day 9 and Final Tally

We got back late yesterday afternoon, and I went to my church's camp meeting in the evening, so it is Thursday morning and I am finishing up our blog. Yesterday we didn't see anything that interested us to stop for, so we made the 5 hour trip home from Holly Springs, Mississippi. Along the way we stopped 3 times to help cars stopped on the side of the highway. All 3 were very appreciative that we stopped, but told us that they would be OK and to go on. One guy, in a shirt and tie said that he was just collecting 5 smooth stones - was he a pastor on his way to a sermon?

As the picture shows, when we got back I paid up for bets lost to Pee Wee.

Just like last summer we learned a lot about our country and had a great time. Trying to good deeds and carrying out a lot of them really adds to a trip like this.

Good Deeds Performed during Coach and Pee Wee’s Great Adventure

1. Day 1: Helped “homeless” person in Nashville.
2. Day 2: Took over for clumsy lifeguard in French Lick, Indiana.
3. Day 3: Gave blackberries to highway workers in Indiana.
4. Day 3: Donated CDs to Christian Charity Goods Store in Worthington, Indiana.
5. Day 3: Took lost woman to her husband at a hotel 15 miles out of our way near Pekin, Illinois.
6. Day 4: Helped a family at the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa.
7. Day 5: Pee Wee scattered burros away from a car in Custer National Park in South Dakota – kids were upset.
8. Day 5: Brought back a coconut cream pie dessert for a very kind hotel manager in Alliance, Nebraska.
9. Day 6: Cleaned room and bathroom for hotel maids in Alliance, Nebraska before we left.
10. Day 7: Pruned shrubbery away from a historical marker in northern Kansas.
11. Day 7: Brought back an extra waffle for unhappy looking hotel manager. She smiled big time.
12. Day 8: Removed large truck tire tread from middle of state highway in northern Arkansas.
13. Day 8: Changed tire for pregnant woman near Trumann, Arkansas.
14. Day 9: Stopped three different times for three different cars on the side of the highway. All 3 thanked us for stopping but said that they would be OK. We’re adding all three of those together to make one. (We make the rules). One man in a tie said he was just collecting 5 smooth stones – was he on his way to a sermon???

So … our final tally is 14 good deeds. Thank you to those people who are able to donate to Family Promise. Any amount that you can give per good deed would be appreciated. The link to Family Promise is below. Once you get to the Family Promise website, you will see how you can donate. Thank you to everyone who followed our updates and prayed for us.
Coach and Pee Wee

Link to Family Promise: http://www.familypromisegwinnett.org/

Day 8 - Tuesday

We began the day with the end of our nostalgia tour - we looked around my old college for a few minutes in Springfield. We saw the athletic dorm where I had to climb in the window many times one year because money was low and I couldn't pay the small rent. The coach who lived there knew though, so it was kind of a Rudy thing. Then we saw the old wrestling practice room and the old gym where we had matches. But due to Title IX ... no more wrestling at this university.

Next we landed in Branson for a couple of hours. Branson is the most commercialized place we have visited, so it was not one of our favorite places. I'm sure it is a great vacation for many people, it just doesn't jive with our type of trip. While in Branson, we did see a very good military museum. It had several rooms with great artifacts from all of our wars from WWI to the present. One room - the one with the soldiers in the picture - lists every single soldier who lost his or her life in WWII - over 400,000 names. It is the only place anywhere that lists all of those names in one location. Visiting a place like that really makes you appreciate our soldiers.

From there, we decided to take a more direct route to Atlanta, with a goal of seeking out more good deeds. Somewhere in northern Arkansas we saw a blown out truck tire in the road that we had to steer away from, as did the cars behind us. We turned around as soon as we could and drove back to the tire and pulled on to the shoulder. Pee Wee waited for traffic to die down and ran out and moved the tire out of the way. Who knows - we might have prevented an accident. (Sorry about the bug splat on the windshield in the picture).

