Y’all come back to this page. There might be more albums in the future, time permitting.

The day before the trip was not a good one. I was on the Hoosier State Press website attempting to register for an upcoming conference. I saw that the day and date of the conference did not match according to my calendar. I immediately called HSPA to let them know of the error and while I was talking, I noticed that the person who was wrong was me. All you can say in these kind of situations is, “never mind.”

I then filled out the form. The form had places for about 10 registrants and my browser, ever trying to be helpful, suggested that I use auto-fill. I did. Pretty soon I got a call from HSPA asking if I was having a bad day. I had registered myself 10 times.

In the meantime, I noticed in my call to HSPA that I couldn’t hear particularly well. I am in the habit of rubbing my finger over my hearing aids, which will make a noise if the batteries aren’t dead. I ran my finger over empty space. The left hearing aid was missing. I had just mowed the lawn. I will not write the expletives-you can imagine them.

For those of you young enough to still have your hearing, I will explain my frustration. Hearing aids are small audio amplifiers that you stick in your ear so that you can hear sounds. One hearing aid costs about the same as a Mac Book Pro. Get the picture? Why do they cost so much? The same reason the POTUS cannot control gas prices. They get those prices because there are a lot of old people who actually want to hear. They are impractical to make yourself so the companies that make them stick it to the old people.

I kept trying to think were that hearing aid might be. Finally, I wondered if it had fallen down my shirt. I checked and there it was. I don’t know why I thought of it; I had never found a hearing aid (or anything else) in my shirt before. The finding put me in a better mood.

I want to leave at 6 a.m. but I couldn’t really get to sleep. I keep grabbing my iPhone to see what time it was. I finally decided to stop grabbing it at got up a little after 4 a.m. The New York Times was already at the curb. I did get away at 6 a.m. Once I got past the Indianapolis airport, the temperature was 43 degrees. The high for the day was 83. I was comfortable all day by adjusting layers.

I decided to have lunch in Cairo, Illinois. There wasn’t much activity there. I stopped at Shemwell’s BBQ to have a pork sandwich. It needed a little salt and the sauce was different that any I had tasted before.

I made a few pictures before I left Shemwell’s and again at a rest stop in Arkansas. I arrived at my motel in Benton, Arkansas 13.5 hours after I left.

Day two

I had breakfast at the Best Western with Gil Niemeir of the Mechanical ministry Team, Christian Motorcyclists Association. As we were chatting, the weather map came up on the large TV. There was only one place in the U.S. that had thunderstorms. The front was just west of I30, the route I was taking to Dallas. I hurried up to get on the road hoping I could out run the storms. Just in case, I already had my rain gear on. I thought If it doesn’t rain, the gear will keep me warm in the 58 degree morning.

Within a few miles the storm hit. I had 300 miles of rain riding–some of it heavy. There was only one period in 330 miles where my face shield actually dried. I was never so glad to get to a motel. After a little Texas BBQ for a late lunch, I took a long, hot shower and fixed a cup of coffee with the in-room machine. I felt like a new man. I switched the air conditioner from cool to heat.

Michael Roytek was a fabulous host who made fajitas for supper that were spectacular. The assembled group including Randy Piland, Peter Simon, Roger Morgan, David Burke and me started talking about the planning of Boy Scout story-telling workshops. The general idea is to get Scouts and Scouters excited about story-telling. Naturally future stories are likely to be about the Scouting experience from the view of Scouts. They will learn skills that will be with them through life.

Day Two

Check out the Day Two album of pictures.

The day started with a newspaper, a cup of coffee and the view of a nice patch of grass in the middle of the table. Actually, the patch of grass reminded me of mowing the grass and that reminded me of losing my hearing aid.

Work started in earnest in planning multimedia workshops for the Boy Scouts. Peter Simon tried to keep everyone on schedule in making a schedule for the workshop. Peter was very good at getting a schedule done. Now we just have to see if it works. Peter likes to plan to the minute and most of the rest of us think of quarter days, plus or minus half a day.

David Carl presented information that humans can only attend to about seven chunks of information give or take two. By my count that makes five to seven pieces of information. After Peter had projected notes on the screen of 472 distinct units of learning we would teach in two days, I had forgotten where I was. I was in a planning haze. Roger Morgan hauled me out to his Texas sized vehicle and drove us to the Hard Eight Pit-BBQ place for supper. I stepped out of the car and the aroma of BBQ caused the planning haze to lift from my mind.

This was a BBQ to end all BBQs. I had never seen such a place. They do things big down here. It was an all you eat place too. Check out the pictures for the large array of choices. One of my favorites was shrimp stuffed with jalapiño and wrapped with bacon. Ever mindful of calories, I had a fruit dish with a side of brisket, sausage, shrimp and bacon, and corn on the cob and ribs. No bread of course.

Planning continues tomorrow.

Day Three

Planning the schedule comes to a close with the main part of the morning devoted to assignments for more work before the first conference. We used a trash can as a tripod and make a timed group picture just before the out of towners departed. I joined old friends Steve Ross and Chris Feola at Tokyo One for lunch and about 2:30 departed for Vicksburg, MS.

Both I and my Garmin got confused at the turnoff for the Best Western and I spent 20 minutes roaming through a hilly residential section with plenty of dead ends.

Day Four

I left Vicksburg in a morning so cool I eventually put on my electric jacket and gloves. It was  very windy too. I pulled into Madison, AL just in time to see Katie Brown’s dance class or at least a bit at the end. Parents and granddaddies are forbidden to be in the dance studio until the end of class.

Audrey’s teacher wanted her to work on identifying a cube, sphere, cylinder and cone. After a bit of testing her, we found she knew these shapes perfectly well; she just doesn’t tell the teacher she knows them. Reminds me of her father.

We decided to make a cube since after a search of the house and garage all we could find were rectangles. After constructing a cardboard cube, Audrey signed her named. I asked for credit as her helper but was denied.

I made another picture of Katie by the light of her dad’s iPad. Her dad has rarely had possession of it.

That’s it for this trip. I head home tomorrow.