Sept 30 - Oct 6
With the camper in the shop, we’ve been living since Monday out of a suitcase, which is not something we are accustomed to. Sure we travel a lot, but we always bring our house and everything we own with us, and we are lost this week without it. Turns out it was the fuel pump that went bad, and that being inside the gas tank, it is not an easy repair job. We finally got the camper back on Friday night - it’s drivable, but has to go back again when the rest of the parts on order show up.
On Saturday we finally made it up to the lake house, after the morning’s soccer game. We’ve seen a lot of soccer and football this week. Kate and Chris came to the lake, but Jeff stayed with a friend so he could go to a homecoming dance at one of the neighboring high schools. On Sunday the fellow showed up to buy the boat - we got a check, and the boat is gone. Yippee!! Dan says that he now feels homeless - a bass fisherman without a boat!
We spent most of the week trying to organize the motorhome. When we leave here we will be gone for a while, so I want to clean out our compartments and try to organize them. I went through all our closets and got rid of so many clothes we just do not use anymore. We also went this week and got flue shots, to make sure we stay healthy through the winter.
Finally, Dan has spent a great deal of time this week negotiating a new sponsorship deal. We still don’t want to talk about who it is, in case the deal falls through, but we will say that for the first time, he has done everything via email (vs. sending a formal, hard-copy proposal and resume’). This is NOT the recommended way of making contact with potential sponsors, but the circumstances and timing surrounding this deal called for immediate action. It has worked out real well so far - Dan is sending the latest version of his proposal in the morning, the prospect is replying later that same day with questions, and Dan does the necessary research and provides answers in his next email. We’re real excited about this one, and think if we can put it together it’s going to make for a great fishing year!
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October 7 - 13
We know the first thing on all of your minds is "How is it going with the new sponsor prospect?" All we can report right now is that as of press time we have no new news to report, although we still have a good feeling about it, and hope to be revealing the big name to you all soon.
We had a very busy week. We went to cousin Ken Keyes’ wedding in Washington, D.C., and had lots of fun, and very little sleep. Dan’s parents were continuing on from there to Florida for the winter, so we drove their van down for them from New Hampshire to save them 500 miles of driving, and then we flew back on Sunday. We are still living at the lake house and it is extremely quiet now. The only noise is that of the carpenters who are building the barn - it’s actually a new 2 stall garage with a loft up top, but we’re calling it the "barn" because we already have a "garage" here. Once the carpenters are done then our work begins, and we’ll be working on that for the next couple weeks. We need to paint it, and put all the electrical in, and if we have time before we leave for the winter then we’ll start moving some of our furniture from storage in.
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October 14-20
I guess we should have mentioned this earlier, but the 1999 FLW tournaments have begun airing on TV. They are showing every Sunday from October through December on ESPN2, and our CITGO commercials can be seen during each show. There are a total of 7 different ads, so tune in each week if you don’t want to miss any. We’ve posted a new page on our website (www.DanielKeyes.com) with the schedule of air times. Give it a look, print it out, and give it to all your friends!
Speaking of the website, we’ve been working hard updating it over the last couple of weeks. Specifically, we’ve responded to more reader’s questions on the Q & A page, and added a bunch of pictures to Kate’s new page (…/Family/Kate). Write to her, and tell her how pretty she is!
Now, here’s an idea, and we want some help with it: we’re looking into the possibility of printing and publishing some or all of this "Life on Tour" journal. Right now we’re thinking of a small, cardboard cover pamphlet, perhaps 60 pages, that would be inexpensive to produce. Obviously something this size cannot include everything we’ve written, so we’d like some reader input on specifically what we should include. Tell us the days, weeks, tournaments, or specific excerpts that were most entertaining to you. We’re thinking about distributing the pamphlets free, in an effort to promote the website and attract more online readers. Send your comments on this idea to Printing@DanielKeyes.com.
LAST MINUTE UPDATE: We got a call late this afternoon, with an invitation to fish the Ranger Millennium tournament at Cypress Gardens, FL, in two weeks. For those of you who don’t know, this is an invitation-only, first-of-it’s-kind tournament in which the winner can take home as much as $1,000,000. Count those zeroes - that’s one million dollars for first place! We’re real excited about this, but there are lots of things that must be done first. We’d have to finish the barn here in NH, close up the lake-house, say our good-byes to everybody, and pack up the camper to leave for the winter. All this we can do in a few days, but the biggest problem is the boat - we don’t have one. Tomorrow we have to start making frantic phone calls, looking for a boat to borrow. Stay tuned - we may be writing about fishing again a lot earlier than we thought!
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October 21-27
This has been a very difficult week. As you know, last Wednesday we got invited to fish the Ranger Millennium tournament. We had called Dan’s mom and dad in Florida, and they got all excited with us and began their own plans to drive over to watch the tournament. At 5:30 on Thursday morning, we got a call with the most terrible news. Dan’s dad had passed away in his sleep just hours before. It was very sudden, and unexpected, and we were all in shock. We gathered up the kids, got on a plane early Friday morning, and flew to Florida.
For the next 4 days, we kept mom very busy during this difficult time. Between our family and those of Dan’s two brothers, there were 16 of us in the house, including 10 grandchildren. There were also numerous aunts, uncles, cousins and friends who flew in to be nearby. We all made it through the wake, and the funeral, and returned to our respective homes on Wednesday.