In a few miles we stopped at a rest area to get a better map of Arkansas. While there, we talked to a nice man and two women who were running the place. We told them what we have been doing over the past 8 days and one woman asked us to wait so that she could make a "to do good" list - she said if we were going to go around doing good deeds then she had a long list for us. That area of Arkansas just had some road construction so most people's GPS systems tell the drivers that they missed the turn for Branson and to make a u-turn. They get several drivers per hour who come in and ask for help in getting to Branson. I made a sign and put it on the door that said, "You Are Not Lost!" They said it didn't count as a good deed and I told them that they were not the judges. But we had made some new friends in northern Arkansas.

We made it to Holly Springs, Mississippi tonight, but about an hour before we stopped for the night, we had an interesting good deed. Way back in 1974, Kathy and I were driving from Missouri to Georgia to visit my parents in Macon. We stopped in Trumann, Arkansas to get gas. We both were using the bathrooms when a teenage girl (drunk) ran off the road and knocked over a gas pump and almost totalled our car. We held the passenger door together with duct tape and barely made it to Macon with Kathy sitting behind me in the back seat. Then today, I saw a sign for Trumann and pulled over to get gas and a picture for Kathy to see - for old times sake. Ten minutes later we pulled out on the highway, drove about a mile and saw a car pulled off of the highway with a flat tire. We asked the young woman (also pregnant) if she wanted our help and she said "Please!" She said she had just gotten the flat tire but didn't have a jack - her husband had taken it out of her car to change another tire. I got the jack out of my truck, but her car was sitting so low that the jack would not fit under it. Her husband's best friend was called because he had a mechanic's flat jack. We told her we would stay with her until he got there and we got her going. When he arrived, even his flat jack wouldn't fit under the car. We all put our heads together and figured out a plan - we moved the car forward a few feet with the two good wheels sitting a few feet lower on the shoulder of the road. That allowed just enough space for the flat jack to fit and within a few minutes the spare was on and she was on her way. The thought that occurred to me as we headed on down the road ... if Kathy and I had not had our car almost demolished 36 years ago, we would not have stopped in Trumann today and we would not have been around to help out the damsel in distress. Funny how things work out sometimes ...

We will head out tomorrow morning with a destination of ... HOME!

Day 7 - Monday

We finally made it out of Nebraska and quickly made our way to the Wizard of Oz Museum in northern Kansas. I can't believe that I have seen important sites on this trip for my two favorite movies: Field of Dreams and Wizard of Oz. This museum was not the best we have seen on the trip, but people can't help but smile there - people such as us. It had many rooms with each room a tribute to the many characters in the movie. The most popular room there was the one that simply shows the complete movie over and over again. People (like us) go in the room intending to stay for just a minute. We all end up sitting down and watching until you realize that there is more to the museum. That is the impact that the most watched movie of all time has on people. One trivia question we learned the answer to ... see who can answer it without looking it up: "What was the name of the professor's horse?" And what was the real name of the wizard and how many roles did he play in the movie?

From there we headed east into Missouri - the home state for both of us. We took a little time off for nostalgia time. Pee Wee remembered that he was a choir director in 1976 while he was a college student for a tiny church near his college in Warrensburg. The church was the Kingsville Baptist Church - it took us a while but we found it. We actually met a man there who teaches Sunday school who was a member of the church when Pee Wee was the choir director. Pee Wee had a big smile on his face as he walked around the church. The picture is a little dark, but trust me - he had a big smile on his face.

Next we drove 90 minutes south to Springfield, MO, where Kathy and I attended Southwest Missouri State - now Missouri State from 1971 - 1975. It was there where Kathy made the wise decision to say "yes." OK OK - I was the one who made the wise decision. I lived in a house of wrestlers there - right next to a McDonalds - not the best location for weight conscious wrestlers. The McDonalds is still there, but the house has been destroyed - which probably improved business at the McDonalds. I remember that most of my wrestler roommates had pets. I had a pet turtle - we hammered a nail through its shell near the edge and chained it to a spike in the yard so that it could roam all around the yard. It was a great conversation piece until we went out one morning and saw just an empty shell. I also had an ugly little dog named Igno (IgnoRamos).

