www.ozone.com

Last night (Saturday, January 27, 2007) I decided to try and order the book “In Search of Steam” by David P. Morgan and photographer Phil Hastings.
Morgan was the editor of Trains Magazine for 33 years. He’s long dead, but had an appreciation of railroading very similar to mine (i.e. he probably didn’t know what the “Flying Bubba” was).
The fact he was editor was the major reason I became a long-time subscriber to Trains. His magazine also had good writing, unlike others I’ve never subscribed to; e.g. “Railfan & Railroad” and “Railroad Magazine.”
“In Search of Steam” is an assemblage of Trains Magazine articles wherein Morgan and Hastings went out in search of the few remaining steam-operations in the late ‘50s — e.g. Norfolk & Western and Union Pacific over Sherman Hill.
One is fabulous pacing of a New York Central Hudson (pictured) at 90 mph across rural Indiana. The railroad is long since abandoned; all that’s left is the right-of-way.
I’ve always wanted to get that book, and here it was, specially promoted in Trains and Classic-Trains (I get both): “order it online at www.classictrains.com/promo; enter promo-code IK73K3.”
So I cranked www.classictrains.com/promo into my IE, then cranked IK73K3 into the promo-code box, and promptly got sent to www.ozone.com.
Okay, so we try a different browser, Netscape 7.0 — I’ve had IE bomb before. “Ooops! You have entered an invalid promo-code.”
So Linda tried it on her PC: “Ooops! You have entered an invalid promo-code.”
She fired up FireFox: “Ooops! You have entered an invalid promo-code.”
So I fired off a question to their webmaster: “I crank both ‘IK73K3’ and ‘1K73K3’ into the promo-code window, and ‘Ooops! You have entered an invalid promo-code;’ www.ozone.com. I guess I gotta use your 800-number.”
“Ain’t technology wonderful?”

My brother-in-Boston (“Bubba”) loudly claims he’s more a railfan than me because he knows what the “Flying Dude” is — and of course I didn’t.

www.ozone.com is a valid web-address.