Some Thoughts on the Iraqi Way

This week the United States passed an unfortunate milestone in the Iraqi Way…..the 4,000th American soldier died.

American Soldier Come Home

The following letter I received from a friend of mine today. I don’t know who wrote it other than she is a housewife in New Jersey. After reading I thought that what she had to say basically summed up how I felt. I also thought that even though this is a porn blog, that perhaps some of you might want to read it and pass it on to friends. So, here it is:

‘Are we fighting a war on terror or aren’t we? Was it or was it not started by Islamic people who brought it to our shores on September 11, 2001?

First Plane Hits the Twin Towers

Were people from all over the world, mostly Americans, not brutally murdered that day, in downtown Manhattan , across the Potomac from our nation’s capitol and in a field in Pennsylvania ?

Second Plane Hits the Twin Towers

Did nearly three thousand men, women and children die a horrible, burning or crushing death that day, or didn’t they? And, I’m supposed to care that a copy of the Koran was ‘desecrated’ when an overworked American soldier kicked it or got it wet?… Well, I don’t. I don’t care at all.

I’ll start caring when Osama bin Laden turns himself in and repents for incinerating all those innocent people on 9/11.

I’ll care about the Koran when the fanatics in the Middle East start caring about the Holy Bible, the mere possession of which is a crime in Saudi Arabia

I’ll care when these thugs tell the world they are sorry for hacking off Nick Berg’s head while Berg screamed through his gurgling slashed throat.

I’ll care when the cowardly so-called ‘insurgents’ in Iraq come out and fight like men instead of disrespecting their own religion by hiding in mosques.

I’ll care when the mindless zealots who blow themselves up in search of nirvana care about the innocent children within range of their suicide bombs.

I’ll care when the American media stops pretending that their First Amendment liberties are somehow derived from international law instead of the United States Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

In the meantime, when I hear a story about a brave marine roughing up an Iraqi terrorist to obtain information, know this: I don’t care!

When I see a fuzzy photo of a pile of naked Iraqi prisoners who have been humiliated in what amounts to a college-hazing incident, rest assured: I don’t care.

When I see a wounded terrorist get shot in the head when he is told not to move because he might be booby-trapped, you can take it to the bank: I don’t care.

When I hear that a prisoner, who was issued a Koran and a prayer mat, and fed ’special’ food that is paid for by my tax dollars, is complaining that his holy book is being ‘mishandled,’ you can absolutely believe in your heart of hearts: I don’t care.

If you agree with this viewpoint, pass this on so that sooner or later, it’ll get to the people responsible for this ridiculous behavior!

If you don’t agree, then by all means hit the delete button. Should you choose the latter, then please don’t complain when more atrocities committed by radical Muslims happen here in our great country!

One last thought:

In case we find ourselves starting to believe all the Anti-American sentiment and negativity, we should remember England ’s Prime Minister Tony Blair’s words during a recent interview. When asked by one of his Parliament members why he believes so much in America , he said: ‘A simple way to take the measure of a country is to look at how many want in… And how many want out.’

I just wanted to pass this one for those of you who are interested. And, let’s hope that the next milestone we achieve in the Iraqi war will be getting our soldiers out of there and back home safely. It matters not how long we stay in that country. We will NEVER be successful in setting up a democracy. It just isn’t possible where you have two or more fanatical religious groups fighting to run their country. When we leave, it will go back to the way it was or even worse. What will have changed will be the number of American soldiers whose blood we leave behind.

Support our soldiers but hate the war. In this election year please support the candidate who promise to bring our men home and out of harm’s way.

BillnPS

Hi Y’all

Haven’t written in a while since I haven’t been traveling.  Well, guess that really isn’t the truth since I’ve gone from Delaware back to Palm Springs since my last post.  But, then, when you do it in an airplane at 35,000 feet just not a lot of opportunity to take a lot of photos.

Had to come back to Palm Springs for meeting here and in Las Vegas.  Drove over to LV last Wednesday for an evening meeting and then a morning meeting on Thursday.  I hate that town so drove right back to Palm Springs that afternoon.

One of my employees went with me to LV and showed me a back way to go.  My bad, it was a gorgeous trip and I left my camera back in Delaware. 

The trip took us on a two lane road, up through 29 Palms where the Marine base is located and then out in the desert for about 100 miles.  The scenery was gorgeous, beautiful cragged peaks contrasting agains the blue skies and colorful shadows as the sun moved across the horizon.  We went through a portion of Death Valley.  One thing I know for sure and I told my friend this, that if the truck broke down and it was after dark, I’d still be in it when the sun came up the next day.