Good deeds today - the picture shows one. We like to stop and read historical markers. We saw one in southern Nebraska but couldn't read much of it due to plants snaking their way up the monument. It took a while, but we manicured and pruned the area the best that we could so that future readers will have no problem reading the information on the monument.

The second one came tonight at our hotel. We are staying next to a Waffle House, and we used free waffle coupons given to us from Mr. Waffle - William Collins, who is the father of Collins Hill state champion CJ Collins. We ended up with an extra waffle when we were finished, so we brought it back to the hotel. The hotel manager was extremely serious and nonsmiling when we checked in, but we changed that. We offered the hot waffle to her and immediately the smile that had been hidden showed itself. It is amazing how being nice to somebody becomes contagious.

Possibly Branson tomorrow for a while, but who knows. We expect to be back home on Wednesday, which sounds good.

Day 6 - Sunday

Man! We have some long states in this country! We're still in Nebraska, but in the southeast in a town called Beatrice. We started off with a fun good deed today. When we left the hotel in Alliance, we didn't leave the way we and most people normally do. We stripped the sheets off the beds and stacked them with the towels. We put the blankets and pillows in neat stacks. We got rid of the trash and and cleaned the bathroom and the sink. In other words we made it very easy for the hotel maids to clean our room. We left a note and a good deed doers card on one of the beds.

We first visited "Carhenge" near Alliance. It is a replica of Stonehenge except that old cars have taken the place of the rocks. Everything is the right shape and the right size of Stonehenge - but with cars. It doesn't take much for Pee Wee and I to release the 12 year old boys still hiding inside of us, and they showed up at Carhenge as we ran around and on the cars. (We got there before anyone in charge was there so we probably got away with more than we should have).

Next we went south to see Chimney Rock near Wyoming. Most people have seen Chimney Rock in various wild west movies. It is visible for 20 miles and was a sign to the early western settlers that the flat prairie lands were coming to an end and to get ready for mountainous travel. Many settlers actually turned around and headed back to the east. If we see any of them, we'll give them a ride.

Next we headed east and stopped at North Platte to see the largest Rail Yard in the world. Our GPS kept sending us to dead ends so we spent way too much time there.

Pee Wee and I have many conversations as we travel when he isn't napping. We make a lot of bets and we have paid off a few times with push-ups. We need help in deciding who won this one: As we travelled eastward away from Wyoming, we were listening to a Cheyenne radio station. We made a push-up wager as to how far away we were from Cheyenne. I guessed 150 and Pee Wee bet 200. As we travelled at 70 mph, it took me close to a minute to plug in Cheyenne into the GPS and to determine the mileage - it was 176. I say I won because it took about a minute after we shook hands to get the GPS to determine the correct distance. So we travelled over a mile in that one minute. Pee Wee says he won because the final answer was 176, and that was closer to his guess of 200. So who wins??

Our morning good deed was really our only one. We keep stopping and asking cars stopped on the side of the road if they need help but they normally just wave us on. But we are always on the look out. In fact, tonight we offered our room to a soldier on leave from Afghanistan - he is staying here with his family and he said his air conditioning isn't working well. We said he could have our room but he wanted to stay in his because it has a jacuzzi. Oh well, we'll keep trying.

Tomorrow we're heading south into Kansas. We'll try to get Dorothy back home, maybe that will work for a good deed.

Day 5 - Saturday

South Dakota is a big state ... it took us a while to get there, but we finally made it to Mt. Rushmore around 1:00. On the way there, we enjoyed the terrain which was new to us. Lots of prairies and undulating hills leading up to the mountains of the Black Hills.

