Busy Day and Special Guest

Beginning with this lovely sunrise after a night of tornado warnings and heavy thunderstorms, this was an all-around great day at Afton Station. It was busy, and I always appreciate that. I also had a very special visitor who helped to make the day pleasant.

My guest was Joe Paul, who is my dialysis technician and does such a phenomenal job of taking care of me during my 3-day-a-week treatments. He and his family visited briefly one day last year, but today Joe took his whole day off in order to drive up to Afton and sit in on my day, just to see for himself all the craziness that I'm always telling him about. We were having such fun that we decided to leave an hour later than usual, which is why this blog entry is being posted a little later.

There were 24 visitors today, which is a healthy number for a weekday in May. They traveled to Afton from Lantana TX, Corpus Christi TX, Adelaide Australia, Wheatland MO, Fairmont IN, Stewartsville MO, Muskego WI, Benton IL, Melbourne Australia, Hamburg Germany, St. Louis MO, and Grove OK. It was a mixed bag. Only one motorcycle today, which is unusual on such a pretty day. The driver was from Germany but spoke near perfect English. He's enjoying his cruise across the U.S. The people from Wisconsin were hunting "roadside" antiques, and from what they said, they have a very large collection of authentic Route 66 signage and other memorabilia. The guys from down the road in Grove OK came in to ask for a stack of my brochures to be handed out during a big (estimated attendance:2000) wake board tournament to be held this weekend at their resort on the lake. They were quite interested in urging folks who are attending their event to visit other sites in the area. I like this a lot!

The super '57 Chevy golf cart made another appearance at Afton Station today so that Marly could install the new stainless steel steering wheel. It caught quite a lot of attention, as usual.

Marly and Kenny were here working very hard all day. Construction of the new showroom out back should begin within a few days. Today, they were clearing the spot where the pad will be poured.