Category: Pix

The Tale of Two Cities

We had planned a getaway for Memorial day that was a little quirky and not like us.  Little did we know that a tornado would get in the way.  Due to said tornado, I had closed myself emotionally.  While you could say I had a “good time.”  I don’t have any emotions to go along with the trip, something I typically have.  My wife wrote a blog post from her point of view, I highly recommend reading to see the contrast in our points of view.

We left as soon as we could on the Friday after the tornado and drove about halfway to our destination, St. Joseph / Benton Harbor Michigan.  We stayed the night in Lafayette, leaving early so we could arrive at our destination early.

As soon as we arrived, we learned about these two cities the hard way.  There seems to be a strong sense of division.  While St. Joseph is a nice, quaint resort community, Benton Harbor shows all of the “what used to be” looks.  There are many homes that used to be mansions, but are now dilapidated; some even boarded up.  It’s downtown area almost looks like a ghost town from the 1950’s.  There is some new growth, but it still feels like a ghetto.

The first thing we did was check into our hotel.  It was a pretty funky Courtyard by Marriott.  We decided to find something to eat, explore, and just relax that evening.  The views from St. Joseph are absolutely amazing.  It’s a great little resort community.  The whole time I was contemplating about what was happening back home and trying to calm my nerves by smoking copious amounts of tobacco.

Sunday was a mixed bag of not great weather conditions, so the beach was not an option.  After having the best breakfast I’ve ever had at any hotel, we headed for St. Joseph.  Our first stop was downtown.  They have a charming area filled with high fashion shops, and typical small town businesses.  They have animal statues on just about every corner, decorated in many different ways.  Taylor loved the “Cash Cow,” a cow covered with REAL money.  It was of course in front of a bank.  My fave was “Vincent Van Goat,” which had a depiction of “Starry Night” on one side and “Irises” on the other.

We then went to the most interesting pizza place I’ve ever been to.  Silver Beach Pizza is a pizza place located within an Amtrak train station.  I had an ice cold beer and a very good barbecue chicken pizza.  It was most excellent!

We then went to the Curious Kids museum.  It was fun for both the girls.  Taylor enjoyed encapsulating herself in a bubble.  Amelia enjoyed the water table, and acting OCD with random items.  They’ve ran out of space in the converted brick house they are located in, so with the price of admission you can also access their addition, which is located next to the indoor carousel.  We then went there.  They have stuff even the adults can appreciate.  They have a climbing wall, water tables galore, space items.  It was quite fascinating and good stuff.  We then went and had fun with the carousel.
We were a bit nervous, as Amelia had never been on one before.  She was a trooper, and had a blast.  It was good family fun for all!

Amelia’s nap time was approaching, so we headed back to the hotel.  Which was perfect timing, as a severe storm approached.  After going through the tornado, this was the first time a storm actually scared me.

That night, we played in the pool – all of us.  This hotel has a very interesting pool, it has an indoor and outdoor section; you can swim to either section through an opening in a glass wall.  We then found an arcade was in a mall not too far away and decided to check it out.  What we discovered was a mall that was essentially dead.  There were no anchor stores at all.  While there were interior stores, there weren’t that many.  We played for an hour or so and then went back to the hotel.

The next morning, we stopped at beautiful Silver Beach.  The difference between an ocean’s beach and a large lake’s beach is pure calm.  It’s an amazing place, with an amazing view.  The girls had fun, I put Amelia’s feet in the cold water and she didn’t want to leave!  The sand was so fine and plush that we decided to bring home a bucket full.  We all have glass jars of it to help remember the experience.

As fun end to our short trip, we stopped at Fair Oak’s Farm in northern Indiana.  It’s a large dairy farm that gives tours and offers many learning opportunities for children about where our dairy products come from.  We took a bus tour, which takes you through some of their barns to see how the cows live and what they eat.  Amelia sat with me, and I told her that these are cows, they go “moo.”  She started repeating me, it was adorable.  We then saw their carousel milker.  It’s an amazing machine that lets them produce vast quantities of moo juice.

We then went to the birthing barn, and witnessed the births of two calves.  While I had seen this many times as a child, Rachel and Taylor had not.  I think it was a good experience for both of them.

Next we stopped by the kids area, where Taylor got to do something she hadn’t done in a while, jumping on trampolines while attached to bungee cords.

