Major Milestones

A week of pluses and minuses.

Pluses...
The big Stumps cooker is sold and delivered (several hundred miles and a blown trailer tire later..). So that is done.
The trailer is also sold and is scheduled to be picked up August 7th.
The 'un-stuff-ing' of the house continues.
Got to see my very good friends Tim, Karen, and Forrest.

Minuses...
Pretty much the same as the 'Pluses' above. Except for Tim & Karen and Forrest, those were pluses no matter how you slice it!

How's that for short and to the point? Glad to see the cooker and the trailer go, and yet sad to see the cooker and the trailer go.

Was extremely happy to see my friends, Tim & Karen and Forrest. That was THE highlight of the whole trip! Tim was the guy who took me in and taught me (very patiently) how to cook BBQ several years ago, and still does. He retired from the competitive BBQ circuit some time ago but keeps contact with several of the cook teams and very definitely would still be a VERY formidable team in a competition. He and Karen were kind enough to let me park the trailer in their side yard for the night and put on a wonderful dinner for my good friend Forrest and me that Thursday night.

Forrest is who I bought the cooker from some time ago and graciously agreed to buy it back. He is also a mentor of mine and a good friend. I will miss his friendship and his Dutch oven cooking (which is award winning and delicious). Friends like Forest and Tim don't come around very often.

Selling the cooker and trailer are the first tangible milestones towards the jump-off of the 'Grand Lap Around The US'. Many, many more to come and they each will be joyful and painful at the same time. Next up is a lot more of the 'un-stuff-ing' of the house. I'm looking to get started in earnest with the house renovations within the next 2-3 months. Those chapters will entail a lot of demo work and gutting out of entire rooms getting ready for re-furnishing. Lots more to come on that front. I'm really looking forward to being displaced to an extra bedroom.... Not.

On a more personal note, I had subscribed to an online dating site in hopes of meeting someone. Except for 'meeting' a couple of nice possible friends (only friends), it was a complete waste of time and money. Needless to say, I will NOT be renewing that subscription. Another plus and minus. The minus is obvious, the plus is two sided. I've met some very nice ladies, but unfortunately I would have to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to actually meet them. The other is that I now know not to bother with online dating.

Don't mean to be such a Debbie-Downer in this post. Just have never had to deal with anything even close to this sort of thing before and it's a learning process. One positive though, I didn't wait a whole month to update the blog! Close, but not a whole month!

So stay tuned. The journey is just getting underway and will start picking up in the next month or so.