So the trip back down the mountain road was a rough as the trip up but at least I had someone to talk to.  Lindsey went to boarding school for high school.  It was the same school that her dad and granddad attended.  She went to a college that she really didn’t want to go to for a year and mutually decided with her parents to take a year off before choosing a different college to attend.  Her mom introduced her to Mel and told her about the coop.  She decided to spend time with Rosario at the co-op to clear her head and get some living under her belt.

Through the course of the conversation she mentioned that she flew into Tegusagalpa and her uncle and cousins picked her up at the airport.  They have lived in Tegusagalpa for a few years.  Her uncle is the chief of staff at the American Embassy in Tegus.  Here I am in a foreign country on a journey to make a difference for retirees and the people of Honduras and I find myself sitting next to the niece of a man that works in the Embassy.  I am pretty sure that contacts like this are very hard to make.  All I had to do was show up and there it was as a gift.  Don’t get me wrong, I do not plan to use this friendship in any way but the goodwill is something that money cannot buy.

We eventually make it down the mountain road and head for Olanchito.  The cab driver must be related to Mario Andretti because he seemed to make it his personal mission to get ahead of everyone and everything that got in front of him.  Fortunately the road to Olanchito is new and the pavement is very smooth except for the areas that have potholes that a Mack truck could fall into.  Juan was driving 70 and 80 miles per hour the whole way.  I had been told by the guys Saturday night that the ride should take no more than an hour.  Juan told me that it was more like 2 1/2 hours and he was right.

When we got to Olanchito, the peace corps volunteer Suzanne had instructed me to stop the first person we saw and ask them for directions to her house.  Juan found this a little hard to believe that anyone in a town of 30,000 would know where to find Suzanne.  We stopped the first cab driver that we saw and asked him if he knew where we could find Suzanne.  He did not know who she was, but his passenger did.  He gave us directions and we were off.  When we got to the place that he told us to go, it was a place called Biblica Digiteca Center.  We went in and the man there gave us Suzanne’s cell phone number and I called her.

She was a 5 minute walk from the Center and she came to meet us.  We went to a local restaurant and had lunch.  The tab for the four of us including soft drinks was $10.  After lunch we drove out to the land that I had been eying on Google Earth.  It was exactly what I was expecting and there was actually a sign on one piece of property that said a subdivision was coming soon.  Suzanne told me that the sign had been there since she showed up in town over 1 1/2 years ago.  I took plenty of pictures and will insert them when I get home.

By this time it was around 2 pm so we needed to head back.  Suzanne invited us to see her humble apartment so we went over and saw her place.  It was a nice gated 2 bedroom apartment with a private bath just like you would find in the states.  It had high ceilings and plenty of windows but no air conditioning.

The trip back seemed to go faster than the trip over because the scenery was familiar.  We stopped at the mall and went into an internet cafe so Lindsey could check email and I made a call back to the better half to let her know that I was alive and well.  Between the two of us we spent approximately 20 minutes using the internet and my phone call to Cyndie lasted approximately 10 minutes.  The total cost was a little less than $1.50 in US dollars.

Before you knew it we were back up the mountain road and putting Lindsey back into the basket to make the trip across the river to the co-op.  I made it back to the hotel by 5 pm and had dinner and crashed.

Saturday night before I went to bed I had the Juan talk to the person at the front desk of the hotel and arrange for a rental car to be brought to me in the morning.  The clerk told him that I would have no problem getting a rental car place to bring me one although it was going to be Sunday morning.  My plans were to drive to the sewing co-op and then on to Olanchito.  I was told that it was approximately 45 minutes up to the co-op and Juan told me that Olanchito was a 1 hour easy drive.

Sunday morning I woke up at 5:30 and showered and went downstairs to start the day.  Before going to breakfast I stopped at the front desk and inquired about having them contact the rental car company to have a car brought over for me.  The clerk said that it would be impossible to get a rental car on Sunday morning and that my best hope would be to get one sometime in the afternoon if the rental car place opened up.  I was somewhat disappointed.

Breakfast was to be served starting at 6:30 so I hit the road walking to see if I could find a taxi and inquire as to how much it would cost for him to take me to Olanchito.  I found one on the corner up the street and after communicating with him in broken english/spanish, he told me 12000 limperas for a trip to Olanchito which is 60 USD.  I thought that would be fair but I noticed that his car was not air conditioned and the fact that he spoke no English and I speak virtually no Spanish, it could end up being a bust.

