GREAT TO HAVE KELLY HOME AGAIN:))

NO, THAT'S NOT A PICTURE OF KELLY......IT'S A HORSE!!

An absolutely beautiful morning & the cooler 63F temp meant no bugs, flies or mosquitoes in the forest.  There is a calming & soothing magic that begins along forest trails at this time of year.  There was a feeling of peacefulness as Max, Checkers & I made our way through the still morning air of the crisp & dampened pine woods.  We just took our time along the trail taking in the sights, sounds & smells around us.  Well, Max & Checkers took in more of the smells than I did.  I still can't smell too much right now but hopefully that will resolve itself soon & I can once again be down on the trail with the guys, sniffing my way right alongside them.

NICE QUIET MORNING DRIVE

Needed a few groceries today so hauled my carcass out of the house later, threw it in the Jeep & took myself on a long round about slow country drive through our rural neighborhood slowly savoring all of nature's wonders around me.  We are so fortunate to live in such a beautiful land.

 

Despite feeling a little pooky by mid morning, I did muster up some reserves & gave the Jeep a good washing.  I was surprised to find a huge load of hardened mud underneath between the skid plate & the floor.  I was able to crawl underneath & loosen it up with a metal power bar.  By the time I was finished I had a third of a wheelbarrow loaded with mud.  The garden hose with nozzle on the 'Jet' setting took care of the rest.  That mud was ram packed in there about 6 weeks ago when we took that little 'bush tour' with the Jeep guy one night after supper.  I hadn't realized the mud had been there all this time.  It made me think again about why anyone in their right mind would take a perfectly good vehicle & deliberately run it through sink holes in a swampy bush.  So, in other words, 'what the heck was I thinking!!!!'

THIS IS THE BEST TIME OF YEAR FOR FINDING SPIDER WEBS

Kelly made it home from Spencerport NY about 1:30 this afternoon.  That is always an absolutely grueling drive through heavy Hamilton/Toronto traffic.  The situation with her Dad is very dire & grim.  Half way home she stopped to phone her Mother & see how her Dad was doing.  Shortly after she had left this morning he was taken by ambulance to an emergency Hospice center.  He will not likely return home again.  Kelly had an extremely stressful week to say the least & was so happy to get home to our quiet little forested oasis where we specialize in peace & quiet.

I have been pouring a lot of thought into this whole blog thing again & am on the verge of making some very definite changes.  I don't think I can put it off any longer if I want this blog to survive.  I have not felt comfortable with some of my content for quite awhile. There are a lot of new & fresh RV related blog sites appearing almost daily out here in blog land & I've noticed some of them really seem to be taking off quickly garnering a fast following with many comment responses.  Most of them are good blogs I guess but a few just leave me sitting here scratching my head & wondering about their content.  I have read them over & over asking myself, how did these blog's get so popular?  It sure has me taking a long hard look at my own efforts here with regards to improving my posts.

I know there are readers out there who think I shouldn't change a thing & would like me to keep the blog content as it is.  Maybe I can still do that but I have to get a whole lot smarter about how to do it if this blog is to continue.  Rants & opinions have their place & for the most part I do enjoy writing them but I sometimes go waaaaay overboard & end up shooting too many holes through the bottom of my own canoe.  For awhile now it seems the paddling has been getting harder for me & I feel my blog is becoming too heavy with opinions, too heavy with long rants & too heavy with just too much mud stuff!!  That wasn't my intent when I started out nearly 3 years ago & I feel I have lost a fair slice of my original focus. And I'm sure I have also lost a fair slice of readers as well, although the numbers show the opposite.

