It’s Freaky Outside This Comfort Zone

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 It’s Freaky Outside This Comfort Zone

Yeah but what a view

This blog is around writing and life in general and why you don’t get what you say you want. Now you probably heard the term, Comfort Zone, before. I always wondered if Comfort Zone meant something to do with a nice cozy couch or snuggling in my warm bed and does being outside of it mean my electric blanket doesn’t work.

I took some personal development courses many years ago and learned many things about myself and what I attract in my life and how I see the world through my unique set of rose-colored glasses that we all have. Even if I don’t wear glasses, nor even like roses. Yeah, sorry I’m not a vegetarian and have been known to snarf down the odd burger and salty deep fried onion rings. Might have to stop for a snack that sounded good with or without the triple yummy sauce, pickles and bacon and melted Applewood smoked cheese. That’s it, never write on an empty stomach. I’ll be back in fifteen.

Burp. Now, back on the topic. Everyone has their own comfort zones around everything they see, do and interact with in life. For some, like the pope, he’d have a huge comfort zone around using the fword and would have a hard time stepping out of it. Where others like Myley Cyrus has very little around strutting around nearly naked on stage in front of thousands of fans and even less on human decency. Don’t even get me started.

                I learned that criminals in a study would pick out the same person time and time again to mug. So while a person doesn’t usually want to get hit over the head and have their wallets stolen, they are attracting it to themselves by the way they portray themselves to the outside world. All about comfort zone. Why do children of alcoholics marry alcoholics? Again comfort zone. While some comfort zones are nice, others are ugly and until I learn what mine are I will attract to me certain things time and time again. I need to become conscious of what it is I’m putting out there and how I want to attract different things into my life.

                I learned many things in the Context Associated series, well worth trying if there’s any in your area. But the most important to writers is this. In today’s world the idea of self-marketing is of utmost importance. Gone are the days of company paid book tours. The internet has changed our lives and while you may get a novel published either via self or through an ebook company it is up to you to do your own marketing. Just ask the aging rock stars of the world. I don’t think you’ll ever see another Bon Jovi or Rolling Stones rock group making hundreds of millions off music sales and doing world tours.

                I’ve been busy learning that I have to step outside my comfort zone and believe in myself and my writings. Just like Ronald McDonald believed once he took off his clown outfit he could cook a mean burger. I’ve been linking, blogging and posting on facebook and lately twitter. Hated twitter, as a writer what can I say in 140 letters? Give me a novel to write and different scenario, Comfort zone. I have to believe that my writing is better than good. It is great and I can and will put myself first and out there. Yes, that is stepping outside of what most insulated writers do. Yup. It’s easy to sit in a room and bang away at typewriter keys, oh sorry another changing thing of the times. How many of those do you think they sold last year? So go ahead and put your foot on the center stage in front of billions, or at least here’s hoping. Get Twittering, Insta whatever, facebooking and using whatever new medium pops up these years. There is the old story of a writer who gave up and filed away his ideas for kids books. Until one of his friends said, after reading the dust collecting book on his shelf. “I think there’s a market for green eggs and ham.”

Make your New Years Resolution as Mrs. Frank’s. I bet her context around comfort zone was stretched when she said, “I put that Sh*t on everything.” Look where that got her.

So get out there and put your books and life in front of the world. 

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Prima Doll Card by Cheryl Wright

 

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I will start of this post by telling you a bit about myself - since it's been suggested by my publisher BooksWeLove.

I have been a creative for as long as I can remember, beginning with hand-sketched drawings when I was about eight, and progressing to painting with acrylics at around ten.

I also began writing when I was about ten, after a hippy substitute teacher took over my grade six class for nearly a year. When he arrived, guitar slung over his shoulder, I moved to the back of the classroom. As the weeks went on, I slowly moved closer to the front.

After many months of listening to classical poetry, and learning the stories behind each poem, we progressed to writing our own poetry and then short stories. More time was spent outside the classroom (writing poetry and short stories) than was spent in it.

It was a year of enlightenment for me, and one I will never forget.

By eleven, I was editor of the high school newspaper and began writing non-fiction articles for my local council.  Over the years I have written for national and international magazines, written sales pages for internet sites, as well as undertaking business writing.  (Sometimes you just have to put money on the table.)

Throughout all of this, my love for writing fiction, particularly romantic suspense, has never waned.

