This past Saturday was the
annual wreath collection/pickup at Bourne National Cemetery out on the Cape. Wreathes Across America had lain 12,500
wreathes on service members’ graves for the holidays and now it was time to
pick them up.
It was my first time
helping with this and I was curious how the operation worked, how long it took,
etc. I met my friend LB there and she
filled me in on the process; basically clear the wreathes to the side of the
road, where the maintenance crews would collect and remove them. She said it normally took a few hours,
depending on how many folks showed up to help.
Well, the weather was damp and chilly but despite this, there was a
great turnout of folks. In addition, the
start time had been announced as 10am but apparently a number of folks had
shown up early and gotten to work. When
we started in, there were only a couple of fields left to clear and that was
done in under an hour.
LB had a number of her
friends there and they were hanging out socializing, so I said goodbyes and hit
the roads. I wanted to get some more
miles on, and headed for RI. My
destination was Ocean State Harley to pick up some poker chips for King and
Lynner. (This is the part where I’m
retarded. I’d already asked Cindy to
swing by here and grap the chips for me (she works in Warwick), but that didn’t
dawn on my until I’d already paid for them and was back out in the parking
lot. Oh well.)
At this point I had no plan
or destination so I turned to the phone.
I’d known my afternoon was open so I’d texted McCarthy earlier to see
what he was up to and we’d been playing a little phone tag, but now it was time
to catch up. He’d replied that he was at
his mother’s house. Where was that? Braintree, he said, and asked if I was
stopping by. I said I still had some
riding to do and would reply again at my next stop. When I’d stopped again and checked the phone,
he’d texted the address, and said I needed to go there, that his mother had an
envelope for me.
Uhm…what?
I’ve never met his mother, so
naturally I needed more info. Rather
than going back and forth on text, it was easier to call; Hey Chum, so what’s
this about an envelope? He didn’t know,
but when he’d mentioned to his mother that he’d been texting with me, she’d
handed him an envelope to give me the next time we saw each other. Okaaaay…what’s in this envelope? He didn’t know but I should go there and meet
his mother. He said they were going to
eat and I said that sounded good, that I was hungry (I assumed he meant on the
way home to his house or something, and I’d meet him). No, as it turns out, this was his family
Christmas gathering. Schedules are
tight/busy, so this was their get-together for gift exchange and a sit-down
dinner. Hell, I’m not going to barge in
on his family thing, I’d catch up with him later. Nope, he insisted and said his mother wanted
to meet me in person – apparently she reads this blog! How about that. Ok, I guess I will see you in a little over
an hour.
Traffic through Providence
was pretty bad, but I made up some time once I broke free of the city
limits. There was some kind of BMW that
looked like a Ferrari (I just looked it up; BMW i8 – a very sweet looking car!)
that wanted to race me. Really? C’mon buddy…on an open track, you’ll smoke
me, but in traffic? You’ve got no
chance. No, I didn’t cut folks off at
all, I’m very careful about that. But it’s
simple physics; my bike has a much shorter wheelbase so I’m able to fit into
spots that he can’t. Plus, my weight to
torque ratio is much more favorable for the short sprints. I don’t know how fast I was going because my
speedo pins at 120 but suffice to say the guy in the BMW wanted nothing to do
with that and soon faded into the distance behind me.
But I digress…
I arrived safely and was
welcomed in by Linda, the wonderful woman who was hosting this party. She was very friendly, I teased her about
having had to put up with raising Michael, and she and he both assured me that
her other son Paul was the wild one. And
before long, he came back (he’d been out picking up the meat for the
grille). He was a riot. I think the best way to describe him would be;
he’s an excitable man. But in a good
way. The whole family was great, and
made me feel right at home.
McCarthy, Michael, and Paul
were doing food prep and I don’t like standing around doing nothing (especially
when getting a free meal), but fortunately they had a couple of small tasks for
me to do which made me feel better about the arrangement. Linda was the penultimate hostess, offering
drinks and snacks the whole while. I had
to be careful I didn’t fill up on things before the actual dinner. I kept hearing about how good the meat was
and that I’d better bring my A game to the table.
Oh yeah; the envelope (now
this is funny). Apparently Linda reads
my blog and has developed an impression that I’m a funny guy, and that I’d
appreciate a good joke. Inside the envelope
were gag prescriptions for old age, pain, sleep, etc. (they were M&M’s and
Good & Plenty’s).
She also gave me a small bag
of multicolored “pills”…
…with an instruction sheet
explaining which one was for what ailment…
Here’s a closeup of one of
the labels – patient name is Forest Gump, Doc’s name is Charlie Brown. Funny stuff!
Next up was dinner and man,
what a feed! I think there was almost a
whole coop’s worth of chicken, and at least half of a cow. And veggies, and rolls (with honey!), and
mashed taters, and seasoned grilled fries, and I’m sure a lot of other things I’m
forgetting. Oh, and when I say “chicken”,
I mean “pterodactyl” because the piece they gave me was enormous.
Suffice to say that I could
barely move when it was time to get up from the table. But the sun was starting to slide downward in
the sky and I needed to get home to dog sit (John had dropped Piper off at my
house earlier in the day).
I bade my farewells and
headed for home. I took a much slower
pace on the roads this time, due to a combination of contentment from a great
meal, as well as lethargy from my stomach trying to grasp what I’d just done to
it.
It was an unexpected
excursion, but what a great time. I’d
met Paul before at McCarthy’s 50th, but it was the first time
meeting Linda, and what a fun (and funny) person she is. The whole family is awesome!
But now that I know she’s
reading this thing I call a blog…does this mean I need to clean my language
up? Hmmm…
Ride Hard, Take Chances
No comments:
Post a Comment