It was great to see Mt. Rushmore - the guy who started the Stone Mt. sculpture is the same one who did Mt. Rushmore. It took hundreds of workers, lots of dynamite, and 14 years to get the job done. Washington is the president on the left, then Jefferson, then T. Roosevelt, then Lincoln. But originally it was Jefferson on the left, but they didn't like how it looked so they blew the first Jefferson off of the mountain. Pee Wee thought he could have done the entire project in a few months.

We then went to the Custer Natinal Forest a few miles away. It is beautiful scenery and included a 10 mile wildlife loop where we saw various animals in the wild and near our truck. A herd of at least 50 buffalo were just a few feet from the truck, as were white tailed deer and several burros. Pee Wee made the mistake of opening a box of Waffle Crisp cereal in the truck. The burros smelled it and before long we had a few of them sticking their snouts inside the windows trying to get at the cereal. There was slobber on the windows, but no worse than we have done ourselves over the past few days. Pee Wee actually put a cracker in his mouth and a female burro tried to take it out. Somebody tell Teresa that I'll try to keep a better eye on Pee Wee around the women.

Two good deeds today - one of them related to the burros. For some reason, approximately 10 burros completely surrounded a car that was near us and were doing their best to get inside. There were a couple of little kids inside who were getting very upset. Pee Wee "risked life and limb" to get the burros away from the car. He successfully completed his mission and the kids were saved.

The other one involved tonight's hotel manager. She was extremely pleasant and kind when we checked in. We are staying in a tiny town called Alliance somewhere in northwest Nebraska. After we ate at one of the two restaurants in town, I got a coconut cream pie to go. When we returned to our home for tonight, I gave the pie to the manager - her face lit up, especially when it was explained to her that her pleasing personality gave us the idea for the gift.

The fact that we are now in Nebraska is both good and bad. The bad is that we are now on a path of an easterly direction. We have had a great time on our journey, but with this new direction, it means that we are over the halfway point and we are heading back. The good is ... that we ARE on that easterly direction. Even though we have had a great time, going east means going home, and no matter what or where we go, the best place to go is home.

Happy Sunday tomorrow everyone and God bless all of you!

Day 4 - Friday

To start off, after the Field of Dreams we made the decision to travel to Mt. Rushmore in S. Dakota, so we spent a lot of time today trying to make good time. Because of that, our opportunities for good deeds were minimal. We tried though - we stopped at two different broken down cars and asked if they needed help. They both had someone working on them and thanked us for stopping but no thanks.

Our day began with an hour drive to the Field of Dreams - the site of one of my three favorite movies. It takes less and less for me to get emotional these days, and I actually got a little choked up a couple of times while we were there. We met the owners who have done a remarkable job of keeping everything the same as the movie. They do a year round good deed, admittance is free and and they simply want a place for families to come to be happy for a while and to experience the promise made in the movie: "People will come." The only good deed today was when a family with little kids was trying to play a short game on the field. They were struggling to make it work and we helped them out. While we were there we saw a very touching scene. There was a TV crew filming a lady in a wheel chair along with the owners of the farm. The woman is dying of cancer and has very little time left. She is a big Cardinal fan and had a final request of her family - to see the Field of Dreams. Ours were not the only eyes there filling up...

After the Field of Dreams we made our way up into southern Minnesota and stopped at an interesting 1900s museum in Albert Lea. My team at Collins Hill actually competed against Albert Lea in a tournament in Minnesota two years ago. From there we ate up a lot of pavement and made it all the way to Mitchell, South Dakota. We visited the Corn Palace there, which is a large building for events that is made mostly out of corn - really.

Tomorrow - Mt. Rushmore and the Black Hills. We'll do our best for more good deeds.

