Last Friday I went on a trip to check out a new supplier of ours that gave us samples and very good prices. His shop was three hours away.  I told my brother Lu (my Chinese driver and good friend) that we could leave at 05:00 a.m. and be there at 08:00 a.m. when they opened up.  He did not think that was a good idea because he likes to sleep until 06:00 a.m.  He also thought that we should bring another driver to help him drive.  These people do not like to drive very much.  Well, we started out at 08:00 a.m.  The roads were good and we made good time.  Little John (Jerry, our electrician and first employee) drove all the way.  He is a good driver.

The man we were going to see was not there. After about one half hour he appeared.  He showed me three old turret lathes and said that the parts were run on them.  I said that the machines could not produce our parts.  He then admitted that his friend had run them at his shop which was located one hour away.  I said that I wanted to see his shop.  Well, after stopping three times for directions we arrived at his friends shop.  He had a big room with a bunch of tables.  On each table was four bench lathes with four operators.   One light was placed between machines. I think it was a 60 watt bulb. The room was not very bright.

The ladies were working like beavers, very fast (movie link).  These people work so hard to keep there job.  He showed me a soft collet that he used to run the parts and some samples.  He said he would make gages to check out the parts. The part is not a close tolerance part so I told Shu to have them run 5,000 pieces to see how they do.

The trip back was just like coming.  I don't think this guy ever was in this area.  Again we had to ask for directions three times.  We finally dropped him off at his plant and got on the highway for our trip home. Lu then drove home.

I forgot to mention about lunch.  We decided to eat lunch around 3:00 p.m.  All the restaurants were setting up for supper and could not serve us any lunch.  That took 45 minutes.  We finally found a buffet lunch room.  The food was not bad.  The trip home took another three hours.  We arrived home at 9:30 p.m. A 13.5 hour trip!  Now I know why he wanted a second driver.  One never knows how long a three hour trip will take.