What MotorSilkMan did this Summer

Well, as you can see it has been awhile since I posted on the blog. It is funny how being on the road takes its toll on time. So, what I have I been up to?

Since I last posted I headed to Michigan to meet with Rick Dragos for a customer visit at a prominent auto industry/NASCAR supplier. They are interested in the MotorSilk product for horsepower advantages and reducing wear. It was a team of young and very smart individuals who were impressed by the technology and are always looking for the next best advantage.

From there I headed to the Chicago area with Rick visiting a few potential customers and staying at a nice out of the way RV park in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. After a week of bouncing around in the Chicago area, and a little fishing on Geneva Lake, I said farewell to Rick and headed back towards Detroit, stopping along the way to visit my nephew and his family. It is nice that I can plan my trips around catching up with family and friends.

I have an old friend, Mike, that lives close to Michigan Speedway. He lives on a lake and he and his wife were great hosts while I visited. We visited the Speedway where there was a wine festival (which was all I needed to hear to be all in) but the Speedway was also hosting one of the phases of the Progressive Automotive X Prize where contestants from all over the world build vehicles and compete for best mileage and low emmissions. There were some very interesting vehicles.

After a weekend on the lake I headed back to Detroit and had the privilege to watch the 4^th of July Fireworks while sitting on a very nice boat owned by a friend of my brothers. It was a large festival and it was great to see all the patriotism.

It was time to start the trek south when I ran into maintenance issues with the RV. I had a rear axle seal go out and ended up replacing most of the rear end including rotors and brakes. I did the work at my brother Gary's house in Ohio. Let's just say his wife inquired often of the repair status since for some reason she wasn't pleased with the big RV parked in the driveway up on blocks. Something about "redneck" came up a few times. The good news is that slowly but surely I am becoming very intimate with the mechanics of the RV.

Once that was fixed, I met some friends at Lake Cumberland Kentucky for a weekend at the lake. It was an interesting time for a visit since they were attempting to set the Guinness Record for the most boats rafted together on the water. They set the record with over 1,600 boats all rafted together.

From there I headed to Bristol Tennessee for the NASCAR race. I was parked across the street from the Speedway and had the opportunity to talk to a lot of people about MotorSilk. I’ve been to a lot of NASCAR races but never stayed that close. Let’s just say that it was a week of late nights and great racing.

It has been an interesting summer/fall on the road and the MotorSilk RV always draws attention where ever I go. It is great meeting people and talking to them about the product. Until the next posting, enjoy the Holidays!

Interesting Companies in the Detroit Area

Geneva Lake

Rick fishing on Geneva Lake

My nephew's Alex & Zach and my neice Kaitlyn

X Prize Competitor

This was fun to watch run

4th of July Weekend with the boys

Brother Roger, niece Maggie and her son Luke in Detroit

RV on the Blocks

Boats starting to Raft up at Lake Cumberland

One of my favorites

Made it to Bristol

Getting ready for Racing

Bristol is great Racing

Hot Summer

As the summer began I spent a lot of time traveling and advertising MotorSilk.

I spent a nice time in Key West and met with David Zevetchin with Evergreen America to discuss a few MotorSilk sales strategies. After Key West, I took a break and flew back to Portland to see my new granddaughter, Ruby Jane. She is so cute and it was good to see the family.

I spent a month in the Tampa area going to various car shows and events. Unfortunately, I missed the car show at the Caliente Clothing Optional Resort. My friend Tom took his car to the show and found that a lot of the crowd was showing everything. It was a tiring event since he needed to stand most of the time due to the conversations with men, while sitting in a chair, was awkward at best. I have that show marked on my calendar for next year.

I wrapped up things in Florida and headed to South Carolina to visit a childhood friend. He lived in Beaufort and he was the ultimate tour guide. Beaufort is basically on the Atlantic coast and he showed me a great RV park right on the Ocean. It was beautiful. I plan to spend a few weeks there in the fall. I spent several days there meeting a few of his connections that were interested in MotorSilk. I treated a few vehicles and have received positive feedback and additional orders. I became a big fan of Beaufort.

