Red Bay, Alabama

October 31, 2006

When I last wrote, we were in the Richmond area, visiting our son and his family. We had a wonderful time, going to various activities the family was engaged in. We went to an indoor facility, where people could race in small gasoline-powered race cars. Kathleen and Sean participated in one race, then Tom, a die-hard NASCAR racing enthusiast, participated in another. It was interesting. There was no coordinated start. All the folks seem to get out and go as fast as they could. The winner was determined by who had the best average time, or perhaps it was the fastest lap, I am not sure which. Actually the main point seems to be to go as fast as possible, without skidding out on the turns (There were a lot of sharp turns.) and avoiding hitting anyone. Occasionally cars ended up on top piles of tires defining the side of the track; such an event resulted in instant disqualification. Anyway, our racers did pretty well, and had fun. I think Sean came in either second or third.

We left the Richmond area and went to Gaffney South Carolina, to have our chassis serviced. The Freightliner factory that manufactures all their RV and school bus chassis is located here. We got what was probably the most thorough service and inspection of any of our regular checkups. We also visited the Freightliner factory which was quite interesting. We watched them put wheels, motors, transmissions, gas tanks, etc and all the wiring and stuff needed to make a chassis. It is a lot more complicated than I anticipated.

From Gaffney we hurried on to Red Bay, Alabama to get our rig worked -- sort of an annual checkup – and that is where we are now. While here, we met some people who were trading 2005 RV for a new 2007 RV in the process of being manufactured here. We looked at the 2005 RVand it was so beautiful we wanted to buy it --- so --- we called the dealer (in Texas), made a deal, and will have a new (to us) motor home, when the motor home that the former owners are buying, is completed, probably next week. Madeline and I are very excited about soon having a new home.

World Series --- wasn’t it great the way the Cardinal came through in the last minute to win their division, although with a terrible regular-season record, and then go on to eventually get to and win the World Series. Since I saw the Cardinals in spring training, it was special delights to see some of these same players succeed in October.

Finally a word on this blog, if you use the Yahoo or Google home page, you can create a link to your home page, by scrolling down to the left of this blog, and clicking in the appropriate place under “Links”. To make a Google home page go to www.google.com and then click on “Make Google your homepage!”