Death Valley is absolutely beautiful…but also absolutely desolate!  The portion we went through was right in the middle of the salt flats.  He was telling me that many years ago, for as far as the eye could see, it was all stark white with salt.  Now, only a little of the salt remains as some big corporation, American Chloride, has been stripping the salt off and leaving piles of dirt, rock and mud behind.  Yeah, mud….it had rained in that area about two weeks prior to us coming through and portions were still wet.

Back in Palm Springs now.  Doctor’s appointment tomorrow and then back to Delaware sometime later in the week.

A BIG thanks to Wolfbernz and Trina for watching Oscar and Jake for me.  From what I’m hearing, I’m going to get them back absolutely spoiled rotten!!!!

Thanks guys!!

Bill

PS  Here are a couple of my favorite photos from Palm Springs.  The one with the rainbow centered between the two palm trees was taken from the front yard of my home.  The other one was taken from the back porch.  These were taken on two different days.  It is rare to see clouds on the mountains and rainbows in Palm Springs.

Rainbow and Two Palms         Rainbow over Palm Springs

Merry Christmas Y’all

Just wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and wishes that the New Year brings you everything you wish for.

Merry Christmas

Bill

The Rest of the Story

Sorry to take so long to post back to the blog but when you read “The Rest of The Story” I think you’ll understand why no posts were forthcoming during the remainder of the trip.

As my last post mentioned, had to pull of the road on Sunday night in Davenport, IA due to all the ice and snow and enormous amounts of accidents on I-80.   Gee, you would think that the folks who live in Iowa would know how to drive in that type of weather…apparently not.

Woke up early Sunday morning raring to go and  get the coach to Nappanee that night so I would be ready early Monday morning at 6 AM for the appointment at the Newmar factory for some warranty repairs.

Walked the puppies, had some breakfast, got the coach ready for the road and then went to start the engine.  That’s when all the problems began.  The engine cranked but would not start.  Tried for about an hour to get it started all without success.  Finally got on the phone to the Good Sam Emergency Road Service to explain the problem.  Good people there.  They got right on it and dispatched a tow truck.

While on the phone to Good Sam, I made it real clear that it wasn’t a battery issue but rather I thought, an issue with freezing since the termperature had gotten down to 8 degrees that night.  I also made it very clear that the coach was 45 feet long.   Of course, two hours later, when the tow truck showed up it was a small tow truck on a Ford 250 chassis and so damned old I had my doubts that it would be able to pull a Volkswagon.  It damned sure wasn’t going to lift the motorhome.  The first thing the driver said when he got out of the tow truck was; “ain’t no way I’m gonna be able to pull that thang, also not sure I have enough power to jump the battery”, grrrrr.   

While he was there I did have him give the Saturn a jump since the battery in it was dead again, then got back on the phone to Good Sam to give them a piece of my mind since time was a wasting and I had to get going.

This time I spoke with a woman at Good Sam.  Explained to her the situation.  She pulled up the account and couldn’t believe that the previous Good Sam representative had sent a small tow truck.  She said to give her a few minutes and she would be back to me with a resolution.  She called back about 15 minutes later and said she had arranged for a Heavy Duty Tow Truck to come out to the motorhome and then to pull me just across the interstate to a place called Truck Country and they were going to put the coach in their garage and let it warm up and see if they could get it started.  She also said that Truck Country closed at 4 PM and the problem was the HD Tow Truck couldn’t get to me until about midnight since the Iowa State Police were using all of them to get the overturned trucks off the Interstate.   Again I’m saying, grrrrrr. 

I got the number of the tow truck company and gave them a call…nothing but an answering service.  About that time my generator quit working and would not restart.  So, there I am, sitting at a truck stop with an engine that would not start and a generator that would not start.

For those of you not familiar with motorhomes, when the generator stops…your batteries are no long being charged so you only have power (including heat) until the batteries are drained.

Thinking that the tow truck would not be there until midnight, and it was by this time 1 PM, I figured I’d better start looking for a hotel.  Of course no hotels in the area allow dogs.  So, drove a Saturn to the nearest hotel, checked in and then snuck the dogs in one at a time.