We then visited the store, where I sampled some cheese.  We bought some souvenirs for the girls and they had some ice cream.

I had just started to heal from this life changing event, and our vacation was over.  Coming home was almost like a nightmare coming true.  While it was nice to get away, the mental extremes that it forced me to go through were almost too much to handle.

The Little Girl Isn’t Dead

This is a continuation of my last post, The Little Girl is Dead.

While on our short vacation, my mind refused me the opportunity to forget about what was going on at home.  Instead it kept thinking about that phrase that was etched into my mind that night.  I kept running scenarios in my head about my girls; I didn’t like to, but I had to.

I felt bad for everyone who had been affected by this storm, especially the less fortunate ones who lived in that trailer court, right next door to me.  They had lost everything, and probably didn’t have insurance.  There were many children living there, so many that the schools had 2 buses come for pickup and drop off.  We would see them all waiting for the bus in the mornings on our way to work.  I still see their faces, and imagine what they must have went through on that eventful night.

I received two phone calls that Saturday while we were in Michigan, our power had been restored!  It had been out for around 3 and 1/2 days.  We don’t know how many utility poles had to be replaced in total, but it was a large number.

Since I had Internet access, I was always keeping up on the news.  Our township trustee had organized a volunteer day, to help with tree & debris cleanup.  This made all of us happy, and was the first step in putting my heart and soul to ease.  In the end there were a total of 3 volunteer days, but the news that an IU student had disappeared shifted the focus, and the volunteers.

We returned from Michigan on Memorial day, and reality set in.  While I had no damage to my home, we had lost about 10 trees; including our beloved apple tree.  Many of these trees formed a ‘natural’ fence along my property line.  They provided large amounts of shade and oxygen, they were also wrapped in vines.  Anyone that knows me, knows that I’m a “jack of all trades.”  I have had experience in cutting trees since I was about 12, when I helped my then step-dad do just that for a living.

We had already lost our weeping willow tree and a maple tree due to wind and ice storms that occurred earlier in the year, we purchased a chain saw so I could clean them up; I was prepared.  Little did I know how difficult the task would be when vines were involved.  This was a task I couldn’t handle, this task needed a quantity of experience people.

We decided to get estimates from tree-trimming businesses.  I called around 5 companies, only one showed up and gave me an estimate.  It was more expensive than we wanted to pay, and under our homeowners insurance deductible.  I wasn’t going to feel at ease until this was taken care of; I was literally stuck between a bunch of trees and a hard place.

I turned to our township trustee’s office.  I called them and asked for assistance, but let them know that I should be placed on the bottom of their list.  I let them know that it was simply downed trees that needed to be cleaned up, there was no damage to my home and that it shouldn’t be a priority.  While we could have paid for the cleanup; it would have presented a financial burden that we might have not recovered from.

A few days go by and as I arrived home from class an Mennonite looking fellow was at my house.  He said he was surveying what needed to be done; he was assembling a crew.  The next day when I arrived home, the trees were almost cleaned up!  It was a group of boys and a man.  At the time I presumed they were Mennonite, since they used technology.  It turns out I was wrong; it was the Worthington Amish Youth Group.  I thanked each one of them personally, and asked if they needed anything at all.  They requested some water, which I promptly fetched and then they went about their business.

With all the property damage and the trailer court in ruins, I was blown away that they decided to help ME.  My whole family is in their debt and are working on a way to pay it forward and show them how much we appreciate what they’ve done for us.

After they finished cleaning up the trees, a larger group, including women went over to the trailer court and assisted cleanup.

The effects of this tornado will be felt and seen for many years to come.  Not just from the people (like me) who live where it happened, but by the thousands of travellers that take that section of Highway 45.  I went through many years of emotional issues as a child, which I thought had toughened me mentally.  I learned the hard way that I was wrong.

While we are mainly healed from this event, our souls will never forget it.  That storm took something from me.  Even though I don’t exactly know what “it” is, I feel incomplete inside.  I don’t know how to move on from this experience.  Writing this has certainly helped.

 

The Little Girl is Dead

Those are the words my mind tricked me into believing were true.  I heard a fireman say something that sounded like that on the night of May 25th, the night a EF1 tornado touched down very close to my home.

My wife, a person who is always concerned with the weather told me that the night was going to be a rough one.  I hear this on a fairly common basis, but something told me that I should stay on alert that night.  She had radar from WRTV 6 up on her computer, and we had a combination of the local weather and The Weather Channel on our TV the entire night.

