February 11 2001, St. Louis MO
Happy day!
In this segment, the 'new' Winnicrew leaves cold and snowy Michigan to start
the year at the sunny and warm Florida Triple Crown. The last couple of
months haven't been easy, but last year's cast is still on tour (although in
separate vehicles) and we have a new Winnicrew member under mine and Dave's
tutoring. Young Mr. Avery Jenkins will cut his teeth on the 'big tour' after
an impressive rookie year, when he won a Supertour tournament and some big
skin money in Toronto. Avery will be riding with Dave and I for the entire
season and we'll see what this second generation disc golfer can do to uphold
the Jenkins family name.
It's been a busy winter! To recap most of the highlights:
- Rebuilt 73' Winnebago's engine in Virginia
- Limped back to freezing cold Michigan with engine barely running and no
heat.
- Al and Sue went their own way with plans to tour as a couple in 2001.
- I leave the Winnebago in the capable hands of Winnicrew Mechanic "Dad
Branch"
- Dave and I jump into my trusty Celica and drive to Maryland, Virginia,
South Carolina, Tennessee and St. Louis in search of a few more tournaments
for 2000.
- Dave and I stay in St. Louis for a week, making golf discs for Davey Mac at Gateway Discs.
- Dave and I return to Michigan for Christmas
- Dave and I drive back to St. Louis for three more weeks to make golf discs.
- 'Dad Branch' wishes that the 73' Winnebago would catch fire so he doesn't
have to work on that tired beast anymore.
- Todd and Al travel to the 'Real Ice Bowl' and shiver to a 5th place finish.
- 'Dad Branch' gives up on Winnie I and donates a sweet 1979 Winnebago
Cheiftain to the 'cause.' A new Winnie for the crew -- you're the greatest Dad!
- The trusty Celica blows its motor into numerous non-working pieces 100
miles north of St. Louis after 199,401 miles of dedicated service.
That takes us up to about three weeks ago. Dave rescued me after a day of tow
truck drivers and repair shops. I left the Celica and we took Dave's car
over to Avery's house in Ohio to pick him up and meet the family.
After about five hours on the foosball table we drove back up to Michigan, where
I inspected the new ride and marveled at its superiority over the previous
box on wheels. Mom and Dad had just left for a four day cruise and a trip to
the Texas cancer center to see how Mom was holding up (good news! No new
growths and the old one seems to be shrinking!). I started fiddling with the
gadgets in the new Winnie. Dave and Avery installed a TV stand the hangs
from the roof (like at the hospital). We loaded up the new ride and waited
for it to stop snowing.
Eventually it did stop snowing and we headed off to Avery's house again to
pick up the stuff we couldn't carry last time in Dave's car with three people and
mine and Dave's equipment from our three week stay in St. Louis. About seven more
hours of foosball were played before we started the drive back to St. Louis
so that Davey Mac could install an advertisement on the side of the Winnie
for his Gateway Disc Sports company. There will be some other advertisements
on the Winnie this year too. If you'd like to advertise then drop me an
e-mail!
On the way to St. Louis we developed some problems with the batteries and the
12-volt power system. I pulled the alternator and had it tested... bad
alternator. I bought a new one and installed it, but things didn't get any
better. We were traveling at night and the headlights were draining battery
power fast. Finally ran out of juice after about 60 miles and coasted to a stop
on the side of the highway. I came up with this scheme of running the
generator into the built in battery charger. The charger only charges the
auxiliary battery, so I had to connect the positive leads on the two batteries
so that the charger would accidentally charge both batteries.
While sitting there running
the charger, we got to meet our first policeman of 2001. He
came up and asked what we were doing. I explained while he ran the plates
and my driver's license through the system. After my amazingly clean record
popped up on his computer, he started to get a little chatty and we told him
all about what we were doing. He talked with us for about another 20 minutes
and said he had to get going back to work. I started up the Winnie and we
drove another 60 miles before we were forced to pull over and recharge some
more.
After more recharge stops and a lot of time, we pulled into St. Louis. Linda
came over and picked me up after I made an appointment with the local garage.
The next morning I was driving Linda to work in her car when her alternator
went out. Right in the middle of a traffic jam on a four-lane highway. I got
out and pushed the car over to the tiny right shoulder of the highway and
immediately a thunderstorm started up. We sat in the rain with no cell phone
and wondered what to do. Eventually a policeman pulled up and called a tow
truck for us.
The backup Winnie mechanic that we hired for the day announced that my new
alternator didn't work. Luckily I had paid the extra $1 for a lifetime
warrantee and I took it to the nearest Autozone and got a new one. After
replacement of a few electrical relays and a voltage regulator, the 12v system
was looking top notch!
(Was there something in my horoscope about alternators this week?)
Right now Dave and Avery are off with Davey Mac and some more St. Louis
faithfuls to play the Ozark Mountain course... an ambitious task to say the
least. I decided to stay behind and take care of some webpage tasks and
straighten out the Winnie a little bit. More luxury means less storage and
we hardly have room for the bare necessities of touring for an entire year.
Some new stuff you'll see from the Winnicrew in 2001 are:
- The new ride! Packed full of unknown problems that may end the tour at any
time
- Todd gets even busier with all his new duties as PDGA competition director.
- Possibly a trailer packed full of disc golf goodies in tow (will it
break?).
- A trip to Northern California and the petrified forest (which has a DG
course!).
- Ken Climo himself will be flying to tournaments and staying with the
Winnicrew.
- Videos! Yep, I borrowed Dad Branch's camera and bought a little video
editing equipment. Look for 'Winnicrew News and Tour Report.' When we set
up the trailer for some sales I'll whip out the TV/VCR and play the
latest installment. It will feature tournament re-caps from the events we
played, TD interviews, player interviews, tours of disc manufacturing plants,
lots of funny and interesting segments of life on tour, and more Dave
Feldberg than you can handle. Fun!
- DiscTV is scheduled to be at a bunch of events this year, with DiscLife.com webmaster
Brian Sullivan as host. You may be seeing even more of us on TV.
- New touring friends! The rumor mill is overflowing with new touring
players.
So, 1008 miles to Ken Climo's house should put us pretty close to broke for cash.
Luckily, we pre-paid for the next four tournaments. Hopefully we will win some
cash and sell some frisbees in Florida.
Sound fun? I hope so. We really love to hear from our supporters. It helps
cheer us up when things aren't going so well. Avery is already a bit
surprised at the cost of touring. Clue me in on where to get cheap gasoline.
A shout out to Brian Sullivan for taking on the huge and often thankless task of creating and maintaining
the incredible resource that is DiscLife.com, and for making our Adventures pages look so cool for the third year straight. Check
out the brand new SuperStore and buy some stuff! Maybe we can keeping bringing
you 'the tour life' for a few more years!
Drive carefully,
-Todd, et al
Got a question for Todd and the Winnicrew? Send it here.
Be sure to include "2001 Tour" in the subject header.