By now it was 6:30 so I headed back to the hotel for breakfast.  I stopped at the front desk and asked the clerk if they could get me an English speaking driver with an air conditioned car.  They said that they would do so and I headed for breakfast.  I needed a reminder that I am in Honduras and 6:30 does not mean 6:30 for the breakfast buffet to open.  6:30 is simply a target that no one really expects to be when food will be available.  When the waiter saw me sitting outside the restaurant at 6:35, he started scurrying the help around and opened the doors at around 6: 45.

I ate breakfast and headed back to the front desk where they had a very well dressed driver waiting to haggle with me over the price for his services for the day.  After getting him to agree to half of what he originally asked for, I headed up to my room to get the rolling duffel bag I had brought to transport the bags from the sewing co-op.

Juan Garcia is the driver for the only taxi in La Ceiba with Quinta Real Hotel plastered all over it.  He has a mural of the hotel on both sides of the car with EXCLUSIVO and QUINTA REAL in decals on the windshield.  Needless to say the little 4 door Nissan stands out from everything else on the road.

We headed out of town to our first destination which was Juan Pablo Segundo Cooperative.  The trip up the washed out gravel mountain road was somewhat rough for the little car but that didn’t stop Juan from driving around 10 miles per hour faster that I was comfortable with.  Once we crossed the wooden bridge with holes that Juan had to dodge, I got my bearings and started to recognize some of the landmarks that Mel had sent me in an email.  After we passed the last little village she mentioned the next instructions said to stop 200 meters before the sign that said El Pital at the concrete barrier on the left side of the road which was the retaining structure for this side of the cable for the zip line basket that is used to get to the co-op.

I noticed the cable before we approached the concrete barrier and told Juan to stop.  He honked his horn and a boy brought the basket across the river for me.  My 45 pound bag full of goodies for the women and I piled into the basket with the boy and we were off.  The basket is moved with a 3 foot long ratchet device that the boy pumped.  Around 3/4 of the way across the river, he stopped ratcheting.  His breath was heaving and I realized that he was having trouble moving this 220 pound Gringo and his big bag across the zip line.  I started helping him pull the ratchet and we reached the other side shortly thereafter.

We were greeted by Rosario and some small children.  I carried the bag up to the workshop where I was greeted by an anglo face.  Lindsey Brownlee is the interpreter that Mel had mentioned and she is a 19 year old young lady that had been at the co-op for 8 days.  I gave Rosario the stuff in my bag and commenced to pack it with the cloth bags that she had made for the convention in Washington DC.  When we got them all loaded, I paused to take a look around the co-op.  They had a stack of wares in a corner and Rosario showed me many of them.  I bought some of the hot pads and she insisted on giving me a small towel with pictures of Honduran wares.  I will post pictures when I return home.

I then told Rosario through Lindsey what I was doing in Honduras.  Tears came to her eyes as Lindsey explained what this big Gringo was planning in her country.  I had Lindsey tell Rosario that she was doing a great work and to continue to do so.

I didn’t mention that Juan Garcia’s English was only a little better than my Spanish and I realized an opportunity to have a full blown interpreter accompany me on the second leg of my journey.  I asked Lindsey if she would like to go with me to Olanchito to see the peace corps volunteer.  You would have thought that I had asked her if she would like to take a trip to Disney World.  She agreed to go and went away to clean up and change her clothes.

The co-op is carved out of a steep mountain that does not have any natural flat areas.  They had to dig and pick through rock for 3 months to clear an area for the 30 by 50 workshop.  Every piece of construction material including concrete, concrete block and wood had to be transported over in the basket hanging from the cable that crosses the river.

I spent some time drinking in the beautiful children that gathered around while Lindsey cleaned up.  Then Lindsey and I piled into the basket with Rosario and the heavy duffel bag.  Half way across I started helping Rosario push the ratchet and we said our good byes.

More of this adventure later.

The journey began last Saturday.  I flew into Roatan from Houston and the flight was on time.  Somehow I ended up as one of the last people through customs but I met a guy that was traveling from St. Louis to the conference.  He owns a real estate company in La Ceiba which I will refer to as Ceiba from here forward.  That is what the locals call it.  Since the trek through customs was so long, I had to wait for the next flight on Islena airlines which was in 5 hours.  Jim caught an earlier flight on another airline so he was with me for 4 hours in the terminal and we talked about the plans I have and everything else under the sun.

About 2 hours into my wait I realized that I should have gotten a taxi and hit some of the beach spots rather than sitting in the airport but it was too late to do so.  Note to self, if you are ever going to have a 6 hour layover in Roatan, go to the beach.