From South Carolina I headed to Ohio only to have a brake issue on the RV. When something is this big and this heavy, brakes are a key component. Luckily I had a friend in Ohio that was an excellent mechanic and we rebuilt the master cylinder and I could brake once again.

With summer half way through, I decided to head north for a couple of very interesting customer visits and other fun. More about those adventures in the next posting.

Hanging out in Florida

The friendly neighborhood Gator

Parked in Beaufort, SC

Lot's of Beaches and beautiful views

I hate it when this happens

Nice view for an RV park

More Key Learnings and Rat Rods

Making my way back to the east side of Florida, I decided to spend the weekend at an RV park where I could be fully hooked up, just like home. I got a spot at the Quail Run RV park. It was a very nice place.

I pulled into my spot and while walking around the RV to make sure I was placed correctly, I noticed liquid dripping from the side. Curious, I opened up the door to where the waste storage is located and noticed one of the valves was open.

Luckily it was the waste water valve and not the waste sewage valve! I figured out that I taken a few showers and used the sink several times and all that water had been going right out the hose that wasn’t connected to anything but the road. Oops! Note to self, always double check the valves. The learning never stops.

My next stop was a car show at the Don Garlits Museum. I joined my friend Tom who took his 1962 Ford Starlifter NASCAR replica, which I have mentioned before. The show had a lot of cars, probably close to 200, from all years, makes and customs.

I was impressed with the Rat Rods, trying to talk several of the owners into using MotorSilk for it’s anti-corrosion qualities, but in their world, rust is cool.

I walked around with my MotorSilk shirt on handing out flyers and having some really interesting conversations. No direct sales at the time, but once again, a lot more people have now heard of MotorSilk. A good weekend all in all!

Quail Run

Lot's of Spanish Moss

Rat Rod Interior

Rat Rod portable grill

Hot Rods, Hot Bodies

Need I say more

What a Deal

With the advice from the police officers, my brother and I walk across the street to the beach front Tiki Bar. We order a drink and tell the bartender about our fun night with the police officers. She explained that their special drink deal is just what we need. Curious, we asked what the deal was.

Well, it seems this particular bar is very much about customer service since their late night deal, from 9pm to close was $12.00 for all the well drinks you want. What a deal, sort of. It didn’t feel like such a good deal the next morning.

The bar got busy, as you may expect, and with that much alcohol flowing so near the beach, let’s just say several patrons decided to take a late night run through the ocean in their birthday suits. Not bad entertainment for $12.00.

The next day the weather was changing for the worse and I had enough of befriending the local police force, so we decided to head back to Tampa. I wanted to get back and continue to work on the prospects for MotorSilk sales. I stayed in Tampa while Roger returned to Ft. Lauderdale for a rainy St. Patrick’s day.

The trips back and forth across Florida did generate a few internet MotorSilk sales. It seems the moving billboard does have a positive effect. The manufacture of MotorSilk is going to start a large TV ad campaign soon. I'm hoping to be really busy in the near future!

Lubricants, Police and Beach Front Bars

With St. Patrick day right around the corner, my brother and I concentrated on finding a prime spot to park the RV. We wanted to be close to the beach and close to the bars. We returned to the hotel that previously allowed me to park in their lot. Unfortunately, with St. Patrick day and spring break, they declined our request. What do we do now?

Roger had his car so we set out to find the local Wall-Mart which was way too far away. We found a listing for an RV park that was a bit far, but we were desperate. Just our luck, they were full.

We get back to the RV and decide to drive north and worse case stay in a rest area, and as we were leaving, the manager of the hotel came out and recognized the RV. She stopped me and said she didn’t realize who it was and she said we could stay the night in their lot. Stress relief feels so good!

