Happy Birthday, Russ

Sorry Chum, I'm late in the day for posting this. But since you're looking down on us, you know it's been a busy day so far. POW/MIA vigil In the early hours, then off to a 22KILL support run. But it doesn't mean you haven't been on my mind. I've been looking for a brief respite to get this posted.

We still miss the hell out of you, and we wish we could see your face, listen to your stories, and especially hear your laughter.

But we'll have to wait til we meet again for that.

Victrola Brother

Absentia In Excess

Holy crap! Has it really been over a year and a half since my last post? (In all honesty, I did mention that I'd been contemplating stepping away from this thing.)

I guess it would be interesting if I explained that I'd been on some grand, worldwide adventure or something, and that's why I haven't been keeping up to date.

But alas, that's not the case. Like most folks, I've been working too much and being laid too little.

I just noticed that my phone changed "paid too little" to "laid too little". I was going to correct it, but then it dawned on me that either statement is equally accurate.

Anyway, the reason I'm here after such a lengthy absence is because I was scolded for not keeping current. I can't promise it won't be another long stretch before I pop in again, but I did want to stop in real quick and say...

...Hi Mom McCarthy, I'm doing ok. Thank you for caring. :-)

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Timing is Everything

I woke this morning, thinking abou thtis blog.  I've obviously been not paying much attention to it so I was actually pondering whether or not I should post a final entry. Something like "It's been a great ride, see ya around" (or some other equally triet and cliche saying).

I didn't come to any concrete decision, but the thought was still floating around in the back of my head.

And then I stepped outside to find a package had been droppd off - sometime either last night or this morning.  Huh.  I haven't ordered anything so I'm not expecting anything, I wonder what it could be?

Bringing in inside, the return address was from Mark - sweet!  I wonder what that prankster has sent me!?!

I opened up the outer box...to find an inner box.  Oooh, I like this game!  Let's see what's inside this other one!

Hmmm...it says "Dave" on the side of this inner box.  Odd...if he were sending me something, why would he need to write my name on it?  Unless....

Wait a minute...there's someone else that lives at that address...

Opening up the second box, I found...a coffee mug!  Cool!  And it's got pics on the sides!!

LOL, oh boy...

And it all became clear to me.  The writing says #1 Son, but it's a pic of both Zig and I...ergo; who is definitively the #1?  (This also explains why the inner box had my name on it - I'm certain that Zig received a mug as well.  And let's not forget about Kate.  I imagine she received something as well)

The other pic on the mug is absolutely apropos!

Oh Mom...stirring things up again, I see.  :-)


Ok, so maybe this blog still has a purpose from time to time...

Global Warming

We just set a record for the lowest "high" temperature today.  We made it all the way up to 6 degrees in Boston (out here in Walpole, we enjoyed a balmy 15).  I didn't really pay attention to the weather report or what the lady was saying, but I did hear something about coldest high temp ever recorded for this day (Dec 28th).  The records go back 100 years, so for this year's Dec 28th to be the coldest ever...well...that's saying something.  Ain't it ain't something good.

Tonight's temps are going to drop even lower tonight so maybe we'll set a new record.  And, the temps don't look like they're going to climb out of the cellar for at least a week.  Awesome.

We don't usually see these kinds of temps until mid-Feb and while it sucks, it at least signals Winter has reached its peak. From there on out, the temps usually begin a maddeningly slow increase, but at least; upward.  Having these temps so early in the season makes me kinda nervous about what kind of winter we're in store for.

On a lighter note, Kate, Zig and I are heading out to Olean tomorrow, for New Year's.  King texted today to say that they had sub-zero temps going on, so we're not exactly improving our warmth factor but getting to see all those great friends will go a long way toward warming us up.

Here's wishing everyone a fantastic close-out to 2017, and a healthy and happy New Year's!

(Wishing I was able to) Ride Hard, Take Chances

Winter Solstice

As I'm sure many of you know, today is the winter solstice.  AKA; the shortest day of the year.  Sunrise is 7:10 am and sunset is 4:15 in the afternoon.  That's right; in the afternoon!  It's still the afternoon when we lose our favorite ambient light source!  But thankfully that will begin to change - very slowly of course, but still; the days will begin to get a tiny bit longer each day.

That's the great news.  The bad news is that today is also the official start of Winter, so while our days will be getting slightly longer, they'll also be getting colder and snowier.  (It's already been a shitty season so far; lots of salt and black ice, meaning the bike has been parked for a few weeks...hence the onset of winter anxiety I'm feeling).

Oh well, we gotta take the good with the bad I guess.

Ride Hard, Take Chances

RIP Dana

Obviously I'm not doing so well on keeping up on the blog, but at the same time it feels somehow appropriate that my last post was in memory of Russell, an now this next post is in memory of you, Dana.  I hope you, he, and the rest of the crew are all up there and having some laughs while looking down on us as we fumble our way through our days.

Just as with last year; there are a few of us heading out your way in a little over a week.  We'll stop by and say hello of course.  Wish it was at a bar, and over some cold ones, though.  It's been 20+ years since the whole crew was together up in Maine.  Seems so long ago but at the same time; where has the time gone?

Bottom line is we miss you guys and wish you were still down here with us.

RIP Dana

Russell Remembrance

Why do these anniversaries seem to come so quickly?  Why do the years seem to pass so fast?  How can it be 11 years already since we’ve seen your smile?  11 years since we’ve enjoyed your tales, spoken in a manner that would captivate a room, or an entire clearing?  11 years since we’ve heard your laughter – so infectious that no matter who was around, they would find themselves caught up laughing as well!?!