I remember the exact moment when I knew we were going to be in for something.  While watching the TV, they were showing all of the tornado warning/watches in Illinois.  The state was covered in red; meaning the state was covered in tornado warnings.

Around 10:19pm our power went out, and almost instantly after that our weather radio went off; it was a tornado warning for us and we knew that this was serious.  My wife headed for our basement and told me to grab Amelia from her crib if I thought it was appropriate.  While I knew this was a serious situation, I had to see it for my own eyes.  That’s when I picked up my flashlight and looked at the large maple tree in my backyard.  It’s large canopy was swirling in a clockwise motion, something I had never seen before in that large of a tree.

I immediately ran to grab Amelia from her room and rushed to our utility room where Rachel was waiting.  Even though I had experienced a similar event when I was 12, I had never felt the urgency or threat that I felt at that moment.  It was the first time we had ‘ran for shelter’ from a storm.  While in our utility room, we could hear the intensity of the storm.  There was no sound like a train, rather the sound of a large volume of air moving at a high rate of speed.  It went away after a minute or so, but we decided to stay in our safe place for a few minutes, just to be sure.

Immediately, I went outside to inspect for damage.  The first thing I noticed was that a large limb from one of my trees had broken and fallen on my neighbor’s fence.  I called him to let him know, and that was when my mental state took a dive that it hadn’t had in a very long time.


He told me that his daughter had called him and by listening to the scanner, she had heard that the trailer court right next to our neighborhood was completely wiped out.  I felt a tremendous urge to go see what I could do to help.  I got in the Kia and discovered that a war zone now existed less than 1/4 mile away from my home; I was also trapped in our neighborhood.

I discovered another one of my neighbors outside, I asked him what he knew.  He said that there were several children trapped in one of the trailers.  He told me that he offered his assistance, but they didn’t want anyone who wasn’t trained in search & rescue to help out of the fear that they might also be hurt.

I then heard those words that I couldn’t get out of my head, “the little girl is dead.”  I had to run back home, I couldn’t help and I could barely hold my tears back.

Out of what seemed to be pure survival instinct, I started tweeting.  Besides our land line, it was my only way of communicating with the outside world at that point.  Here they are:

  • I’m a prisoner in my own neighborhood and there are people dead less than 1/4 miles away from me
  • Trailers stacked on top of trailers, it’s a sickening sight! If I only had a line to the outside world besides this
  • I can’t sleep knowing that my poor neighbor children lost everything, almost their lives tonight. I also confirmed with the fd, no death …
  • I now wish it would stay dark so I cannot see the remains of what was #didthisreallyhappen
  • I’ve only lost a few trees, which I loved -I feel bad for mentioning it, but I think it should be noted.
  • Please put the children who just lost everything in your thoughts and/or prayers. They really didn’t deserve this
  • You never realize how much you appreciate freedom until that freedom is taken – quote me

I then went back and found a larger group of my neighbors.  One of which had a friend over who is a policeman.  We went back and actually did some searching with the fire department.  I snapped some photos on my phone, but due to the atmospheric conditions, they didn’t turn out too well.

I went back home and told Rachel that I couldn’t go to sleep, and that I was going to leave as soon as I could.  I felt disconnected from what was happening, I needed information.  Around 3am, I started seeing headlights from cars driving around our neighborhood – the road must have been finally cleared.  I packed up my laptop, phone and associated cables to charge everything and headed into the unknown.  My destination was the IU Wells Library, but I wasn’t sure if I would make it.  I had to try.

The journey is only about 6 miles, but it seemed like 50.  The entire west side of Bloomington was pitch black.  No stop lights or street lights.  When I finally made it to campus it was even worse.  Trees were down everywhere, what is normally a somewhat linear route ended up to be a criss cross puzzle.

I finally felt okay.  I sat with some of my TCC co-workers and briefed them of the situation.  I logged onto a computer and started my hunt for information.  I printed every article I could find, from the Herald-Times, to the Indy Star to even MSNBC.

Once everything was charged, and my search for information was complete I headed back home.  Little did I know that the drive home would be even more treacherous than the drive in.