We get parked in the lot with great exposure and was getting ready to do some partying when a police officer stopped and wondered why we were parked there. I let my brother deal with the police, if you recall he is retired DEA. He explained we had permission from the hotel and the officer said that was good enough for him. (Police visit #1)

We get ready to go get a bite to eat and another officer drives up saying he had a complaint about the noise of my generator. Keep in mind we are next to several beach bars that have bands most every night. When they are playing you can’t hear my generator standing next to it. Regardless, we agreed to be a good neighbor and I shut it off. (Police visit #2)

We went to get something to eat and upon returning, two more officers were at the RV. I’m thinking Gun Oil sales, but they had another agenda. Supposedly a person in a condo close to the parking lot had a personal agenda against us and had repeatedly called the police quoting ordinances that even if the RV is on private property; no one can stay in it. (The damm internet lets anyone look up laws. That should be illegal)

It was clear these officers thought all of this was ridiculous, but they had to do their job. The officer told me he was going to ask me a question and I knew the answer he wanted. He asked if we had a room in the hotel and we were not staying in the RV. I started to ramble and he stopped me and said, just say yes or no. I said yes. He suggested we go have a few drinks and let it all calm down. Well, it's not like me to disobey an officer of the law, so off to the bar we went. (Double Police visit #3)

After all the drama I realized I missed an opportunity to give half of their police force samples of my MotorSilk products. Oh well, off to the beach front bar which is a great story for my next blog. The night gets better, well, sort of.

MotorSilk Manufacturer Visit

My brother Roger and I met Tom, who drove over from Tampa, to see and learn more about the MotorSilk manufacturing process at the Advanced Lubrication Technologies facility. We met with Bill who works the magic behind developing the MotorSilk products. We toured the facility and gained an understanding of how the products are mixed, tested and bottled.

We had a lot of questions for Bill and I personally was amazed at the technology and the on-going research on the formulas to ensure their effectiveness and continuous improvement. It was also nice to see a product that was developed and produced in the United States.

I wanted to thank Brenda for setting up the visit and Bill for being so informative. I’ll look forward to additional visits in the future.


Roger and I headed back south to Ft. Lauderdale for a little R&R. More on that later.

Me and the ALT group

Back to Business - Sort Of

My few days with Kim came to a close when I dropped her off at the airport. We had a great time and now I needed to get ready for my next ride along.

My brother Roger is retired from the DEA. He has been meeting his various law enforcement buddies in Ft. Lauderdale on Saint Patrick’s Day going on 20 years. Since he was coming south anyhow, he came a week early and went with me to visit the MotorSilk manufacturing facility which is located in Palm City Florida.

Roger met me at an RV Park just north of Ft. Lauderdale. Since I hadn’t been hooked up to facilities in more than a week, I was out of water and full of sewage. I’ve been told that more than once in my life. I did learn another RV lesson in that always fill the RV with the good stuff and get rid of the bad, at every opportunity, even if you just did it. You never know how long it will be to the next opportunity. Let’s just say it isn’t fun having the bad tanks full, and it seems other motorist find leakage a bit annoying. Enough said.

I got the RV situated at the park and Roger and I went in to Ft. Lauderdale to meet a couple of his friends. We made it a short night and returned to the RV so we could get headed out for our trip in the morning. We hit the road headed north after a short detour to drop Roger’s car at his buddies’ house.

We were scheduled to visit the facility the next day so we had plenty of time. We reached our destination and after driving through a few strip malls, (BTW – I am now pretty proficient at getting this big bus in and out of anywhere with minimal damage!) we found a nice place to have dinner. There were no RV parks in the area, so after talking to a few people about where to park and telling them what MotorSilk is, we were told there was a Wall-Mart down the road.

I have to admit that this was on the higher end of the Wall-Mart stores. We had our cameras ready in case we saw any candidates for the people of Wall-Mart, but no one stood out. It reminded me of the joke about 1 out of every 4 people is an idiot and if your three friends seem okay, it’s probably you. Luckily I didn’t notice anyone taking pictures of us. Anyhow, thank you Wall-Mart for your hospitality and we headed out to the manufacturer the next morning.

Pelican's on the Pier