"...when...a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionise. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact, that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army."

"For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done for ever."

And suddenly Jonna and I feel a whole lot better about what we're doing with our lives.

February 26: I'm finally off of Interstate 10 today...and onto Interstate 20. Whoopee. Jonna dropped me off and I hadn't gotten more than a mile into my walk when I had my second encounter with javelina (hahv ah LEEN ah). There were only two of them this time and they were down in a gully only about fifteen feet awaqy from me. They didn't run when they saw me, but they didn't seem anywhere near as threatening as the herd of them I had encountered back outside of Tucson. And of course I had left my camera in Nessie. So I called Jonna on the cell phone and asked her to turn around and come back. While I was waiting for her, the two javelina crossed the road, then two more appeared on the side the original two had come from.

Jonna arrived back with the camera and I walked slowly to where the two javelina were standing. Unfortunately, they wouldn't let me get quite as close as I had been and one of them ducked under the barbed wire fence near the roadside - a maneuver

with which he was obviously familiar. I did manage to get a couple of pictures of the other one. I then discovered that it was the same two javelina I had initially seen. There was a gully on the north side of the road where I thought the first two had gone. They did, but they weren't there anymore. There was a small culvert running under the road at this point, and they had obviously crossed over the road, then ducked down into the culvert and crossed back to the point where they had started. At least I got pictures this time.

I've fallen off the rock wagon and may need intervention. Just shy of the 13 mile marker today I had caught up with Jonna and was letting the guys out for a little romp in the desert when a few rocks caught my eye. There were a couple of nice agate specimens, a small chunk of chalcedony, and one that I believe is either something like a decent sized copper nugget - or a meteorite. It would be great if it's a meteorite, but I'll have to let someone who knows more about it than I do take a look at it. Jonna's expert opinion is that it's a petrified dog turd - but all I can say is that if that's what it is, those prehistoric doggies must have subsisted primarily on a diet of lead, because this little sucker is quite heavy for its size.

After making decent mileage for today we motored on ahead into Pecos, which, sadly, seems to be a town that has died but nobody's gotten around to interring it yet. We can't figure out why, but a vast majority of shops seem to be closed and those that are left are for the most part pretty shabby. It's the only fairly decent sized town around for many miles, so one would think it would attract a significant amount of business, but it doesn't seem that way. We decided to stay at a Motel 6 for a night after several nights in Nessie. We're going to have to exercise a bit more discretion about our allegiance to Motel 6. We generally stay there if there's one available because they are always pet friendly. But the check-in clerk warned us that they were having trouble with their boiler so hot water was on-again and off-again. It was off again. And the washing machine was out of order. At least the bed was comfortable.

Before leaving Van Horn too far behind we need to make mention of one significant observation: if you ever find yourself in or near Van Horn, you really ought to take the time to stop at the town's bookstore. It's easy to find - on Business 20 one block east of the bank. I don't want to spoil the discovery by telling you too much about it, but trust me, it has to be the one place worth visiting within perhaps a seventy-five mile radius - and you'll certainly enjoy browsing there.

I bought a wireless card to try to get back on the internet, but couldn't find a hot spot. Watching the news, we saw that some congressman - didn't catch who - has introduced a bill to restrict the OOOO's war powers. The pundits all think this was a foolish thing to do, but only because they're not using common sense. It's nice to see some of our leadership catching on to the things I've been saying for so long, but they need to analyze their approach. The reason the pundits all think it's a bad idea is that it would be foolish to restrict a president's powers in a time of war. But that's just it - we're not at war, unless you consider the "war" on terror to be an actual war - in which case we're now in a perpetual state of war. But if the "war" on teroor is what it is - or what it should be - an ongoing and evolving effort to successfully address the problem of world terrorism, then we are not in fact at war and there is no justification whatsoever for the executive branch to retain war powers. But you know all that, because you've been paying attention and you have what seems to be so uncommon in the world today - common sense.

February 24: After leaving the Evil Traveling Troll behind in Oklahoma we did not have a single additional mechanical problem for the rest of the trip to Van Horn. Becky insists it has nothing to do with the Evil Traveling Troll, but then I discovered that she helped Jonna pick the Troll out, so I do believe her assertions are somewhat biased.

