Simply stated, it was a disaster! Some of the organizers were less than friendly, the facilities were very marginal, and the attendees were not interested in spending money. They would not let Pat man the craft sign-up desk, and the result was a class of only 5 ladies. Normally she sells out very quickly with a class size of 25.

The building we were in was a barn on the fairgrounds. The booth size was not what was advertised/normal (9 ft front vs the normal 10 ft.). The booth size was not a big issue for us, since we had signed up for a double booth, but for some folks it was a very significant problem. One day was very hot and the building had very little ventilation. Traffic in the vendor area was very sparse. Usually some vendors are busy, but almost universally, most experienced very low sales. We were almost skunked, but did sell one Silverleaf unit in the last hour of the show! We have made the decision not to attend this event in the future.

Sunday, we drove a short distance to a very special restaurant in Delavan (Millies: http://www.millieswi.com/ ), WI at the suggestion of our neighbor Karyn. They specialize in pancake breakfast menu items. It was absolutely fantastic. The food was great, the drive was very picuresque and the little shops were fun for Pat. After we returned from breakfast, we packed up and headed west towards La Crosse. The terrain and farm buildings really reminded us of Germany. They have had a lot of rain and everything was green and beautiful.

I mentioned the Great River Road. This is national parkway of the Mississippi, established in 1938. It consists of many different highways that are designated as part of the system. It runs for 3,000 miles through 10 states. There are several websites detailing this parkway. One of the best I found was: http://www.experiencemississippiriver.com/. We plan to travel along this route on our way to Du Quoin, IL for our next rally. We have several days to make the trip, and we plan to enjoy this wonderful part of our country. I will post some of the details of this adventure in later posts.

That is all for now.

Hello from Elkhorn, WI

2010-06-08T19:05:00.001-07:00

Hello from Elkhorn, WI

Tuesday evening June 8, 2010 (sixth travelogue of this trip).

We are at the Walworth County Fairground in Elkhorn, WI (map). This is the site of a regional FMCA rally where we will be vendors. Tomorrow is set-up day and the rally runs from Thursday to Saturday.

After our last post, I realized that I was really dating myself. KCKA was the airport designation for the old Kansas City airport in down town Kansas City. I flew in and out of there many times. It was a strange airport with both ends of the runway defined by the Missouri as noted on this (map) It is still an active airport. Pilots considered it to be a dangerous airport for commercial aircraft as there was no room for error. However the safety record was excellent. The “new” airport is in MO and is designated KCI.

Our flight from Orlando was interesting. There were huge thunderhead clouds and the ride was a bit choppy. The pilot did not turn off the seat belt for at least 45 minutes. Pat had to use the restroom and “violated” air policy to do so. She was not alone.

We were picked up at the airport by the hotel where we left the truck (free as a part of a package of one night's stay). Our drive back to Prescott was uneventful or nearly so. We saw a lot of standing water as we got closer to Corning/Prescott. As it turns out, they had a terrible storm during the night (over 3 inches) and there was a lot of flooding in the town and farm land.

We spent Sunday catching up on things and getting ready to leave on Monday. On Monday we still had some errands to run and we wanted to visit Pat's aunt before we left. We finally left about 1:00 PM and drove about 200 miles to Coralville, IA (close to Iowa City). We did our typical Wal Mart stay, as we needed to stock up on some supplies.

One of the activities during our stay in Prescott included some pretty significant genealogy work. I had mentioned about our visits with Pat's dad's relatives. Pat and her cousin Jeanne spent quite a bit of time visiting cemeteries to gather more information.

Our drive today was terrible! We ran into a lot of rain and wind. I-80 was closed over the Mississippi and we had to take a pretty significant detour in Davenport. What should have been a 220 mile trip was over 260 miles of downpour and construction. We left about 11:00 and did not get here until just before 5:00.

We have an excellent location with no close neighbors (not the norm). We have electrical power and access to water. The organizers hosted a dinner tonight for the volunteers and vendors (again not the norm).

That is all for now.

Hello from the Orlando Airport

2010-06-05T09:12:00.000-07:00

Hello from the Orlando Airport

Saturday morning June 5, 2010 (fifth travelogue of this trip).

Tuesday we had a “down” day. We were pretty wiped out from the two previous days. Dan caught a nice bass (perhaps 4 pounds) in the lake that our condo adjoins. We barbecued the fish along with hamburgers and hot dogs for dinner. During the week, Dan and the kids did quite a bit of fishing. They all caught some nice bass, but they returned them to the lake.