In addition to running a website for writers for over ten years, I have been writing coach on a one-to-one basis for several writers. Working as a staff trainer for about twelve years certainly helped in this area. 

On a more personal level, my husband Alan and I recently celebrated 41 years together. We have two adult "children" and six grandchildren, three of whom have lived with us for the past twelve years. It's a challenge at times, but you do what you have to do.

For a little over fifteen years, I have dabbled in creating greeting cards, which I find to be very relaxing. Many a plot problem has been solved in my craft room! I have recently begun art journaling, as well as canvases. (YouTube is a wealth of information for just about any topic!)

On that note, here is a card and canvas I made for my granddaughter's 15th birthday this week.

The image is a Prima Doll, with several different (but similar) images in the range.  Since it was for a teenager, I made sure there was lots of bling and ribbons on this card.

Here is the canvas I made to go with it.

I am very new at canvases, so it's not perfect, and is very basic, but I'm pretty happy with it, and my granddaughter did love it. (And that's the main thing.)

I hope you've enjoyed this card and learning more about me. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time!

Links:

My website:  www.cheryl-wright.com 
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/cherylwrightauthor 
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/writercheryl
BWL website: http://bookswelove.net/authors/wright-cheryl/ 

Brain-Scrambling Earworms by Stuart R. West

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Not too long ago, on the way back from the grocery store (imagine this dramatically emblazoned upon the big screen like a Star Wars scrawl), my wife suddenly shouted, “Oh, my God!”

“What? What’s wrong?” I imagine the worst, maybe a spider crawling on the window next to her.  (And believe me, with her that is the worst; once she jumped out of her still running car when she saw a spider).

“I’ve got the EZ Brite jingle running through my head,” she exclaimed.

That actually brought me a great amount of happiness. EZ Brite doesn’t exist, nor does the jingle. It’s a fictional teeth-whitening product I created for my new comedy mystery, Bad Day in a Banana Hammock. One of my two protagonists, Zak (an extremely vapid, but good-hearted male stripper), has the jingle crawling through his head at the most inopportune moments. Particularly when he needs to focus on why he wakes up with no memories of the previous night. And next to a dead, naked man.

“EZ Brite makes your teeth clean, EZ Brite gets out the greennnn…”

By definition, an earworm is a memorable piece of music that continually repeats through a person's mind after it is no longer playing. It’s also known as a brainworm; some people refer to it as “stuck song syndrome.” No matter what you call it, earworms are insidious and harder to get rid of than poison ivy.

What really surprised me, though, is the amounts of research scientists have given this phenomenon.  A long list of researchers (too long, too boring to list here) has been studying this illness since at least the ‘50s. 98% of the population is bothered by this condition. While it affects both men and women, it tends to irritate women more and stays with them longer (probably due to the natural tunnel vision of men). Suggested cures? OCD medication, brain puzzles like Sudoku and chewing gum.

“EZ Brite, nice and easy, seconds to apply, really breezy…”

Unfortunately, my fictional earworm has been bothering me since penning my book.

But I had relief over the holidays. Radio stations inundated us with even worse earworms.  You couldn’t turn the dial without being tortured by Santa Baby. For my wife, it was Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer. Both equally obnoxious earworms.

Chewing gum didn’t help me (my wife can’t stand to be around gum-chewers). Perhaps someday, scientists will actually create a true cure for this sickness that infects 98% of the world. With that high a percentage, you’d think the men in lab-coats would prioritize it. Maybe they’ll create a brain-implanted chip that can turn earworms off. I mean, we can “block” friends on Facebook with relative ease. This just seems like the next logical step.

“EZ Brite goes on quick, tastes so good, just give it a lick…”

And I apologize for contributing to this sinister disease with my fictional earworm.

There are more verses of the EZ Brite jingle in Bad Day in a Banana Hammock. There’s also Zach’s tough, take no guff, ex-detective sister, Zora, who has three kids in tow and one on the way. She’s also very cranky. Stir in a murder mystery involving a plastic surgery enhanced femme fatale, a frighteningly large and deadly European chauffeur, a dead politician, a gleefully loud politician, a Hillaryesque politician’s wife, a competitive male stripper in a fireman’s outfit, a conspiracy theory hermit, aging hippie parents, and squabbling kids and maybe—just maybe—you’ll be distracted enough to not add a new earworm to your minds IPod.

