[pktruckdriver]

Barb, Bill and Jeff, I thank you for your responses, and your true opinions, I would expect no less.

Barb, as for the team, if my team member does not recover, last chat I had with him he sounded horrible, yes he could recover, I hope so, and then there is his wife of many many years, also, not doing the best, should he be made to endure a contest with so little to offer, over spending all the time with his wife, he has my prayers, my Churches prayers, and hopefully all of y'all's prayers too. But is not life more important than a contest, well to me it is, I was wrong dragging Rich into this, I feel bad for that, should have respected his wishes to not participate, isn;t that what true friends do? And Raymond, well he too is very very busy with his business, and doing great, but only if he is there and working, there is nothing wrong with that, actually it is very honorable for him to work so hard, I respect him for it, we all should, that is why, this team while made up of great friends, may not be the right thing for us, at this time. I did not forsee Rich's health problems , or Ray's need to work so hard, or my meltdown, and need for surgery, so sorry you are dissappointed, guess in time I will get over it, not a sarcastic response, I would love to have your ringing endorsment, honest, I always enjoyed our time together, our few talks, your duaghters attempt to help me with my health issues, and then Ted.

Jeff, you man are so right on, if you can't afford to play then go away, wish I learned that long ago, but like those that play the lottery, you hang around waiting for a nice big hit, that never comes, that you shoulda had, they are there everyday, big hits, yet I have eluded them so far, funny kinda, but in truth very sad, oh well. Can I learn now and try to keep the team going, if they both want to continue, I guess I would, but they have more important things in there life right now. Yes I guess you all could say the same thing and be right too, life we all live each day and do our best, some better than others, Rich has millions of grand kids to be with, ones who love him and her so much, there time should be with them, no? Not some losing horse player like me, just my thoughts, can you see it otherwise ?

Bill , as usual you're advice is right on, i may be in that lull, and the next 2 weeks be on top again, but my paceline selection is , for me the best I can do, and when in doubt I will use 2-3 lines and see what is better, I try some match up techniques learned from the Match up books, and then as for the +'s and -'s and circle's, to me that is not needed in RDSS because of the color coding, which I love so much. I now look at the conditions too, workouts for some races and modleing too, all this I do, as I been taught to do. But losing streaks are always there for all of us, maybe more so for me, not !!

The contest has races I most likely would not play, but must, so I do, we all do, some do very well with them, me not so well.

I focus more on Dirt sprints, 6 f and 8- 8.5 turf routes, clm/alw and some minor stakes, I do my best work with these two types of races, my records show this, yes records I keep them, did you think I did not, how can you try to win without them, right? But enough for now, I know my strentghs and weaknesses and still have trouble with my weaknesses, which I will not discuss now.

I must go now, think what you must , but sometimes friends get there friends into things they should not have been in, this looks to me like one of those times, I apologize to them for it, I was not thinking of them when trying to put a team together, again one of my faults.

Patrick