Wednesday we went to Kennedy Space Center and had a ball. Two of the grandsons are pretty technically oriented and we had a great time looking backwards into the space program that put man on the moon. They have a Saturn V rocket on display and we were blown away by how large it is. We also took in an IMAX on the moon landing. After that, we had Adam (our taxi driver) take us to Cocoa Beach. There we had a great lunch at a restaurant on the beach and then went down and spent some time in the sand an surf. On the way home we stopped at the famous Ron Jon surf shop to get some T-shirts.

Thursday was Josh's (our grandson) birthday. We spent quiet morning in the condo. In the afternoon, we arranged for Dan and the two boy to take a helicopter tour (Josh's suggestion). It looked so fun that I scheduled a second flight with Josh and Brandon. Attached is a photo of us in the helicopter. For dinner Dan cooked a special shrimp pasta dinner (Josh's favorite).

Josh and PaPa

Yesterday, we again took it easy in the morning and then went shopping for souvenirs in the afternoon. We again barbecued for dinner (partly to empty the fridge).

This morning we cooked a breakfast using most of the rest of the food in the fridge.

Without question, this was a great trip!! We had a nice mixture of hectic touring and relaxing.

Our flight will take us back to KCKA where we will pick up the truck and head back to Prescott, IA

Thats all for now.

Hello Again from Orlando Florida

2010-06-01T12:09:00.000-07:00

Hello Again from Orlando Florida

Tuesday afternoon June 1, 2010 (fourth travelogue of this trip).

We had two great days at the the parks in Orlando. Before we get to that, lets talk about our transportation. When the Bergmans (another daughter and her family) were here a few weeks ago they found a wonderful taxi driver that has a 15 passenger van. Lisa negotiated a contract with him to drive us around this week. That includes 5 trips to the airport, a few trips to mouseland and then a day at Cape Kennedy and Cocoa Beach. This is a very convenient and and cost effective system. Our driver is great and is always willing to work with us. At the Parks, he drops us off close to the ticket booths and we get picked up in the same place.

Sunday we went to EPCOT. Pat and I go there whenever we are in the area (perhaps every three to four years). We love this park as it is pretty low key and has great rides and theme buildings. It also has a large lagoon surrounded by several “countries”. Each country has a structure representative of the architecture of that country. Some are displays from that country (e.g. Canada has a great surround movie that displays the wonderful beauty of Canada). Others have great restaurants with menus representing they typical food from that country. We always go to the German restaurant. It has great food, wonderful beer and fun music. Irina (our “German Shepherd” exchange student from '81/'82) often reads our blog. I can picture her reaction to our going there {grin}. Obviously, it is heavily slanted towards Bavaria and her very strong belief is Bavaria does not represent all of Germany {another big grin}. However, we always think of Irina and her family when we are there. This time it really brought back memories of her mother singing with a Bavarian entertainer when we visited Vail, CO. We had so much fun and her mother was such a wonderful person.

Our German Lunch at EPCOT

We were very fortunate at EPCOT. In spite of the holiday weekend, the lines were fairly short and we were able to go on all of our planned rides and a few extra. We stayed for the 9:00 PM fabulous fireworks and laser show. We arrived at the park at 8:30 and left at 9:45!! One of the group had a pedometer and we walked 9 miles! The weather was almost perfect, in spite of the predictions of rain. It did get a bit hot and muggy in the middle of the day, but cloud cover quickly took care of that.

Monday we went to Magic Kingdom. Again, the lines were not terrible. With the FastPass option, we were able to ride all the rides on our list and quite a few more. We were tired and decided to head home about 6:30 as opposed to staying for the fireworks at that park. Again, the weather defied predictions and was favorable. We only walked 5 miles there. The crowds were larger at Magic Kingdom, but not what we expected for a holiday.

The group at Magic Kingdom

When we got home, we ordered in Pizza and just relaxed. Today we are also relaxing. Dan's brother Andrew and his friend Brian are flying home today. We have had a ton of fun with them.

That is all for now.

Hello from Orlando Florida

2010-05-29T12:57:00.001-07:00

Hello from Orlando Florida

Saturday afternoon May 29, 2010 (third travelogue of this trip).