You Never Know What Tomorrow May Bring by Nancy M Bell

Well, I must say things have changed drastically since last month. I have spent the holidays in Winnipeg, Manitoba at the Health Sciences Centre. Not exactly how I planned to spend Christmas, New Year's and all of January up to this point. My oldest son, who is respected Equine Surgeon, was admitted to ICU on Christmas Eve suffering from some strange symptoms. He has been in ICU ever since and up until last Monday we had no diagnosis. It is without a doubt one of the scariest things I have ever experienced. A huge team of doctors, encompassing more areas of expertise than I can remember, were stumped. Many procedures and tests followed, some of which were sent to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. While they waited for results to come in they began treating him for what they believed was most likely to be the cause. A lot of very terrifying conditions and diseases were talked about, most of which did not have good outcomes. We faced the fact that our son might never leave the ICU alive.
Then last Monday night, January 11, which is actually his birthday, one of his doctors came into the room and said he had some news. A test came back positive for a condition that was treatable! It is a surreal feeling to be overjoyed to be told that your son has a rare form of encephalitis. It was the best news we could have gotten, because it was a treatable thing. The chances of full recovery are very good. We are not out of the woods yet and there is a long road to do down yet, but at least there is a road to walk down with a light at the end of the tunnel.

So, the point of me telling you this is....? Never take anything for granted, ever. Hug your kids, tell them you love them, no matter how old they are. Tell your friends what they mean to you. There are no guarantees in life and this has been brought home to me very clearly. Who would ever guess that a healthy successful thirty-five year old would become incapacitated so quickly. In the space of a few days he went from a highly functioning professional to being hooked up to a machine that breathed for him. Take the time to appreciate the glory of the sunrise, the magnificence of a sunset, the diamond points of the stars on a clear night. Dance in the moon shadows on crisp white snow under the full moon. Don't hate Mondays or wish away the cold winter months longing for spring. Live in the moment of each and every day. Come Hell or High Water live life to the fullest to the best of your ability. Wishing you Peace, Joy, Love and Happiness each and every day of your lives.

You can visit my website, follow me on twitter @emilypikkasso and on Facebook

I am currently working on the next book in the Arabella's Secret series. The Selkie's Song is the first book and is available at Amazon and where good books are sold everywhere.

I Write Because I Read - Janet Lane Walters

Our marveklous publisher thought we should let the readers know a bit about us. So here's a bit about me. I've just entered my 48th year of being a published author but not all those years were spent writing. Some of the time was spent being a nurse and storing up material for when I returned to writing.

Now to my original bit. I read at an early age. Now this I don't remember but my mother told me the story. From the day I came home from the hospital, once a week or so my grandfather would read to me. He ran a finger under the words as he read each one. What I remember is sometime between my third and fourth birthday I began to read to my mom and dad. I quidkly went through all the children's books and those mom would find at the library. I wanted my own card. At that time to have a card you had to show you could read. I passed and began a systematic, alphabetical journey through the children's section. When I went to school I thought reading class was boring. When my turn to read from Dick and Jane, I read with expression. Was my teacher happy? Not one bit. She acused me of memorizing the book. My father didn't like this when I told him. He went to school and snagged the principal and told her,no one calls my child a liar. Pick any book off your shelf and open it and tell her to read. I passed that test and was allowed to read books during reading class. Never did learn much about Dick and Jane.

By the time I reached third grade I was reading any book my parents had on their shelves. They were also readers. I read Anna Karenina and gave it as a book report, shocking the teacher but she remembered what had happened when I was in first grade. She did object to the way I ended the book report since I found ways to change the ending. That was when I decided to become a story teller.

Writing plays to put on in a friend's garage was my first venture into fictional story telling. We had a great deal of fun and the neighbors came to our shows. There were many pages of these first efforts that were lost when we moved. But I could make up more. During high school other things came into my head. I liked all my subjects except Geometry and Typing. There was little time for writing stories but I did scribble away.

My father was a steelworker and strikes were common. I knew I couldn't spend my life trying to be a writer. I went to school and became a nurse. Occasionally I was called by one of my instructors not to be so descriptive in my nurses notes or in my case studied. The good thing I I added observing to my skills and I continued reading.

