Kids Cars

What do Kid’s Cars and Motorhomes have in common?

          They both break at times.

          The Kid’s Cars were used at the Chatterbox to serve the kid’s meals in. Made out of cardboard and needing to be folded into their shape, they sometimes met their fate, and had collisions, complete with ketchup  drizzled about for realism. When they came apart, my always awesome staff would “repair” the cars for the little kid that was about to have a meltdown because their car came apart.

          Problem solved.

          The motorhome is a different animal. I do a lot of the maintenance myself, but there are some issues that I am not even remotely qualified to attempt.

          Like the really big, 24-foot slide-out that has a motor and track problem.

          This requires the slide to be entirely extricated from the body of the motorhome.

          Which requires a really big forklift type thing to hold it.

          It also requires making a several days trip to where it was born.

          Off to Forest City, Iowa, just this side of the Minnesota border!

          It is here where the folks at the factory have both the expertise and equipment to handle a job like this. Believe it or not, the price to do this at the factory was reasonably low. They will also fix a few other issues for us while we are there.

          So, today is Monday, April 26 and this adventure starts our Great Eastern Summer Migration of 2021!

          A short, but very important, back pedal if I may. You probably noticed the photo of a young lady and me at the top of this post.

          This is Darcy from Kid Stuff Marketing in Topeka, Kansas.  Darcy and I have been friends for over 17 years, but we have never met until today. Darcy was my contact at Kid Stuff, and I would call her at 7:31 every Monday morning (they opened at 7:30) for all the years we had the Chatterbox. I was always her first caller on Mondays. We talked about our children and families, heard about each other’s vacations, graduations, and weddings.  I told her years ago that someday I would get out there and visit in person.

          Someday.

          So, when this trip to Winnebago Land came up and I realized that Topeka was just a (relatively speaking) short detour, we decided that if everything looked good in the morning, that I would give Darcy a call and invite ourselves up for a visit.

           I called her at 7:31 today 😊

          She was surprised.

          Darcy told me that when she saw my name pop up on the caller ID, she was like….. “Nahh, couldn’t be.”

          But when I said, “Hi Darcy, It’s Don!” she knew it was for real.

           We arrived at lunchtime, Darcy came out to the motorhome and we had  great visit. A chance to get caught up on family news, (we couldn’t believe how big the kids got), you know, all the important stuff.

          Just one of those ‘Someday’ bucket list type things that usually never get done.

          But meeting nice people that you’ve known forever should get a higher place on that list.

          I’m happy that I made the ‘Someday’ be today.