Jim offered to pick me up at the airport in Ceiba and take me to the hotel so I thought that would be better than getting a taxi.  Honduras is not on daylight savings time so everything is an hour later here than in Texas.  My flight was to leave Roatan at 6 30 pm so he said that they would be at the airport at 6 45 to pick me up.  Well the country might not be on daylight savings time but the airline decided to load the plane at 5 30 and head to Ceiba.  It is probably good that I did not take a taxi to tour Roatan because I would have missed my flight.  This gave me a good dose of the fact that there really are no schedules in Honduras.

I arrived in Ceiba on a twin engine plane that is bigger than the small jets that continental airlines uses for many domestic flights at 6 pm.  The airport is very clean and modern and air conditioned.  Shortly after I arrived, the airport began to close and the last taxi driver left around 6 15 pm.  I was putting my Honduran side to the test by being ok with the fact that I was counting on someone to pick me up and had no way to get to the hotel on my own.  Fortunately another taxi showed up and waited until Jim showed up with Juan Martinez who is his office manager in Ceiba.

The drive to the hotel took approximately 10 minutes.  Since it was Saturday night, the city was hopping with activity.  The hotel is magnificent and right on the beach.  Jim and Juan waited while I took my bags up to the room and we had dinner overlooking the pool with the ocean waves crashing 30 feet away.  This was a great beginning to what has been a dream trip.  I am on a long break between seminars and will continue with my awesome Sunday later.

One thing is certain, I am supposed to be her doing what I am doing and my head should be spinning because of all that has occurred but it isn’t.

I am four days away from the faith based step in my adventure in making a difference in Honduras.  Along with the trip to La Ceiba for the conference on doing business and buying real estate in Honduras I will be going to a small sewing co-op.  Here is a link to the site where the co-op sells their wares http://www.juanpablosegundo.org/

I will be renting a vehicle while in the country and I received directions to the co-op which included the instructions that after maneuvering through the mountains, I drive so many meters after one of the turns and I look for a concrete barrier on the left hand side of the road.  I am to stop at the barrier and honk my horn for the folks on the other side of the river to come across the river on the zip line in a basket to show me where to park my vehicle and proceed across the zip line to visit the co-op.

Since I speak no Spanish, this is going to be a real adventure.  The coolest thing about this particular stop is that it is on the road to the town that I have identified as a prime candidate for the retirement community that I will be building down there.  I will be going on to the village to visit a peace corps volunteer that has lived there for over a year.

I will post pictures of the adventure when I return to the states.

I was pleased to see an article in the Thursday Houston Chronicle on the back page of the Business Section that talked about the push by Central American countries to attract American Retirees.  Anything that validates the quest that I am on is welcomed with open arms.  When I read the article I had to ask myself why I was still working for the man.  The obvious answer was the deposit that shows up every two weeks like clock work.

I have five days of sorting through issues that will ultimately contribute to the growth of our company before I head down to La Ceiba Honduras.  My flight is from Houston to Roatan and then I take a puddle jumper over to La Ceiba.  I am going to be brave and rent a vehicle while in La Ceiba so that I can experience the full court press of how it will be when I am actually building the retirement community in this third world country.

I am starting to think that I need to spend some time in the community of the city that I have targeted for the project.  The mistake most gringos make is to go in with guns blazing and offend the locals when attempting to help out.  Many mission groups go down there and take no time to listen to the people and consider the best way to help out.  I have been reading some documents regarding USAID and the average Honduran lives off of one dollar a day.  The average annual income is less than one thousand American dollars.  Knowing this will help me to NOT throw money around and offend those who live on so very little.

I have seen how throwing money around can have a negative affect on people.  One of the owners of the company that I work for had the habit of taking some employees out to lunch and spending a substantial amount of money on the meal thinking that he was rewarding the employees for a job well done.  The thing that he did not take into account was that he was spending as much money on one meal for this employee as they had budgeted for two weeks of groceries.  It is hard to swallow a steak when you know that you have hungry children at home and don’t know how you are going to make your next electricity bill.

All for now, I am finishing up the hot dogs and hamburgers for the oldest J’s birthday party.  He and his lovely wife flew in from Florida for the weekend.

I hit a home run with the first Craigslist posting and sold my motorcycle to the first person that came over to see it.  He paid me the asking price with a check and said that he would come over to pick the bike up after the check cleared the bank.  I guess I got spoiled with this first time experience in being a seller.

The surplus tires for my truck are a different story.  I got a call on Wednesday from a guy that wanted to see the tires and I told him that I would bring them to work with me on Thursday and that he could come to my office to see them.  I called him back Thursday morning to make sure he was still coming and he told me that it was actually his brother in law that was wanting the tires.  He said that he would call his brother in law and have him contact me directly.  A few minutes later I got a call from the brother in law.  He said that he would come to my office around 5 pm to look at the tires.  I gave him directions to the office and his response to them should have told me something right from the start.  He seemed somewhat less than attentive to the directions but I always give people the benefit of the doubt and try not to judge based on first impressions, although they are seldom wrong.