I worked as a nurse, married and had pneumonia. My sister-in-law brought me a bag of books to read. They were all nurse romances. By about the fifth book, I knew I could do better. The writers new little about nurses, doctors or hospitals. I began making notes. But selling that first book took time especially since I decided to start with short stories. In 1968 I sold the first short stories and wrote and sold more. The magazine marked for short stories was going dry. I sold two stories that I recieved money for but the magazines folded before the stories were published. So I set out again to learn how to write longer. In 1972 I sold my first romance - a nurse romance. I wrote some more, raised four children, returned to work as a nurse as they neared college age and writing went on the back burner.

I returned to writing in the late 1980's and had to learn things like queries and the like. In 1994 I was published and since then I've added a few books to my shelf. I'll put some of the covers here. By the way, I still read and write.

Books We Love Spotlight - Author, Roseanne Dowell

Roseanne Dowell wears many hats - wife (married 50+ years) mother of six, grandmother of fourteen, great grandmother of three, Avon Representative,  author, and former school secretary,  she writes a variety of genres  from romance to mystery to paranormal and suspense, all with romantic elements and a bit of humor. Her heroes/heroines range from their mid twenties to their seventies. Yes, old people need love, too.

In her spare time, Roseanne enjoys quilting and embroidery, especially combining the two and making jewelry as well as other crafts, Her favorite past-time is spending time with her family, her second favorite thing to do is write. She's currently working on Book 3 in her Family Affair Series.

The Musical Extinctions

The word “extinction” evokes images of dinosaurs and dodos, animals once plenty, but now existing only in the historical record.

Civilizations go extinct as well. Ancient Egyptian, Roman, Aztec and other societies have died off, either by violent conquest or cultural exhaustion. Along with them, artistic expressions—whether literary, dramatic, musical or otherwise—die off.

Another form of artistic extinction occurs when one culture becomes so pervasive and powerful that other cultural forms of expression become overwhelmed. This is the current situation.

Manipuri lady playing the Pena

I had the experience of this many years ago, when visiting the Indian state of Manipur, which is nestled in the north-eastern corner of the country, bordering Myanmar, near the Chinese border. As I was returning to my host’s home one evening, I had the surreal experience of being blasted with the strains of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” coming from a small roadside dwelling. Manipur is a rural society, whose traditional instruments are soft-sounding bamboo flutes, the pena (a lute played with a bow) and the pung, a two-headed drum. Indeed, the contrast was jarring.

Drum market in Zimbabwe

Traditional societies have an astonishing variety of instruments. For example, Zimabawe, a relatively small country in Africa, boasts the Ngome and Ingunga, just two varieties of several dozen types of drums of various sizes. Other percussion instruments include a peculiar drum played by rubbing and scratching that produces an unusual scratching sound, and the kanyeda, an instrument made of bamboo strips strapped together and filled with small seeds for percussion. Some traditional instruments facing extinction are the chinzambi, chipendai, tsuri, mukwati and wenyere.

And it is not just instruments that are fading away, but also musical forms and idioms. Traditional musical forms are very much tied into the spiritual narratives and mythologies of these societies. In many cultures, music is not regarded as a performance designed to make money for the artist but as a means of connecting with the sacred, which has reward in itself and is focused not on the artist, but on the object of the art.

The introduction of Western education, mostly by missionaries, effectively cut traditional cultures from their roots and thus provided the means for Western musical attitudes and idioms to enter. Indeed, youth in many traditional societies are trading in their instruments for guitars and drums and the musical idioms of their ancestors for rap and rock-and-roll.

Yo Yo Honey Singh

Examples abound: Yo Yo Honey Singh, a Punjabi rapper, whose explicit lyrics shock local sensibilities; K-pop music featuring Korean boy bands with hair dyed blonde blasting rock-n-roll in the Korean language; and Bollywood, the Indian film industry, which at one time featured exclusively Indian instruments, now giving way to Western music.

Music is distinguished by creativity and variety. Its diminution strikes at the very heart this artistic enterprise, leaving all of us poorer in its wake.

Mohan Ashtakala is a the author of "The Yoga Zapper - A Novel," www.yogazapper.com 

Published by Books We Love.

WHO am I really? by Sheila Claydon

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My publisher has suggested that I and my fellow authors start the year off by introducing ourselves properly on the Books We Love blog. It's a much taller order than it seems. It depends is the only answer I can give about who I am and what I do.

