Tuesday June 14, 2011-Elkhart County Fairgrounds, Goshen IN

It was cold again this morning, about 59 degrees. I feel bad about bragging about this because of all my friends and family that are still back in Texas sweltering in the heat down there. I don't feel bad enough to prevent me from telling them the temps here with a big 'ol smile on my face though....

I want to start out by telling a couple of news items that I read about this morning. The first is about a convicted and registered sex offender, 53 years old, that broke into a 77 year old woman's house and while raping her, he reportedly told her that he didn't feel well, rolled over off her and died of a heart attack. How fitting! And you that don't believe that God has a sense of humor.


The second case was of the killing of a Police officer. The man was stopped on a traffic violation and pulled a gun, shooting the Officer 8 times including one last shot behind the Officer's ear into his head to make certain he was dead. An all points bulletin was put out for the shooter and his vehicle and he was soon spotted. A pursuit began with several officer following him, and he soon bailed out of the vehicle and ran off into some woods. He opened fire on the pursuing officers, which resulted in the shooter's death. The man, an illegal alien, was killed in the gunfight after suffering 68 gunshot wounds. The Sheriff of the county, when interviewed by the liberal news media, was asked why the shooter was shot 68 times? The Sheriff responded that he was shot 68 times because thats all the ammunition that they had. Gotta love that Sheriff!!

Then the Medical Examiner, after completing the autopsy of the shooter, said he died a natural death. The news media questioned him about ruling this a natural death, to which the ME replied that when someone is shot 68 times, it is natural that they die.

Please notice that I did not refer to the illegal alien as a "suspect" but called him what he was, the shooter. The shooting was recorded on the officer's dash-cam, which included a description of his car, the license plate and even video of the man shooting the deputy, so there is no doubt that he committed the crime and later paid the price with his life.

One more rant and I'll start telling you what we did today. Does technology make you mad? My computer has started to freeze up. I don't know why except that my big ol' fat fingers sometimes his the wrong combination of keys and it just freezes up. The only way to restart it is to turn the whole thing off and restart it, even if it means that I lose whatever I was working on. It comes right back on but at what price?

We bought a new GPS recently. It works just fine but it seems to take us through towns instead of going around them. Its really no big deal because we still get to where we need to go but it's irritating. Its no wonder that man invented the hammer before the computer.

Okay I'm done. Soon after breakfast I went down to get my golf cart for the rally. When I got to the road, there was Terry, bringing it to me. Its a gas-powered cart, which is different that any that I've driven before. Its going to take some getting used to but I can handle it. I drove around for a bit, enjoying the cool air (there I go again, bragging about the nice weather). I noticed that some of the vendors are arriving. The Classy Chassis trucks are here and look nice. I went by their booth outside and talked to them briefly about an automatic filler between my in-bed tank and the OEM tank but they were waaaay high priced! His trucks look nice but I didn't even ask about them. I still like my Dodge.

We just hung out most of the afternoon before getting ready to go to Shipshewana to the Blue Gate Cafe. This is a great Amish cafe near the flea market. We have eaten here before, at the 2009 Heartland rally. Tonight was even better. We met with over 270 of our friends and had a great meal that included fried chicken, meat loaf and this year's addition of pulled pork as well as the usual veggies. The meal was wonderful and our new friends at the table made it even better. We all ate too much but it was sooooo good!!

We drove back to Goshen and when we got here, we drove the golf cart over to the rally hall where we met with Jim and the other coffee-makers, Keith and John to go over the procedure. We made a couple of pots of coffee to practice and to make sure the coffee measurement worked to make good coffee. After getting everything squared away for the morning, we went for a ride around the fairgrounds, visiting with people and soon came back home. It was almost ten before we got home! It had been a great day and we had a lot of fun and the rally hasn't even started! Just wait until tomorrow!

So long.