I told the guy that I had planned on leaving the office right at 5 but that I could wait around if he needed me to.  This was my second mistake.  5:15 rolled around and I called his cell phone which went to voicemail.  15 minutes later I called it again and he answered.  He said that he was at a road that I recognized and the beltway which would have him arrive in approximately 20 more minutes.  I decided to wait another 20 minutes.  At 6 pm I started calling his cell phone again and it went voice mail after 5 rings.  I really did not want to give up on this lead but finally headed home around 6:20 pm.  I now know that the seller does not go out of his or her way to accommodate a “buyer”.  If you do so, you give up the upper hand in the negotiations.  It makes you seem desperate to sell your goods.  I realized that the tires have been sitting in my garage for 8 months and they can sit there another few weeks until the right person comes along and realizes what a value they are.

Meanwhile the check for the motorcycle cleared the bank and the buyer called me yesterday to get the VIN number so he could add it to his insurance.  This will be the last night that the KLR-650 sleeps in my garage.  Now to find some more stuff to sell.

So craigslist seems to work.  I got a check for my KLR-650 tonight.  The guy that bought it came over Monday night and sat on the bike and cranked it in the garage and fell in love.  He had just finished the same motorcycle safety course that I took 2 years ago.  He went and got his license yesterday and came back tonight and rode the bike.  He gave me a check and said that he would pick up the bike on Saturday which is plenty of time for the check to clear.

Another guy called this afternoon and was wanting to come over if the first guy did not buy the bike.  I called him and he was very disappointed.  He told me that it is really hard to find the KLR-650 on the used market.  I told him that the reason is that the owners really don’t want to get rid of them after owning them.  I am not any different but it was really hard for the bike to just sit in the garage since I bought my brother’s Suzuki Boulevard.  I really don’t need two bikes and the money will go toward the debt we have.  I may get a dirt bike sometime in the future when we have no debt whatsoever.  I now know that you can buy used stuff much cheaper than new stuff.

I am taking the extra tires I have had for some time now so a guy that called me today can come look at them.  The plan is to NOT come back home with them.  I bought the tires brand new for only $150 from my boss so selling them after driving on them for around 30K miles for $300 will be a sweet thing.  Even if I have to come down to $250 the way I see it that would still be SWEET.

A garage sale is the next thing.  Soon, very soon.

We hosted a seminar two weekends ago called No Sweat No Debt.  A guy named Steve Diggs spoke to our church Sunday morning and really touched the hearts of many people.  Then he hosted a seminar Sunday night and Monday night on finances.  We had 176 people show up Sunday night and 150+ show back up on Monday night.  This is a large crowd of people to take time to go to a seminar on financial matters.  Most people don’t want to admit that they could use some help on the financial matters in their lives so we were very pleased with the attendance.

This was the 206th seminar that Steve had done and we booked him a year ago to come and talk to us.  Needless to say the message he had was biblically based and touched the hearts of everyone in attendance.  My family less the ones in Florida attended.  The things he said were the things that we needed to hear.  He does not preach the no credit thing but showed us how debt owns us when we are borrowing for the wrong reasons.

Finances are something that most people don’t want to talk about and at the same time they know very little about what it takes to manage the money that we get wisely.  I can remember when I was making 30K per year thinking that if I only made 50K how much easier it would be to get by.  Little did I know that the more I made the more I would spend.  When you are making enough to meet the bills, the lie is that a budget is not needed.  When you don’t plan how to spend your money, it gets spent on whatever suits your fancy and getting ahead becomes a pipe dream.

I have often wondered how people were able to retire at 60 and not have to work.  There is really no magic to doing this, there is planning that can make it happen with little effort.  When you fail to plan how to spend your money, someone else is planning on how you should spend it on their stuff.

I figured out a long time ago that all that I have is a gift from God but never really looked at how I could spend and save what he gave me in a way that would get me out of debt.  Steve has an awesome ministry and has a way of getting people motivated to make a difference with the financial gifts that God provides.

We had 21 families sign up for a follow-up 13 week seminar that is designed to get us on a road to no debt.  I will be leading the first group through the material.  That puts the spotlight on my finances and I am honored to get to do this task.  I really expect this to make a difference in the lives of the people that go through this workshop with me and my better half.  I have already started putting some of the steps into process by listing my “extra” motorcycle on the market.  He said that one of the ways to get out of debt is to become a “ninja” at selling stuff.  Those are my words but the principle is his.  We will be having a garage sale soon and there will be much extra stuff that will be sold.  Twenty years in the same house has allowed us to accumulate much stuff that is depreciating daily that we hardly if ever us.

