Visit With An Old Friend

Our friend Stu McNicol is on a motorcycle trip from his home in Tennessee down to southern Florida to visit his daughter and some other family members and friends along the way. We were fortunate to be among those friends, and we met Stu for lunch yesterday at Uncle Chicken’s in New Smyrna Beach.

We met Stu back during our fulltime RVing days and have been friends ever since. We’ve actually been friends with his wife Donna even longer, first meeting her when she was a solo RVer. If you’re not familiar with Donna, she is the author of the popular Klondike mystery series, along with the C’Mon Inn cozy mysteries and other excellent books.

Stu was delayed a bit, but we didn’t mind waiting for him, sitting outside at a table with an umbrella to shade us. After the requisite round of hugs when he arrived (we have all three had our COVID-19 vaccinations), he and I ordered the huge Morning After Flagler Burger, while Terry opted for the Cheesy Smoked Chicken Bacon Ranch Sandwich.  It was all delicious, and we talked for a couple of hours. Stu was a career firefighter and first responder in Maryland, and I picked his brain when I was writing Big Lake Burning, the sixth book in my Big Lake mystery series. He’s always got some great stories to tell, and we definitely did some laughing while we ate.

Eventually, we had to part company because Stu was headed further South and wanted to get to his destination before it was too late in the day. We said our goodbyes and got another round of hugs and had one of the restaurant employees take a picture of us before he climbed on his trike and headed on down the highway.

On our way home, we stopped at Publix to pick up some things, and by the time we got home and got everything put away we were both washed out. It had been a pretty warm day, and I think setting outside so long, even with the umbrella, got to us. So we didn’t have energy for much of anything else the rest of the day.

In the early evening, a line of storms came to the area, bringing a lot of thunder and some lightning and some much-needed rain. This area is something like five inches below its normal rainfall for the year, and there have been a lot of brushfires throughout the state due to the drought-like conditions.

Today is your last chance to enter our Free Drawing for an audiobook of Big Lake Blizzard, the fourth book in my Big Lake mystery series. To enter, click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name (first and last) in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn this evening. Note: Due to the high shipping cost of printed books and Amazon restrictions on e-books to foreign countries, only entries with U.S. addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed.

Thought For The Day – When you die people cry and beg for you to come back. But when you do there’s all that running and screaming.