Still no lights or businesses open.  It was daylight now, I what I had feared was true; it had to have been a tornado that came through.  While there were spots here and there in town and on campus that had tree damage, there was a defined path of destruction starting just west of Curry Pike/Leonard Springs Road on Highway 45.  This defined path followed me on my journey home, and that’s when I encountered the sheriff’s deputy blocking the road to my home. “And where do you think you’re going?” he asked me.  “Home” I passionately stated.  He let me through.

The next day we left on a planned vacation to Michigan.  We felt it would be better to leave the sadness and destruction, than to stay and be constantly reminded of it.

I’ll continue this tale in my next post.

 

 

Catching Up

It has been too long since my last posting.  I’m going to sum up what’s happened since my last post, and then write individual posts for the more important things later on.

A EF1 tornado hit my area.  It started a few hundred feet away from my home and travelled a couple of miles east.  Nobody was killed thankfully, but some were injured.  It wreaked havoc on my family’s emotional state for a period of time.

Our beloved family member Oreo lost a battle he could not win.  Over the past several months, he lost a lot of weight.  So much so that we decided to take him to the vetinarian.  After doing some blood work, it was discovered that he was in renal failure.  To make it worse, there wasn’t anything we could do to cure him, we could only try to make him comfortable.  We still miss him greatly.

We’re now into Summer Session II at Indiana University.  Session I went very well for me.  I took a computer science course which was an introduction to Python.  I am now taking a Survey of Hip Hop & Rap cultural studies course.  While I’ve never been a large fan of the genre before, I’m beginning to enjoy all aspects of it!

 

Out of Shape

Since I’ve gotten married my weight has risen to a plateau of 275 pounds.  It’s amazing how you don’t notice these things until they creep up on you.
Lately my back has been hurting when I do anything but sit.  I’m also sure one of the reasons why I’m tired all the time is primarily due to the extra weight I’m carrying around.  I know I don’t have anyone to blame but myself, but the last several months have been exhausting due to our ever growing child.

I believe my “six pack protector” is mainly to blame for my back problems.  This time I’m not going to complain, I’m going to do something about it!  Last winter we bought a Nintendo Wii and Wii Active, a workout program.  While it’s not as effective as a real workout at a gym, I believe it will get me on the right track.

I started working out last night, and from that I can tell you for sure that I’m out of shape.  I tried the “easy 30 minute” routine, and my body gave out after half of the workout.  I’m still sore this morning.

I plan on giving my body a day of rest between workouts to help facilitate getting back to a healthy weight.  I hope this can be an inspiration to my wife as well.

For the last year or so, my oldest daughter has become somewhat of a couch potato (much like her father).  I want her and Amelia to know that when you do that there are consequences.  Had I kept a normal workout routine, or a more physical lifestyle I wouldn’t be in so much pain.

I hope this shows them that it pays to be active now instead of later.

Goodbye Yahoo!, Hello Google

I’ve been subscribing to Yahoo! Mail Plus since 2006, and while I enjoy it, I don’t enjoy the fact that I have to pay $19.95 a year to POP my mail to my various e-mail clients.  I knew I needed to make a switch somewhere, but didn’t know where to go.  I know there are many e-mail services out there such as hotmail, juno and gmail.

I’m kinda finicky about my e-mail provider, as I’m not a fan of web mail (I only use it when I have to).  That’s why I’ve been paying for Yahoo’s Plus service.  I used to be a big proponent of Juno.  If you don’t know the history of it, it’s quite fascinating.  It started as a e-mail only program.  You could write emails and send them, that’s it.  It would connect when you wanted to send or receive and then disconnect.  In the age of dial-up access, this was an efficient use of the phone line.  I used Juno from 1996 until about 2004, that’s when my inbox began to be clogged with so much spam that I spent more time cleaning the spam out than simply reading the e-mail that was intended for me.  That’s when I gave up my original internet handle, Cowboyman.
Starting August 1st, I will no longer be with yahoo.  I’ve had a gmail account for quite some time, I just haven’t used it much.  I will be full-on switching over to google for my email needs.  To keep the spam bots away, I won’t be divulging my entire email address for the world.  But for those of you that know my email address, it will be changing ever so slightly.

Instead of firstname_lastname@yahoo.com it will be firstname.lastname@gmail.com

If you’re my friend on facebook, you can see all of my info on my profile page as well.

Hacking Apple’s Time Machine

On my quest to learn everything I can about the “locked down” world I like to call OSX, I tried to setup Time Machine.  For those of you that don’t know, that’s Apple’s built-in backup utility.

