The Ball of Twine Tour

In the year after the 9/11 attacks, Mary and I loaded the car with Daughters One and also Two and headed out on what for us would prove to be an epic adventure. With a carefully packed van and printouts of directions to myriad points of interest in each of the states through which we intended to pass, off we went.

In order to facilitate communication with family and friends during our grand tour, we set up a web site called The Ball of Twine Tour (okay, so One’s twelve year old friend set up the site after I failed utterly and completely to understand how to do so – what of it?). The name arose from the fact that I had researched the world’s largest ball of twine and threatened Mary with the prospect of visiting all three locations that claimed the title (the real one is in Cawker City KS and Darwin, MN are the real thing, if you care to know, while Branson, MO is a pretender).

We didn’t actually visit the twine balls on that trip, although One and I did finally visit the one in Cawker City during a later trip. But the BallofTwineTour moniker stuck and we really enjoyed posting pics and comments to the site for the enjoyment and edification of our homebound correspondents.

Jump forward to yesterday. We had finally decided to dump the site and stop paying $12.95 for its maintenance. So after downloading and printing out each of the web pages for posterity, we arranged to drop the site and the contract.

Or so we thought.

I will refrain from subjecting you to a recounting of the entire sordid process we have gone through on this. Suffice to say that in spite of our multiple requests that the site be taken down, all Yahoo did was kill the functionality while continuing to bill us.

Here’s what I’ve learned:

1)      A family website can be a really fun thing that means a lot to each and all of us, but…

2)      Yahoo is not the place to host a website and not a company with which we’ll ever do bidness again.