At the Chicago Triathlon.

The clouds were bunched over Lake Michigan. In the space between the clouds and the horizon the morning sun began to show red. A few clouds dropped the dark streaks indicating a shower. Yet, overhead and to the west, the sky was clear. It was chilly in the dawn darkness as the first waves of participants, spaced four minutes apart, in the Chicago Triathlon awaited their turn to swim. Each wave was distinguished by the color of their swim caps. It was approximately a half mile swim, a thirteen plus mile bike ride and a 3.1 mile run.
Son, Lars, celebrated turning forty by doing the triathlon. It's a great spectator event allowing the fan club; grandma, grandpa, wife and daughter, to follow the progress of the swim by walking along the shore. Then, again we could intercept him as he ran and took a short cut to beat him to the finish line. He did well, meeting or exceeding the goals he had set. 9300 others joined him in celebrating his fortieth year. It was a grand party through which Mai-Evy slept.

She's so cute!

It's only been a month since we last saw Mai-Evy but, WOW, has she changed. She's bright eyed, curious and happy at four months. She coos, babbles and loves to chew on her feet. We're in Chicago because Lars is doing the Chicago Triathlon tomorrow. And, of course, it gives us a chance to check in on Mai-Evy. I'll post some pics in a few days so you can see for yourself how cute she is.

Travels with Al.

Dayton, Ohio is not the same as Minnesota. We rolled in Thursday, that would be the Curmudgeonette and I, to 93 degrees and 98% humidity. I opened the car door and said "Wow, isn't this great and the Curmudgeonette stepped out and said "how terrible." We've got about five degrees of mutual comfort zone. Below 70 I'm cold and above 75 she's hot.
We're here visiting our friends Jerry and Jean who've been having some medical issues.
Staying at the Comfort Inn I overheard this exchange in the breakfast room. "Good morning, how are you?" Reply "I'm happy in the Lord" I thought, well at least I know he's not Lutheran.

What is it about travel?

Mysteries abound in life? Why do I love SE Asia so much? Why do I like to travel? Garrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac" appears on my e-mail every day. Today in his article on William Least Heat-Moon, the author of BLUE HIGHWAYS, he quotes Heat-Moon "When you're traveling, you are what you are, right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road."
Perhaps that's part of the mystique of solo travel. Each moment a person can be whomever he chooses. There's a freedom in that like a rich dessert. Great to sample for a bit but it is not for the long haul. For the long haul the gift of relationship stretching back over the years is like protein that sustains and nourishes. Maybe that is why coming home is often the richest part of any trip. Home is where one touches long and lasting relationship.

"This has never happened before!"

Cathy and Tim arrived from North Dakota Monday. Today Cathy was scheduled for gammaknife radiation of her brain tumor at the University of Minnesota Hospital. She was to report at 5:30am. I volunteered for transport duty. So at 5am we left the house and by 5:30 she reported in.
Cathy and Tim were quickly escorted to a preparation room. When she left for an MRI at 7am Tim and I were dismissed until noon. We went to Key's restaurant in St. Paul for breakfast, cruised 2330 Commonwealth where the curmudgeonette grew up, dropped in on Rollie Martinson at the seminary, circled the state capitol, visited St. Paul's Cathedral and the cathedral of salvage equipment better known as Amble's.
By 11:00am we were back at the hospital. About 11:20 the doctor came out apologizing profusely because the radiation equipment was not working. He said that a technician was working on it but her treatment was on hold until the machine could be fixed. At 1:30pm he announced that they were giving up and her radiation would have to be rescheduled. Cathy and Tim in their placid, mature way said "Well, we'd rather wait and know that it is really working." No anger about driving 600 miles in vain nor about the days taken off work. Those two are really a class act. I'm so proud of them.

and the band played on!

My bad! I forgot to mention the band in my blog about Kate's & Brad's wedding. They were very good...must have been 15 or so. They're called DNR. No, it's not the Department of Natural Resources. They're a group of physicians so they call themselves "Do No Resuscitate" or DNR for short.

Nancy Pelosi did not attend.