Day 3 - Thursday

We started off in French Lick, Indiana and ended up about 20 miles north of Davenport, Iowa. In between we toured a unique jail in Crawfordsville, Indiana. It was made in the 1880s and was used up to 1972. It is the first of 15 jails ever made that has the gears and levers to revolve the jail cells around in a circle. There are two stories of cells in a circle that revolve around when they are needed to - there is one opening where a prisoner can enter to be locked up, then the cells revolve all at the same time. We had some fun taking turns locking each other up in the cells.

Our next stop was Danville, Illinois where we visited a local museum that was a doctor's house in the mid 1800s. One of the doctor's best friends was Abe Lincoln. We saw a bedroom where Abe would stay and the balcony from which Abe gave a speech to the locals. He had to step through a window to the balcony - back then home owners were taxed by the number of doors they had, so a window to the balcony eliminated one door. I hope Obama doesn't hear about the door tax - he might try to bring it back.

We then took off through Illinois - we had a goal of Dyersville, Iowa to see the Field of Dreams, but that is going to have to wait until tomorrow because of a good deed we performed. Somewhere near Peoria we stopped for gas and a lady of about 30 pulled up in a small SUV. She asked for directions to a town named Pekin. She seemed a little upset so even though we had no clue where Pekin was we tried to help her. She explained that she was supposed to meet her husband at a Super 8 Hotel there. Her husband was trying to give her directions over the phone, but she was getting more and more lost and confused. Pee Wee and I made the decision to use our GPS and have her follow us all the way to the Pekin Super 8. We both considered what we would feel like if our wives or daughters were lost somewhere and quickly made the decision to help her. It took us over 30 minutes to get her to the Super 8 and back to where we were, so the Field of Dreams is going to happen tomorrow, but we felt real good after helping her out.

We also did a couple of other minor good deeds - we were stopped in a line of traffic on a country highway somewhere in Indiana. There was a guy at one end of construction being done holding up a stop sign, and another guy at the other end doing the same. Pee Wee had bought some huge blackberries at a roadside stand earlier. When we got to the workers, we stopped traffic behind us while we shared the blackberries with the workers who were sweating profusely.

One other - in the town of Worthington, Indiana we stopped in the town square simply because it looked interesting to us. We walked into a Christian book store that turned out to be much more than that. They had a big supply of clothes and and other supplies that anyone in need could come into the store and have for free. I had a few CDs in my truck of hyms - they are now in the store's collection. We wish we could have given more, but that is about all we could give - we didn't think it would be wise to drive around naked.

We can't wait for the Field of Dreams tomorrow and beyond ...

Midnight between Day 2 and Day 3

I forgot to mention that the city of Louisville forced me to do a good deed for them ... in the manner of a parking ticket outside the Louisville Slugger museum. We didn't notice the parking meter at the back of the truck. Louisville - I'll pay but you don't get a "Good Deed Doers" card.

Day 2

We began the day by going to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, which is so mammoth that you could put the national debt in it. Neither one of us had done any cave stuff since our childhood, so it was fun. We learned that the bats around that part of the country are in trouble due to a type of fungus that is spreading and killing them off. This isn't good because bats eat millions of mosquitos every night. So save a bat.
We then took some pictures of Fort Knox from the outside - billions of dollars of gold is there. Getting in is about as hard as breaking in to Fort Knox - it is closed to the public.

Next we went to the George Patton and tank warfare museum near Fort Knox. We found it really interesting. There must have been 100 killing machine tanks from all the wars from WWI to our present struggles. As I walked around, I kept thinking that God would certainly prefer for our knowledge and expertise to go toward other causes than in devising various ways to kill each other. But it was still something to see and read about all the many people who have fought to protect our country through the years - including the present day.

Next we went to the Louisville Slugger Factory and Museum in Louisville. We watched bats being shaped from maple or ash wood in 30 seconds. We took some pictures of the largest bat in the world - it stands 120 feet high out front of the museum and is a replica of a Babe Ruth bat. I had my picture taken with a real bat used by Mickey Mantle and Pee Wee had one taken with a Johnny Bench bat. So today we saw tiny bats that move on their own and large wooden ones that people swing.

