How a horseman and uShip helped us deliver 500 books to the Troops

Meet Dave Rice. He's the one on the left. Why the introduction?

Well, thanks to a bunch of generous authors (see the previous post) Operation Warrior Library suddenly had another 500 books to deliver to troops in Afghanistan. Now, the first part of that journey begins when with us delivering the books from OWL central in New Jersey to Major Davis at Fort McPherson outside of Atlanta. Not an easy trip for us to make.

That's where my favorite company, uShip, comes in. They connect people with things that need hauling with truckers looking to haul. They can hanlde full loads, or in our case, partial loads. Now, what makes this company truly cool, is that they have a charity option. When you click that, wonderful people offer to haul for next to nothing. Dave turned out to be the right guy in the right place at the right time - which turned out to be a parking lot outside of Cherry Hill, NJ.

And Dave brought company. He helps deliver rescued horses from lives of abuse. The horse he was delivering had been sold by a woman as a yearling and she came across him on the Internets and rescued him. So Dave was bringing the horse home. While we transferred the boxes to the horse trailer, a retired mounted police officer joined us to chat horses. He keeps a picture of his horse in his wallet right next to photos of his family. It was obvious that the "horse smell," as he put it, made him very, very happy.

You can find out a bit more about Dave at his website. His daughter has also been involved with turning one of their rescued horses into a dressage horse in a film called, Dartagnan is the Champion.

So, Dave got the books delivered. I was just informed yesterday that the books are heading to the 278th Heavy Brigade Combat Team (HBCT) of the TN Army National Guard. And new books for the next shipment are already coming. Which means that if Dave is in the area, I hope to get to have him help out again. If not, I'll be posting again on uShip, and looking forward to meeting another very cool American.