Although I'm always a wife, a mother, a grandmother, an aunt, a cousin, a friend, a colleague, and a neighbour, I'm also a writer, a reader, a gardener, a cook, a dog owner, a traveller, a walker, a carer, a Yoga practitioner, and a whole lot of other things besides, and that's before I get on to control freak, micro-organizer and (you might already have guessed this) list-maker! Then there's my working life  - the jobs I had, the things I learned - but I'm not even going there.

I'm no different from anyone else of course. We are all made up of the little bits of  everything that are our day-to-day lives. It's how we form the memories, some bad, some good, that we reminisce about as the years go by. Oh hang on a minute...I'm a writer (it said so in the list) so I am a little bit different after all. Its why I store all those experiences in my sub-conscious until I'm ready to retrieve them and download them onto the pages of my latest manuscript.

I'm not proud of it, but it's how it is. When I travel most of the details of the journey remain lodged in my brain. A new environment is uploaded to my sub-conscious lock, stock and barrel and sits there until I need it.  Time spent with my grandchildren, visits to family, walking the dog, talking with friends, shopping for a neighbour, even visiting someone in hospital...it all goes into the swirling cauldron of memories that I call upon when I'm writing.

Sometimes an experience will trigger an idea for a story and when that happens, it will, if left to its own devices, weave itself around the memories I have stored in my head, rejecting some of them and trying others for size until the outline of a new story emerges with very little conscious effort on my part. It's not until I fire up my lap top that the real effort of joining it all together begins.

In Reluctant Date the trigger was a place I stayed on a holiday. This somehow wove itself into another landscape 3,000 miles away, picking up a hero and heroine on its journey. In Mending Jodie's Heart the idea for the story was prompted by an actual event involving horses and disabled children, which, before I knew it, had turned into the When Paths Meet trilogy. Then, in my latest book, Miss Locatelli, half-forgotten memories of Italy forced themselves back into my consciousness as soon as I realized my heroine had to visit Florence. A magazine article about a jeweller triggered that one.

When I look back at the dozen or so books I've written so far there is a real bonus, however, because every one of them has special memories woven into the story. None of them are about me or my family although, inevitably, some of the characters will display traits I've observed in the people I know, but the story still resonates with me on a personal level. The children in my books often behave in the same way my own children and grandchildren did when they were small, and then there are the animals. Dogs, horses, birds...even the wild ones...all trigger a memory. The grown up characters too. I rarely spend long describing any of them. They are just part of a continuing story of memories that I like to think helps to make my stories real.

So that's who I am. Someone who is made up of little bits of a lot and who never knows which bit she is going to wake up to.  Today it was the micro-managing/list-making persona. Tomorrow it's grandchildren day, so cooking, cuddling and playing games will dominate along with supervising homework and listening closely to whatever they want to tell me.  With any luck I'll wake up to my writing persona the following day and by then I'll have more memories to call upon, so when the book I'm writing at the moment, Remembering Rose, is published at the end of June, I will be able to read it and remember.

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All of Sheila's books can be found on the links below:

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She also has a website and can be found on facebook

Road Tripping USA by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

 

 

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/536768

Author’s Note

I belong to Angels Abreast, a breast cancer survivor dragon boat race team in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada. Every four years the International Breast Cancer Paddlers Commission IBCPC) holds an international festival somewhere in the world. In the spring of 2013, my team received a notice that the IBCPC had chosen Sarasota, Florida, USA, to hold the next festival in October 2014.

     We decided to attend and while the other members were going to fly down, tour around some of the sites and head home I wanted to see more of the country and meet some of the people. My husband, Mike, and I drove from our small acreage at Port Alberni, British Columbia, on the Pacific Ocean, to Sarasota, Florida on the Atlantic Ocean.

     Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine the people I would meet nor the beautiful places I would see nor the adventures I would have on our ten week, 18,758km (11656 mile) journey. On the thirteenth day of every month in 2016 I will post a part of my trip that describes some of the excellent scenery, shows the generosity and friendliness of the people, and explains some of the history of the country. The people of the USA have much to be proud of.

 Road Tripping USA Part One

After weeks of planning and preparing, we left our home on September 23, 2014, and over the next few days we drove through southern British Columbia into Alberta, where we crossed the border into Montana. The countryside was flat as we headed east to North Dakota and then south into South Dakota on Highway 85.