I debated on how to number this travelogue. If you read our previous posts, we made a somewhat quick trip to Prescott, IA for a funeral. We made this trip in our PT Cruiser, as the bus transmission issues were not yet resolved. However, we had planned a trip to the East (including Prescott) to attend a couple of rallies. So, when we returned to Evergreen, I finished up the bus and we headed back out on Thursday (5/20). This time in the bus!

We made our “normal” stop in North Platte, NE at the Wal-mart. Friday we drove to Prescott and parked at our relatives farm (our “Iowa Home”). Saturday we attended a wonderful wedding of Pat's second cousin. We were able to get to see almost all of the relatives in the Corning/Prescott area.

As a bit of background, Pat was born and spent the first 15 years in the Corning, IA area. She even attended a one room school house close to where her mom and dad farmed. We have visited the school a couple of times and it is still in good condition. Unfortunately, the farm house where she was raised is gone, as is her Grandparent's house. She still has a ton of relatives in the area and it is really fun to come an visit!

The next few days in Iowa were quite hectic. Pat and her cousin spent some time decorating graves and visiting relatives. I helped Bill plant beans and did some work on the bus. Pat and I also visited some relatives of her dad. This was fun and really contributed to her genealogy database. We also got to have a fun evening on her cousin's new-to-them pontoon boat on Lake Icaria (map). . This is a beautiful lake that is very close to the Corning/Prescott area.

On Thursday (5/27) we drove to the Kansas City area and stayed at the Travelodge (exit 18 on I 29). They offer a very inexpensive package for a night's lodging/parking/transportation to the airport. Indeed, the cost of a night's stay was about what it would cost to park at the airport. We had stayed there many years ago for the same arrangement. We were concerned that the facilities might have become run-down. However, it was neat and clean and that is all we could ask.

We got up at 4:00 AM on Friday to catch a flight to Orlando. This is a trip our daughter Lisa and her family had planned and they “twisted our arm” to come along. We arrived in Orlando a bit before noon and went to the local Wal-mart to get groceries for the week (staying in condos). The Kassels arrived about 5:00 PM and we have been relaxing. Our condo is a part of the Grand Beach facility (map).

We will probably start the “park adventures” tomorrow. The whole week has predicted afternoon showers, but we can work around that.

That is all for now.

Hello from Snow Central (Evergreen

2010-05-13T09:26:00.000-07:00

Hello from Snow Central (Evergreen)

Thursday Morning May 13, 2010 (Second travelogue of this trip).

We are back home after our short trip to Iowa for the funeral.

It rained for most of the first half of the trip home and then again as we got closer to Denver. Indeed, the rain turned to snow as we got close to the house. We have over 4 inches of snow on the deck this morning!

It took us about 12 hours to drive home. We took our time and made some longer than normal stops (one to do some Internet work). We arrived home last night about 6:30 PM.

Our short time in Iowa was very whirlwind. We were amazed at how small towns respond to the grieving families. Some of the families delivered food within a few hours of hearing the news. The food was abundant! Folks were very good about delivering the food, saying a quick condolence greeting and then leaving. They did not overwhelm the family.

Speaking of family, Joe's family is very large. We had a family dinner Sunday night and there were over 50 people there. The minister said a few words and asked for ideas as to what to say the next day at the funeral. That started an small avalanche of stories. Everyone was laughing and crying at the same time.

In my last post, I may have given you a slightly distorted picture of Joe. He was everything I described, but much more. To say the least, he was a CHARACTER! He loved life and lived every moment to the max. You would not be able to pick him out of a crowd, but he was larger than life. The minister concluded that many of the stories that folks related would not be appropriate for the the service {big grin}.

There were 18 of Joe's cousins (first second and third) that traveled from Denver for the funeral. That tells you how much our family thought of Joe!

We are off schedule for our travels. We had planned on leaving for Iowa next Monday for a wedding and then some family travel to Orlando followed by travel to two trade shows. We will still make the trip, but may not be able to make the wedding. Part of that depends on how my final testing of the bus goes. I think I have worked my way through the problems and have a plan.

I am a little surprised that none of the readers noticed that I posted the wrong month in the text my last post. Seems anymore I don't know what month it is {grin}.

That is all for now.

Hello from Prescott, IA

2010-05-10T05:41:00.000-07:00

Hello from Prescott, IA

Subtitled: We will miss you Joe Holbrook!

Monday Morning May 10, 2010 (First travelogue of this trip).

