6/6/18.. Well "Cowboy" Bill Haldaman arrived safe but not so "sound" from Montana with Barbara. They are now happily ensconced in their 5th wheel trailer with their 2 Labrador retrievers Brook and Brown at one of our nice local RV Parks, to wait for the closing on their new house at the end of the month. My "Not So Sound" comment is because Bill, who wears a pair of mini hearing aids and he thought he lost one of them in Montana before they left there. Turns out that was not quite the case.  Bill decided to put his earlier older larger aid in his ear to replace the missing newer device. All the way driving down the 3,000 miles from Montana he could not hear correctly with the older device in that ear. Then he started getting a pain in his head and his neck swelled up a bit. At one point he blacked out while towing the 5th wheel down the highway but somehow managed to coast harmlessly to the shoulder and woke back up again. Thinking he was just getting drowsy from driving, they soon found a parking spot at a truck stop and went to sleep. The first full day they were down here I had to go to the VA. for a cardiogram on my ticker (which turned out O.K.) and Bill needed to transfer his records here from the Montana VA., so we both went over there together. Bill told the on-duty Doc about his hearing problem and they gave him an exam right away. They discovered the mini aid was lodged in his eardrum and that by inserting the older aid in on top of it he had gotten it stuck deep inside. So when he turned it on the 2 aids in 1 ear were sending crazy signals to his brain. With quite a painful emergency extraction performed, they finally dug the little one out and he is O.K. except for a slightly bleeding eardrum for a couple of days. They are going to fit him with a new "improved" one next week. So 3 cheers and a salute for the good Docs on duty at the Cape Coral Pines VA. Clinic.  They say Bill will be fine and Good to Go on our Road trip up to S.C. later next week to pick up my flats boat and drop off my BATTLEWAGON trailer and do some bream fly fishing and maybe some redfish as well. We will be out looking at a few boats today that I have lined up for Bill and Barb to take a look at, as they want to get out on the water after our local fish population as soon as they can.