We ran a story a couple of days ago pointing to the KNPR report on Cowboys Helping Kids the reported trail ride across (South to North) America to support kids and domestic violence victims. Since then the project's $5,000 donated website has been taken offline and later replaced with a sponsor page listing the sponsors of the project.

Attached to this post are a few images of what the website looked like when it existed at www.cowboyshelpingkids.com.

KNPR has a report suggesting there may be something fishy up with Richard Fipps' Cowboys Helping Kids. The report cites a neighbor who reports that Fipps was at home in North Las Vegas on June 28 when the website chronicling his trip says he was in Montana. The site above doesn't ring true to me but I'm hard pressed to find exact problems. All of the entries do seem vague and very general. There is a lot of emphasis placed on reaching Ely and then no mention of being in the town. It's odd.

"It's a sad thing that one person can try to do something good for someone and somebody has to be negative about the intentions," Fipps says on the site explaining the early end to his trip. But the sentence comes from nowhere, out of the blue. Though it did come a few days after Fipps was contacted by a reporter inquiring about the story.

The great thing about publishing rumors is that if I publish them they rarely come true. CNN and a few other outlets picked up the story late Friday afternoon. Friday morning I skipped my normal podcast listening on the way to work in favor of hearing NPR's coverage of Renquhist's retirement. It was not to be. Even their story on O'Conner didn't mention the rumor floating around.

This weekend was spent on much more satisfying projects. Things like assembling a pile of old concrete blocks into a garbage shelter. I've driven home for the last time to see the trash cans blowing about. They're nicely contained. This afternoon bought real progress like completing the cross braces for the fence which we should be able to install next weekend and replacing the world's worst lawn sprinkler installation. It's another project that will usurp hours of daylight next weekend as well. For some reason the nearly-square rectangle of lawn in the house was the victim of installers who didn't completely grasp geometry. On one edge three sprinklers provide nice coverage of the lawn. On the other side, where there is more sun, there are only two sprinklers and a perpetual brownish thin spot. It doesn't help matters that fluid dynamics plays a role as well. The two lone sprinklers trying to do the work of three were installed on an extra 50-foot run of 1/2-inch line instead of directly on the 3/4-inch feed line.

In other ranch news it seems the owners of the vicious dogs next door (the ones that attack our horses) will be getting new neighbors. These neighbors will be raising goats. Likely they will also need to study Nevada's law about dogs harassing livestock.