It was a good trip. It’s 9:20am and I’ve been home for an hour. Not bad. It was an 18½ hour drive home, with only 3 stops for gas. We didn’t stop for meals. The hot familiar shower felt awesome, though not nearly as good as the hugs and kisses from my queen and three [...]

It’s been a challenge finding a free wireless hot spot on the way home. We tried the Tennessee welcome center rest area near Memphis, but the guy didn’t know what a wireless hot spot is; not very welcoming. Then we stopped at the Flying J truck stop on I-55 in Matthews, MO because they have [...]

We’re now heading north on I-55, just north of Jackson, MS. I’m hoping to connect up at a wireless hotspot somewhere along the way this evening. Today went well. We ended up only working on the one house all week, with the goal of getting all the walls up and mudded. And we did well. [...]

We got the photo. Definitely the best moment of the trip, watching Paul look at the laptop screen and see his grandson for the first time. Immediately, he said, “it’s his mother”, as he wiped a tear from his eye. He immediately saw the resemblences in Ethan’s face. What a day. It doesn’t get any [...]

Interesting day on the job today. My crew went back to the same house again to try to finish up. We finished all the dry walling, but there is still a bit of mudding left to do. We may go back tomorrow, or we may just drop off a couple people there and then the [...]

The best news that’s happened since my last post is that last night at dinner, Paul Albers got word that he’s a grandfather for the first time! If you’ve ever met Paul, you’d agree that he’s already got an infectious smile, but today he’s glowing. I couldn’t be happier for him. He’s going to have [...]

Another great day. I slept quite well last night. I’m sleeping in a small classroom with Rick Schaeffer, Bob Krezwina and Bob Gorig. Plenty of power for my CPAP machine, and to charge my cell phone and laptop computer.
Catholic Charities didn’t have anything for us for breakfast though, that sucked. I had a cup of [...]

Long day today. I drove the last hour or two this morning to get us into Louisiana. We met up with the other 4 cars and finished the trip into New Orleans together.  We got here around 11:30 this morning. The weather for the drive down could not have been better. It’s 1,161 miles from [...]

So, now we’re at the Louisiana welcome center. It’s the first rest stop south of the Louisiana border on I-55. We all met up here so we can head into New Orleans together. This place has a wireless hot spot, so it’s nice to be able to upload my writings from the past day. I [...]

So now I’m back in the front seat, blogging from somewhere in Missouri at three o’clock in the morning. We just made a stop for gas at a BP station and now Denis is driving. I took a driving shift coming out of Bloomington. With four of us driving, it works out quite well.

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What a day today. We left town this morning at 10:00, right on schedule. We started by having my daughter Randy take a picture of the four of us by the truck. Holy cow, was that hard. It was -10 degrees outside. This year, I’m riding with Denis VandenHeuvel, Rick Steeber and Dave Brooks. Denis [...]

There are 39 of us making the trip to New Orleans this year. Unfortunately, that’s one short of what it was supposed to be. Pat Jacobs, my aunt, couldn’t make the trip. Aunt Pat is another one of those great women in my family, not too different than my Mom. And as Mom put it, [...]