It Pays To Have Connections

Before I get into my story of last night I'll catch up a little bit since the last post. Bennie and I spent a fantastic week at Virginia Beach a couple weeks ago. The weather was absolutely gorgeous. I enjoyed riding the bikes the hotel gives us (which saves a lot of money), and of course we walked a lot. So we got a lot of exercise. Virginia Beach is a great place for walking and for bike riding with the 3 mile boardwalk and bike trail next to it. Plus there are a lot of bike trails that leave the beach and go out into the outlying areas. One morning I rode across the inlet over to the "rich" section. There were nice houses right on the beach. They may have sold for $175-200,000 around here. One was for sale, and I asked the yard guy how much they were asking. He said "1.4". It wasn't much bigger than our house, and it was actually across the road from the beach. One day we took off and drove down to the Outer Banks - 1 1/2 hours away. I had never been there. That was fun seeing what it looked like. We walked up "Kill Devil Hill", I guess is the name, to see the Wright Brothers Memorial. We drove down to the Bodie lighthouse. We crossed some really long bridges and ate at a great restaurant. Then came "home", back to our hotel. The only problem with staying gone a whole week is that I still feel like I'm behind on everything. I have about 20-25 hours of TV recorded that I still haven't seen.

Okay, so on to my story. Last night some of the women at church planned a night at the fair. I have done this almost every year for 15 years probably, always with different women going each year. We usually plan to go on the night of Priesthood session because the men are at church. So last night, after some cancellations, we ended up with three of us going. We knew that Clemson was in town playing Wake Forest, and parking might be a problem. So we waited until well into the game to get there so there wouldn't be the traffic. We got to Winston around 5:00. Well, half a mile from the stadium we started seeing cars parked all over the place, on both sides of the road and every available grassy space. It was jam-packed. As we got closer to the fairground and coliseum, all the lots were closed and had "lot full" signs on them. So, now we were starting to worry. As we went by the huge parking lot at the coliseum, it was also full, plus cars were stopped in both lanes coming from the other direction, trying to pull into that lot. So, I told the other two girls that my brother worked at Freddie B's, a bar across the road, and maybe we could park there. So we drive up by FB's, and the lot was blocked with two blue barrels in the entrance. Also it looked to be full. So, now there seemed to be no hope of parking anywhere. The cars going in the opposite direction were just sitting there with nowhere to go. So Kristen Branch, who was driving, pulled into a convenience store to see what was there, but no spaces. She turned around to pull back out, and I suggested that I run down to FB's just to see if Jimmy was there and if he could help. So, that's what I did. When I got to the bar, there was a friend of Jimmy's, Jon Hoots, outside sitting at a table. I went up to him and asked if he could hook us up with a parking place. He said yeah, come on in. So I went back to the street and waved Kristen to come in, while Jon went and moved the barrels. There was one space left that he let us have. He put the barrel back and told me that he had been charging $10.00 a space for parking there, but we got it for free! It was just really cool the way that worked out. I went in and said hey to Jimmy, then we went on to the fair.

I had put in my fudge, but it only won second place this year. But, I also put in chocolate cookies, which won second too. And I saw Will Moore driving around in a Pepsi golf cart. He said to tell everyone hello. He is living in Winston now.

Also yesterday while I was gone I taped the Virginia Tech/West Virginia game and watched it this morning. Marcus Vick rules! He threw 15/17 and ran for a TD. I think the Vick brothers are going to greatly overshadow the Manning boys in a few years.