Meanwhile, I am watching every single dime that I spend with a renewed vigor.  Funny thing is that you can drink water with a meal and not spend $1.25 each day.  I already figured out how to not spend money when buying gas, you just use your credit card at the pump and don’t go into the store.  One of the keys to this is to pay off the balance of the credit card every month.  We have been doing that for almost a year now.  We only have one credit card that carries a balance and the interest rate is only 1.9% until the balance is paid off.

The key to this whole No Debt thing is to NOT spend more than you make.  Society has set it up so that it is so easy to spend more than you make and owe your soul to the company store for the rest of your life.  I can actually see the day when we are able to have absolutely no debt.  It may not be real soon but we will have a plan to make it happen before the follow up seminar is concluded.

This is something that everyone can do but there are some decisions that have to be made in order to do so.  I am moving into the phase where it doesn’t matter what others think and where I am taking responsibility for my finances.  HMMM, I am sure glad that my eyes have been opened to the possibilities of being debt free.  I just wish that I had been exposed to this kind of data 20 years ago.

Well, better late than never!

We are down to the deadline on getting the loans for middle J’s college applied to his tuition and fees.  Sam Houston State University has no idea as to how hard they make this “process”.  We went through a similar experience his Freshman year.  We had done everything we were supposed to and went to the website every day to see if we could apply the money we had borrowed and every day we got the same response that the money was not yet available. 

The financial aid group must be outsourced to India because any time you call their phone number you get a busy signal or an answering machine where your message is never returned.  The other way of contacting them is through a “request tracking system”.  The first year we went through this meat grinder, our online request was responded to after we had paid by credit card.  It seems that someone somewhere had not entered our information correctly so the money was not available until after we had paid.  Little did we know that the money would be credited toward Jacob’s Bearkat card instead of being sent to us as a check.  Jacob had fun spending that money the first semester of his Freshman year.  That will not happen again.  If we have to pay with our credit card, the loan money will be sent to us as a check to pay off the credit card.  I am just glad that we have no credit card debt and that the balance will not incurr any interest.

I finally ended up looking up the email address of the director of financial aid.  The email responses I got from her validated my thoughts that they are in fact outsourced to India.  Canned responses to my email were all that I got and that was obvious because my questions were not answered.  After the 3rd email from her she was referring me back to pages that I had already told her were invalid in my first email.

I am not so frustrated about this because it is what I have come to expect from academia.  The people that are administrating and “teaching” our children in the “higher” education system have a lot to learn about customer service.  They have no concept of what or who their customers are.  When a person gets a paycheck and has no idea as to where the money came from, there is a lack of appreciation that creates apathy and so on and so forth.

Maybe I am a little frustrated because there is no hope of this ever getting any better.  I guess it is my fault by not being able to pay for college out of funds that were set aside over the years or making the student do all of the paperwork.

Many thanks to my daughter in law for taking care of the oldest J’s college loans.  I don’t mind paying the loans off just as long as I don’t have to apply for them.

Easy weight loss.

I have been on an involuntary weight loss program called a stomach virus.  It started to do the dirty while I was sitting in an auditorium waiting to find out if I got to serve on jury duty Monday morning.  Fortunately I was not picked and was able to make it home in time to hit the bed.  I slept through most of the stomach cramps Monday afternoon.  I got up Tuesday morning and went through the normal routine thinking that I was going to be ok.  I backed my truck out of the garage only to drive right back into it and stay home yet another day.

Wednesday I was able to go into work for the morning only to realize that I was not yet well.  Today was a better day and there is no sign of said virus.

On the work front, we began the last class to train our dial up technicians on the tools to migrate the billing work out of the customer service group.  Everyone in the group is excited about the improvements we are making in our business to better serve the customers.  We will begin migrating the work next week.  Once this is done I can execute the next step of the plan to reduce attrition.  I identified some players today that will be instrumental in the future steps.

Mabad, I think I found out why I was having stomach problems the last few days and I am almost too embarrassed to admit it.  The better half bought me some new multi-vitamins.  I haven’t been taking any for a while and I started taking them Monday morning.  How was I to know that you should take them after eating?  Need I say more, I took the first one right after I woke up and then ate a very light breakfast.  My stomach didn’t like that at all.  I did the same thing on Tuesday and Wednesday.  I skipped the vitamin today and ate a regular breakfast and have felt fine all day.  Needless to say, I will put my vitamin in my pocket and take it after breakfast tomorrow and see what happens.  Who would know that a 49 year old man could still learn something?