The curmudgeonette and curmudgeon just returned from a wedding in Sioux Falls. The wedding was at First Lutheran but the reception was outdoors at the Westward Ho Country Club. South Dakota never looked so good. The reception began at 6pm with blues skies, a slight breeze and the temperature was 75 degrees. The setting sun cast a glow over the tent and the guests. It was as lovely as it gets!
For one reason or another I've been to several hundred weddings. Never have I seen such a relaxed bride, Kate. Her calm was more remarkable because both she and the groom live in Washington, DC. Besides that, it was an elaborate wedding with fine service at church and a lovely reception hours later at the country club.
Why such calm? Was it the whirlwind romance that stretched over seven years as they completed their graduate degrees? Perhaps that had something to do with it. But when we asked Kate about the stress she said "What stress? There were no ambassadors to deal with, no secret service people telling her that someone was threatening, no boss changing her mind several times in the last hour...planning a wedding? A piece of cake! (Parenthetically they served pie; apple, strawberry, strawberry rhubarb and blueberry in place of cake. Those hundreds of weddings I attended would have been improved by pie!)
You see, Kate is Nancy Pelosi's right hand assistant and event planner. With that experience planning her own wedding was a simple matter. However, Kate did send the wedding participants a seventeen page e-mail of instructions the week of the wedding! :)
Kate and Brad are an exceptionally fine couple and I wish them every blessing!

To the rescue....

About 7pm the phone rang; "Dad, are you in a rescue mood?" Lisa asked. She's living in a log home in the woods north of Cambridge, MN, about an hour from my house. "What's coming now?" I wondered. That kind of an introduction usually leads into something about car trouble. But this turned out to be cat trouble.
Lisa had been walking with Kjell, the dog, when she heard meowing in the woods. It turned out to be an abandoned cat, perhaps six weeks old and obviously used to both people and dogs. When the cat wouldn't run Kjell didn't know what to do but Lisa brought it back to the house. But, not in the house because she is desperately allergic to cats. Left alone in the woods the kitten would soon be a welfare plan for a hungry coyote.
Before long the curmudgeonette and curmudgeon were making a quick trip to rescue a cat. We left it at the Hennepin Co. Humane Society who, I hope, will be able to find it a good home. It was pretty cat, all black except for a little white blaze on its chest.

Latest Mai-Evy pics.

Infatuation with my granddaughter continues so here are the latest pics.

Farewell to the Diamond Reo.

Some wag has said that the two happiest days of a man's life are the day he buys his boat and the day he sells his boat. More about boats later. Some years ago I bought a 1970 Diamond Reo Truck. In case you don't know about trucks, it was a very big truck, the top of the hood was over seven feet off the ground. During most of its life it carried a concrete mixer but when I bought it it was bare. I put an implement bed on it and used it to carry my bulldozer. A couple months ago I sold the bulldozer to a man in McAllen, TX. Without the bulldozer I no longer needed the truck.
Without a use for it the truck was mostly in the way standing in the alley of my garage. Every time I wanted to access a tractor I'd need to drive the truck out of the garage. After advertising it nationally (one call came from Toronto, Canada!) I sold it locally. Chatting with the man running the excavator tearing down the old post office across the street from the garage I said "you want to buy a Diamond Reo?" Turns out he did want to and he did. So...if you wanted a Diamond Reo....you're too late.
I remember how excited I was the day I bought it and now I'm relieved to have it sold.
Boat story later.......

Truth is humor..

There is an old joke about people in small towns needing to lock their cars during August or they may find if full of zucchini. Well....I was standing in front of my garage in Sinai, SD, Tuesday watching the old post office being torn down. Up drove a local farmer, Tim, in his pick up truck. He stopped in front of me and asked how much sweet corn I'd like. I said I was in town alone so a couple of ears was all I could use. The next thing I knew Tim had my car door open and he's dumping an arm load into the car. Then he roars off looking for more places to unload corn.

Barefoot boy with cheeks of tan...

Or, as we used to say "Barefoot boy with shoes on..." I always went barefoot in the summer time. I remember neither when I began nor when I stopped. I do remember starting too early in the spring when the ground was cold and deciding to wait a bit. My feet became tough as leather and I was able to run barefoot on gravel, through thistles and even in alfalfa stubble.
There was a time I impaled my barefoot on the tine of a pitch fork. That barely slowed me up even though I'd never heard of a tetanus shot.
When I was ten years old we got running water; a bath instead of a path. The workmen laying the pipes made the assumption that I was barefoot because we couldn't afford shoes. But, I had shoes, I just did not want to wear them if I didn't have to. I always wore them on the rare trips to town. I sure didn't want those sophisticated town kids thinking I was more of a bumpkin than they already did.
Now my feet are so tender a trip a few yards to the mailbox is a challenge. Maybe, maybe next summer I'll go barefoot again.