My situation is somewhat unique, but I found many others on the interwebs trying to solve the same issue.  How to backup over wireless, and how to backup to a NTFS formatted drive or a network drive.  So I scoured the web and found many potential solutions, most of them contained incomplete information however.

The guide that finally pointed me in the right direction is located here.  It’s a surprisingly easy process and should be supported by Apple.  Why should you have to physically connect a drive to a laptop to back it up?  That just seems counterproductive to me.  Isn’t the whole point of having a laptop for mobility?

I’ll outline the steps below for those of you who are weary of clicking on links.

Step 1:

  • Open up Terminal (Applications, Utilities)
  • Enable unsupported volumes by entering the following code:
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences
TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

Step 2:

  • Mount your network drive (Finder, Go, Connect to Server)
  • On your Mac, open Disk Utility. Click “New Image.” Use the following settings:
  • Save As ComputerName_MACAddress (Must be Ethernet MAC Address and not Airport MAC Address)
  • Volume name can be whatever you want.  I named mine “Time Machine Backups”.
  • Change partition to “No Partition Map”
  • Change Image Format to “Sparce Bundle Disk Image”
  • Custom Volume size. Set the maximum you want to use on your remote location.  Don’t worry if you don’t have the room on your Mac.  I set mine to 200gb, the size of the hard drive on my Mac.  The empty file was a little over 300mb.
  • Save and then move this file to your network drive.

Open time machine and select the network drive you moved the sparsebundle file to.  Time Machine should now backup without any issues.

When you perform the first backup, have a wired connection and turn off your wireless.  My first backup was 50 gigs and took over 3 hours with a gigabit LAN.  I can only imagine how much longer it would take over a wireless connection.

This has been the first of what I’m sure will be many achievements in my learning and (in some cases) working around Apple’s master plan.

First Impressions

I finally stepped into the world of Apple.  While I thought it would be a new and exciting experience, I must say I’m somewhat disappointed.

I purchased a Black MacBook off eBay that came with many accessories.  The auction included a laptop bag, 500gb Lacie external hard drive, the original box and restore discs and an Apple keyboard and mouse.

It’s specs aren’t the best, but I don’t need them.  It has a 2.16 ghz Core 2 Duo Intel processor, 2gb of ram and a 200gb hard drive.  I plan on upgrading the ram to 4gb once I learn all I can on OSX and need to start working with VM Ware.

I must say that the design of and abilities of my MacBook amaze me, while some aspects of it downright disappoint me.

The first issue I had was with it’s “slot loading” disc drive.  This computer came with Tiger (10.4) so I purchased Snow Leopard (10.6.3), and my first task was upgrading to this OS.  While I’m still not sure if something is wrong with mine, or if this is a design flaw; my particular machine doesn’t particularly like to load or unload discs.  The only way I can get them to load is by pushing the disc in all the way using a foreign object.  Ejection is similar, as it only ejects about 1/16″ out of the machine.  I asked some of my co-workers about this and they confirmed that these drives are finicky at best.

My second issue is with the seemingly “closed” nature of the Mac OS.  While I’m basically a newbie, it doesn’t seem as friendly to someone who likes to customize everything like myself.  While there are options, they are limited.  Luckily I have vast experience with Linux, the second cousin twice removed to OSX; this makes my learning curve much more shallow than if I had no experience at all.

Let me restate for all the fan boys out there, these are just first impressions.  I haven’t had a chance to dig deep into this machine yet.  I’m diving head first into the mac world and only using a PC when required or when I can’t use it; such as at work or when I’m doing some work for my business.

I transferred my entire music library last night and eagerly anticipate setting up iTunes and seeing how similar the Mac version is compared to the Windows version.  I’m also going to start transferring all of my personal home videos using iMovie and iDVD.  Two programs I actually need to learn for my job at IU.

Since I have went on a technology “spending spree” of sorts, I am imposing on myself a probation from technology purchases.  The only caveat is if something fails and needs replaced.  I think I’ve put enough financial stress on my wife for a year or so in that department regarding this and my recent HTPC purchase.

Little Sis is All Grown Up

Late Thursday night we received an anticipated visitor, my little sister.  She’s been living in Phoenix, AZ for a few years now.  Besides the occasional call, I don’t hear from her much.

