Seems like Orlando always serves up interesting times. As I do every year we photographed the Miss American Coed National Pageant over Thanksgiving. It went off without a hitch this year as we worked in a different capacity this time. All I had to do was show up, take photos each day and hand my disk over to them. Easy money, which RARELY happens for us. We went out again for Vietnamese again, Pho 88, there and found a great one, with a menu so huge! Almost too many choices when you have no idea what they are even. So the bad thing that happened was I let me phone sit by my chair in the pageant to go get something to drink. And when I got back it was gone 🙁 Someone snagged it I suppose because noone ever turned into lost and found. I cant believe it. I had some good photos on that phone I did not want to lose. My horse shoe in the road! My red high heel in Denver! to name a few. Anyway something funny happened the next day. I noticed that on a seat in the pageant sat a phone that looked identical to mine, same scratches and chewed up antenna. So I decided to ask the person siting there with it some questions. I asked her what kind of phone was it? She answered correctly. Maybe she read up on it on the internet I thought. Next question I asked was so i could see the phone to view the call log. “Does it take good pictures?” I asked. “Yes great ones” she answered, “may I see them?” I replied. She then handed me the one with pictures to browse. I could not tell when they were taken, but when I asked her more about the phone she answered quickly and correctly. “Man she is good” I thought. So instead of making a fool of myself and accusing her I decided to call Verizon to see if my phone had been reactivated on another line. They said no, and now that I had reported it stolen it could never be reactivated by someone else. I felt bad about accusing her in my mind, but hey it seemed suspicious that a woman would choose such a big bulky construction type phone. I was bummed I thought I had found my phone and the culprit. I never did find my phone and have since had it replaced with the same model. I love it being shockproof and waterproof. Just when i was so down on the human race though a stranger made a kind gesture that restored my faith. This is the good part of my Orlando trip. As we were driving just down 27 outside Clermont we began to smell a burning smell. I knew the smell since we have had encountered it several times before. It was the smell of brakes heating up! We stopped asap and checked it out. There was smoke coming out fro below the coach but not from the wheels, but rather near the transmission. But I then recalled seeing in the manual that was where the parking brake is located. It seemed it was locked up. But why? I got onto the internet and started searching for the answer. I came across a name on almost every post about parking brakes, oldused bear. He seemed like the expert. I got his email from a forum and sent him a message detailing our dilemma. He responding immediately to my surprise. “Give me your phone number and Ill call you” it read. So i sent it and he called with information exactly what was wrong and how to fix it. It was something he calls a “Rotten Green Switch” 🙂 Apparently it goes bad a lot and it is of course, green. I was unable to get the part to repair it but he helped me through the steps of physically disabling the parking brake so we could get on the road to Port Charlotte. The power of the internet is astonishing. This was truly an example of it. How I, in Florida, can connect with someone else all the way in Oregon to help me while stranded on the side of the ride to get me moving again. It also restored my faith in the goodness of people. I have noticed then whenever something happens that lets me down with people someone always comes along to restore my faith. So what I am saying is always kep the faith. The world is not all bad 🙂
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