I was out portable , in a dealer loaner power wheelchair it had started to rain,I left the store and started down the sidewalk only to find no curb cut in that direction ,it was a slim sidewalk and in turning around my drive tires began to spin in the grass, my cell had no service so I used my local repeater, I called the control Op who called the auto parts store I was stuck at, and ask them to have someone come out and assist me, the store thought it to be a crank call , and ignored it until the OP called them back and said the guy is stuck and it's pouring cats and dogs now go out and help the guy, this time they poked there heads out and there I sat drenched , finally giving me a push and frèeing my chair allowing me to take refuge until the rain passed.
This is a kind of one horse town only has 3 repeaters , so the guy who made the call for me is the owner of the machine , who like me has sleep disorders so we can be found frequently chewing the rag in the middle of the night, many guys were surprised the first time we did it because it's normaly dead quiet at 3 AM , we now run a semi regular "insomniac net" and frequently have check ins , if we can't sleep all we have to do is blow our call and if anyone else is up we rag chew,those of us on that machine ( about 10 hams) all know each other by voice and only blow our call to comply with the regs , most of us are retired or medically disabled so we are good friends who if you see one us at a ham fest the others are not far behind. These results may not be typical in your area, the repeater owner and I also are chronic pain patients so we never run out of things to rag chew about because sleep disorders are not the only sleep problems , pain Also keeps you up, if you are looking for mental or emotional support you can sometimes find it in fellow club members , but you won't know until you make some friends, sometimes it can be found and other times not, so you should always have a back up plan where you know you can talk about what you need
I was brain injured a few years ago and my friends both ham and non ham know that sometimes I am grumbly and need to talk and they are wonderfull about it.
As a point of refrence I have been chewed out here by a moderator for what they considered thread hijacking , pre brain injury I was a real quiet guy and now if its on my mind I say it, never leave things to chance, if you need mental or emotional resources drop me a PM and I can give you some places on the net.
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