Tuesday, December 7, 2010

The Bucket List revisited





























I know that it has been a quite a while since my last post and I really have no good excuse for not writing more frequently. Lord knows that we have been busy in the interim. St. Jan and I drug the trailer to Wisconsin to be on hand when Gen ran a half marathon in Elroy, Wisconsin shortly after returning from an excursion to Rapid City with the trailer in tow. In October Jan and I, Gen, Sam and Gus loaded up the pickup and made a run to Virginia to see Rachel and her family who just returned to the USA from Germany. After a non-stop run out -lets not do that one again- we found their house in Chesapeake with the help of our gps unit. How did we ever get along before this came along? I mainly use it to navigate in urban areas. Anyhow it was good to see them, Hans, Rachel, Josiah, Annika and for the first time William, the newest grandson. The Norfolk area is nice, naturally not quite what I expected. We celebrated Will's first birthday during our stay and made a two day run home. Amazingly enough we all made the round trip without strangling anybody. Even Sam and Gus traveled like troupers strapped into car seats the whole way. I don't think that I would care to make the trip tied down like that.







I have been on a few PGR missions in the meantime, riding to as many as I could before the weather turned cold and snowy. Today it was 2 above zero when I got up. That makes me think of something, every night when you go to bed you routinely assume that you will get up in the morning don't you? Hmm, anyhow in this period of time I should have written a blog for St. Jan's birthday, the woman that literally saved my life, gave me three terrific children that have expanded into seven grandchildren. What can I say but thanks? At one of the last PGR missions I was standing next to a guy from Jordan, and we got to talking about riding to Alaska. This guy spent two months on the road up there and back and said don't wait. I mentioned it to Jan and she encouraged me to just do it. I have to admit that that is one item that has been on my bucket list for a long time, so know I am into researching the trip. I have all winter and then some to get this organised so it should be interesting. I have done a map-quest and it is over 3000 miles to Fairbanks from here, so I am thinking it's going to be a minimum of two weeks on the road. Jan and I also plan to ride out to Virginia this year too, and I was planning a return to western Wyoming this Summer. I am thinking something is going to have to give or I won't be back until Fall. I am going to throw in some random pictures with this post to give my pathetically small group of readers a look at what we have been up to.