{"id":2372,"date":"2019-04-24T17:35:13","date_gmt":"2019-04-25T00:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikebellah.com\/?p=2372"},"modified":"2019-04-24T17:54:15","modified_gmt":"2019-04-25T00:54:15","slug":"bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/?p=2372","title":{"rendered":"Bill"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>My friend Bill is a dealership driver; that is, he drives vehicles to and from Amarillo automobile dealers. It\u2019s a rigorous gig.<\/p>\n

Last Sunday, Bill drove to Corpus Christi where he picked up a 15-passenger van early Monday; then, scooted back to Amarillo by 4:00 p.m. <\/p>\n

On Wednesday, he delivered that vehicle to a customer in Guymon.<\/p>\n

On Thursday morning, Bill flew to Denver where he picked up a Chevrolet Traverse, which he had back in Amarillo by dark.<\/p>\n

Saturday, Bill woke at 4:00 a.m. to drive a new Cadillac Escalade to the Metroplex (360 miles) and return with the customer\u2019s trade-in to Amarillo by 6:00 p.m.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s just one week. In 2017, Bill made 140 trips, logging 78,886 road miles and traveling another 17,000 in the air.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the clincher. Tomorrow, Bill will celebrate his 92nd birthday.<\/p>\n

Bill is my hero\u2014for so many reasons. To start with, he finds the coolest jobs. Just since turning 70, he\u2019s been a city judge, an instructor of judges, a water aerobics instructor and, for over 10 years now, a car jockey.<\/p>\n

Then, there\u2019s Bill\u2019s zest for living (I wish I could bottle it).<\/p>\n

He loves the landscape. He has photo albums of everything from mountains to beaches to bluebonnets to a little country cemetery in Central Texas.<\/p>\n

Bill loves his food. He\u2019s got one or two favorites on every route: Cooper\u2019s Barbeque in Llano, Casa Rio (TexMex) on the San Antonio River Walk and Guadalajara in Castle Rock, Colorado.<\/p>\n

And don\u2019t get him started on vehicles. Bill has driven them all: a Jaguar, Corvette, an Escalade; he even pulled a travel trailer with a big pickup truck.<\/p>\n

Come to think of it, Bill is experiencing the lifestyle of the rich and famous when he is neither\u2014well, he is famous in the circles I hang with. And he is rich\u2014maybe not in dollar bills, but people like Bill who can find opportunity where most of us miss it, and who can transform that opportunity into pleasure and joy\u2014well, they are rich indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My friend Bill is a dealership driver; that is, he drives vehicles to and from Amarillo automobile dealers. It\u2019s a rigorous gig. Last Sunday, Bill drove to Corpus Christi where he picked up a 15-passenger van early Monday; then, scooted back to Amarillo by 4:00 p.m. On Wednesday, he delivered that vehicle to a customer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2372"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2377,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372\/revisions\/2377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}