We finished the day in French Lick, Indiana. We stayed at a hotel that has a water slide park. We did a lot of water slides which was fun, but I made it a point to not call Steve by his nickname Pee Wee - somehow two men together at a water slide park, with one of them going by the name Pee Wee, in a town named French Lick ... I think I will elaborate no further.

Good Deeds: We had one big one and one small one. Near Fort Knox, we were on a road with a lot of traffic lights and a lot of lunchtime traffic. We were moving very slowly and saw a wreck maybe ten car lengths in front of us. Traffic was barely moving and three women were standing by the two vehicles. I got out and walked up and asked if they needed help. Pee Wee started directing traffic and got it moving better. Nobody was hurt - it was just a fender bender, but the two fenders were locked around each other and neither car could move. Pee Wee walked up with me and between him, me and a fireman who just arrived, we were able to move the cars around just right to get them apart. We got back in our truck, they moved their cars off the road, and traffic started moving. We felt good about that one. The other one was minor, but we are still counting it. When we were going down the water slides, we would leave from a platform that had 4 different starting points for 4 different slides. There was one lifeguard up there who would send the various rides off. Once he pushed a little too hard and flew off down the slide himself. That was pretty funny, but several of the kids on the platform started to take it as an opportunity to stampede the slides. We restored order until the embarassed life guard made his way back up the ladder.

We are probably heading in the direction of Illinois and Iowa tomorrow ... good night from French Lick - home of Larry Bird.

Day 1 - The White House

White House, Tennessee that is. We ended up several miles north of the little town of White House in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
We had a very rough start this morning. Pee Wee got to my house about 8:15, we did a coin flip (I-75 won), jumped in the truck full of excitement and ... dead battery. About an hour later we were finally off.
We wandered around for a while and landed in Linnville, Tennessee - home of a guy named Mars who came up with various candy bars like the Milky Way. We toured a small museum there and were hoping to find some free samples but came up short. So we went to a little store and bought two Milky Ways.
Next we made our way up to The Upper Room. It is a beautiful chapel and museum next to Vanderbilt in Nashville. It is also where the devotional booklets by the same name are made. It is also next to a university with poor sports teams but did produce an outstanding pastor many of us know. It has a fantastic life size, wood carved replica of Davinci's Last Supper.
After we left we took a picture of the city sign of White House, then ended up in Bowling Green where we got some pictures of the Corvette National Museum.
Like last year, the good deeds were difficult. We stopped to help a man who was broken down on the side of the road, but he took one look at us and said we didn't have the tools we needed. He looked serious so we didn't pursue it further. We did hand out one "Good Deed Doer" card - although it was a little comical. When we were driving away from the Upper Room area, Pee Wee yelled for me to pull over - he pointed out a homeless woman who was asking for handouts. I pulled over in traffic and quickly gave him a few dollars to give her and told him to give her some of the fruit we had in the car. He handed her the money and a card, and I was trying to get the fruit to him to give to her. But the traffic behind us was flying - I thought about throwing the fruit toward her, but thought better of it - throwing fruit at a homeless person didn't sound like a good deed. So we drove off, but only before she handed a newspaper to Pee Wee. In otherwords, she wasn't asking for a handout, she was selling newspapers. Oh well, she got a real good tip, so we are counting it as a good deed.
I'll see if I can figure out a way to get some pictures put up on this blog thing ...

Leaving tomorrow morning

A few things I hope happen:
1. Safety (we'll accept your prayers)
2. We learn as much about our country and have as much fun as we did last summer.
3. Whoever reads this - please go to the Family Promise link in the column at the right on this page and make a contribution. Family Promise has an 80% success rate for getting homeless families on their feet and helping them to get their own places to live. That is a phenominal rate for this type of organization.
4. I hope Pee Wee lays off of the spicy food this trip.
5. I hope we don't have a hotel manager mistakenly give us the honeymoon suite like one did last summer.