anybody thirsty?

Today was another good day delivering water for Seven-Springs. Actually, everytime I take the van out to deliver water it's a good day. Mainly because I really meet some very neat people.

Maybe I should back up a little bit. Several years ago, not sure but it must have been around 1996 or so a member of our church in Bassett -- Gordon Brooks, senior came up with this idea to bottle and sell water. AFTER the fact I wish I had been a part of that because the water we have on our ranch is the purest in the world. ANYHOO, I've always had this secret type of fascination of Gordon and his project.

Jump ahead now to late summer 2007. I was informed by the board of commissioners in Rock County that my job of installing road signs for the county was being taken away from me. The job would now be taken over by the road crew guys. No need to dwell on that so I'll move on.

I was looking for a "sort of" part time job to create a few extra dollars when I heard about this job of route driver for Seven Springs opened up. I went up - -applied -- and GOT THE JOB!! I was really excited.

When I reported for my first day on the job I was met by the new manager. Not sure what happened but the manager that hired me got fired. When I was told I had the job I was given a clipboard showing names and addresses of customers and a notebook that kinda gave some extra directions on the "how to do this" and the "what they take for water". There was this one other guy named Terry who had worked there for about 6 months who helped me load up the van for my first route. After double stacking the 5's - -five gallon bottles I was set to go on my first route.

MEMORABLE -- no other words. Even before I made my first stop I rounded a corner ( not that fast either ) and OVER THEY WENT. Did you catch the part about the double stacking? Guess what, if you don't tie the bottles in they fly all over. It was raining buckets, which meant I couldn't unload and reload, rather I had to shift, then restack - -almost 60 bottles all totaled but thank goodness NONE of them broke, ( that's a later story. )

I'm not going to bore you or myself right now with all of the stories of water delivery but to say it is different than my job as weed cop, HA, would be a definite understatement.

Today, my route took me to Butte. There are always several towns involved in different routes, ( we now have a total of 8 ), but today was extra challenging. To begin with we have been adding new customers each and every month. This month from last month added close to 20 new customers. Today I started out with 84 5's, which was about 20 more than the total route last month. Before I finished I could tell I was going to be about 20 short -- which means I'm going to have to go back tomorrow and finish.

A good problem to have, but now I have to figure out a way to fit 100+ 5 gallon bottles, plus a mix of other bottles, into a van that has close to 290,000 miles on it. Any ideas?

Will add more to tell you some neat stories about some neat folks I see and meet.