"Arby" Shares photos of Shanda and her horse

I got to meet my daughters (Shanda) new horse "BEAR" while back in Houston. His name really should be "Teddy Bear" because she has him trained to be more of a pet than a horse. Shanda is into the "Parelli Natural Horsemanship" thing big time and is doing wonders with this guy. He follows her around like a loving puppy dog. No bridle bits. No shoes. Just love and mutual trust Arby

July 2011 Accident

Day 100 risking my life on the horrible roads and construction and
traffic of Dallas area. Guess I taught this pimple faced, pierced, mouth
breathing teen ager you should not cut across 4 lanes of rush hour
traffic............unless you want to be late to get back to work at your
burger flipping job!

Last I saw him he was WALKING back to his job. That was AFTER the cops
gave him a ticket.

At least my car is derivable. Not pretty though!

Not towable so Lora will have to follow me back to Houston when ever this
gig ends and I will get it repaired there.

"Arby"

<<<>>>

May 2011 Update

We have been working a hail storm in Dallas area for past 5 weeks. Just
when we thought it was about over a horrific storm hit us again last
night. (5/25). We took refuse in the bath house/laundry room/party room
while the sirens blared. Got a little bit of hail damage to my car but
the worst of it missed us. I have seen some cars today that were hit
hard. The report was baseball/softball size hail but I saw one car today
that looked like a bowling ball hit the windshield. We had about 35
adjusters here earlier but they had cut some loose and we were down to
about 12. Now they have 30 more coming back in tomorrow. I think I have
some job security for a while longer. Beats the hell out of working in
Joplin. Those poor folks!!!!

A few other interesting things going on in the ol KOA today. The little
race cars were out of their mobile garage. Talked to mom. Seems they
spend the summer racing 3 of these all over the country. Last week was
Texas Motor Speedway . Dad flies back to home base in El Paso and flies
back for races. Mom home schools. Nice kids!

This evening 3 motor homes pulled in next to us with two police escorts
from El Paso Sheriffs office. About 15 very nice young men bailed out.
They ran.............yes ............you heard me........they RAN from El
Paso to about 100 miles West of Dallas when the traffic got too bad, for
a charity thingie. They will spend the weekend here involved in a
" Special Olympics ". When I took this picture I told them to just relax, I
was just going to send it to the Sheriff to prove they were behaving
themselves. You should have seen them hiding their beer!

One more interesting thing. The Monaco parked next to me had the Gen
running for about 4 hours. The noise and stink finally got to me and I
went over and asked the young man in charge if he had an electrical
problem. He said yes...........when I plug it in the AC won't run. I said
let me try it. I plugged it in and turned on the breaker and all was
fine. He has only owned it since 2007. THEY WALK AMONG US!

Later I noticed he had his black tank closed. I 'splained that to him. He
thanked me and said "that makes sense".

Beware..............THEY are out there and they need help.

New Toad Pics

Well, after 101,000 driven miles including some hard "off roading" and
being towed at least 60,000 we finally decided to retire our 05 Malibu.
It is still in the family with Lora's daughter.

We decided to give another Malibu a shot since we had virtually no
problems with Malibu and the ease of towing. Got back to Houston 9/1. I
had been emailing 3 local dealers for the best price on the exact car we
wanted and told them that all I cared about was the price since they
would never see me again. Turns out there was not one in all of Houston
that met our requirements but there was one outside of Houston near where
we stay and they came in with the best price so made the deal on 9/4 and
picked it up 9/7. Got the tow bar brackets fairly fast and installed
yesterday.

Lora wanted the Gold Mist and a sun roof. I insisted it had to be white
since hail damage is so hard to see on white cars. I also wanted middle
of the pack as far as equipment which did not include sunroof.

I am sure we will really like our new Gold car with sun roof!!!!

While the shop wired my lights I also had them hard wire direct to the
battery my 350 watt inverter for running the computers and printers when
I am working. Also notice the little switch in the pictures. To tow, I
have to pull one fuse. This little switch replaces the fuse and makes it
much easier. I still need to figure out where and get the nerve to drill
a 3/4" hole somewhere to permanently mount the switch. Or, I just may
leave it where it is.

"Arby's" SHORT Off Road Trip

I was in the beautiful little town of Woodland Park, CO on Friday 13th
doing an estimate. The next stop was Monument, CO. The GPS said it was
only about 15 miles away. I called my next customer and he asked me how I
was coming there. When I told him, all he said was............"well, it
is very scenic".

I headed out and it quickly turned into a one lane dirt road through Pike
National Forest. Nice road and very "scenic". Only 8 miles to go. Not
bad. The further I went the worse it got. Got too deep into this mess
when I realized only dirt bikes and Jeeps belong here but I kept going
hoping it would get better. When I finally got to within 4/10 mile of
what I thought would be a better road it really got bad. I stopped and
walked part of it to check it out. Looked bad but I decided I could make
it................and I did...............sort of. Got within 1/10 mile
of the hopefully better road and steam started rolling. Had to keep going
at this point or no one would ever find me.

