My Freedom Days

Well these are some of my pics from back when i had my scooter, Most are from when i took off to Colorado to camp and also go to a Men's conference with John Eldridge"Wild at Heart".I had a such a good time i just didn't realize that shortly after all this i would be forced to sell my bike.

When we moved up here i wasn't making enough money to justify keeping and making a bike payment-so i sold it - i miss having a bike and WILL have another one some day.

This is some of the people i road my bike with in La, the Pastor and his wife are standing right beside me, that's me to the far left-

Some of the awesome sights in Colorado

This is an early pic it is from my first ride up to Mena ,ark-It is right before my wreck- they said that i just didn't turn going through a left turn , i went off the road going about 30 mph, the bike flipped in the air and i went up went about 15 feet and came down on my back, my pastor said that when he got to me i was the color of my jeans, and i wasn't breathing- he tilted my head back and i gasped for breath- he had thought that i was dead-they prayed and then i came to, i started asking what happened- i was diagnosed at the hospital with a concussion and a compression fracture of t12 . I recovered in a couple of weeks and then road my bike over the next three years , about 30 thousand miles which includes the above trip to Colorado

The trailer is something that i built- we had the cargo cover from a Mazda van- and i bought a little trailer and mounted it on the trailer then painted it and put stickers on the cover, it pulled very nice-







This photo is after i moved up to il, and i drove down to miss. to spent the weekend with my son ,we camped and road around,I have many fond memories of that trip, i am glad that we had that time together.

The Family

It has been said" that a picture can say a thousand words" this one comes close. I notice that dad is looking straight ahead and we are all looking at something off camera,-I guess that dad just knew that we would, someday all look differently at the same thing-i am sure that the way i remember things are different,because we all have are own opinion of the way things were.It seems that the little difference that we had are bigger now , politic, religion to who we cheer for in sports. etc.But we are all still Family-

Merry Christmas

Hope everyone in my family had a good Christmas-

Penguins Hockey

My son and I went to a hockey game last night it was a lot of fun, he is a fan of the penguins so we drove to St Louis and watched them thump the Blues, I notice that after watching the Mudbugs play the NHL players are very crisp with there passes and much better players over all.It was exciting to see the players that we see on TV ,Crosby,Marc-andre Fleury,Malkin,etc.

lordy,lordy, look who forty

Today, is my wife's birthday and here are some pics. from Fern Cliff, a State Park that is about 20 miles from here-it is very "picturesque"!! We celebrated her 40th birthday with homemade pancakes for b'fast, a hike in the woods, and cake and ice cream to boot! What a perfectly peaceful day it was! Just what the Dr. ordered. Again--Happy 40th my love!!

How about my cool plates

My wife surprised me with these plates she had ordered them so she could give them to me on fathers day- wasnt that so sweet! I think they go very well me , and my very cool1965 VW .Also check out my roof rack that I got the other day.

It happened so fast-

I went to work this morning just like i do every work morning and when i got there the main air compressor wouldn't come on like it was suppose too.So i told my boss and he try ed to call someone and they said they would try to come to the dealer as soon as they could,well that wasn't quick enough for me so i thought that i can check it my self so i went and got my fluke meter and went to the compressor room-and took the cover off that exposed the wires coming from the circuit box to the compressor and grabbed the meter leads and went to test to see if i had any 220 volts well when i put the leads on the wire there was a loud pop and smoke and the lights went out and i fell back and immediate i was freaked out, I am in big trouble. Because what i found later was that when that happened it blew the main circuit breaker to the whole dealership.;-I got up and walked out to my car and sat down in it. I started to freak because i could have been killed and all that would have happened after that with my family and everyone else.
Well after i sat out there for about ten minutes i walked back into the dealership and they were asking what i had had done to make the lights go out not knowing the severity of the situation so i went in to my boss's office and sat down and told him what i had just done well he didn't understand all that had happened, he just knew that an electrician had been called and we would go from there-
an eletrician showed up in about a half hour later and asked what had happened so i told him the compressor wouldn't come and that i got my meter and show him how i ck ed it. Well its not 220 like i thought it is 480 volts, and that i have to ck it differently What i had done was short my meter across the two wires-and i was told that i was lucky to be still alive.I know that i am a son of God and there is no such thing as luck.also my meter still works .when i shorted the wires it blew the other breakers so he just flipped them back on . He figured out what was wrong with the compressor, some switching valve that wasn't working. So when i came home at lunch and told my wife we both cried a little with gratatude that it wasn't my time and to thank the Lord for keeping me safe-
when i got back to work from lunch i was talking to a guy and he said that he saw the fuse panel that had been checking and said it was like a blanket, or a wall was there, because when i shorted the wires the blast went away from me instead of towards me.
it can happen so fast-