Anyway, amongst all this gnashing of teeth & wringing of hands I was totally surprised & heartened this afternoon when I noticed we had picked up 3 new blog Supporters all at once.  I would first like to offer a big thank-you to, ME AND MY DOG  Much appreciated, my new friend.  The name, LUVGLASS   rang a bell for me & I remembered briefly seeing that name on Twitter a couple years ago.  And, as it turns out, we were actually in email contact with this person 4 years ago in regards to a Cobb Cooker.  I see we have some mutual friends & I actually did receive a couple nice emails from these folks not too long ago.  Thanks guys.  Martha & Terry over at the GYPSY LIFE JOURNAL round out our new trio of Followers.  Thanks to all you good folks for climbing aboard as blog supporters.....you folks surely made my day:))

GROANER'S CORNER:(( Read this following email message carefully.  Maybe read it a second time.........

Did I like nut another to it send do to better anything  have doesn't that person a like this reading time sweet your took you since.

Were you able to make any sense out of it.........No?  OK, try reading it backwards then:))

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Tourists see the world, travelers experience it.

"UNTIL ONE HAS LOVED AN ANIMAL, PART OF THEIR SOUL REMAINS UN-AWAKENED"

OUR BLOGGER WEBSITE http://thebayfieldbunch.com/

OUR PHOTO ALBUMS http://picasaweb.google.com/stargeezerguy/

AL'S SMUG MUG PHOTO GALLERY http://stargeezer.smugmug.com/ (a work in progress)

The only thing better than right now will someday be the memories of right now...... AL.

(Now read it backwards)

AN AFTERNOON CAMPFIRE

A QUIET & RELAXING BACKYARD CAMPFIRE THIS AFTERNOON

It was the best sleep I have had in years & years & years.  After downing my little Dimetapp codeine cocktail last night I went to bed shortly after 10.  Despite a short pit stop somewhere in the pre-dawn hours I slept right through to morning.  If I hadn't lost the keys to the Jeep I might even still be sleeping but in my dream world I was in the middle of a busy big city intersection trying to find my keys while cars all around were honking uncontrollably.  No wonder I woke up with a start at 5:30 this morning.  What a huge bonus it was to have actually had a good night's sleep for a change.  Made me feel like a new person this morning.

My energy lasted long enough this morning to get the doggy guys all the way around the pine trail, get the grass cut, pull some weeds & repair an electrical cord in the carport.  By early afternoon I was back in my recliner.  I have one anti-biotic pill left for Saturday so hopefully that will be the magic bullet that turns this thing around.

For readers who sometimes send in questions to bloggers & maybe do not receive a reply, be sure to read RICK'S POST this morning on, 'why.' 

If you are Motorcycle person living in the northern latitudes & would like to take your bike south with you in the winter check out RV LIFE ON WHEELS posts over the last few days to see how they are going to do it.

For all you diesel drivers out there you might want to read RETIRED ROD'S POST today & see what he has found out about the new mandatory 'Urea' technology being added by manufacturer's to their newer diesel engine truck models.  And yes, it is going to cost you money!!

Rene over at LIVE-WORK-DREAM expresses some heart felt thoughts about the realities of full timing & their new found friends in the mountains of Colorado.

Have been having some strange happenings on my side bar over the past couple weeks with things mysteriously disappearing.  This morning I noticed KAREN IN THE WOODS had vanished off our 'Blogs We Follow' list.  I have re-added Karen & I see where they are just getting into the fine points of, 'Toad Towing' for the first time.

JERRY & SUZY may be in California at the moment but big winds tore into their Escapee Park back in Benson Arizona this week doing some damage to their place & others!!

Kelly has had a difficult week in Spencerport & will be returning home tomorrow afternoon.  One day to rest up & then it's back to her very busy Deer Park Lodge job.  The latter part of August has turned out to be kind of difficult for us but at least we are heading into the all round best time of the year.  Did you realize Christmas Day is only 4 months from yesterday.  I wonder where we will all be by then................................

GROANER'S CORNER:((  Old age is when former classmates are so gray, wrinkled and bald, they don't even recognize you anymore.

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Tourists see the world, travelers experience it.