We've discovered a distressing fact about traveling with a motorhome: you don't want to find yourself in need of immediate repairs. While Nessie is fully roadworthy now, her plumbing is in need of attention. Jonna was caught in Missouri during the below zero weather last month, and while we did our best to drain her water systems there has been some damage done and we really can't use any plumbing other than the toilet until we have everything inspected and whatever necessary repairs done. We've stopped at several RV repair places along the way and have discovered that they all have a waiting period ranging from two weeks to over a month. This means that unless we can anticipate where we're going to be at a given time and make an advance appointment, we're not going to be able to get the repairs done. And it is very difficult for us to estimate when we're going to be in a given location. Perhaps things will settle down in the near future and we'll be able to figure something out.

We did stop in Odessa to get Nessie a much needed oil change, and while they were working on that, I fixed a few other minor problems. One of those was the left low beam headlight. The fabled mechanic who told Jonna that her tires we about to self destruct also had told her that the headlight bolts were so rusted he'd probably have to break the mounting frame to replace the headlight so we've been running without that light for the past several days. I picked up a headlight and some Liquid Wrench at NAPA and decided to have a go at it. I don't know what the mechanic was looking at, but I didn't even need the Liquid Wrench. The bolts weren't rusted and the burnt out headlight slipped out easily. I also replaced a bolt on the driver's side rear view mirror that had mysteriously vanished and the bolts holding the rear license plate on - one of them had also gone missing. Maybe someone is building their own RV by swiping miscellaneous parts from passing rigs.

Thursday evening as we headed over the Texas plains toward the low mountains surrounding Van Horn I remarked to Jonna that it looked like we weren't going to get much of a sunset. The sun was low in the sky and there was a variety of different cloud formations scattered across the horizon, but the colors were drab and washed out. But then the sun finally dipped below the horizon and the light show began. There was every color from bright pink to turquoise to electric gold. One cloud seemed to be its own little rainbow. An entire fleet of wispy little clouds suddenly lit up like a neon sign. The clouds above and behind us turned first crimson, then deep pink with vermilion folds among them. To the northwest, one low, thin cloud was so black it looked like someone has slashed a hole in the display where the night sky was showing through, One things we missed living in California was the brilliant sunsets of the Illinois prairies. We used to rate them on a scale of one to ten. This one rivaled any that we experienced in Illinois and definitely rated a ten. We drove along wondering what the ancients made of displays like this. I'm sure they probably believed these colors were a living thing. Maybe they weren't too far wrong.

Our mechanical problems were replaced by electronic problems unfortunately. Ever since Jonna went to Missouri our cellular internet connection was behaving weirdly. While she was at Becky's, if she got online with the computer it would shut down after about ten minutes maximum - and I mean completely shut down...the computer would just suddenly power down. We knew the problem was with the cellular card because if we unplugged the card - or didn't use it to get online - the computer would chug merrily along. Then beginning Thursday we had a terrible time getting online at all, and if we did it would only go for four or five minutes before shutting down. So we stopped at a Cingular store in Midland where we encountered one of many recent absurdities. First, we were told that their warranty exchange program is a mail-in program - you can't exchange the card at a store. This, we told them, was a problem because we don't have a mailing address where we can receive things in a reasonable time frame. Then we were told that our card is "old technology" and they don't even carry that card at the stores anymore. Understand that we bought it at the end of October. After wrangling about all this for a while we called the warranty repair number that evening and I spent about an hour and a half on the phone going through diagnostics until the tech decided that the card was, indeed, bad. Duh. Then we wrangled some more until I finally convinced them - I think - to ship the replacement to their store in Odessa where we'll pick it up in about a week. I'll know for sure tomorrow when I call back to check.

We ran into another absurdity Friday. We still have a couple of bills we're paying, usually by internet, but with our internet commection down we have to resort to regular mail. So I went to the bank in Van Horn the other day to get a money order to send out for one of our bills. I had the cash for the money order. The cashier told me that the bank doesn't do money orders for people who are not regular bank customers. I must have looked at her like she had sprouted antennae. I went to the post office and got the money order there, but have been wondering ever since what possible risk there is to a bank in doing a money order for a non-customer when they're being paid for it in cash. I guess I really don't want to know.