We had planned to travel to Prescott next week, but those plans got changed last Thursday evening. We received a call that Pat's cousin, Joe Holbrook, passed away quite unexpectedly at age 55. He had had surgery to repair a torn hip muscle. Apparently a blood clot from the surgery caused the death.

We left Evergreen early Friday afternoon after my doctors appointment. We arrive in Prescott at 1:00 AM their time.

Today is the funeral and I will not do well. You see, Joe was a very special person. In a lifetime, a person meets a handful or two of people who are a cut way above any other friend. Joe was one of those people with out question.

Joe was a wonderful husband. He and Cheryl did not have children, but he was a very special friend to every kid he ever met. When we would show up in Iowa with our three girls, Joe would quickly round them up and take them for ice cream. They loved it!!! I suspect there were times that he did not have two nickels to rub together, but he still took them to the ice cream shop. But Joe was much more than that. We went to a family dinner last night (about 50 people) and the out- poring of love was unbelievable. Yes, that happens at other similar times when folks pass away, but it was quite different than that.

Our girls were devastated and immediately made plans to try to be here, in spite of their hectic lives. Two were able to make it, but Judy's family has had some terrible flu going on and they were not able to be here. However, she wrote a wonderful tribute blog (here).

I have searched for a way to describe Joe, and I can't find the right words. I looked up warmhearted in the Merriam-Webster dictionary and it said it was “marked by ready affection, cordiality, generosity, or sympathy”. That certainly described Joe, but there would be a much longer list for him. The term “heart of gold” came up several times last night, but that also fall short. Lets leave it that Joe was a very special person who defied description!

I should also mention that Joe was a very proud Marine. His funeral today will include a Marine ceremony. There will not be a dry eye in the place. He loved his country as much as he loved his family.

WE WILL MISS YOU JOE!

I will continue this travelogue when we again head out to Prescott and then travel to some tradeshows.

That is all for now.

Catching Up.

2010-05-03T07:12:00.000-07:00

Monday May 3, 2010

Catching Up.

I have not posted on this blog since April 1. As I have mentioned several times, this blog was conceived as a travelogue. We have not traveled since our fateful trip home behind the hook (tow truck). I thought I would catch up on a few things that have been happening since then. And for a change, it has been a pretty good month.

First, I have to tell you that we are still having some snow storms. Over the weekend, the snows in the mountains were huge. Two of our daughters were traveling in the mountains and had hectic stories to tell. Daughter Judy and her family were traveling in their new to them motorhome and got into terrible snow on one of our highest passes. Their story is here.

Last week we talked to our former German exchange student, whom we keep in fairly close contact with. She was asking about my analogy of the light at the end of the tunnel as related to some of the trials and tribulations we have been going through. It was obvious that she was concerned. I assured her that things were not as bleak as she had thought. It is always fun to talk with her and catch up on her family news.

Last week we went to a very sad funeral. The granddaughter of our good friends died at the age of 34 from cancer. She was developmentally disabled, but seemed to live a fruitful life based on considerable testimony from her many friends who live in the various community facilities with her. It really brought home how fortunate we are to have healthy productive children and grandchildren!

Speaking of productive children, we must brag on two of our daughters. Their books have been published recently. Kelly has written a great textbook for new teachers. This book is a continuation of a training class that she presents. The Amazon link is here. The ISBN number is: 978-0545167284 . Daughter Judy has published a children's book based on her llama business. The ISBN is: 9780984532308. It should be on Amazon in the near future. She has plans to visit disabled children's facilities with one of her llamas with the goal of helping the children cope with life. Now each of our daughters have been “published”. Lisa co-authored at least one professional technical paper.

One of our major accomplishments this past few weeks is to establish a new doctor “network”. As a retiree of Gates, we have to adjust to the changes of their insurance program. For years we have been in the Kaiser system. We felt comfortable with their program and our doctors. This year Gates dropped Kaiser and adopted Anthem. That meant that we had to find new doctors. Sounds simple, but that is not the case. Pat was finally able to find a rheumatologist. That was getting critical as she had to have her bi-monthly blood tests. Her rheumatologist recommended a doctor in Conifer (close to our house). We have appointments this week for our physicals. Hopefully we will feel comfortable with this new doctor. My physical will include the paperwork for renewal of my CDL drivers license. I have an appointment with the eye doctor who did at least one of my eye surgeries (now possible since we are in the new insurance system). I will need his sign-off on the CDL form because of my sight issues.

