On the Road Again...

 I drive. A LOT..! 

I check my vending route at least once a week, 

I drive to stores for merchandising assignments, for errands, on shopping assignments for customers, and for courier and delivery gigs. 

Whenever I come across extraordinary experiences, positive or negative, I write reviews on Yelp.com. 

Being that I’m sometimes sent to stores that I’d never seen or heard of before to pickup items for delivery,  I’ve learned of really cool places, especially a few restaurants that have been around for decades but I’d never heard of that I found to have exquisite menus. So look for my store reviews soon! 

An experience at a tiny bar left me so flummoxed that I had to write a review of it in Yelp when I realized that my understanding of it might be the only recent one in the life of that location. In other words, did others see the same things I did? 

Even if they did or didn’t, why can’t I write about any unusual experiences I've come across? 

And so I think I might do just that. 

Why not add a page to my blog that reviews my restaurant visits, or even store visits? 

Purely subjective, but sometimes I got a lot to say! 

Look for it soon!  

By the way, google is discontinuing automated email updates from blogs so I think it’s up to bloggers to manually send out updates. 

I’ll try my best to send some sort of work-around. 

Pandemic Over Yet?

 Pandemic Almost Over

   Greetings, 

My routes and I are still recovering from the pandemic, and I just wanted to let u know that I’m able to focus back onto the route. 

This means that the few machines I have left will be tended to properly now. 

An update means recovering from my supply lines coming back up so that I can get fresh candies, my current supply sat too long with too many machines that no longer exist so my supply is a toss and a loss. 

  With businesses back up and running, I’m working with new personnel and their preferences so it’s a lot like starting over from the very beginning with only a few machines again. 

 The Honor Boxes are holding up fine, I didn’t stock up on their candies as much since I wanted to get to know the new line first.  

   I’ve been taste testing the gumballs and as hoped, they always hold up and I’ll tell u why. 

   When gumballs issue straight from the factory, they are so fresh, they melt in the mouth, no ability to chew on them at all. After a few weeks, they firm up but only a little bit. It takes a good 3-6 months to get a good solid gumball with fresh flavor that doesn’t melt away. After this, they gradually firm up more and more, but never have I ever seen nor experienced a gumball that won’t soften up after a bit, and flavor diminishes but doesn’t disappear ever. 

   I honestly believe, and there’s no way to test it, but I believe the better made gumballs, usually by Double Bubble, stored in an unchangeable environment, no heat, no cold nor moisture, just a constant room temperature in medium light, would be able to last with flavor and effectiveness for a few generations. 

    The only problem I have seen so far is that the Jelly Bellies took on flavor from the machines themselves. 

   Jelly Bellies are of exceptional quality and are known for their accurate flavors, which lasted protected in the machines thru the last several months but had taken on a plastic aftertaste from the machines, so I’ve changed them out for gumballs, which never take on any stray flavors or tastes. It’s really too bad, too, because Jelly Bellies are very popular but difficult to vend and maintain. 

   So I’m back on it, I haven’t forgotten the machines or customers, and thanku for your patiences!  

   

Let’s Not Forget the Chocolate

 

Altho I work mostly with bubble gum and hard candies, let’s not forget the chocolatiers and the history of chocolate in all its variations. 

I realized I was moving away from my candy route simply because it had been downsized so much from the pandemic, and especially since opportunities have opened up for my books business, I’ve been focusing on that, but let’s not forget the chocolate! 

Returning to M&Ms for some of my machines, I noticed that they do not have the metal spirals in them that the gumball turnstile machines sometimes have. Was that some sort of design flaw? I don’t think so because M&Ms vend naturally quite well and the metal springs that rotate in their canisters might break up the small candies. Gumballs are much hardier and are able to aerate easier. That’s why I fill gumball canisters to the top while keeping M&M canisters, both peanut and plain, half empty (or half full if you’re an optimist :-) 

So those of us working hard to survive the pandemic, or working hard to survive, let’s not forget the temporary pleasures of chocolate for the body and the permanent joy of God for the soul. 

eBay Lets PayPal Go

 Okay fine, eBay doesn’t transact with PayPal anymore. 

Did they come up with their own payment system like maybe ePal, eBayPal? 

No, they are demanding access to your checking account..! 

This is horrendous. 

One of the 1st rules of Financial Peace University is to never ever give credit card companies access to your checking account. Debit cards are okay because those are treated similar to credit cards, but eBay expects full access to your hard-earned CASH..? No interim steps, arbitrator, 3rd party with no hands on your cash, just unadulterated access? Nope, I don’t think so. 

People are already investing in invisible cash, cyber money, no hard copy, just a click of a button and ‘it’ comes or goes 💸 

I can’t even sell my books on there anymore. 

eBay is awesome but not that awesome. And I can’t in good conscience promote debt cards, I mean credit cards. 

I’m sure it will be wildly popular to trust Big Brother with your wallet but my books are outta there. 

I’ll post my new site soon. I never made that much money from books anyway, it’s always been from sheer love of the written word, on paper, cloth, cardboard, any hard-copy, but not invisible digital cyber-books that can disappear with the click of a button on a whim. 

So far, I’ve never had any purchased books on my Kindle disappear from me, but I’ve had saved books that I had planned to purchase later disappear...