I always have my digital camera with me when I'm walking, but wish I would have had it the other morning when I had the guys out for their morning stroll. There's a dirt road leading away from the RV park where we were staying and they know that until we get to the road we're in a "no bark" zone, but when we hit the road they can chase and bark and be as goofy as they want. We had gotten onto the dirt road and the guys were barking and running and generally having a grand old time goofing off. There was a pipe metal fence running along one side of the road and suddenly a roadrunner jumped right up on top of the fence about three feet from my shoulder...and just sat there! It didn't seem to be the least bit intimidated by the dogs barking and running and jumping around - it just came by to say hello. And I didn't have my camera along. Rats! The roadrunner walked along the top rail of the fence for a while, then finally hopped down and went about its roadrunning business I guess.

During the trip down here and the ferocious windstorm on Saturday we managed to get lots of housekeeping stuff done to Nessie. By the way, the windstorm was so bad here that we had to run into town and get some Dramamine for Jonna - the rocking of Nessie was making her seasick. I got the new curtains up, repaired several small things inside, and I think most importantly we basically tore everything apart and completely reorganized. It's going to take some time to get used to the lifestyle of living in a camper...and figuring out how to arrange things so that they're neatly stored away yet reasonably readily accessible. We're getting better at it.

On to the business at hand - the walk. When I began my walk, my primary focus was to restore the balance of power among the branches of our government and to start undoing the damage that has been done to our Constitutional rights and freedoms. I saw the ending of the war in Iraq to be an inescapable result of the restoration of sanity and reason to our governance. I did not address exactly how or when the end of this war should take place, stating in my rationale that I would have to leave such details to wiser heads than my own.

But time has passed and our leadership continues to be incapable of rising above inanity and sloganeering. Jonna just finished reading a book I mentioned the other day - "How America Lost Iraq" by Aaron Glantz. She wanted to make sure I read the last chapter of the book, which I did. Seems Mr. Glantz and myself are on the same page. And I am now convinced that the only sane, rational, reasonable, logical, humane, ethical course of action for us is to immediately and completely withdraw our military forces from Iraq. I'm sorry, those of you who want to argue for a phased withdrawal of some sort for fear of the chaos that might ensue if we were to pull out completely are simply not paying attention. The cold, hard fact of the matter is that we cannot possibly do any worse than what we are doing. In all our rhetoric over the dangers of immediate withdrawal, we neglect one overarching reality - and that is that the Iraqi people are real people, with hearts and minds and sense of their own. While we are occupying the country they have little or no control over their government, their environment or their day-to-day existence. Can we honestly think so little of them as to believe that, if left to manage their own affairs, they would continue the killing and the bloodshed and the chaos that has ruled their lives for the past five years?

We ostensibly went into Iraq to liberate the country from an iron-fisted megalomaniac of a dictator. We did that. And five years later - and I realy, really hate to say this, but it's demonstrably true - the Iraqi people are far worse off than they were under Hussein. I'll paraphrase an old saying that the average person's assessment of whether their government is a good government is whether or not the trains run on time. Under Hussein, the trains ran on time. And the people had electricity. And running water. And hospitals. And schools. And jobs. And a plethora of other services and conveniences. Now, five years after their "liberation" - FIVE YEARS - they have none of that, and little hope of seeing most of it in the foreseeable future.

I'm not saying Hussein was anything other than the mad dog he was, but there is something else to consider as well. The atrocities for which he was toppled, tried and executed happened a) during the 80s when the United States was actively supporting his regime, or b) during the early 90s when, after the First Gulf War, Bush the First encouraged the citizenry to rise up against Hussein then did nothing to support them when they did. So while we can look on Hussein as a thoroughly deplorable despot, we cannot escape the fact that whatever blood was on his hands is on the hands of our nation as well. Deal with it.

My growing fear is that those who are pulling the strings at this time still envision creating an Iraq that is modeled on South Korea - a haven for American interests that is under an essentially permanent U.S. occupation in order to keep it stable and functioning. The thing that those who hold this agenda seem unable to grasp is that Iraq is not South Korea and never will be. What we face in Iraq has huge elements of culture and religion that were not present in South Korea, and result in an atmosphere that makes their agenda completely impossible. Continued occupation - for a day, a year, a decade or a century, will not produce a stable nation or government...in fact, it will do precisely the opposite, and in the process provide a perpetual recruitment tool for those we hope to eliminate.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - unless and until we completely abandon the military option we will be completely unable to even begin to explore the many other possible options that are available to us to bring stability to the Mideast. When is our leadership finally going to get this through their heads?