Now to the bus project. I have been trying to put at least 4 hours most days to get some fairly major projects done. The timing of these projects affect my ability resolve the transmission control problem. The major sub-project was to revamp the hydraulic system. I am adding a large hydraulic fan to cool the charge air cooler. This has been an ongoing problem since I installed the Series 60 engine in the bus. When the hydraulic system is finished (hopefully today or tomorrow), I will be able to operate the jacks from the same system. The jacks will permit me to easily elevate the axles off the ground. This, in turn, will allow me to place the rear axle on blocks in order to do some preliminary testing in the shop. That will make the troubleshooting much easier. I am sure that is paragraph is clear as mud to most folks, but the crazy bus nuts will understand {grin}.

Guess that is all for now.

Reposted with corrections: Hello from Mile Marker 117 South of Colorado Springs

2010-04-01T18:41:00.000-07:00

Hello from Mile Marker 117 South of Colorado Springs
Subtitled: I think the light is a train.

Started Wednesday Morning March 31, 2010 finished Thursday evening April 1, 2010 (Fifth travelogue of this trip).

The information relating the subtitle will become a bit more obvious as you read through this lengthly post

I am starting this post at a location that was an unplanned stop on this trip. We are having Internet issues, so I am not sure when we will upload this post.

We decided to stay over Sunday night at the Hollywood Casino so that we could watch several race programs (NASCAR, IRL and NHRA). Turns out that they were all rained out. However, we enjoyed the laid back day and the weather was pretty nice. Monday we drove to Trinidad, CO and stayed at the Wal Mart. We have stayed there several times as it is a nice driving distance to/from Evergreen.

Yesterday, as we drove through Pueblo, we noted that the transmission did not down shift as we slowed down. We made it through town OK in tenth gear and then continued on to this rest stop. I did quite a bit of trouble shooting and determined that the transmission computer had failed. I had a backup computer, but it was at home. I have been carrying the replacement parts with us for the past several trips, but in the rush to get on the road for this trip, we left them home. We were a bit over 100 miles from the house so we decided to unhook the service truck and drive to the house to get the computer. We left at 12:30 and arrived back about 5:30 after taking a detour to for a stop to get a backup disc from our printer who is going out of business.

I was able to switch the computer and we everything looked OK. All of the issues I had seen on the computer reader were gone and the transmission went in gear correctly. It was getting late, so we decided to stay in the rest stop.

Well, it is now early afternoon and we made it all the way to MM 116 – all of one mile. The transmission has gone into limp mode where it will not shift. I did quite a bit of diagnostic work with my computer reader with the help of the Eaton transmission representative – a great resource. We are both very puzzled as to what is going on, but we have no alternative but to be towed home. I do not think this a huge, costly problem. However, it needs to be addressed at home where I can pick away at the troubleshooting process.

The first tow truck that showed up was big enough (capable of hauling semis), but did not have the reach to hook onto the suspension. The second tow truck has been dispatched from Colorado Springs. Supposedly they have the correct equipment. I will update this post as we learn more and then try to post it later today. {note: we got home quite late and had Internet problems (see below), so the actual posting will be delayed.

The new tow truck showed up and had the correct equipment. It took at least an hour to hook up and pull the axles. We left for Evergreen about 3:30. We followed them to the weigh station where the DOT folks made them put on an “oversize load” banner on the back of the bus and the front of the truck (they were 85 feet total length). That was not a huge issue, since the towing company had the proper approvals.

The trip to Evergreen was quite slow. We had to take a route that allowed wide turns. We arrived at the entry to the Highlands about 7:00 PM. We unhooked there because we still have a lot of snow/mud in the yard and the area we would normally pull into was not available. The trip to our house was quite short which was a good thing since I was locked in second gear and that is about 5 MPH (recall that this is a 10 speed truck transmission). Besides, I was at least able to show that the bus was still drivable (small grin}.

As if all of that is not enough, we have a major Internet issue. We use Hughes Satellite for both the bus and the house. For the past several days we have not been able to connect with the satellite. We had been told that we had a problem with the satellite controller on the bus. We accepted that, as it is a fairly complex system and there are lots of things that can go wrong with the software/hardware. However when we got home, we still could not connect using our fixed dish. Lots of troubleshooting determined that our modem and/or power supply has gone bad. We have one on order, but it will be a few days before it gets here. I have been using the library to do some posting, but that is a real hassle.

