April 28, 2010

Yesterday I sent in my registration for this years Leukemia Cup Regatta in which I plan to skipper our sailboat “Don’t Panic”. Last year due to fantastic crew, a lot of luck and stumbling across a couple of wind lines, we actually took first place in our division. I have no illusions of a repeat event, but am still proud and excited to be part of such a worth while program. It is the clubs 10th year raising funds for the fight against Leukemia and we are close to passing the $500,000.00 mark!!! You can count yourself very blessed and rare if you or someone close to you has not yet been affected by Leukemia or some other form of cancer. This is the time when I ask you for MONEY. I make no apologies for it and anything at all will help. All regatta expenses are covered and donated by members of the four marinas on the lake which means that 100% of the funds raised goes directly to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. For your convience I have a website that you can use for your donation.
The web site is http://gat.regatta2010.llsevent.org/leukemiacupdontpanic

Or you could mail your donation to me at The Treasure Map, 835 Fairfax St., Carlyle IL 62231. Please make checks out to The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and I will make sure it gets to the proper people. Any amount of donations and/or prayers are greatly appreciated. The regatta will be held May 28th – 30th at the Carlyle Sailing Association and is open to the public. You are all welcome to come as it promises be a fun filled weekend. For those of you who would like to bring in a boat for the regatta, the “Notice of Race” is on our club website. www.csa-sailing.org

Please feel free to call me if you have any questions and God bless.

Joe Bartmaneditor

June 29, 2009

         I know that there are a few of you that the first thing you do with your new Treasure Map is to
open up  this page and read my monthly log.  Not because I think that it is so fantastic or anything, but several of you have told me so.  Yes you know who you are.  Well that would be the only way you haven’t yet seen us promoting our web site.  www.thetreasuremap.net   Yes we have been promoting the snot out of it. By the time this comes out it should be up and running and I wanted to be sure you had the chance to see it.  The web site isn’t new, just rebuilt again.  We actually hosted our first web site back in 1992 (before it was just another part of running a business) and have had several versions and upgrades since then.    Here I thought we were being right on top of technology when one of my nephews informed me that I should come into the 21st century.  I had to admit he was right. This time one of our newest and greatest items is The Treasure Blog.  Yes we added a blog section to the web site. (we actually had to throw out the old site and start over).  Now we can blog to our hearts content. Just look for the link.  This is still new to me so I’m looking for your ideas and help with subject matters and such.  If you want to talk antiques – lets blog about it.  If you want to talk about new stores opening up, so be it, or maybe you have a special event going on in you store or town.  Go for it and we will see how things work out from there. 

            Now if your feeling the pressure to join the 21st century too, it’s ok, we can do it together. We can host you on our site and make it look just like you have your own and have been doing it for years.  Sort of like a new millennium self help group.  Maybe your one of those who are right on top of things and have a great site up and running.  That’s fantastic. I would love to link our sites together and bring more traffic to them both.  Either way we need to use the Internet to our best advantage and get the next generation to shop your stores too.  Then they too can see that nothing beats being able to actually hold and look at an antique or a collectible before they buy it.  Give us a call or send us an e-mail and we will see what we can do to help.

            This week at the lake it was our annual Jr Sailing Camp.  We had 39 kids ranging from 8 to 16 years of age running around learning how to sail.  Almost 1/2 of them were here for the first time.  What a hoot.  It looks like a bunch of bath tubs floating around the harbor in organized chaos.  We call them the harbor mice.  It’s one of cutest things ever. It’s kind of like herding butterflies.  As with most of the rest of you, we had LOTS and LOTS of rain.  The kids all stayed at the camp grounds and had to use brooms to sweep the water out of the tents!  They didn’t need pajamas for bed, just swim suits.  Glad I was high and dry in the house.  The heat index was in the 90’s yesterday and it seems the boats kept accidently flipping over into the water.  I’m sure that was just a coincidence.  I have been hard at printing The Treasure Map and missed all the fun this year.  But I have a funny story to tell.  Our jr instructor was at the end of the dock trying to teach the 8 year olds how to tack (turn into the wind) and one of them kept flipping over into the water and our instructor could not figure out what he was doing wrong.  Well as I watched it became clear what was wrong.  The kid was more afraid of tacking than flipping over.  Every time the instructor turned to look at another student, this one would purposely flip the boat so he did not have to tack.  It was quite a site to watch. 

            And so it goes in life.  Many a times I have caught myself doing something that did not work just because it was easier than learning how to change course.  So if starting a web site is like learning how to tack, it’s ok.  We can help keep you from flipping the boat over. We’ll I’m at the end of this line so it’s time to change course.  Until next time, “jibe ho”