We managed to get another fifty miles down the road this morning...before another tire blew on us. One of the ones that was replaced last night - the right rear inner tire. It was pretty impressive - the entire tread area just peeled right off the tire, leaving it looking like a very black peeled banana. I got Nessie stopped quickly, so it didn't actually go flat - it was just sitting there with its plies hanging out all the way around. So we called roadside assistance again, which put us in touch with the guys who replaced the tires last night. They had to scrounge around for a while for a couple more tires in the right size.

Meanwhile, Jonna and I sat on the side of route 69 in Oklahoma at the 104 mile marker and got caught up on our cribbage and Mancala. After a while we decided to get out and police up the southbound roadside, collecting a couple of huge garbage bags full of cans, bottles and assorted debris in the process. Finally, Bub (that was his name, Bub) showed up again and made lots of banging and hissing noises outside while Jonna and I switched to a few games of gin. About 1:30 p.m. we were finally ready to roll...again.

Actually, there were a couple of good news items about this one. First of all, we weren't out any more money - just more lost time. Secondly, the previous night when the tires blew, I elucidated clearly and severally to the nimrod at the roadside assistance number that all the tires on Nessie were bias ply tires and we needed bias ply replacements. For those unfamiliar, I still remember from way back in the 60s and 70s when I was in the Air Force reading numerous accounts of fatal car accidents directly attributable to the mixing of radial and bias ply tires on a car. When the tire blew this morning, I discovered something I was unable to see in the darkness the night before. Despite my repeated insistence that I needed bias ply replacements and the nimrod's repeated assurances that I would be receiving bias ply replacements, the tires that had been placed on Nessie in the darkness had a big, fat RADIAL on their sidewalls. And that's what took Bub so long this time - he had to find two bias ply tires to replace the two radials he had put on Nessie the night before.

Anyway, we're back on the road again and less than an hour from Denton, Texas - which is where we had hoped to be last night. Jonna has begun to settle down a bit - she just about had a purple hissy fit every time Nessie hit a bump or made an unfamiliar sound for a while there, but we managed to make it safely to an RV park for the evening and she is soothing her frazzled self right now by reading "How America Lost Iraq" by Aaron Glantz. Everything is relative, you see.

We got six new tires installed on Nessie and hit the road today. Less than two hundred miles down the road - you guessed it - both right rear tires blew out. When we bought Nessie we got roadside assistance for her, so I called the number and the lady told me someone would be there in forty minutes. An hour and a half later he arrived. Since we were in Nessie at least we could fire up the generator and play a little backgammon while we waited for him.

Turns out the tires weren't faulty - the installation was. When you have dual tires, you have an air hose attached to the inner tires which passes through the outer wheel so that you don't have to take the outer wheel off to adjust the air pressure in the inner tire. The outer wheel also has a trim cap that fits over the hub and the wheel. It, of course, has a hole in it for the air hose to pass through, and it also has two nuts that secure it in place. The guy who installed the tires did the left set properly, but either did not tighten or did not install the two nuts that hold the wheel trim cap in place on the right side. So the trim cap vibrated and rotated until it sliced through the air hose, instantly deflating the inner tire, which then proceeded to take out the outer tire. And we're out another three hundred bucks for two more new tires. The tire shop will hear from me in the morning.

Of course, by the time we were ready to roll again it was late. We had hoped to make about five hundred miles today, but decided to find a room in Pryor, Oklahoma - about ten more miles down the road - to lick our wounds for the night. It turns our that Pryor is hosting their annual Geranium Festival or some other wingding, because there was not a motel room available anywhere near Pryor. Incredible. We wound up in Muskogee before we found a place to rest our weary bones and soother our frazzled nerves for the night. Oh well, we're safe and warm for the evening, although we'll wind up with yet another extra day before I can start walking again. The guys are watered and fed, Jonna is already asleep, and I'm not going to be too far behind her. Tomorrow will be better. Yep, it will.

February 7: The email problems have been solved, but I'm still going to leave the gmail address as the primary way for people to correspond with me for now.  Having these days off is driving me crazy, but I should be back on the road tomorrow and should be able to make it to Van Horn before my short hiatus on the 12th-14th.  I'm back with Anne for today so I have some internet time available.  I spent the last two days at the Coronado Motel in El Paso - not to be confused in any way with the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego, which would have cost me roughly twenty to thirty times what I paid to stay the past couple of nights!

I had a radio interview this morning with Paul Strelzin from the El Paso Air America radio station.  It was fun, but we didn't really talk about what I'm doing as much as we did about how I'm doing it.  He did feature the website though, so I hope more people will be able to find us.  Tnank you, Paul, for affording me the air time.