Today we finally decided to get a Verizon Air Card. This will back up our normal system and give us options for connecting to the Internet when we travel without the bus. It seems a bit slow here, but we are pretty much off the beaten path for these kinds of services.

Now lets discuss the my reference to the light. Many of our recent posts discussed the fact that the past several months have been very difficult for us. I have made reference to being in a tunnel and seeing a light in the distance. We were not sure if it was daylight or a freight train. Well, our latest setback suggests that it could be a train {grin}. We can only hope that things get better.

BTW, Pat commented that I had handled the very stressful bus situation rather well. We were both pretty stressed, but we took the attitude “what can you do?”. We can only hope that things get better (they can't get much worse).

That is all for now. I will update the blog after I figure out what is causing our bus transmission problem.

Hello from Mile Marker 117 South of Colorado Springs (text deleted)

2010-04-01T12:03:00.001-07:00

This post had significant problems due to a file corruption problem. I have re-posted it with corrections in a new post.

Sorry for the confusion.

Hello again from Algodones, NM

2010-03-27T10:48:00.001-07:00

Hello again from Algodones, NM

Saturday Morning March 27, 2010 (Fourth travelogue of this trip).

We wrote our second post of this travelogue from this same location last Saturday. As we noted then, it is a fun, convenient, inexpensive place to stop. We are staying here two nights to wait out a snow storm that is hitting Denver. Besides we need to relax after a rather hectic show!!

The FMCA rally was a mixed bag. For the attendees, it sounded like it was a royal pain. The show was at the fairgrounds, but the camping was at the Balloon Fiesta Park, several miles away. The ran large commercial buses between the two facilities, but that must have been a logistics issue for the folks in the park. On the last day of the rally, there was a rollover crash on I-25 that had traffic virtually shut down. We could really see the impact at the show, as there were very few folks in the vendor area and 3 or 4 ladies missed Pat's craft session (after they had paid for it).

In addition, Albuquerque is over 5000 feet in elevation and the aging membership includes many folks who have health issues at that altitude.

Albuquerque was our first trade show in 2004. It was a disaster for us, as we were not prepared and we were located in the Balloon Park. At the time FMCA said they would not be back. I don't know what changed their mind, but they again held it in mid-March when the weather is really iffy. I think the attendance reflected the lack of enthusiasm for the location by the membership. FMCA always publishes the attendance, but they did not this time. We believe they were quite embarrassed. We have a semi-official count of less than 1700 coaches. That is, by far, the lowest attendance at an “International” rally. Attendance has been declining over the past few years. We attended some of these rallies before we started vending and went to several that were well over 5000 coaches and a few that were over 7000.

In spite of the bad attendance we did OK. We had quite a bit of interest in our fire suppression system and sold a reasonable amount of other product. Probably not enough to pay for the total cost of the trip, but better than many of our shows. It might sound strange that we don't cover the cost of our trips, but our philosophy is that we are “paying our dues”. With our kind of product, people need to build their confidence that we are trusted vendors. We have begun to see a bit of an up-tick in system sales that we attribute to contacts at the shows.

The booth had potential customers in it almost all of the time. Often there were several at one time. That is the good news. The bad news is that we were on our feet on hard concrete for most of the three days of the show. We had to get up before 6:00 each day and often got to bed well after 10:00. Not complaining, as we know the “drill” going into the rally. However this rally was harder on us than most. Hence the need to relax here at the casino.

In the last post we had a link to the map of our location at the fairgrounds. If you look closely, we were a couple of hundred yards from Central Ave. This is the old Route 66. We have talked a great deal about Route 66 in the past. It was a highway that ran from Chicago to LA. It was first planned in 1926 and finished in 1938. It has been immortalized in music, books, movies and TV. One of the best sites for the history of the highway is here.

I would love to quote all of the page cited above, but the following excerpt will give you an idea of some of the compelling content:

“In his famous social commentary, The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck proclaimed U. S. Highway 66 the "Mother Road." Steinbeck's classic 1939 novel, combined with the 1940 film recreation of the epic odyssey, served to immortalize Route 66 in the American consciousness.”

We have held off establishing a trade show/travel schedule pending resolution of the bus problems. Now that it appears that we are “back on the road” again, we will be firming up our schedule. The shows and rallies we are looking at are very exciting.

That is all for now.