As we cycled in to Beaver Bay to do laundry Jon was sitting there taking care of e-business on his phone. As he travels, his mail service based in South Dakota, scans his mail so he can choose which to have them open and scan for him to read online….Very cool indeed. He noticed our tandem bike with all of our laundry in our trailer Bob. We struck up a conversation for a few minutes and found out simply that he was an Iraq war vet. We decided to thank him for his service by buying him an ice cream while our clothes were drying. His eyes watered a bit when we gave it to him and then we had a long conversation about, well, lots of things.
Jon served 8 tours in Iraq and on the last one was hit with an RPG and suffered a traumatic brain injury (along with other injuries). After “recovery”, as he says, “you never recover from something like that”, he stayed in the Army and managed to eke out 28 years of service before the PTSD took its toll. He said he has absolutely no regrets regarding his service and he has been traveling the country in his RV for the past year. He gave us all sorts of neat hints on how to live life on the open road. When leaving he gave us his cell phone number and mentioned he was settling down and buying a house in his home town of Beaver Bay, Minn. He now wants to return to a simple life of hunting, trapping and fishing. He also wants to volunteer driving vans for the DAV (Disabled American Veterans) that take veterans to their medical appointments He said that if we were in the area again to give him a call and we would have a place to stay.
A class act and new friendship! Nice!
Wow! He is a cool dude!