A little more walking trivia before I get back into the serious stuff over the next few days.  I want to answer a few more of the questions I'm regularly asked about my walk experience:

What is the most unusual item you've seen along the road?  I'll interpret that question as meaning what is the thing you've seen that you least expected to see lying along the roadside.  In that sense, it would have to be the cake serving knife from a wedding reception.  I saw this along a frontage road in El Paso.  It was obviously from a wedding reception because it still had the ribbons and stuff tied around it.  I didn't look to see whether it was engraved.  The next most unexpected thing was one red boxing glove lying along the interstate a few miles from the western border of New Mexico.

Have you found anything of value/any money along the road?  I have only picked up one item of any value so far - a neat little corkscrew that I brought back for Jonna.  I routinely find loose change, but have only once found any paper currency.  The most I've found in one day was $6.27, again in El Paso.  Six dollars of that was a five and a one folded together.

Have you seen any interesting critters, snakes, scorpions, etc.?  No snakes or scorpions - wrong time of year.  The most interesting live critters I've seen (and one of the most unnerving experiences so far) were the javelina just east of Tuscon.  I've seen several dead animals that I dearly wish I could have seen alive - a kangaroo rat southeast of Glamis, a gorgeous ringtailed cat near Benson, two beautiful owls within three miles of each other outside of Lordsburg, and a sparrow hawk a few miles beyond Fort Hancock.  The one that startled me most was the ringtailed cat - my immediate reaction was, "I didn't know there were lemurs in North America!"  It isn't a lemur, of course, but it sure did look awfully similar.  I had to locate it in an Arizona wildlife book to find out what it was.

February 5: I'm still trying to correct the email problem and think I've figured out a way to make it as far as Van Horn before my short trip to San Diego next week.  I'm still going to wind up with several days off here in El Paso, though.

While I have the time I figured I'd answer a question I've been asked by several people.  They want to know what exactly I'm carrying with me during this period when I'm completely on my own, so I thought I'd offer a complete inventory.

There are two basic configurations as I walk.  If at all possible, I will leave my larger backpack behind while I walk.  I can do this whenever I know where I'm going to be staying after I'm done walking and have a way to get my backpack to that location.  When this is the case, I carry a very small bag slung across my shoulder with a few basics.  So there are three things to describe: 1)What I carry on my person, 2)What I carry in the small bag, and 3)What's in the backpack.

1)On my person: I have my cell phone, my GPS and a digital camera.  I also carry a little bit of cash, my wallet, Don Day's dogtag, my Travel Bug dogtag, a very small Swiss Army-type knife, a comb, a pair of nail clippers, my water bottle clip, a pen, a small notebook and an equally small US road atlas.  I'll have a bottle of liquid in the water bottle clip - usually Mountain Dew.

2)The small bag: The small bag will contain my mitten/gloves if I'm not wearing them and my jacket if I'm not wearing it.  It will also have additional liquid, extra batteries for the GPS and camera and sometimes a candy bar or protein bar.

3)The backpack: The backpack itself isn't much more than a glorified duffel bag, so it is extremely light.  All the rest of my supplies are in there, beginning with a sleeping bag rated to 40 below, a bivy sack, a sheet of tyvek and a foam pad.  Together, these account for about half the volume of the backpack.  I have a set of Frog Togs (waterproof top & pants), two extra pairs of socks, three extra pairs of sock liners, a T-shirt, two extra pairs of underwear, additional batteries, a first aid bag and a padded pouch.  The padded pouch contains a laminated copy of the petition, several signing sheets and various receipts and notes I collect during the journey.  The first aid bag contains vitamins, Aleve, Tylenol, Rolaids, a space blanket, a flashlight, sports wrap, sports tape and assorted bandages.  On the outside of the backpack is a zippered pocket which holds my cell phone AC charger, deodorant and cologne, a couple of razors, scissors, a tiny roll of duct tape, several travel packs of tissues and a bottle of sunscreen.

That's about it.  Note that I do not have an extra white shirt, jeans or shoes.  I wear the T-shirt and Frog Tog bottoms while I'm washing my white shirt and jeans, and as for the shoes...well, they're holding up very nicely.  But the idea was to travel as light as possible and I think I've managed to do that.  I haven't weighed the backpack, but I'm guessing it's less than 20 pounds, and when I don't have to carry it I'm toting extremely little excess weight.