I (Annie) cannot stop crying. I feel so blessed to have had such a wonderful father-in-law. If you could pick your in-laws, I couldn’t have made a better choice.
We had spoken to Dan’s father the night he passed away. He was so excited for us. After 4 years of Dan on the pro trail, Dad had just in the last 4 months begun to understand and accept the career path his son had chosen. He had in fact in the very last week completed reading the entire "Life On Tour" journal, and for the first time ever actually encouraged us to enter and fish a tournament - the Ranger M1 Millennium tournament.
We have been very emotional about whether or not we should go, so soon after his death. Certainly we are not nearly as enthusiastic about it as we were just a few days ago. However, knowing that it is something that Dad was excited about, we feel that it is something he would want us to do, even now, under these circumstances. Perhaps with his final acceptance of Dan’s fishing in his last days on earth, he was telling us that very shortly he would be able to provide the divine intervention that would mark a turnaround in our success. If we don’t go, then we will always be asking ourselves, "What if?"
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Thursday, Oct 28
We said our good-bye’s to NH today - to the kids, to Bob & Flo, and to Charlie & Debbie and their kids. We’re leaving for the winter, essentially, and not driving back until perhaps April. We will fly home for Thanksgiving, - there is a memorial service planned for Dan’s dad in NH that weekend, for the benefit of New England family and friends. Aside from that the kids will fly down to be with us for a week at Christmas time, and we’ll probably fly home for a week sometime in mid-winter for a visit.
We got on the road late in the afternoon and we’ve got a long way to go. We estimate that it’s between 1500 and 1600 miles from NH to Winter Haven (FL), and we both have to drive the entire distance by ourselves, since we’re doing it in two vehicles again. Dan is in the motorhome and Ann is in the Bronco. At least we don’t have to pull a boat this time. Speaking of boats, Ranger has found us a boat to use for the week and is shipping it down to Florida for us - all we have to worry about is getting ourselves there in time. Dan would like to be there by Saturday night, so we have all day Sunday to set up camp, find the boat, get a license, prepare fishing equipment, and look at maps.
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Friday, Oct 29
We only made it 200 miles yesterday. We’re not happy about that, but you can’t drive when you’re falling asleep. Today we didn’t get an early start either - there was business to take care of on the computer before we could get going, so we left finally around 10am. Late in the afternoon we finally made it to a Flying J truck stop. Because of our rushed departure from NH, we desperately needed to dump our holding tanks, fill the fresh water tank, and fill the LP tank. We’ve had no water, no showers, and no heat since returning to the camper on Wednesday, and the temperature had dropped into the 20’s on Wednesday night.
Feeling refreshed after a long shower at the truck stop though, and with fresh audio books to keep our minds occupied, we got on the road again and made it as far as Staunton, VA, by 10pm. Here we stopped for the night at a familiar WalMart Super Center.
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Saturday, Oct 30
On the road again at 8am, we had just crossed the line into North Carolina when the motorhome died. That’s right, the engine quit, and we were stuck on the side of the road again. For the third time now in the same number of trips, we were faced with having to have this thing towed off the highway and to a repair shop. The differences this time though are 1) we are far from home and don’t know where to have it towed to, and 2) we are on our way to a tournament, not from, and we don’t have time to deal with this. Thank God we have the Bronco with us. We jumped into that and went to the nearest truck stop, right off the exit that was only 100 yards beyond where the camper sat stranded. They said that they could arrange to tow us, and possibly even help diagnose the problem. We went back and decided to save time we would just push it off the highway with the Bronco. Just as we were going to begin Annie (who was praying hard for dad to help us) cranked the motor and the camper started, one last time. She raced it to the truck stop, where it never started again once we shut it off.
We spent the next two hours doing diagnostic work, and making angry phone calls to the last repair shop. We think it’s the same problem we just had fixed - the fuel pump. Of course it’s a Saturday afternoon, the nearest camper repair shop is 60 miles away, and there is no chance of anyone working on this until at least Monday.
Here we are again, decision time. We are still 800 miles from Florida, and we had wanted to be there by today. We decided we could not waste any more time. We threw all our fishing gear into the Bronco, along with a week’s worth of clothing and dog food, and headed on down the road. We drove all night, stopping only for gas and to change drivers. It was a very long night.
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Sunday, Oct 31
We arrived in Cypress Gardens at 4:30am., exhausted. We parked in an empty parking lot and slept a few hours on the floor of the Bronco ( never to be done again). When we got up we wandered around town some - we found the boat that was delivered for us but we have to wait for a forklift to take it down off the trailer. We found the campground where John & Laraine Hobbie are staying, so we visited with them for a bit. We found the motel where Dick and Lena Bowman are, and we reserved a room there. Thank goodness they will let Cooper stay with us. Eventually we got the boat, and Dan spent the rest of the day getting ready to fish tomorrow while I unpacked our suitcases. We were in bed by 7:00.
On another note, we want to thank all of you who have sent your kind and encouraging words through our difficult time. We speak to Dan’s mom daily and she is doing as well as can be expected. It certainly puts our minor problems into perspective.
Link to:
November 1999
October 1999