     South of Redig we came to the junction with old Highway 85 that went west 7.8 miles (12.5km) to the Geographical Center of the Nation. This spot was picked by U.S. National Geodetic Survey when Alaska and Hawaii were added in 1959. Before that the centre of the nation was near the town of Lebanon, Kansas. The road is gravelled and the centre is on private property and not accessible.

     As we headed to Deadwood we entered the Black Hills National Forest which got their name because the trees are so thick that from a distance they look black. They are a small mountain range with the highest summit being 7244 ft. (2208 m). The area has been called the last great El Dorado on the American continent.

     The Black Hills were originally granted to the Lakota Indians in 1868. In 1874, Colonel George Armstrong Custer discovered gold near the present day town of Custer and that triggered the Black Hills Gold Rush. Deadwood, named for the dead trees that were found in the town’s gulch, was quickly established and soon boasted a population of 5000. Lawlessness prevailed and some claim the town was founded on gold, gambling, and guns.

     We drove through the beautiful ponderosa pine trees and the red rock hillsides into the historic town. We stopped at the tourist information center in the Days of ’76 Museum, then went downstairs to see the rows of carriages, stagecoaches, and wagons. I sat in a stagecoach and we saw black and white hearses and a Brewery’s wagon. From there we found a casino and spent an hour at the machines, leaving with less money than when we entered.

     One of the most famous people to live in Deadwood was gambler, and sometimes lawman, Wild Bill Hickok. He was playing poker in Nuttal & Mann's saloon in town on August 2, 1876 when another gambler, Jack McCall, shot him in the back of the head. The hand that he held, aces and eights, is now known as the Dead Man's Hand.

     At Mount Rushmore National Monument our first sight of the monument was from the entrance and many people stopped just inside the doors to stare at the faces in the distance. We followed a very wide marble walkway to the Borglum Court. We went under an arch and were on the Avenue of Flags, where a flag from each state and territory flies. At the end of the walkway is the Grand View Terrace, a very wide lookout where we had a great view of the monument.

     Mike went back to the motorhome while I took the Presidential Walk. The walk is slightly more than half a mile and the first part is a flat path. I went past an Indian Village which was closed then reached a cave made by two huge boulders leaning against each other. I entered the cave and looked up through a crack between the boulders to see Washington’s face. George Washington was the first president of the United States and served from 1789 to 1797.

     I strolled on the wooden walkway to the viewpoints where I took pictures of each face and saw them from different angles. Thomas Jefferson, beside Washington, was the third president of the United States. His term was from 1801 to 1809.

     Roosevelt, next to Jefferson, was wearing his glasses. He served as the twenty-sixth president from 1901 to 1909. He was vice-president to President William McKinley and when McKinley was assassinated Roosevelt became president.

     Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president, is the fourth face on the sculpture. He was president during the civil war and was assassinated in 1865, nine days after Robert E. Lee, the Confederate commanding officer, surrendered.

     The presidential faces on Mount Rushmore were carved by sculptor Gutzon Borglum, with the help of over 400 workers, between 1927 and 1941. The monument is 60ft (18m) high and represents the first 130 years of the country's history. Three million people visit each year.

      As we left the parking lot we looked out over a lovely valley where we could see, as Mike put it, ‘into next week’. We drove through Hill City and eventually came to a set of traffic lights on the highway. We turned onto Avenue of the Chiefs to get to the Crazy Horse Monument.

     Crazy Horse, literally meaning ‘His Horse Is Crazy’, was a war leader for the Oglala Lakota. He fought against the white man’s encroachments into native land and led a war party at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. He eventually surrendered to U.S. troops but four months later he was killed by a military guard.

     I watched a 20 minute Dynamite and Dreams film about the monument and Korczak Ziolkowski, the self-taught sculptor who was approached by Lakota chief Henry Standing Bear to sculpt Crazy Horse, ‘one of the red man’s great heroes’, in the Black Hills. The film showed some of the early work he had done alone and had an interview with him before he passed away in 1982. There was also an interview of his wife who died in 2014. They had 10 children and some of them are still working on the project, which is being funded solely by money raised from the tourists who visit.