The next morning, now it’s Monday morning, and I’ve already missed my appointment at the factory, I called Truck Country to see if the coach was there.  It wasn’t and of course the guy I spoke with new nothing about it.  I got cleaned up and headed back over to the truck stop to check on the motorhome and it wasn’t there.  Now, I beginnng to panic a bit so I drive over to Truck Country and there it was sitting outside.  Seems it was being towed there as I was speaking to Truck Country on the phone earlier.

To make a long story short, they finally got it repaired.  Just a clogged filter and a 5 amp fuse that needed to be replaced, cost….$979.00  !!!!!, grrrrrrr.

I was back on the road by 5 PM that night and pulled into the factory at Nappanee at 11 PM Monday night.  On Tuesday morning they came a got the motorhome and the dogs and I started the last leg of our trip to the house in Seaford, DE, arriving at about 3 AM Wednesday morning. 

Needless to see, all I did on Wednesday, after finally waking up, was to unload the car.  Thursday was spent unpacking boxes, finding and hooking up the computers.  Finally got everything hooked up and running today, Saturday.  What took so long was that I didn’t have any computer desks at the house and had to go buy two.  Those damn things have to be assembled and they must have had a thousand screws each.  Fortunately good friends came over (thanks Paul and Trina) and helped to assemble them.

So now I’m up and running.  The good thing is that by the time I got here John (and those good friends again) had the truck completely unloaded!

It’s good to be home.  Tomorrow John flies back to Palm Springs and I get back to work unpacking boxes.

Thanks for being with me on the trip to Palm Springs to Delaware. and have a very Happy Holiday Season.

Bill

It was a hell of a Day!

I started off fantastic.  Up early, walked the dogs, checked emails then got to go shopping with Brandy and Sam.  Got myself some boots for the snow and some great photos of Sam taken on her birthday.

Had a great time visiting Brandy, Sam and Tom.  Oscar and Jake had a ball.  Played with Sam and Tom all morning and just wore themselves out.

oscar-jake-and-tom.jpg

And, Jake had to try that snow one more time. 

Jake, butt deep in the snow

 

And, of course, had to get some pics of Grandpa and Sam:

Grandpa, Sam and Jake

grandpa-sam-and-jake2.jpg

Hated to leave, but with a deadline to keep and another storm coming, left Hastings around 1:40 PM….after, of course, lots of hugs and kisses goodbye.

Everything went pretty good until the sun went down and the temps started to fall.  Got to around 18 degrees by the time I was in western Iowa and the roads began to freeze.  I’m guessing, but I must have seen at least a couple of dozen semi’s and car off the side of the road.  Some on their side and some on their top.  Then, about 30 miles from the Illinois border the traffic came to a halt.  A tractor-trailer had jack-knifed and was blocking both east bound lanes. 

We all had to sit there for about 45 minutes and finally the police began to route us off on the right hand shoulder to squeeze around the rig.  Fortunately I was one of the first in line and I just barely got through.  Right after I got through, maybe the 3rd or 4th truck behind me, sank down in the shoulder and got stuck.  That was at about 10:3o PM.  It is now 12:45 PM and I’m sure all the rest of the trucks and cars are still sitting there since there was no place to turn around and it was going to take hours to get the truck back upright again and off the roadway.

I continued on just creeping along since the roads were a complete sheet of ice until I heard on the CB that another rig had jack-knifed and turned over about 5 miles ahead of me and was also blocking both east bound lanes.  Just as I was thinking I was going to be sitting on the road all night, I came up to an exit with several truckstops, so off I went and headed for the Flying J.  Found a place to park the coach and here I sit, nice and warm with the puppies on my lap just typing away.

It was a hell of a day.  A great day seeing Sam and Brandy and Tom….and then a crazy one once the roads started to freeze up.

I did talk with John.  He made it just past Knoxville fighting rain, then sleet and fog most of the day.  He’s now checked into a hotel and safe and cozy for the night. 

For those of you in to the stats….here they are.  Went a total of 484 miles today at an average speed of 63.7 mph.  My miles per gallon average 6.4 and actual drive time was 7 hours and 7 minutes.  Real time on the road was 8 hrs and 45 minutes.

It was a good day.  Tomorrow I hope, depending on the weather and the roads, to reach Nappanee, IN where I will drop off the coach on Monday and then drive on in to Delaware in the car.  It’s a total of 702 miles, so not sure I can make that in one day, even in the car….but, we’ll see.

Mileage to Nappanee tomorrow is 272 miles…..should be a breeze if the weather holds.

All in all it was a GREAT Day!

Bill

 

 

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