Back to MO

DSC01204 To say my soul was rattled by the time I got back to Brent and Connie's back porch is an understatement. Brent picked me up at the airport in his white Z3. (He actually asked if my suitcase would fit in a Z3 trunk! Of course, silly.) The ride back from STL was a dream- but familiar from 2001 and Brent's fabulous Midwest ride. (Please check out the Midwest Ride from 2001, it's taken me 6 years to get around to posting it!!!) Here on the porch was a steady stream of hummingbirds.	DSC01206 The whole CCC trip was supposed to be a getaway from family stress, and I didn't get away from the family with my ringing cell phone in the car getting Zac's endless text messages and the bizarre Cinderella treatment from Zac and the CCC folks was pointless stress I did not need. You can see my shoulders are practically in my ears- a sign of stress. By Monday I was a relaxed and happy camper, shoulders like a normal human. I started pestering Brent and Connie about helping me organize a Z3 Ride to New Orleans around Columbus Day. Interested?
DSC01214 It's easy to forget about stress and just watch the hummingbirds sitting on Brent and Connie's back porch.	DSC01215 For car stuff, we discussed Brent's Check Engine Light (I took a picture but it didn't come out. It's not the same as on my car, mine actually says "Check Engine", his is a cartoon of an engine. Brent's son Cody has a Jetta, and it arrived with the solar charger as oem equipment, much like a spare tire. Pretty neato. Brent was looking into Service Bulletin SIB 12 10 02 which apparently deals with a sudden terrible stumble and limp home mode while getting CDL, EML, DSC and check engine lights and that is quite interesting considering the recent rash of similar issues we've been hearing about on Z3 Rides. And I pestered them some more about a possible New OrleanZ ride. We could easily stop at the Dragon and the Delta Blues Museum and the National Voting Rights Museum, ship our cars back the way the CCC does, split the cost... take cheap Jet Blue flights home...
DSC01216 Over the hill on Brent's road the Mississippi River ran a velvety-blue ribbon through the trees, separating Missouri from Illinois.	DSC01219 Brent was also quite proud of his Traffic Pro GPS antenna mod, getting it to sit flush on the dash.
DSC01220 I'm not even sure I have the same trim bolt to unscrew here.	DSC01221 a little velcro instead of the beige trim dot...
DSC01222 and voila, a seated GPS antenna. Since we were kinda forced to get back to Memphis from Clarksdale and make it to my flight, I figured out the Garmin on the fly. It was very limited, but like most GPS's I am now becoming familiar with, if you can learn to speak it's language and re-structure how you are thinking of geography and spelling, you can make it work. My Traffic Pro is 1000 times better, easier to use and program- but Garmin updates its maps. For instance to get to the airport in Memphis I had to tell it to take me to Memphis, then spell out "Airport" to get it to start looking for things in Memphis that have "Airport" in the name, and after about 30 Airport hotels and East Memphis Airport, there was finally Memphis International Airport. The traffic jam function also required you to fiddle a lot with the programming, so when we ran into construction by the time I told it to re-route, we were past the obstruction and it kept telling us to go back. Traffic Pro in the same circumstance, you push one button, dial the distance to avoid and you are done. (and check out the video to see how cool the Traffic Pro display is!)	Pdrm0017 Here's my Traffic Pro GPS antenna- and look at that old cell phone! I installed the beta Traffic Pro three months after Brent's Ride in 2001, a month before 9/11. So much here was reminding me of the great times we had, and how I hadn't written up the pages from that ride. So much happened so fast in 2001, it's taken me 6 years to catch up, and 11 years to get back to Crossroads.
DSC01224 This note on the Hill's fridge couldn't be more apropos... As Brent kinda looks like Mark Twain, and Twain was born in Missouri but lived most of his life in New York. This was really the message of the trip. On the plane from Memphis to St. Louis as I chatted with the man in the seat next to me, the man asked if I thought I had been cursed. I said sometimes I thought I had been some of these last few years. But I was beginning to see that everything was getting better- by leaps and bounds- ever since I went back to Crossroads. I had sold my soul to the Devil 11 years ago, and I guess going back there got my soul- and luck- back. Brent writes: "We keep this saying on our fridge. We are proud of that and feel its meaning is the Gospel."	DSC01225 I don't remember how it came up, but Brent recalled a gift sent to him by TimUK. More friends made from this car and the rides and Homecoming.
DSC01233 TimUK sent Brent one of these "crickets" when Tim led a drive over the English Channel to France.	HC02002 Brent and Connie and TimUK and I were last together in person at the 2002 Z3 Homecoming, here in the photo with 500 Z3s- Kenn Sparks to the far right
HC02002 copy Close up of the 2002 Homecoming pic, TimUK, who started Zroadster.net among other things, now riding motorcycles in Morocco, with JonT and Adrian van Hooydonk (designer of the Z4) and his family (and I forget the other BMW designer guy's name in the background, anyone know?) between us and Brent and Connie behind their car. Biggly is not in this picture but he was there, he picked me up from the airport and brought me to Homecoming. (I couldn't drive down because my Mom was sick, she died a few months later.) Funny, these are the friends I made over a car. Nearly a decade later, they are still some of the best friends I have, some of the best people I know. And they were bailing me out of trouble when I was stranded with the CCC.	DSC01227 We were thinking of you, TimUK, in Missouri.
DSC01234 Brent showed me some of the trees he planted, here's a White Pine. We also fed the catfish (see the catfish in the video).	DSC01235 another White Pine...
DSC01236 Wild Catalpa	DSC01237 Wild Catalpa