All shook up…

We be a little shook up, and a whole lot lighter in the wallet, but we be safe. Sixty miles north of Logan, Utah, on I-84, the right front tire of the Bluebird blew. It was awful. An explosion and the bus is lurching violently toward the ditch. Trucks doing 70 mph right on our tail … I don’t know how Davey managed to keep us on the road. If he hadn’t been paying attention we would have lost it, for sure. (Coincidentally, we heard about a blowout at nearly the same place a couple of weeks ago when a 15-passenger bus rolled and killed 9 Utah State students.)

Adventures on the road! Can’t have so many good ones without a knarly one every now and then, I guess. Whew!!

We’re getting ready to head south. Seeing family and friends this past summer has been wonderful. When I count my blessings I put my brother and his wife at the top of my list. They are taking such good care of my mother, and doing it with a loving spirit. It allows me to travel without worry and guilt. I’m very, very grateful.

Our company meeting near Orlando was not the high powered sales training we expected (and hoped for). Rather, it was our introduction to Southern values and Southern cooking (and eating). A big Southern value is connection to family, and Southeast Publications is a big family. So we met a hundred of our fellow sales reps and our leaders and tried not to fall into judgement. I opened a cupboard in the dark and smacked myself in the eye the morning of our first meeting. Every day the blood seeped deeper into my orb and creases and very few people asked how it happened. They might have looked at Dave funny. It helped keep me out of judgement.

Parenthetically, LeRoy Smith, a very large, very slow talking colleague from Missouri, offered a suggestion to explain my black eye: Jes tell ‘em he said to “Siddown and shuddup,” and you didn’ hear the “shuddup.”

Every now and then we have to remind ourselves that we have chosen to work in a trailer park bidiness, and we are living a more or less trailer park lifestyle. Sometimes it’s kind of a shock. But Ah’ll tell yew whaaat … it’s allus interestin’.

So we’re off, in a few days, headed south and east. We will be looking for RV parks to work, having given Les Schwab a very large part of our maintenance budget (A little over $3,000 for tires, for those of you who are thinking of joining the lifestyle or are saying, maybe later, and looking for validation.) Attached are pictures of the kids, and one of Honey-Ma with her new scooter. She asked this guy if he wanted to run down to the tavern; I just have to trust that he passed. This time.

Love to all.

Sam