     The first blast took place on the Crazy Horse monument on June 3, 1948. Since then the head and face have been completed and work is now being done on the hand and arm. When finished, the rider and horse will be 641ft (195m) long and 563ft (172m) high, and the largest mountain carving in the world. It is so much bigger than Mount Rushmore that the presidential faces would actually fit in the head of Crazy Horse. I wandered through the large log building that holds a gift shop, the Indian Museum of North America, the Native American Cultural Center, an information center, and displays. There is a 1/34^th scale model that shows what the monument will look like when completed.

     “We need to get the front brakes done as soon as possible,” Mike said as we crossed the border into Colorado. We’d bought the used motorhome for the trip and had been assured the brakes were fine.

     We stopped at a KOA campsite in Limon. Mike asked the woman behind the counter where we could get our brakes done. She gave us a map of the town and showed us where NAPA was. It opened at 8:00am in the morning and she circled their phone number. Mike was surprised because in Canada NAPA only sells auto parts. In the United States they also do vehicle repairs.

     In the morning Mike phoned the NAPA dealer to see if we could make an appointment to have our brakes installed. He was told that it was first come, first served. We looked at the map and saw it wasn’t very far from the KOA to the NAPA so I decided to stay and shower. I would walk over once finished.

     I got into the shower and turned handle. Nothing happened. The first thought that entered my mind was that I needed to pay for it so rather than check further I quickly dressed hoping to catch Mike. He was gone. I went to the office.

     “Morning,” the woman said.

     “Hi,” I said. “I have a tale of woe to tell you.”

     “Go right ahead.”

     “My husband has left to get the brakes on our motorhome changed at NAPA and I hadn’t got any…”

     “Don’t worry,” she cut in. “I’ll give you a ride over.”

     On the way we chatted. She told me she had been in Limon about ten years. She liked the town and enjoyed owning the KOA. Many of the people who camped there were regular customers who stopped in on their way south for the winter and on their way home in the spring.

     Mike was sitting in the motorhome in the NAPA dealer’s yard. He dug out his change purse and gave me all his quarters. I jumped back in the car and held up my handful of change.

     “I don’t know how much it costs for the shower but I’ve got all the quarters my husband had. I hope they are enough.”

     “It doesn’t cost extra to shower,” she said.

     “But I turned the handle and no water came out.”

     “Just pull on the handle to start the water.”

     Talk about feeling dumb.

     Back at the KOA the woman offered me another ride when I was finished. After my shower and ride back I asked her to wait a bit. I am a writer and had brought some of my mystery novels with me. I gave her a set as a thank you for her kindness.

     The man who changed our brakes was very friendly. He and Mike chatted the whole time. Apparently he had spent time in the Navy and had been to Nanaimo, B.C. so he knew where we were from. We left Limon about noon, happy to have our brakes done.

     We passed through Canon City and soon entered the Royal Gorge National Park. It was a narrow, winding climb to the parking area for the Gorge Bridge. We walked out on the wooden decking of the highest bridge in the United States. I have a fear of heights but I looked over the side at the Arkansas River, and the railway tracks running beside it, 1053ft (321m) below. Mike went to the motorhome while I walked to the far end and back.

     American explorers first saw the Arkansas River canyon in 1806. The railway was built in the late 1800s and the suspension bridge was constructed in 1929. The bridge is 18ft (5.50m) wide and 1260ft (384m) length and has 1292 planks.

     After seeing the Arkansas River Mike, and I headed to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Monument. We stopped on the south rim where the interpretive center is located. I went in and looked through the center then we began our drive along the rim. There are eleven viewpoints, some of them close to the road, some a bit of a walk like the Devil’s Overlook where I walked 600 yards from the parking area. There is one that is wheelchair accessible. We stopped at other viewpoints to look down at the river at the bottom of the canyon and to take pictures.

     It took over two million years of water and climate erosion for the canyon to become what we saw. Although the Indians, two Spanish expeditions, and fur trappers all knew about it, the first record of it was made in 1853 by Captain John Gunnison, leader of a survey expedition. It was named the Black Canyon because little sunlight penetrates the high, sheer walls. Some places only get 33 minutes of direct sunlight a day. In 1999, 14 miles (22km) of the 48 mile (77km) canyon were made into a national park. During its run through the park, the Gunnison River drops an average of 95ft (29m) per mile and in one two mile stretch it drops 249ft (76m). The canyon is only 40ft (12m) wide at its narrowest.