A Request and the Usual Placeholder

I received a nice note from a guy named Lane Barnholtz yesterday, and he had a simple request:

I thought your readers might be interested in Charity for Charities: http://www.vajoe.com/charity/. Bag Blog made a post about it.

VAJoe.com will be donating $2,000 to military charities. People come to VAJoe and vote for their favorite military charities. They can nominate charities, also. The charities with the most votes and one randomly selected charity share the $2,000.

I was hoping you would mention this in your blog.

Done, Lane.

I checked out the list of charities one can vote for (voting begins next week) and was pleased to see Valour-IT and Soldiers’ Angels are on the list, as are various department-centric charities, e.g., Air Force Aid Society, Air Force Enlisted Village, Army Emergency Relief, and so on. And, as Lane notes, if your favorite charity isn’t on the list you can nominate it. Easy as that. So: go. Please!

I’m posting late again, as usual these days. Last night I was up into the wee small hours watching the drama unfold in Minneapolis. I don’t know about you, Gentle Reader, but I nearly always have this twinge of dread and apprehension when crossing a particularly long or high bridge…the Golden Gate, the Oakland Bay Bridge, the Mackinac Bridge, yadda, yadda. It’s irrational, I know. Yet the nightmare came true yesterday during rush hour in Minneapolis.

Just as an aside: I’ve been across that bridge in Minneapolis…sideways at 70 mph or so around 0300 in the morning in the waning days of December, 1977. I hit a patch of ice on the bridge’s approach and lost it, quite literally. Even though I just knew I was gonna go for a swim (or bounce off the Mississippi river ice), I managed to straighten the car out, somehow, and proceeded on my way... to the next available off-ramp for coffee and a change of underwear. The change of underwear being metaphorical, of course.

Today’s Pic: Another paved RV park (Jenny!), this time in Houston. Well, it’s not completely paved, as was the Reno park. Close enough, though. I stayed here for two days until I found another park with a lil more elbow room…and better rates. This one was quite expensive, as RV parks go, IIRC. Nice facilities, well-kept, good location, but expensive.

I don't have as many park-pics as I thought I did. In fact I'm missing a lot of the more "colorful" places I stayed at during my first year on the road, and more's the pity. Some of those places made me laugh the following morning when I got up and looked around. This, of course, is in reference to a bad habit of mine, early on. I'd drive way too long before looking for a place to stay...and it's hard to judge a park in the dark. But almost any park is better than a rest area, and I "stayed" (shorthand for taking an extended nap) in a few of those when push came to shove.

March, 2000.

Back in a bit…