She came into town with a friend for her BFF’s wedding.  Being so far away from her family, her time was precious during her stay.  Besides trying to catch up with me and her new niece she hadn’t met yet, she had to try to see her uncle and her dad (who is currently in jail).

After a busy Friday, she and I and her friend went out to have a few drinks and play some pool.  Little did I know that Bloomington in the summer would be so busy!  We went downtown and there were lines out the doors.  So we went to the east side, and it was packed there.  By the time we rolled into Ellettsville, it was 1 A.M., there we found what we were looking for; a quiet location that wasn’t busy, with pool tables.

While we were there, we played pool and caught up on life.  It was a rare thing, and I wish we could do it more often.  I found out my sister has done some modeling, which I found odd, but I think she really looked well.  She had me copy 3 CD’s of her modeling pictures.  I never thought my rural farm girl of a sister would be into fashion!

I also found out she’s been dating a man of mixed race for about 9 months now.  I have always thought of myself as an open minded person, but it took me for a spin when I saw pictures of them.  It’s not that I have a problem with it, I just need some time to adjust.  The more important fact is that she’s happy, not what I think.  If he makes her happy, then I should be as well.

She left for Louisville, KY to see our mom last night.  She’s going to spend today and part of Tuesday with her before flying back to Phoenix.  I hope they have a blast together and get to reconnect, like we did.

She’s the only sibling I have.  While I haven’t really appreciated her in the past, I really appreciate and miss her now.  I wish she didn’t live so far away, but moving has done so much for her as a person that in my opinion it outweighs all of the negatives.

Hopefully when Amelia gets more self sufficient, we can take a family vacation out there to see her.  I also have 2 cousins who live in the Phoenix area, which is awesome!

She told us she’s on Facebook, which is great to keep up with her life.  She doesn’t want us to look at her page until she has it like she wants it though.  Just remember Gloria, I’m only a phone call away!

Goodbye Friends

Saturday I sold my mower and trailer.  I had listed them on craigslist.  They went to a really nice guy from the Cincinnati Ohio area.  I still can’t believe he drove that far to purchase such old equipment.

My mower was old and tired.  I had called it the “little mower that could.”  A reference to The Little Engine That Could.  It wouldn’t give up and was a very good mower, but time wasn’t on it’s side.  It was a mid 80’s model, and the almost 30 years of use was rearing it’s ugly head on the engine.  I had a oil leak that started to become something to watch last year.  It was the first time I had to add oil to it.  I had talked around to several people about repairing it, but nothing panned out.  In the end, we replaced it due to blue smoke billowing out of the top of the engine after mowing the front yard.

I purchased the trailer from a former boss of mine when I worked for Sternberg.  Part of my job description was to mow their frontage property on Dillman Road and Highway 37.  The trouble with this was the fact that it was about an acre of total land, and I was not provided with the proper equipment – just a run down push mower and weed eater.  As I wrote  previously I snagged a Independent Contractor gig out of them and made an extra $30 a week mowing this.

I only had one problem, and a serious one at that.  I had no way to get my mower to the job site!  When I mentioned this to my boss, he said he had a trailer that he’d sell to me with terms I couldn’t refuse.  I really wanted a trailer, so this made my month!

There was one caveat, my boss lived in Story, IN.  Which is in the middle of nowhere.  One Friday night Rachel and I drove out there to take a look at the trailer.  It was not in the shape you see it above.  The wheels were rusted, the tires were dry rotted.  There was no light kit, and the deck was barely there.

After getting it home (which I was surprised it made the journey).  I immediately put new wheels, lighting kit and deck on.  I got it inspected and applied for a title for it.  I also put a new coupler (what the trailer attaches with) on.  I also tried my hand at building some ramps with the materials I had left over (big mistake).  So I bought some ramp end caps and used some lumber for ramps.

I was very happy with the trailer!  It was very handy when we moved furniture or bought new furniture.  It was the perfect size for my mower as well!

Since we sold my truck last year, we haven’t had anything that is capable of towing (yet).  So the trailer has just sat.  I had tried to sell it previously, but wasn’t liking the offers I would get.

I would have kept the trailer, but the new mower we purchased is much larger than my little John Deere STX38.  With a 8 inch larger deck, and taller stance this thing makes my old mower look like a toy.  I figured it would be easier to sell them as a package – tow and go, then separate.

You both filled a need in my life, but your time has moved on.  I hope you make your new owner as happy as you made me over the years!