New Beginnings

 In 2003 I developed a terrible case of tendonitis known as 'tennis elbow'. I had heard of it but this was my first experience with it and it was very painful. I was in the business of meeting people and it hurt so bad when I had to shake hands. It had gotten so bad that I could not extend my arm when shaking hands so I had to stand close so as not to extend my arm and work hard not to grimace every single time. I tried pain relievers and anti-inflammatories of all kinds without success. It was not going away or getting better so I bought one of those velcro forearm thingies that was supposed to help. It did help some, but it was uncomfortable to wear and did not stop the pain. During that time I was experiencing chronic lower back pain and would see my chiropractor a couple of times a month. After a regular visit, I saw that he offered acupuncture as one of his services. After an adjustment I asked him if he thought that might help my problem. I had known him for a long time a...

 When I met Carol Ann her brother law Jimmy drove a small pick up truck that was branded under the name Datsun. This was many years before Nissan bought out Datsun. It was a cool little truck, it was small and easy to get around town in. His was a 1973 white truck with a cute little 4 speed standard shift transmission and was a solid little truck and I really liked it. Growing up all my dad drove was the half ton Ford truck with a full 8' long bed. The first one I remember was a light blue1967 with a standard shift known as a 3 on a tree. That being the shifter was on the steering column an with no air conditioner. The next one he bought was in 1972 which was blue and white and was an automatic transmission and it did have air conditioning.  In 1976 I bought a 1972 Datsun pickup from a friend of Jimmy's that looked almost identical except it was red in color and Larry had taken off the factory 14" rear tires and replaced them with 15" Firestone Super All Traction (or ...

 It was January 1971 I was 13 years old and we had been living in the country for about a year and a half. Since we had lived here on this 45 acres my dad had purchased several cows over the past year and a couple of them had been bred so we were expecting to have some calves soon. As I find out, ideally you would like to have calves born during the winter as there are fewer germs and the cow's labor is usually not as hard on them as it is in the heat of the summer.  It was quite cold that night and one of the cows delivered a calf that was still born. This does not happen often in my experience, but it did that night. When we get up that morning and find the dead calf, we bury it and go over to our nearest neighbor, Mr. Frank Davis. Mr. and Mrs. Davis were both in their mid 80s and had lived in their current house for many decades and they kept an eye out for me and Danny as both of my folks worked in Denton. Any time a storm would blow in, Mrs. Ella Davis would call us and l...

 When I retired last year one of the things I wanted to do was to get back to riding my bike. Another item on that list was to get back to riding the Hotter n Hell Hundred bike ride in Wichita Falls again. As it turns out I did not ride many miles at all and I chose not to ride it last August. Though there are multiple rides to choose from 10k, 25 mile, 50 mile, 100k (62 miles), and 100 mile. I was afraid that since I had not ridden at all that even the 25 mile ride in that heat would have been more than I could handle.  Over the 8 or 9 times I have done this ride I have seen many people get sick from heat stress and I was not going to be one of those. Back in Episode 26 of this blog I tell the story of how I got started with this ride for the first time. I started riding once a week or so at the beginning of this year since I was determined to get back to it and logged around 100 miles or so and for one reason or another I simply got away from it. Habits sometimes are so hard...

When I first started this blog last year, during the summer of 2024, I wasn't sure what I wanted to write about so I started writing about the projects I had been working on since I retired a few months earlier in January. I thought it might be interesting to read those activities and posted several entries. After a few weeks I re-read them and even I was bored with the content and ended up deleting the several posts and consolidated them into a single story. After thinking about it for a bit, I re-started it with what has ended up being a collection of my trips, adventures and memories. I thought this would be a great resource for my grandkids and their children so they would know more about me than I ever knew about my grandparents.  By the end of the year I had published about 45 blog entries complete with pictures. One day I had the thought, 'what would happen if Google stops supporting and does away with this platform?' All of the work I put in to create these stories ...

 If you have never had cows or worked cows, it may surprise you to know that they are among the most curious of animals. I cannot help but laugh at them. After they have been in one area for a period of time and they are used to their surroundings they will notice when something has been changed or out of their 'ordinary' and they will have to check it out. If they notice that I have closed a gate that is usually open, they will immediately go over to check it out and see what is up. It is not just the 2 cows I have now, they have all been like this. I cannot tell you how many times I have shut the gate to the small pasture next to the house so as to move hay, or cut trees or some other activity that I do not want them in there, they will walk up to the gate and just stare at it, as if they stand there long enough it will just open up for them. Anytime there has been a very strong storm, I almost always some tree damage that will range from a broken branch to a split tree. When...

 Earlier this week I finalized plans to do a bike ride on Saturday morning with my buddy Larry. We were going to meet at the college parking lot at 6:45am and ride toward Valley View then back to Lindsay. After that we would head over to the Gainesville Municipal Airport. By now we have completed just over 18 miles on the bike ride. The airport was having a breakfast for those that have an airplane at one of the hangers. We had a nice breakfast and I met more people than I can remember names. After we finished breakfast and visiting with a few more folks, Larry says, hey I haven't had my plane out in a few months, would you like to take a ride? I said sure. He does his pre flight check list and we pull it out of the hanger and head to the runway. We taxi to the north end of the runway (since we had a south wind this morning) and take off. It is surprisingly warm inside and as we build speed down the runway to take off the plane kind of bumps and bounces until the tires get off the ...

 I met my Highway Patrol Trooper neighbor a couple of years ago when he arrived at my house to investigate an accident. As it turns out, a guy was driving his car and had a heart attack and died behind the wheel. As his car proceeded down the hill just east of my place it maintains its position on the roadway for a quarter mile or so and then drifts across the centerline to the left, leaves the road, travels a short way down the bar ditch and comes to a stop when it strikes my front pipe fence. A guy driving the opposite direction witnesses the car as it leaves the roadway and sees it hit my fence. He stops in my driveway and and goes to the other vehicle. The engine is still running, the doors on the small car are locked and the driver is non-responsive. He runs to my front door and rings the doorbell multiple times and by the time I get there, no one is at the front door. I step out on the front porch and see him running back to my driveway and yell at him asking what he needs. H...

  I am not necessarily proud that I had to work long hard hours (meaning 60-70 per week as a normal work week) throughout the majority my adult life. What I am proud of is the fact that nobody ever   gave   me anything and everything I achieved, I did it through hard work, perseverance and determination. I worked longer hours than most people I know not because I wanted to, rather it was the price I paid to provide for my family and achieve what I consider success. I figured out many decades ago that in order to be a success I would have to pay the price of money for a college degree, or pay the price time and work my way through the ranks. I am convinced that a large part of my adulthood success was because I simply out worked most of the people that I worked with and was determined to be better than they were in as many ways as I could. I have to say it paid off, though I did end up working for about seven years longer than I had planned and did not retire until the age...

  It is July of 2001 and I have just received my 5th or 6th Jury Duty Summons since I registered to vote for the first time in 1976 when I was 19 years old. Each time I got one of these summons in the mail before, the case had either settled before the jury selection process started or I was not selected for one reason or another so I have never served on a jury. I have always wanted to do this, at least once just to see how this process worked in real life versus how it is portrayed on television or in the movies and I expected this one to be no different. This case was filed in District Court and was about a property owner who had agreed to be paid by a power utility provider to set one of those very tall metal transmission towers on his property complete with easement access. He agreed to this arrangement for $75,000. Shortly after construction started, he decided he was entitled to a larger sum of money, which they refused to pay so he was now taking them to court to get the $3...