moving on

If I grew up obsessed with cars, with son Joe it’s motorcycles, including a few years ago completely building an antique Harley he bought and brought home in a basket. By the time he was finished, it was showroom. He had many before that and three or four since, including recently a Ducati and a Honda and now a BMW. Joe’s an engineer at a company in Winston-Salem that designs and builds aircraft interiors, has a group of friends there who also are into motorcycles, who go on a long weekend, or weeklong, motorcycle tour a couple times a year in the mountainous area up there. They just returned from a ride over into Tennessee, where they stayed in nice accommodation with lovely scenery and on beautiful lakes. Joe is 56 and one in the group is 70s I think Joe said, and they don't rough it. Joe's Patty died in 2009, and during his time of working through grief he took his Harley up into the mountains for a long weekend tent camping alone, but this group camps in comfort. 

Early in the summer they’re going on a longer trip that will include a stop in Columbus, Ohio, I think a motorcycle show or motorcycle museum there, and I think Nick may come down from Michigan to spend a day with Joe, and Joe may see and get some pictures of the house on Naiche Road we lived in from 1971 to 1974, and when Tass was born and was daddy’s tiny girl. Leaving San Diego where we bought our first house, new, a California style, we also bought the Columbus house brand new. It was off a quiet creekside road, a small group of new homes built on what had been pasture and cornfield. That was where, on a sweltering summer day, age 36 sweating in bathing suit and shirtless, in the border between our pasture and the next, I picked blackberries in what I didn't realize was a thick growth of poison ivy. Winter evenings after a heavy snow I’d take Tass for a sled ride, pulling her along. Malinda was in high school there. Sunday evenings we watched Julia Childs on television and then I’d make omelets for everyone, our custom there. Oktoberfest every year downtown. My first tour of duty at a joint sort of defense installation with Army and Air Force as well as Navy officers under a Navy admiral in command. Now eighty-one, I was thirty-something and a lifetime of forties ahead. Would I go back? Where do I catch the bus to 1974?

Jiminy, how did I get there, what am I doing in Columbus, Ohio this morning?

Clear sky, quiet Bay, and the sky is filled with the beautiful sound and presence of USAF jet fighters.

Broken and "fixed" not to say "safely repaired" utility pole, from Monday, yesterday morning's walk, corner 2nd Street and something ->

One heavy storm from extinct, this dock was here when Robert and I were boys.

DThos+ somewhere way, way downstream