Made it up onto a relatively good looking road and engine started heating
up so pulled over and gave up. Cell service was horrible but after
several tries finally was able to let Good Sam know about where I was.
After several disconnected calls it was determined a wrecker would be
there in an hour. Fast forward to many other frustrating disconnected
calls and the wrecker finally made it there in 3 hours.

At last, all is well! Not on your life. The next 1 1/2 hours to get towed
over the worst 8 miles of rutted, washboard, switchback roads you ever
saw. There were a few switchbacks and ruts that the driver considered
unhooking the car and driving it through.

We finally made it to a shop back in Colorado Springs at 5:30. Great
folks and they assured me they would fix me up on Saturday and took me to
pick up a rental car.

I went by the shop on Sat morning and the tech working on my car advised
me that I should "never buy a lottery ticket with my luck". There was
about a 1 1/2" square opening in some sheet metal in the lower left
corner of my car which is the only place a rock could possibly have
gotten to my radiator.

Great service and a mere $675 later and all is well. I needed to flush my
5 year old antifreeze anyway.

Lesson learned................the GPS can go places that a passenger car
should not go.

"Arby's" Long Road Trip

Had an exciting little 325 mile round trip today to the metropolis of
Eads, CO.............population 300. Got to drive 14 miles down a dirt
county road. That is...........it was dirt except for places in the
middle where the weeds were up to my hood. I killed lots of Grass
Hoppers.

This idiot wanted me to estimate the hail damage on his four vehicles.
They were solid mud up to the windows. Four wash jobs would have been
worth several hundred dollars to him!

I have heard that route 50 (I think) in Nevada is "America's Loneliest
Highway". Obviously they never heard of route 96 in Eastern Colorado!
Sometimes I drove for 10 or 15 miles without ever seeing a house or
another car. No rest areas but not a problem. Just stop in the middle of
the road (which I did) and do what you gotta do. You can see 10 miles
either way if a car was coming.

One amazing thing was the "stored/abandoned" railroad cars. I found out
they have been there for over a year. I clocked one string of them and
it was an amazing 11.7 miles long! There were two more strings that were
a mere 3.7 & 2.8 miles long. I wonder what all that scrap metal is worth?

I am glad THE gas station in Eads was open or I would be stranded there.
Looks like the Texaco along the way might have been out of gas.

"Arby" and "Blondie" find THE Restaurant

Have you ever had a lovely steak dinner "a mile high" in a KC97 tanker? We just did. Check it out.

Solo's "The Airplane Restaurant"

Colorado Springs, CO

(Click to visit the web site)

Here are some pics of a real motley crew

October 2009

(L-R) Ray-"Arby"; Lora-"Blondie" ; Terry, -Mossrocker" ; Danette-"Songbird" ; Judy-"WW" & Joe-"Golfin' Joe


They will let anyone in here...	But the music is good....

...Real Good!	Yeah!

Thanks Terry for the photos

Great Rally....Bad Ending

JJ Weber, Heybob & I left the rally Sunday headed for Tunica, MS. Had a
little trouble in Memphis. Some Idiot (here after known as "Mr I") tried
to pass me on the right side. I was in the right turn lane and he was on
the berm. Lora started screaming "there is a guy on our right side and he
is going to hit us". I could not see him. As the berm tapered down to
nothing he tried to cut in front of me and clipped my right front. That
must have been enough to turn him sideways and I hit him squarely in his
left front door with my left front. I never saw him at all until I saw
this car spinning across 4 lanes of heavy traffic and hit a cement wall.
I don't know how he did not hit another car.

The big bang noise sounded like it came from the rear. I pulled over and
looked at my rear camera and the car was gone. I ran back to the rear and
the car was there and no damage. I had the right turn signal on which put
the right camera on instead of the rear. Now I am really confused what
the noise was. Found it in the front. See the attached pictures.

The cops investigated and determined they could not issue a ticket since
there were "conflicting stories". Mr I said I turned into him and there
were no witnesses. JJ & Heybob were behind me and they couldn't see what
happened and not one good soul in Memphis bothered to stop as a witness.
Anyway, the cops said our insurance companies would have to sort it out.
Thank God Mr I had insurance!.

While the cop was writing his report he was bent over Mr I's hood
writing. I maneuvered Mr I within ear shot of the cop and starting asking
him some questions. I said weren't you in this berm lane trying to pass
me on the right. He said "yea but I had my signal on" (like that
mattered). The cop stood up, looked at me and said "did he just say what
I think he said?". I said yes but he had his turn signal on and laughed.
Mr Cop said "that changes things" and promptly wrote him a ticked for
improper lane change. Whew!! I am off the hook insurance wise at least.

I need a new front cap, generator door, camera and some inner structure
repair. Talked to a RV Body shop today in Dallas and they say it could
take 3 to 6 weeks to get the parts and the repair will take about 4
weeks. This sort of thing has been my main worry ever since we went full
time over 6 years ago. Where in the heck do we live for 4 weeks?

Oh well, It will work out somehow. Compared to the poor folks on the Gulf
Coast, this is nothing. The good news is, no one was hurt and our "home"
is still usable and drivable although not too pretty. Funny.........just
about an hour earlier at a rest area Joe made the comment to me how nice
our motor home looked with no dents, scratches etc after 2 years. Maybe
it was all Joes fault????