Bringing Life Up To Date

This was a quiet day, so we will just do a little catching up.

Item #1 -- You may remember the story about Suzy's CoachLift incident. She was riding up the lift when it suddenly tilted forward and sideways, leaving her at a precarious angle, held in place only by her seat belt. Thanks to quick action by daughter Deb, her pal Albert, our neighbor Mr. Smith, and two of the park housekeeping staff, Suzy was rescued, scared silly but not seriously harmed. Without that seat belt, she could have fallen face first onto the motorhome steps and done some real damage.

Next day I took some photos of the swing-arm affair showing that one part of the arm had twisted at a weld. Thank God it didn't totally break the weld! I called the CoachLift offices and told them what happened. The sales rep was aghast at our story, promised that it would be promptly and properly dealt with. I offered to email our pictures, and he was anxious to get them. The owner was not at the office that day, but he would be brought into the picture as soon as he returned.

When Steve, the owner, called the following day, he also was astounded by the failure; he said that had never happened before, and promised to send a replacement swing-arm the same day, along with a prepaid shipping label to ship the damaged one back. He asked a few questions about details, and said that they would tear the old arm apart to see what might have caused the failure. The new arm should arrive at daughter Deb's house early next week.

Item #2 -- "Mr. Smith" and his family across the road seem to be having a wonderful gathering. They are gone most of the day each day, after breakfast in their screened pavilion. They are a quiet group, considering there are five teenagers, along with two of their mothers and one father, plus the two grandparents. They told us they have been doing this annual get together for twenty years, and as many of the family as possible are there each year. There are older grandchildren off on their own now, with jobs keeping them away. What a great tradition; we sure hope they can keep it up for another twenty years, eventually organized and sponsored by the next generation.

Item #3 -- Some of our readers probably have seen blog posts and comments about a current challenge that is by invitation only. It's called the 7 Links Challenge, and Laurie and Odel wrote about it in their blog, here. Laurie declined the challenge and explained why. We also were nominated for this challenge, and were ready to accept it, but, as Laurie wrote, it's too much like homework. So we can sit and ponder at our own ease, which of our 340  or so posts were most popular, most helpful, most controversial, etc.

Item #4 -- This is a new item. We have started a second blog, with its first post today. This blog is called One Shot Leads to Another; it will display just one picture a day with nothing but a title, and sometimes a link to a Picasa Web Album. We got the idea for this post by following John Souva's excellent Connected to the Vine Photography blog. You can find our first post at One Shot Leads to Another. What do we hope to achieve with this new blog? Well, as John explained to me, it's a way to do something with the thousands of pictures we have sitting quietly on our hard drive.

So now, you are up-to-date in ... Our Life on Wheels.