Day 9 (I feel like registering to vote in South Dakota)

Well today was... interesting. 

Welcome to the Pink Heals Tour, where we're kind of like Blanche ("we have always depended on the kindness of strangers.") DuBois.  Leslie has a loose belt and this fine gentleman climbed up to take a look and see if he could be of service.  Despite his best efforts, Leslie's belt is still loose, but we had no issues with it today.

We left Aberdeen around 8:30.  Saw a lot of farm land including sunflower fields, a first for me.

We made our way west and then south to Pierre (French for "holy crap it's windy here") and got into town around 11:30.  We were met by an engine from Pierre FD (side note, Pierre Fire Department is all volunteer.  Nobody stays at the station, they all come from home.  For real.  The state capitol.  Color me surprised) and (don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking volunteers.  I'm just surprised) we were escorted to a large, Arkansas based, we sell everything on the planet, store (hold the endorsement opportunities, I'll pass) and we set up in the parking lot.

Met some nice people there, did a few home visits and then went on to the local dragstrip for a quick (see what I did there?) event.

But if you know me, you know I'm not a big racing guy.  It was cool, but it wasn't well organized from our perspective and I was ready to go about 15 minutes after we got there...

So instead of rambling on about nothing of consequence, I've decided to turn the rest of this into the first installment of "meet your Pink Heals Tour driver" effort.

Meet John, he's from 

He's also a famous movie star

That's him (a younger, hairier, him) on the right (in uniform) with Helen Hunt in a scene from "Twister"  We tell people all the time he's famous.  I also tell people he's my dad, even though he's less than 10 years older than I am.  John is a genuinely nice guy, and he makes me laugh.  He's also really good at interacting with people.  He's got that Okie drawl and I'm never quite sure if he's trying to pull a fast one or not... Here's John entertaining us -

Stay tuned for more installments of "meet your Pink Heals Tour driver"

Tomorrow we head up to McLaughlin, SD then we cross in to North Dakota (no offense South Dakotarians, but THANK GOD!) and head to Bismarck (a lovely pastry) and then to Miles City, MT where we'll spend the night.  Yikes.  Lotta windshield time tomorrow.

Pink Heals!

Peace