"UNTIL ONE HAS LOVED AN ANIMAL, PART OF THEIR SOUL REMAINS UN-AWAKENED"

OUR BLOGGER WEBSITE http://thebayfieldbunch.com/

OUR PHOTO ALBUMS http://picasaweb.google.com/stargeezerguy/

AL'S SMUG MUG PHOTO GALLERY http://stargeezer.smugmug.com/ (a work in progress)

The only thing better than right now will someday be the memories of right now...... AL.

BETTER DAYS AHEAD.....I HOPE

EARLY SIGNS OF AUTUMN ARE UPON US

At the risk of sounding like an old broken record again I'll just say that it hasn't been the best of days.  Seems this viral thing lets me win a few & then grabs me by the britches & slams me to the ground again.  I was very encouraged by Tuesday mornings energy levels but after a rocky night again I have spent the majority of my day in the recliner somewhere between the History channels 'Tank Battles' & Al's Snoozeland.  Not much of an appetite but I did whoop up a big bowl of oatmeal this morning.  We'll see who win's tomorrow's battle......Al, or the Bug!!

And it was 10 years ago today that I worked my last day for the Stratford Airport.  That marked the end of my years there.  It also marked the end of the many hundreds of thousands of miles I spent in the madness & chaos of Canada's infamous 401 super highway.   Known for having the heaviest traffic in all of Canada, I fought my way in & out of Pearson International Airport day after day running the gauntlet of endless heavy truck traffic & frenzied drivers.  Always under heavy stress to get all my passengers to the Airport on time to catch their various flights to destinations all over the world.  Blinding winter storms day & night & punching through heavy morning fog.  Rain, sleet, freezing rain, no matter.  People had to make their flights on time or lose expensive vacations.  Business men could not afford to miss meetings in Dallas, Vancouver, Atlanta or London England.  It was an extremely stressful job but I loved it then.  I was very good at the job knowing all the shortcuts to the Airport.   And I knew the traffic patterns like the back of my hand.  I knew what other drivers were thinking & going to do before they did it & I could slip through heavy traffic like a ghost in the night.  In the nearly 13 years I worked that job off & on I do not recall ever having any of my passengers miss their flights.  It was a crazy time back then & so different from the relaxed lifestyle I live now.  To this very day I still avoid driving through major cities or heavy traffic areas............. 

GROANER'S CORNER:((   A young blonde girl in her late teens, wanting to earn some extra money for the summer, decided to hire herself out as a "handy woman" and started canvassing a nearby well-to-do neighborhood. She went to the front door of the first house and asked the owner if he had any odd jobs for her to do.   

"Well, I guess I could use somebody to paint the porch" he said. "How much will you charge me?"Delighted, the girl quickly responded, "How about $50?"  The man agreed and told her that the paint and brushes and everything she would need were in the garage. The man's wife, hearing the conversation, said to her husband, "Does she realize that our porch goes ALL the way around the house?" 

"That's a bit cynical, isn't it?" he responded.  The wife replied, "You're right. I guess I'm starting to believe all those dumb blonde jokes." A few hours later the blonde came to the door to collect her money. "You're finished already??" the startled husband asked.  

"Yes," the blonde replied, "and I even had paint left over so I gave it two coats."   Impressed, the man reached into his pocket for the $50 and handed it to her along with a $10 tip.. "Thank you," the blonde said,

"And, by the way, it's not a Porch, it's a Lexus."

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Tourists see the world, travelers experience it.

"UNTIL ONE HAS LOVED AN ANIMAL, PART OF THEIR SOUL REMAINS UN-AWAKENED"

OUR BLOGGER WEBSITE http://thebayfieldbunch.com/

OUR PHOTO ALBUMS http://picasaweb.google.com/stargeezerguy/

AL'S SMUG MUG PHOTO GALLERY http://stargeezer.smugmug.com/ (a work in progress)

The only thing better than right now will someday be the memories of right now...... AL.