Victrola!!

In light of that, this year’s remembrance will focus on Russ’ laughter…

I forget what year it was, or even what time of the year it was at.  It wasn’t Labor Day because I was the only one up there.  Russ and Gretchen were still together and doing well, so I guess it must have been a fair amount of years ago.  There was some kind of barn party going on at one of Russ’ friend’s places and we were headed there for the evening.

Something else to keep in mind; at the time, Russ was still on his kick to try and replicate Tommy’s (from Olean) amazing steak sub sandwiches.  He’d….perfected (??) his attempt and had locked down his own personal recipe and while it wasn’t very close to what Tommy was serving, it was a damn respectable sandwich on its own.  Cabbage, special red hot dogs, thin sliced meat (not SPAM), special hot sauce, etc., etc., etc.  Those of you who’ve had them before, you know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, back to the remembrance.  We’d gone food shopping during the day and collected all the various odds and ends needed for the sammiches and had spent most of the afternoon cooking them up just right.  We ate a few of the first batch while preparing the second and third batches.  Hell, it was going to be a long night, we needed to get a good base established!

Eventually, all the ingredients had been doled out, all the sammiches had been broiled, some had been eaten, some had been put away into the fridge, but 6 of them…yes, the finest 6, dare I say…those were individually wrapped in foil and placed with care into a cooler, along with some ice, to be brought with us.  Sure our bellies were full at the moment, but there were MANY hours still ahead of us, and we needed to make sure we could counter our future hunger pangs with solid sustenance!

We stocked a separate cooler with our beers for the evening and off we went.

Arriving at the party, we were welcomed in as if weary travelers returning from a long trip away.  But this was normal whenever I was with Russ; no matter where we went, if they were friends of Russ, they always welcomed him and whoever he was with, as if they were brothers.

The crowd was sizeable, there was a band playing, we made lots of rounds saying hello to people.  The beverages were flowing well, and as is often the case when excursioning with Russ, the mantra of “Maine; The Way Life Should Be” was running through my head.

After a bit, we found ourselves a place to pull up some floor and relax for a bit.  I was destroying the beers, Russ and Gretchen got their smoke on (if you know what I mean), and we were all kicking back and laughing ourselves silly.  After a bit of that, Russ was hit with a full-on bout of the munchies and decided he needed one of the sammiches.  He reached in, grabbed one and pulled it out…and there was some water dripping from the end of it.  What the…damn, the ice had melted (duh) and the ends of the sammiches – wrapped in foil – weren’t exactly water proof, so the sub rolls had soaked up some of the melted water.  I was quite certain that this would render the lower half of the sammiches as inedible, but Russ, not to be deterred in his smokey state of mind, unwrapped the foil and gave the soggy end a mighty bite.

I peered at him with serious anticipation – how was it?  Was the wet part; disgusting?  I was getting pretty hungry at this point and was loathe to think that half of our food supply had been ruined!  But Russ assured me that oddly enough – the sammich tasted amazing!  But there’s no way that wetting a sub roll would make it taste any better?  He couldn’t explain it, but for whatever reason, he exclaimed the sammich to be more delicious than ever!  And then he accentuated his argument by taking an even larger bite, and savoring it with moans of delight and what appeared to be a near swoon.  I was sold!

I grabbed one of my sammiches, tore the foil off of the soaked end, took a humongous bite and chewed with reckless abandon, eagerly awaiting the moment when the new, enhanced flavors would coat my tongue and send ripples of satisfaction to my brain.

But…something was wrong…this didn’t taste good…  This…this tasted…TERRIBLE!

I froze in mid-chew and looked at Russ with what must have been a pathetic look of confusion and revolt.  My brain, in its beer-muddled state, was unable to figure out what was going on.  How could Russ’ sammich taste so amazing while mine tasted so god-awful??  I looked at Russ and managed to garble around the stuff in my mouth; “…but…this thing tastes like SHIT!?!?”

But then it all became clear to me because I could see Russ' face register the disgust and confusion on my face as I stared at him with this half-chewed mouth full of sammich, and he immediately burst into full-throated laughter.

Now when I say full-throated laughter, only those of you who have seen Russ when he’s been hit by one of these fits will understand what I’m saying.  When I tell you that he was beside himself with laughter, he was almost unable to breathe from laughing so hard.

When he was able to summon half a lung of air, he paused to look at me and say, “Of COURSE it tastes like shit, it’s soaked with COOLER WATER!” before succumbing to another fit of amazingly contagious, hearty laughter.

I could not spit that stuff out of my mouth fast enough, and seeing me trying to paw that crap off of my tongue only sent Russ into deeper fits of laughter.  There we were; me trying to hack this soggy sludge out onto the ground, Russ literally almost pissing himself from laughter, and Gretchen just caught up in the whole spectacle and laughing herself silly, too.  Folks around us were looking over and trying to figure out what the hell was going on.  For all appearances, it probably looked like I was choking, and Russ and Gretchen were laughing themselves to death at the sight of me struggling.

The whole thing had been a joke at my expense.  Of course the soggy part of the sammich tasted like shit!  But rather than let on, he’d built it up and suckered me into falling for it.  And man, did I bite!! (Pun intended.)

It took us quite a while before we all finally gathered ourselves and got the laughter fits under control.  Suffice to say that we cut the soggy ends off of the rest of the sammiches, but for years after that, whenever one of us was hungry, we would joke about the soggy sammiches, and it would send us into brief sessions of laughter at the memory.

God I miss that laugh…

Victrola Brother!!!