A wedding.....

Heidi and John were married this afternoon. After a cool dry summer suddenly it is hot and humid. The wedding was at a farm turned reception area east of St. Paul, MN. The service was in a grassy clearing with little shade. People who don't like heat said it was hot; nineties and humid. It was a wonderful celebration full of love and respect abounding in good taste. It was filled with elements congruent with their values.
After the wedding we moved to an area where the tables were set under awnings. That was fortunate because thunder soon rumbled and rain fell. It did not dampen the spirits at all.
Gratifying to me was the maturity of the bride and groom who planned a reverent, creative service and a fine reception yet were mindful that marriage is much more than a wedding. I wish them well and will follow their journey with interest.

Golf as metaphor...

It fell to me to make the tee time for our foursome. We usually play Lakeview which is an easy course in Mound, MN on the west edge of Lake Minnetonka. We'd hoped to play the Links at Northfork which is a bit like a Scottish course with huge barren sand spots and tall tough grass in the rough. But the Links was having a tournament so tee times were not available.
A coupon in the paper offered 18 holes plus cart for $26.95 at the Elk River Country Club. It had been at least two years since we'd last played it so I made a reservation. We met at the Target parking lot and car pooled to Elk River about twenty miles north. It was a picture perfect day, seventy eight degrees, no wind and full sun. The course is pretty, set in rolling hills and woods.
We disembarked from the car, paid our green fees, took a few puts on the putting green and teed off. We were full of hope and expectation. It wasn't long until my hope was gone and I realized that, once again, my expectations would be unmet. My score was the worst in...who knows how long.
Golf is a difficult game for which I don't seem to possess the concentration necessary to excel. Add to that, an aging body that just cannot hit a ball as far as it could last year and most of the time my expectations are unmet. I don't get angry, I'm not good enough to do that. I just get disappointed.
So what is it about? Golf is an exceedingly difficult game and I celebrate every good shot. Yet, I admit it is more fun when the percentage of good shots is higher. Camaraderie is a huge part of it. Playing regularly with the same group is deeply meaningful. We keep our handicaps, which I will not print here, and the two worst scores buys lunch for the two best scores. Usually we eat at McDonald's unless there happens to be a Culver's on our route.
Golf is a bit like life. We emerge from childhood into adulthood full of hope and expectation. Many of the hopes are dashed and the expectations unmet. Now by seventieth decade I've often found myself surprised. Peers who I judged to be gifted and expected to excel fell flat. Others, of whom I expected little, have excelled.
Personally I'm filled with a sense of gratitude for the blessings that have come my way. I grieve for others for whom the breaks have not come or who's lives have been much to short.
Now, if I could only just learn to keep my head down.....

Melancholy understood...sort of....

The geezerette and I drove to Sioux Falls Sunday for the wake of long time friend, Tom. After the wake was over we decided to cruise town a bit. We drove around Augustana College, my Alma mater and where we met. We also drove by the house at 817 Roberts Dr. where we lived from '75 until '80.
In the process I was aware of a strong mixture of nostalgia and melancholy. This time I think I figured out the source of, at least some, of the melancholy. On the way to our old house we passed the house where Oliver and Ida Bergland lived. A young man was sitting by the driveway and I thought, "You should know about Ida and Oliver and furthermore you should know me because I knew them and I've been in that house many times."
That's when it struck me; the melancholy comes because I remember the place but the place doesn't remember me. My relationship to the place means nothing to those who are there now. That feels like loss to me and thus it is a melancholy experience.

Worth reading,,,No, highly recommended.

We're a part of newly formed neighborhood book group. The last book we read was THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett. It's a novel set in Jackson Mississippi during the early sixties. Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She persuades a number of African American women who work as domestic help in white homes to tell their stories. It is very well written and helps one glimpse some of the turmoil of the civil rights movement from a new perspective.
Our discussion at the book group was enriched by the multicultural backgrounds of the group. Perhaps the key to the book is this, "Wasn't that the point of the book? (The book is the one Skeeter writes using the maid's stories.) For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought."