RAWK Falls

Long day today.

It's currently 10:51 PM and I'm sitting on the lobby of our hotel in lovely Dixon, Illinois (boyhood home of the worst president this country has known) having concluded a long but by and large good day.  

I figured I'd come down to the lobby rather than bother my roomie, Ray from Kokomo (can you guess the favorite vowel of the founding father of that town?) Indiana with the nonsense you're about to read.

So, where to begin?

How about this?  Less than a mile out of our hotel in Elgin, Don comes on the radio with "Joel there's smoke pouring out of the back of this thing"

Not a good start.

We got over on the shoulder and got  out to see what the problem might be.  The air brakes locked up.  

Of course they did.

There's a direct correlation with Dave going home for a few days of R&R and one of the vehicles breaking down.  Long story short, it was a relatively easy fix (huge props to Rockford FD for the repair) and although Don was stuck on I-90 in Elgin for a few hours and had to miss the home visits, he joined up with us around 5:00 tonight, in time to grab some food and finish off our day in Rock Falls.  

I think I set some kind of personal record tonight.  Between 5:00 PM and 8:00 PM I spoke with the local news paper reporter, a television reporter from the Quad Cities and two local radio reporters.  

Apparently I need to obtain many leather-bound books and make my apartment smell of rich mahogany.

From a bill paying perspective, we moved a lot of t-shirts and hats.  But the most important  part is that we met a lot of great people.  We gave a lot of hugs, helped correct someone else's faux pas and generally felt and shared a lot of love.

That's kind of one of the recurring themes I talk about when I'm interviewed for information about the tour.  Love.  It should be so simple.  If we spent more time focusing on love and the things that draw us together, we wouldn't spend so much time focusing on hatred and the things that divide us.  

That's probably far too simplistic of an idea but Geez Louise, why can't we at least try it for a while.  I love Steve Earle, always have, and one of his songs has the line 
"I don't remember learning how to hate in Sunday School"
and man it just makes so much sense.  I think by and large Rock Falls "gets it" but they still connect themselves to an event that rhymes with Belay for Fife and the large corporate charity that runs those events stopped giving money to everything but research.  

That's right, they stopped supporting the social services and support services for people fighting for their lives.  The skeptic in me thinks they did that because it's harder to trace money given to research.  I don't know...   

Ok, here's what I do know.  Sleeping Beauty is now on the TV here in the lobby.  I don't know why, so don't even ask.  

Also?  I'm tired.  And I stink.  I desperately need a shower.  It was a tad on the warm and humid side here in Illinois (that's not a complaint btw, I'll take this over winter EVERY day) and even though I didn't get in the gear today, I still managed to work up a good sweat.  I don't think I would've hugged me today, so kudos to the ladies that braved my funk towards the end of the evening.

And, on that note, I bid you

Peace