Ride 'em cowgirl

Stewart Tennessee. Where my Grandma and Grandpa lived. Hasn't changed in 50 years

The only difference is a railroad track used to run through this field

There's a couple railroad ties still in the ground. I assume left for historical reasons

Cameron throwing 220 LBS (Vince) in the water

March 7th: Kids down at the harbour

VOLVO update: Yes, that number is 366,348

I (Vince)took this pic this morning of the Volvo odometer because it occurred to me that we are going on 2 years allready since we bought the old girl. Original reading was 302,000 when we bought it. So far so good, no problems except it is needing new rear brake drums now and I had to replace the front and back disks and a set of new tires a few months ago. She leaks a little oil from the front seal but the Volvo dealer said keep it full and a little STP oil treatment should do. I've been keeping an eye on that. Might go ahead and get that fixed in the spring.

A couple trips to Ocean City, Virginia Beach, Rhode Island, Campin in Hagerstown with a full cargo load, towing the boat back and forth down to the ramp and yanking it out of the water a couple times each week....Wheeeeew I need to give her a rest.
I did give her a spa treatment recently for being so loyal to us.

Next an update on my other ride, the 1972 GRADY WHITE!

Had to post this one!
This is just a pic Vince took while coming home from work. He said thats what makes the drive worth while. There is something calming once you're on the bridge heading back to the Island. It never gets old.

This is really amazing!

March 2nd we were sitting in the house without power due to the snow storm. About 10 inches fell Saturday and Sunday then the power went out for two days! We snuggled up around the fire the whole time and cooked hot dogs for dinner and lunch. Here are a couple of pictures from Monday, March 2nd and then a couple that I took that very same Saturday, March 7th. You do the math. My brain is still boggled!


Mary was at her girlfriends house Friday night for a sleep-over party and the next morning came up the street with a big gang of girls to see if they could take the canoe out. What? whos going canoing in the middle of the winter. I went out on the front porch and couldnt believe it. Here they are, all 7 of them in a 4 man canoe. By the way it was low tide so the water in the creek was only about 2-3 feet deep.

What Credit Crisis? (Revisited)

What Credit Crisis? It's funny how everyone lately has been so glum about the Wallstreet mess. I joke with people all the time about how I have all of my money in Thom Mcann Shoes, literally, in a shoe in my closet! Well that's kind of an exaggeration too. I don't really have my savings in a shoe, but if I actually had any money to save I would keep it in my shoe. We already have been living very modestly and don't have any credit cards or loans or car payments (on the car issue, take a look at the beauty in the pic. 1989 Volvo 355,000 miles and running like a charm. Total cost for my transportation to work vehicle.......$700.00. Bought it over a year ago. Yes, we peeled 700 smackers out of the wallet and took her home). If we want something we save enough money to pay cash for it or we don't get it. We went through the "living too large for our own good" phase and got ourselves in trouble a while ago and decided it's time to live off the land and spend our time sitting on the front porch reading books to the kids instead of sitting in a movie theater every weekend to the toon of 50 or 60 bucks a pop. I got sick of hearing everyone complaining about the cost of this and that so I did something about it. I planted a garden and grew veges so we save a little on produce. We try our best to not drive across the bridge to save gas. We stopped going out to eat so much. We treat ourselves to a weekly crab feast, as long as I catch enough of the critters to feed Mary and Suzy(Vinni and I don't eat em we just catch em and watch the girls eat them, Correction: Vinni does like dipping claws in butter and sucking them clean). There's an old saying that goes The more you have, the more you you have to worry about losing. It's true! If you have fancy stuff all over the place and sweet cars in the driveway, you are always worried about someone taking it or scratching it. Get rid of all the fancy stuff and you won't believe how refreshing it is to not worry about someone taking stuff or scratching stuff. Another thing we have learned about getting back to basics, take notice the next time there is an electrical outage. Notice how much fun the kids seem to have when you take away the most important utility that we need. I don't know about your kids but ours love running around finding candles and finding a board game or cards to play with. We end up sitting in the family room all together talking and laughing. No TV blasting, no computer chatting, just enjoying being together. Those are the times the kids like the most. When they have the least! Try it next time, you'll be surprised. This is Vince signing out. AJournalist once asked Mother Theresa "what can each of us do to make a difference in this world, with all of the poverty and sadness. She replied, go home and love your family. Love begins by taking care of the closest ones - the ones at home. The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved.

Giving the kids a little spray before heading home.

We were out all morning fishing when who pulls up beside us. DNR police! We had a few crab traps out and all of us were holding fishing poles when the nice lady asks to see our fishing licenses. Guess what, I didn't even have my wallet on this particular day much less a license. So after she inspected the boat for all safety equipment and I came up short on new flares and a safety ring, she says go home and get your license before fishing anymore and didn't ticket me. That was lucky because having a boat full of people all fishing without any licenses would be one wopper of a fine. We zipped back home, ate some lunch then I went to the DNR web site and bought a vessel license so anyone on the boat could fish legally. You can print it right off the site then they send the stickers later. So lets try this again. We were back on the water in a few minutes with all the right paperwork. Suzy casts her line, Alisons boyfriend Cameron, who is an avid fisherman, is standing at the stern with me and casts his line. So we wait. I decide to have a beer and watch for a while. After no luck for Suzy or Cameron I stick a little piece of fishbite (fake fish bait) on a tiny hook and cast it off port side while swigging my beer and within a few seconds ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ... the line takes off. I gave the pole to Cameron because I didn't want to loose this one or the pole. This fish was going to put up a fight. He fought with the thing for a few minutes before we could see anything at all, then slowly the fish started to surface.
It was a Stingray. Probably 3 feet from tip to tip and he was mad.
Eventually we ended up pulling him up and cutting him loose but not before he broke the pole in half.