Of course, I also have my red bandana, my straw hat and my walking stick.  The walking stick is not a cane - it is a highway adaptation of an essential desert hiking implement.  I call it my Unfriendly Critter Alignment Tool.  It is long enough to poke into any dark holes and rattle around before I sit down near them, and the brass head is quite heavy, so that if I bonk an unfriendly critter with it, the critter will know it has been bonked.  I haven't had to do that yet, but I nearly used it in Deming, where a dog came awfully close to getting bonked as he attempted to impress his buddies.

So that's what I carry with me.  Next time maybe I'll tell you about the songs that run through my head all day...quite a bizarre mixture.

February 3: I'm still unable to access email and trying to light a fire under tech support about it - sorry.  As of today I've made it just about as far as I can go unless and until I can establish some contacts in the Van Horn neighborhood.  I'm already 70 miles outside of El Paso and can't expect folks here to slog me way out into the middle of nowhere and then come back and get me again later.  This means I may have as much as a week off until my quick trip back to San Diego.  Oh well, if so I can get caught up on the website...if I can ever get into my email!!!  Sheesh.

Yesterday was a mixed bag.  Since there was a motel in Fort Hancock I figured I could stay there for the night and leave from there in the morning, which is in fact what I did.  Trouble was, It was both the worst motel and one of the highest room rates I've encountered to date.  You know the kind - rooms reeking of disinfectant, pillows the thickness of pancakes, a heating system that sounded like a semi roaring through the room, six TV channels - four of them in Spanish.  I felt thoroughly ripped off.

I went across the street to the local diner - Angie's Restaurant ("Home of the Chicken Fried Steak") and ordered a cheeseburger for supper.  The waitress asked me if she hadn't seen me walking on the road earlier.  I told her she probably did.  "Are you the man walking from San Diego to Washington?" she asked.  I told her I was.  While I was eating my cheeseburger I heard her talking to some people in the other room.  She was speaking Spanish, but every once in a while I heard her say, "San Diego" so I figured she was talking about me.

When I finished and went to pay the bill, the cashier said, "You're the guy walking to Washington to try to get our troops home, aren't you?"  I said, "Yes, ma'am - I am."  She said, "It's on the house.  I hope you're able to do some good."  It really struck me.  I stammered out a thank you.  She said, "No - thank you.  Good luck and stay safe, OK?"  I promised her I would.  It's the first time something like that has happened to me.  It made up for the fleabag motel.

There's more I wanted to write tonight, but it's not date specific and since I may have considerable off time over the next few days I'll let it wait until later.  For now, I have to send another nastygram to tech support then get some sleep.

February 1: Some funky stuff going on with the website for the past few days.  For some reason I haven't been able to get into the email - I've got a call into tech support about that.  Then I wasn't able to create a February Journal page this evening, so I'm posting in January for now.  I hope to have both problems resolved shortly.

The weather continues to be unpredictable, but I managed to get in two decent days.  I've run out of frontage road though, and had to transition over to route 20 yesterday.  Tomorrow I should reach Fort Hancock and will run out of route 20 there and be left with no option other than walking the freeway until I get to Van Horn.  Van Horn is as far as I want to go by the eleventh, when I'll have to find a way back to El Paso to catch a plane for my short return to San Diego.  When I get back to El Paso on the 14th Jonna should be here to greet me.

I stayed with Janet and Tom last night and tonight I'm holed up with Don and Pat.  The rain is coming down right now, but it did hold off until I finished my walk.  We'll see if it decides to stop before tomorrow morning.  We're trying to find people from the Fort Hancock-to-Van Horn area who might be willing to fetch me at the end of a day's walk and bring me to shelter, but no luck so far.  I'm OK until at least Saturday afternoon.  I think there's a motel in Fort hancock, so I can stay there when I reach Fort Hancock tomorrow and start out from there on Saturday, but I'll need a way to get back on Saturday afternoon.  I know Anne or Janet will come to get me if we can't find anyone else, but that's a lot to ask as I'm getting pretty far away from El Paso now.  Sometimes it's really day at a time.

Jonna's with our youngest son, Dietrich, in Chicago now.  They spent their first evening together last night touring some of the clubs where Dietrich and his friends play in Chicago, so it was a very late night.  But as Jonna observed, any evening that begins with Jameson's and ends with chocolate has to be a pretty darn good time.