     ~

Dare I..?

 Okay, so at its best, my route makes about $10 per visit, at its medium, $5 a visit, and not necessarily at its worst, but at its least, $0 a day. Those are the locations that only require a cleaning and making sure the machine is up and running and doesn't need to be re-stocked. 

I can service around 10 locations a day, and that's only if everything goes even semi-smoothly. 

So I could make $100 a day, (I haven't yet), or $50 a day, (once or twice pre-pandemic), or $20 a day. 

This is difficult to remember because I was just starting to settle into a decent routine when the pandemic hit awhile back. These days it's honestly just a few dollars a day. 

The best part is that independent routes like these are flexible and fun. 

This means that I can begin adding machines back onto the route, soon, hopefully, dare I hope..?  

            

  

    ~

God Bless Us

 

May Gd bless u and yours, even the house that flew the flag upside down, what a mess, this is for them, too. 

  

 

~

I Wish I Miss Oh Well...

 I miss, I wish, oh well... 

A wish and a dollar will get u a cup of coffee. 

I miss walking in the park, sun-bathing, and shopping. 

I wish I was a millionaire. 

Life is hard and then we die, oh well. 

I pray to God there is a God...

A Word About Curbs

A Word About CURBs

Okay, a rant about the rascals known as CURBs. 

CURBs are helpful because like the lines painted down the lanes on roadways, they keep us from drifting into other lanes or off the side of a road, a gentle bump and we are on our way again. CURBs guide rainwater to their respective destinations, and prevent cars from parking on lawns, just a few of their positive attributes. 

So if lines are painted down the middle of roads, sometimes even reflectors added every yard or so, why are concrete CURBs virtually hidden from view? 

I have seen some newer CURBs, almost always part of a median, that have reflectors permanently attached. Why are they there, it’s just a CURB, I’ll tell u why. 

CURBs are like pot-holes in reverse. 

Except CURBs are helpful but brash, reminders to stay in the correct lane or suffer the consequences of a new axle or two at worst, re-alignment at best, but always jarring never-the-less.  

When one is turning from the left lane onto the cross-street to the left of the driver, 

unless one looks to the left thoroughly, past oncoming traffic in the case of a green light, one might miss that the lane(s) they are turning onto are 2, 4, or 3 lanes wide, while also taking into account a possible median. 

Is that median grass or concrete? 

Is it grass with a concrete CURB? 

Is it a single-wide median or a double-wide median, I have even seen a grassy median that must have been over 20-feet wide, I almost turned right into it up onto that lovely grass thinking it was a proper car lane, surely there couldn’t be that much grass in the middle of a street, but there was. 

Did I mention there was oncoming traffic, and that I was wanting to get to my destination so I didn’t wait for the green arrow and took my chances with a regular green light, perfectly legal, 20-foot wide median or not, there was an impatient car behind me honking because I wasn’t turning into traffic fast enuf I guess, and that there were cars waiting, not in the lane I was looking to turn into, but the lanes that were waiting for their own green light so they could cross in front of us? 

So let’s see, it was 3-lanes of waiting cars to the left of me waiting for their own green light to go, a 20-ft wide grassy median with concrete CURB, another 3 empty lanes that I was trying to turn onto, 2 lanes of cars driving from the opposite direction, a honking car behind me, and a concrete CURB waiting for me. 

Oh, did I mention it was night-time? Yep, complete with over a dozen nice glaring headlights lighting up every possible reflection in existence. 

I made it from sheer patience with experience and experience with patience. 

Even during the day, turning from under a freeway onto a service-road, I barely missed a little tiny cement triangle of a CURB once..! What the heck? Totally unnecessary in my humble opinion. I guess it was there to guide drivers into the correct lane by banging on various tires. 

I know reflectors can be expensive, but when they paint the middle of roads, the sides of roads with those yellow or white stripes, can’t they spend even a splash of paint on every CURB in existence? 

I could tell u all sorts of stories about some of the crazy CURBs I have noticed, but u wouldn’t believe me! 

Invisible CURBs, the bane of my existence… 

Fun Facts About Peacocks

 I found what I suspected on the internet, and that is that peacocks are very much like chickens.

I would even venture to say that peahens, peachicks, and peaflocks are essentially big, beautiful chickens! 

 

• Male peacocks produce infrasound with their tails, likely to communicate territorial boundaries with other males and charm the females. The sound is inaudible to humans
• Peafowl fight snakes
• There are three species—the green, Indian and Congo peafowl
• A genetic mutation called leucism is responsible for all-white peacocks, but they are not albinos

🦚

Some Random Peacocks

 

Okay, so I'm checking on my honor boxes, and had to take the long way around to a store because it was school crossings hour. 

Since I had to slow down, I chose to admire a lovely white peacock toy on the lawn, then he turned to look at me! 

I didn't have time to load up a video, and besides, once I really slowed down to a crawl, I began to notice peacocks all over the place, on the roof, in the trees, on the porch, can u find them? 

What a treat! Enjoy... 

A Beautiful Toy That Looked At Me! 

There were 2 of them!

Why Did The Peacock Cross The Road?

Can U See Him? 

This One u Can See!

Peacocks Enjoying the Trees and the Weather! 

 

🦚