When I left off, I was heading to a repair shop in Nashville to replace my turn signal switch.

Back in Minneapolis, we had determined the intermittent problems with the brake lights were generated by the turn signal.  Problem was, we could not get one shipped to Minneapolis before I left so we looked into options during the journey.  Terry’s Service Center in Nashville was a great find and they were willing to have the part shipped to them and also give me an appointment on Friday, December 29^th, right before the long weekend.

Backing up a bit here – I could not leave town on a journey of this length without brake lights, so the always ingenious minds at Further Performance figured we could change out the back up lights to red LED’s and I would need to manually operate the brake lights by turning on and off the switch.  Considering my trip was mostly interstate driving south, this worked well.  Any city driving was a bit of a challenge, but I erred on the side of caution and pulled the brake switch often in traffic.

Terry’s Service Center was a great find!  Hey Nashville folks – this is a really well run, caring business!  Originally owned by Terry, the shop was now under the ownership of David, the mechanic who worked on my bus.  His wife helps run the front office and along with another service advisor and mechanics in back, this is a great auto repair shop.  You can hear it in the interactions with customers on the phone and in person.

And, during conversation with David, he mentioned his family likes to go to Roberts Western World on Sunday morning with their 4-year old son.  Anyone who has been to these Sunday morning services at Roberts can ‘testify’ to the power of great music and some positive words.

At a gas station, somewhere in middle Georgia…I pulled into a gas station and as I got out of the bus, another vehicle pulled in behind me blocking much of the driveway and this very large, excited fellow came running up to me.  Kinda scared the crap out of me!  He was soon joined by another fellow and a young girl.  They had to pull off the highway when they saw my bus and follow me into the station to get a better look.  Their accents told me they weren’t from Kansas and pretty quickly offered that they were from South Africa and were HUGE VW Bus fans, owning a number of them over the years and currently having a mid-80’s Westy.

Check out the tattoo on the big fellows’ arm and you can tell he is a ‘Super Fan’!

Made Savannah by nightfall yesterday and will head down to St Augustine by mid-afternoon today to hang out for a few days, then back to business on Jan 3^rd for a meeting at the Omni in Orlando, then onto Naples for a week-long conference then finally some time with Linda!

Found a quirky motel in St Augustine and it should provide some great photo opportunities!  Will also check out the campsite that Linda and I will be staying beginning January 13th and of course, will visit with Micky and Jim, friends of ours who are staying in St Augustine for the winter.

Happy New Year All!