Our RV Adventures

(Insert annoying theme song here.)

About noon Jan and I headed over to Huntsville for some lunch at Rosie’s Mexican Cantina. We had first eaten here several years ago, and we always make sure to go back when we’re in the area. It’s that good.

After lunch we made a quick stop at Sam’s Club for kitty litter and vitamins, and then it was back to Athens, where we found a note on the door telling us to come over to my Uncle Ed’s for dessert about 5:30.

We ended up going over earlier so I could see my cousin Anna Jean, who had dropped by for a few minutes.

And now back to the small world.

Our regular blog readers may remember the story of this picture. It was taken at Busch Gardens in Tampa FL when we visited there in April of 2009. Jan and I were riding the ‘baby’ roller coaster in the kiddie area. Jan still swears it wasn’t the ‘baby’ coaster, but Busch Gardens disagrees and says it  it, but it’s now called the Sand Serpent. 

To quote:

Travel to Timbuktu and you’ll find young kids’ favorite ride in the park, Sand Serpent, formerly Cheetah Chase.

This fun-filled family coaster zips, zooms and climbs five stories into the air before bringing riders back down in a roar of laughter.

As you can see one of us is having a good time, and one of us, not so much.

Anyway, when I first posted it here on our blog in 2009 it was apparently picked up by a reader and posted here on Awkward Family Photos.

Thanks a lot!

A few months later, we got an email from some friends back in Houston who told us our photo had gone viral. They said their son was in class the last day of school, and to kill time the teacher had brought in his laptop and was showing the kids some of the photos on AFP.

Finally the teacher said “And this last one is my favorite”. Our photo popped up and the class roared.  Then after a few moments, our friend’s son pointed at the screen and said “Hey, I know those people.” And the class really broke up.

But wait, there’s more.

In November of 2009 we were back here in Athens on our way back to Texas, and visiting relatives. Coincidently, my cousin Glee and her husband were up here visiting from Florida. Now, I hadn’t seen Glee since I was about 13, and I had never met her husband before, so we had a good time catching up on things.

Sitting around talking, it turned out that Glee and her husband lived in Tampa. So I then related the story and showed them the photo on my phone. I also mentioned that I had wanted to ride SheiKra, the big vertical dive coaster, and had convinced Jan to do it with me by not telling her that it was 200 feet high, and that at the end of the ride, it drops you straight down from that 200 feet at 70 mph.

Well, my devious plan was working until we took the train ride around the park right before riding the coaster. As we pulled into the station nearby, the conductor who had been narrating our trip, said he had ridden SheiKra once, and he never would again. He said it scared him to death, and he almost wet his pants. Well, of course, that ended any chance of getting Jan on the ride.

Blabbermouth!

As I’m relating this story, Glee’s husband looked over and said, “At the end of the ride, did the conductor say, “If you enjoyed your train trip today, my name is Dave. Otherwise it’s Mary””.

I said, “As a matter of fact, he did.”  And then Glee’s husband Dave said, “That was me!”

You can start humming the ‘Small World’ theme here, because there’s still more to come.

On our visit here this time, my cousin Jimmy who is visiting from Fort Myers with his wife Beth, and who I also don’t think I’ve seen since we were kids, mentioned he was a Chiropractor there.

I then said that one of my clients, Dr. Heimlich, that I do the computer and website support for in Houston, was a Chiropractor.

Jimmy then said, “Well I went to chiropractic school with a Myron Heimlich in Texas.”

OMG! Segue the Small World theme into the Twilight Zone theme.

I don’t know what it is about coming back to Athens, but strange things happen here.

Tomorrow Jan and I are having lunch with two of my second cousins, Anna Jean and Marjorie. We got to see Anna Jean for a while this afternoon, but with both of them together, it should be a hoot.

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Thought for the Day:

Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain were talking about the problem of people plagiarizing their work. Describing one particular egregious example, "He’s dead now," Twain said to Kipling, adding reflectively, "I didn’t kill him."

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Since we had another 300 mile trip today, we wanted to get an earlier than usual start at 9, so I was up at a little before 6:30 (this is getting to be a really bad habit.) to get things started.

After I got the coffee started, I went outside (it was 35 degrees!), stowed away the satellite dish and cables, and plugged in the engine block heater, then it was back inside to thaw out my frozen hands. I thought about warming them up by holding them to Jan’s feet, thus waking her up, but on second thought, I decided I wanted to live another day.

I hadn’t hooked up the toad last night because it would have stuck out in the street since our site was just long enough for the rig.

But after coffee and a breakfast sandwich, I went back outside to hook up and also add some air to a couple of tires. Also by this time Jan had had her shower so I disconnected and stowed away the water and sewer hoses.

After letting in the awnings, we were ready to go outside, except for disconnecting shore power.

And so, a couple of minutes after 9 we were on our way. We had a brief bobble coming through Somerset, KY and getting on the Cumberland Pkwy when we found that they had torn up the old road and built a completely new interchange without telling Margaret, our GPS program. She was just positive we were driving off the ends of the earth and should turn around and go back.

But we soldiered on, and about 100 miles later we met up with I-65 and headed south. Then just south of Bowling Green, KY we stopped for diesel at a Flying J.

Pulling into the RV diesel pumps I was happy to see a sticker on the pump saying that if you used a MasterCard you could pump $100 in one transaction, and if you used a Visa Card you could pump up to $495 in one transaction.

Great! No more having to go inside and stand in line. So I used my Visa Card, and my Flying J RV card, and started the pump.

Which almost immediately stopped at $75. Huh?

So it was off inside, where I stood in line, and when I asked about the $495 sticker, the young woman (blonde) said, ‘Oh, we don’t know anything about those stickers, or who put them there. People just keep asking us. But all the pumps stop at $75 no matter what card you use.”

Later checking on the Pilot-Flying J website, it also says you can pump $495 on a Visa Card.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

We pulled into Northgate RV Travel Park, just off I-65 north of Athens, AL about 2:30. The park is owned by my uncle and his son, so it makes it very convenient when visiting all my relatives here.

We’ll be here for 3 nights before heading down to Gulf Shores on Sunday, and hopefully we’ll be able to get together with everyone while we’re here.

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Thought for the Day:

“It is as absurd to say that a man can’t love one woman all the time as it is to say that a violinist needs several violins to play the same piece of music.” – Honoré de Balzac

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